Uh Oh.

Apparently when Reagan became president he took away the tax breaks for renewable energy and drove the largest solar energy farm out of business. Wow. And sorry. I'm going to try to post another hulu video even though I know I haven't fixed the previous ones. The name of the program is "The Nature of Things: Earth Energy" but I think it's going to expire in 3 days. I highly recommend that if nothing else, you head over there and watch the episodes on "Biomimicry" (there's 2 parts) and learn how scientists are using the techniques prefected by nature to make human life more efficicient and just plain work better. Plus finding things that we'd never have been able to do otherwise.

I Pledge...

to reduce my environmental impact by:

1. Refusing to buy processed foods. I will do my best to only eat foods that I make completly for myself...except when going out to eat of course. This includes ice cream, cookies, cakes, and all other "junk" foods. I also will not buy spice mixes, but will instead buy all spices and make them myself. I will grow my own herbs and also the majority of my vegetables. I will buy locally whenever possible and shop at farmer's markets as often as I can. I will not give up taste for the environment, however, and yet I believe I will actually be happier.
2. Refusing to buy plastic whenever possible. I will use aluminum foil instead of plastic wrap. I will use glass containers or jars with metal lids. I will use a fountain pen with homemade ink instead of buying disposible pens. I will use homemade glue instead of tape. I will not buy bottled water, or any bottled juice; and never soda. I will try not to use plastic baggies and will use them as many times as possible before recycling.
3. I will recycle any plastic that enters my life. I will recycle as much as I can, including making my own paper for letter writing so that I know where my paper was made and with what chemicals and how those chemicals go back into the environment.
4. I will reduce my water use. I will take shorter showers, or shower less often. I will buy water saving appliances. I will have a low flow shower head and toilet. I will practice "if it's yellow" so long as it is not obvious. I will not water my lawn/garden except with rain water I have collected. I will not leave the water running while I brush my teeth and I will shave in the shower.
5. I will reduce my electricity usage. I will not turn the lights on when I don't need them. I will go to bed, and wake up, early to get the most out of the light that the sun provides. I will buy a tank-less water heater so that I only heat the water that I use. I will use natural gas if and where possible. I will have energy efficient appliances. I will look into solar panels and wind turbines to supliment my energy usage. I will use a computer to watch television instead of a television set, since most likely I will be on the computer anyway. A laptop can be charged while in use and then run off the battery, getting twice as much usage with half as much power...though my physics is probably wrong with this.
6. I will strive to pay the least amount of money to any power or water company.
7. I will reduce the amount of chemicals I use in my home and in my body. I will seek natural remedies and use less harsh cleaners. But I will not sacrifice my health. I will not, however, just flush old medications down the toilet so that they can contaminate our water supply.

Why Global Warming is so Confusing.

One of the most common defenses against global warming is to use discrepencies in the conclusions of published papers and say that "well, if they can't agree, then it must not be true". What the skeptics don't realize is that there's a big difference in the conclusions of a paper written on Southern Alaska and one written on Northern Greenland. There's also the problem of scientists talking about additional research that can be done next within their conclusions without accurately saying why they didn't do what they think should be done next--because they ran out of funding or need more assistants. But anyway, I'm not here to complain about public misunderstandings of scientific papers. I'm going to propose a simple example that might help you understand why global warming is complicated and why you should be leery whenever someone proposes "scientific proof" that global warming is fake.

The world is a complicated place. Depending on the specific characteristics of a location, the way that location responds to changes will be different. Picture, for instance, a study of 20 different people. These people include men, women, children, the elderly, Asians, Africans, South Americans, Europeans, the disabled, the average, the health nuts, tall people, short people, "smart" people, "dumb" people, and any other number of other differences associated with the human genome. Now, lets take our experimental group and let's increase the temperature. The old and the young might be the first to drop out--unable to withstand extremely elevated temperatures (you know you've heard about the warnings during heat waves). The South Americans and Australians of the healthy variety will probably be able to survive the longest. Or, let's fill the room with excess CO2 and see who can best survive the pollution. Not enough water? Too much radiation? Etc. Why the discrepancies?

 No one would question a study that concluded that different people respond differently to different stimuli (well, actually, I think they do, but that's a different story), so why are there so many complaints when envirionmental scientists say that depending on where you are in the world the affects will be different?

Actually, my next area of study on this topic will be to figure out why so much of the public is convinced that we're actually in a state of global cooling. No scientists agrees with this.

Wondering Aloud.

It's 1982 and Ellen Goodman from the Washington Post Writers Group was tasked with writing a review to put on the back of my book Women's Diaries of the Westward Journey by Lillian Schlissel. She wrote, "In this new season of migration, when the economy acts like a centrifuge, it is equally challenging to keep a family together..."

As I wasn't alive in 1982, I can't really say what the economy was like. Nor can I say much about the "new season of migration". But I can say something about a centrifuge. I've used one probably 2 dozen times during the 7 weeks of bio-lab I've had so far and will probably use it more in the coming weeks. A centrifuge literally spins around in circles causing everything inside your tube to get squished into the tip, creating a little pellet. I'm not sure how this can describe an economy. Unless, of course, she means that all the wealth got spun around in circles until it all ended up in the hands of a very few people (making up that pellet). Ah well. If you could provide some insight, that would be much appreciated.

On a similar, but probably not related note, there was a funny moment in my lecture course today. The professor that was speaking had a total brain fart when describing initial thoughts about coral reefs. Apparently early scientists of the species thought that the corals were..."umm....what's the name for, uhh, vegetarians?" "Herbivores" (said someone from the audience).  "Thank-you" (from the professor). It was a great lecture. He told us about 2 research projects he worked on measuring the affects of stresses on coral reefs (increased amount of nutrients, increased water temperatures, increased sediment runoff, etc). One was in Israel where they worked out of a military tent while the military vessels sailed past checking on their work. The other was off the coast of Key Largo, FL where they lived 80m under the ocean surface for 10 days with a broken toilet where they had to venture out of the habitat to a separate bubble and "release more nutrients into the ocean column" and then told us of the certain fish that liked to hang around and bit the legs of those using the bathroom. Good times. Oh, and they couldn't have an open flame because they were under pressure, so they had to eat freeze dried astronaut meals for those 10 days.

North-West Passage

I've heard a lot of people call global warming/climate change a hoax and of course I have my own opinion on the phenomena.

First off. The name change. Yeah, totally political. People are more willing to believe in "climate change" over "global warming" simply because when winter gets brutal, it makes no sense to think that the world is getting warmer. All it tells me is how ignorant a certain demographic of the population is. You see, weather and climate are two VERY different things. The definition of weather (from one of my envi.sci. textbooks) "includes an area's short-term temperature, precipitation, humidity, wind speed, cloud cover, and other physical conditions of the lower atmosphere over a short period of time--the atmospheric conditions we experience day by day". Climate (from the same book) is a "region's general pattern of atmospheric or weather conditions over a long time--years, decades, and centuries. Average temperature and average precipitation are the two main factors determining climate, along with the closely related factors of latitude and altitude. Many factors contribute to a local climate, including the amount of solar radiation reaching the area, the earth's daily rotation and annual path around the sun, air circulation over the earth's surface, the global distribution of landmasses and seas, the circulation of the ocean currents and the elevation of landmasses.

Second: The environment is a LOT like the economy. You change something and there is an affect in what feels like an unrelated area.

For example. If you lose 100 jobs in production of refrigerators, you will lose 50 jobs in the production of refrigerants and 25 jobs in production of steel. With 175 jobs lost you will find a decrease in demand for luzury goods like big screen tvs. Then you lose jobs in that area as well. This is of course, a very simple model. The environment is just as wide spread. The death of honey bees in Europe will cause a decrease in food supplies that would normally be sent to Africa. You would think that it would just mean the death of more Africans. Nope, because American's will take up the slack. Our food supplies would decrease, increasing our prices.

Now for the "real" environment. Water is amazing--it absorbs an amazing amount of energy without changing temperature. Ocean currents are probably the most important influencer on climate. It's why England doesn't freeze while Greenland does. But the oceans can only take so much. Watch a pot of water boil. In a split second the water goes from 99.9C and not boiling to 100C and is boiling.  If you increase temperatures, you increase evaporation of oceans, thus increasing the salt concentration of the oceans because salt is not evaporated. Increased salt concentrations will make them reach levels that fish and other sea life cannot survive. If the fish die, then humans can't eat them. Also, if the fish die, the other sea predators, whales for example cannot eat them. The whales will die and thus can't be used by individuals for food or oil--whalers will go out of business. Also, increasing ocean temperatures causes some funky things to happen with ocean current systems. You see, there are layers to the ocean with lower levels with temperatures holding at a pretty constant amount (kept warm by the Earth's core). The surface is warmed up by the sun. But there are certain physical properties that get messed up as temperatures change. The yearly turn-over of the oceans is caused by changes in temperatures--if temperatures are screwed up, they won't happen. If you're studying a lake, you can watch every fish die when the lake doesn't turn over and replinish oxygen into the lower levels of the water and put nutrients into the upper level.

So, what causes an increase in temperatures? Who cares. Doesn't matter. Be green because it's economical and sustainable. Be green because it doesn't destroy the environment and kill off the beautiful bugs that make it possible to have food, the animals that clean up our wastes, or the plants that give us the oxygen that we breathe.

Still don't believe me that the climate is changing? How about this fact. We now have a North-West Passage that was the dream find in 1600. Had there been a NW passage back then, life as we know it would be very different. England might not have decided to send settlers to this new world, or would have at least not have invested so much money--their focus was on getting to Asia. Recently, (within the last 2 years) the NW passage was crossed. This is probably the most visible example of how the sea-ice up there has melted and probably the most widely noticible examples of visible climate change. Weather change wouldn't cause that much ice to melt--only sustained increased temperatures would be enough to cause it.

Latest article on carbon levels here.