Our World and Everything in It

As we continue to argue whether or not man causes global warming, brown clouds are shadowing land from the Arabian Peninsula across Asia all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Hey when we can see it, it’s idiotic to deny it.

The clouds are not only darkening cities but also causing the Himalayan glaciers to melt. How is that happening? One would assume that darkened skies shield the glaciers from the sun’s glare. An article from Beijing, China on Environmental News Service states: “Atmospheric brown clouds, formed by the burning of fossil fuels, biofuels, wood and plants, absorb sunlight and heat the air.” Not only that but, “The clouds also mask the actual warming impact of climate change by anywhere between 20 and 80 percent because they include sulfates and other chemicals which reflect sunlight and cool the surface.”

There is no logic relative to global warming. You know the same simple logic that figures we are getting cooler so it can’t possibly be global warming. That’s a little too easy. As anyone can see from this latest study, what should be isn’t, plus the affects are hidden.

The scientists that conducted this study are from universities and research centers throughout Asia, Europe, and the U.S. The article went on to show yet another chain reaction: “The possible impact of atmospheric brown clouds could include elevated levels of ground-level ozone, which could result in crop losses of up to 40 percent in Asia.” And the Himalayan glaciers are the source for the rivers throughout China. Food and water shortages may happen in the near future. With over a billion people, could this mean a widening world famine?

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2008/2008-11-13-02.asp

There are still arguments whether or not global warming has contributed to the onslaught of wildfires in California that certainly appear to be getting worse. As a matter of fact, I read an article that suggested it is because of invading populations of people moving into fire prone areas, and/or forest management practices instead. But a scientific paper published a year ago stated “that the changing climate was a greater influence on wildfire activity and intensity than forest management.” http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/Global-Warming-California-Wildfire-47102305.

As for people moving into fire prone areas, sure there would be more likelihood of fires, and more property damage, but Mother Nature is seriously contributing to the wildfire fiasco with a record drought, temperatures in the 80’s-90’s instead of the 70’s for this time of year, and winds that are clocking at 60 and 70 mph, with gusts up to 85! Besides authorities declared that the wildfires in California this past July set a record. There were over 1781 fires burning at once, but luckily most were in sparsely populated areas. So much for the “people-cause-the-fires” theory. http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/california-wildfires-set-a-record/.

What I find odd is that the same people that deny the fire activity in California is due in part to global warming but instead caused by people, simultaneously deny that people cause global warming. Is this not selective reasoning? Certainly the smoke from these fires contributes heavily to air pollution.

Even an article in Business Week suggested that if we don’t do something soon about global warming the costs of the bad weather produced by it could be devastating for California. It stated that there could be “as much as $3.9 billion in annual damages caused by wildfires, rising sea levels and extreme weather events.” I say ditto for many other parts of the country. http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D94EAOUO1.htm.

California isn’t the only area of concern. Hurricane ravaged Galveston, Texas did not get enough press during the presidential campaign. There are still what can be termed “Katrina victims.” I’ve noticed a pronounced change in path and verocity of tropical storms up the east coast of America. We do not want to see anything that resembles a hurricane hit NYC. This past spring our midwest was hit with horrible floods. Tornadoes in the South in November are becoming common. And let’s get real here. Five states in the SW have experienced huge growth, even though 4 of those states collectively rely on one and the same Colorado River for all of their water needs. Add the mentality that wants to maintain a steady growth in population in America, and we have to ask, “Just where is everyone supposed to live that won’t pose some sort of weather and/or uninhabitable terrain problem in the U.S.?” Can’t run, can hide from Mother Nature.

With a new administration on the way, the U.S. is about to get much more environmentally friendly. As a matter of fact the environment is a priority on a very crammed transition agenda. As an article in the Washington Post reported: “While Obama said at a news conference last week that his top priority would be to stimulate the economy and create jobs, his advisers say that focus will not delay key shifts in social and regulatory policies, including some — such as the embrace of new environmental safeguards — that Obama has said will have long-term, beneficial impacts on the economy.” Yeah, a lot of new jobs.

Some things to be looking for right off the bat:

Declaring carbon dioxide emissions endanger human welfare.

Rescinding the Bush administration’s decision last December to deny California the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles, (17 states are lined up right beyond California to do the same).

Creating a National Energy Council

Improving Food and Drug Regulations

Not a bad start. Anything has to be better than an administration that consistently pushed science aside in lieu of ideological beliefs or for politically motivated reasons. Hopefully, we are about to see many brand new industries emerge that will provide new construction, new jobs, new investments, and new futures for many people.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/08/AR2008110801856.html?hpid=topnews

While many are busy trying to make change in this country through our upcoming elections, the Bush administration is feverishly trying to deregulate more. And some of this deregulation would not only have horrible consequences for the environment, but also public safety.

Think that it’s no problem because either Obama or maverick McCain will undo the Bush damage? Think again. The Clinton administration tried to put through regulatory laws a little too late at the end of his administration. When Bush took office he scrapped over 250 of Clinton’s regulations for the environment, public safety, etc., quite easily. So this time around the Bush administration is making sure there are no loose ends to their lobbyist loving deregulation push. It will take a heck of a lot of time, trouble, and interest to undo what Bush puts in place now. It affects farms, animals, our food, imports, fishing, environment, clean air, water, global warming, and public safety.

We’ve seen what deregulation has done with tainted food, toys, the sell off of our national parks, a spike in killing wolves, buffalo, and wild mustang horses, and many -other things that affect global warming like over fishing, which allows the growth of rotting plants that results in increasing methane explosions into the atmosphere. We’ve slowly learned that every little thing affects something else in a big way—a process that the Bush administration has never grasped. Their concern is for corporate gain at the expense of many things that directly and adversely affect us.  

Please read the entire article and contact your congressional reps to stop this last minute deregulation that could prove to be the last blow to the environment and our own safety!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/30/AR2008103004749.html?hpid%3Dtopnews&sub=AR

I watched a segment on ABC news about people greening up their RV’s. The RVer that was interviewed showed what he did with his fifth wheel. I figured sooner or later the RV industry was going to catch onto going green. There are too many used campers and RV’s for sale.

The RVer in the interview added solar panels along the front, what would be the upper berth over the driver. He added a small wind turbine on the back. He said it powers everything inside he wants it to. He devised a way to catch rain water whenever possible, and runs it through an inline filter. And finally he maps out where he can buy B10 biofuel. So far he said he has been lucky to find it.

More entrepreneurship is needed in this industry. I blogged about “trashing out” homes in need of some ingenuity, now the RV industry could use some ingenious mechanics out there to recycle some of the really nice RV’s I’ve seen for sale. Between solar, methane, wind, and all types of fuels that will hopefully debut in the very near future, surely with a little modification here and there, some mechanic, somewhere can launch a guilt free, economical cruising home.

I hope it’s soon because I would love to criss cross America with an RV. Throw the pets on board and visit all the national parks before they’re ruined by developers that bought some of the land auctioned off by the Bush administration. It’s more likely this will happen than not. My husband retires in 3 years. I have a degree for writing so…”Have laptop; will travel.”

Tips on greening up an RV: http://www.ehow.com/how_2269205_green-rv.html

Check out this website’s comments section. Someone has been installing solar panels in RV’s for 6 years and knows what to expect and the costs. Another commenter is looking to convert his old VW camper to hybrid. Now that’s what I mean about ingenuity. http://www.autobloggreen.com/2007/03/21/what-could-be-done-to-green-up-rvs-here-are-coachmens-ideas/.

http://thesustainableearthproject.blogspot.com/2008/09/big-ol-guzzling-rvs-reconsidered-are.html

CO2 gas has competition in our atmosphere. Methane gas and nitrogen trifluoride is increasing at an alarming rate. The ice melt in the Artic is releasing an enormous amount of methane from rotting plants. The nitrogen fluoride is used in the manufacture of flat panel monitors.

According to an article in USA, two Scripps Institute geoscientists have collected cylinders of air samples from around the world and both methane and nitrogen fluoride is building quicker than expected.

I’ve blogged about the little known methane gas explosions along the coast of Africa: http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/2008/04/mankind-contributes-to-global-warming-through-fish/. They are caused by the same thing—rotting plants on the ocean floor, plants that used to be food for sardines and a rapidly declining fish supply due to overfishing, especially in that area.

Understand the chain reaction of imbalance now? One thing like overfishing causes excess plankton, which eventually dies and begins to rot on the ocean floor. The rot releases methane gas, which builds under pressure and eventually blows. The caveat to all of this is that the first global warming event 40 million years ago that literally scorched the earth was caused from excess methane gas. http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/2007/06/world-environment-day/.

And what about nitrogen trifluoride as evidence man truly is affecting global warming by excessive output of harmful gases that throws the (closed system) atmosphere out of balance? If geoscientists can actually register the growth of toxic nitrogen fluoride, which is not a naturally occurring element but rather a combination of elements used in the silicon industry, than that is proof man is contributing to the toxicity of our atmosphere and an imbalance of what we witness as global warming.

The more scientists are able to gather air samples worldwide the more our eyes will open to the fact we’re polluting at an awful rate and by doing so promoting the demise of our world and everything in it. I hope we can unite on this conclusion soon enough.

For those that say this is a normal cyclical happening, did we have excessive nitrogen trifluoride in the air back then too? We certainly didn’t have almost 7 billion people on earth to think about relative to global warming.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27400533/

http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/2008/06/worse-things-increasing-in-the-air-than-co2/

http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/2008/05/humans-have-been-affecting-the-earths-atmosphere-for-at-least-2000-years/

http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/category/environmentalism/global-warming/page/4/

I was watching PBS news last night and found out a little more about how the foreclosed home situation is being handled. No wonder banks/lenders are in trouble. The waste is unbelievable. It’s called “trashing out a home” when mortgage lenders pay someone to carry everything out of a house to a dumpster. The items are many times top notch household furnishings and electronics. It all ends up in a landfill. What a waste. This pillage should be spread around.

I watched a whole new genre of mover called “trash-out crews.” They go into foreclosed homes and strip the house of all its belongings and send it to the trash dump. You might think that wouldn’t be much, but many upper middle class homes that have been vacated, leave behind much of their high-end belongings too. In some cases it looked as if someone came through and yelled “run for your lives the damn has burst” because food was left out, and toys were still on the floor. There is a large amount of TV’s and electronics like PCS left behind. These items could be put to use in schools.

When the interviewer asked the head of one of these trash-out companies about giving it to charity he said the logistics of hooking up with a charity is slim. They don’t show up, or aren’t on time, or leave things of little value behind so that he has to go back a second time. Unfortunately, he said he tried the eco friendly way and it ends up costing him money. His company is paid by the mortgage companies to pick up perfectly nice items and send them to the landfill where they pay fees to dump the stuff too.

Don’t think this happens much? The same guy with the trash-out company started with 3 employees and now has 73. His trash out crews trash 15 homes per day—high scale stuff from the edge of the golf course homes. It was sickening to see what went into a dumpster knowing the mortgage industry is in serious trouble and wasting like this. To think people somewhere are living in huts on dirt floors, and the amount and variety of things that are getting buried in the earth here is ridiculous. 

I ran across one article that wanted to know where the entrepreneurs are when it comes to trashing out homes? Think about it. It’s a never ending supply of free merchandise that you can actually resell on eBay or Craig’s list, and the bank/lender pays you to pick it up. If you don’t resell it, you store it and in the future you charge the same bank that paid you to pick it up in order to stage the same empty homes for resale using the furniture you took from them in the first place. Think of it as getting paid to pick it up, then put it back.

My first thought was, “Where is Habitat for Humanity?” After all, if an organization like Habitat is going through the trouble of enlisting volunteers to build someone a brand new home, it shouldn’t be an empty home with all this “trash” around.  The same volunteers for Habitat could be working with the mortgage lenders for “clear out” not “trash out” jobs. Imagine presenting someone with a new and “furnished” home.

Is this socialist ideology? It’s certainly “spreading the wealth” around. I see it as recycling whatever, whenever from someone who didn’t care enough to take it, store it, or donate it in the first place. Besides the amount spent on trashing and landfill costs is not that much cheaper than doing the right thing.

I don’t buy it that there is no way to hook this stuff up with charity. There is always a way. If someone offered good money for a solution there would certainly be a way to do it, but then it wouldn’t be charity.

http://www.news-press.com/article/20081022/RE/810220376/1014/RSS02

http://www.maxgladwell.com/2008/10/foreclosure-crisis-where-are-the-green-entrepreneurs/

WXYZ news announced this morning that Detroit area Coca Cola trucks would soon be running on hybrid electric motors. The trucks were purchased earlier this year from Eaton Corp.

Eaton is an impressive corporation as far as transportation and the environment. There website states: “We create innovations in hybrid power and low emission vehicles as a leading provider of diesel-electric hybrid power systems for truck and bus applications on three continents. Eaton is also developing hydraulic hybrid power systems technologies for use in refuse trucks, delivery vehicles, buses and other applications. Eaton has a hybrid truck drivetrain center outside of Kalamazoo and is a Cleveland-based Corp.

http://www.eaton.com/EatonCom/Markets/Truck/index.htm.

Coca-Cola ordered 120 of the hybrid trucks, the largest North American commercial order from Eaton’s hybrid systems according to WWJ. Coke previewed these trucks when they purchased 20 of them last year. They evidently liked their performance.

The article below said that Coca-Cola did extensive tests and found that “Eaton’s hybrid-electric drivetrain equipped trucks decreased emissions by 32 percent and fuel consumption by up to 37 percent.” This kind of fuel savings could start a trend.

http://www.wwj.com/Coke-to-Buy-Hybrid-Delivery-Trucks-From-

Eaton/1729913

The NRDC and other organizations like Greenpeace and Center for Biological Diversity have filed a suit against the Bush Administration again on behalf of the polar bear according to the NRDC. The polar bear is on the endangered list, but it seems its habitat is not. Soooo there is a lot of leeway (loopholes) in that plan for Big Oil.

The White House has been flooded with petitions to protect the polar bear and its habitat, but the NRDC and others have had to file suit even as Bush’s time in office is limited. Likewise, the Center for Biodiversity has a lawsuit against the Dept. of Interior, lead by good ole Dirk Kempthorne, for attempting to expand oil and gas development in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas or the “Polar Bear Seas.” It’s called the “Five Year Plan.” Real nice. In five years we should be on our way to oil independence.

It’s more tail chase logic. Allow oil companies to invade polar bear country with the industry that produces the fuel that emits CO2 fueling global warming that is melting the polar bear’s habitat in the first place. It’s another pretty package with little inside from the Bush administration. Apparently, we are to assume the package itself is a big portion of the actual present. And so goes this administration’s polar-bear-is-an-endangered-species offering that sounds right and just but turns right around and gives oil companies the upper hand in the Arctic.

An Arctic that is diminished with one million square miles, six times the size of California, melted away in the past 30 years. For those that want to argue this all happened before, well it wasn’t the Medieval Warming Period from somewhere in the 900’s-1300’s era. We’re a heck of a lot warmer now. According to New Scientist Environment website we might have to go back 6000 to 125,000 years to get as warm as we’re getting and it’s only going to get worse. This is not just natural phenomenon happening here. Anyway the difference between thousands of years ago and now is almost 7 billion people.

Look at the more dense population areas of the world. They are along the water. Take a pitcher of water with ice cubes in it and watch as they melt. No water level change, but add ice and that pitcher overflows. Imagine the scenario if all the ice that covers the land in our coldest regions slips into the surrounding water. That’s adding some mighty big ice cubes to our albeit mighty big oceans/seas but the pitcher will still overflow.

Big Oil’s intrusion in the Polar Bear Seas is adding insult to injury or in this case certain death to the polar bear. And it’s unnecessary. There are some 63 million acres of land leased for oil exploration that hasn’t been touched. The intruder polluters also endanger birds, fish, and other mammals with potential oil spills.

Organizations like the NRDC, Earthjustice, Greenpeace, Center for Biodiversity, and others are making progress. Shell put off drilling in the Beaufort Sea off the Arctic Refuge coast for another year. Now if they can just hold the Bush Administration and Dirk Kempthorne at bay for oh, a couple of months, maybe a new administration will have a little more empathy for the polar bear and our environment. 

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11644

http://www.nrdc.org/naturesvoice/feature1.asp

http://www.nrdc.org/media/2008/081006.asp

Between the presidential campaign and financial crisis, we haven’t really absorbed the enormity of devastation from hurricane Ike. This time around it wasn’t just houses along the Galveston coastline but actual property that disappeared. Imagine being a homeowner without a home or the sandy beach where it once stood. What now? We’ve been told the storms are only going to increase in intensity, but we still refuse to believe we have a connection to any of it.

I’ve been watching the storms that continue up the eastern coastline. If something big makes it to New York—it will be catastrophic. By all indications more and more hurricanes are traveling that eastern seaboard path. It’s only a matter of time, and it’s too bad we will have to be kicked that badly before we pay attention to our role relative to the environment.

The other devastation that hardly got any media play is the half a million gallons of oil that spilled into the Gulf of Mexico from damaged oil rigs. Fifty two rigs were hit with thirty two severely damaged according to ABC news.

The Gulf of Mexico already has a “dead zone” that is miles wide where runoff pollution, mostly agricultural fertilizer, has killed the ecosystem in the gulf to the point there is no life all the way to the bottom. It’s caused by oxygen depletion. Fishermen say that they can tell when they’ve entered the dead zone. The water appears deep, murky and lifeless. Well now it’s oily too.

My whole point here is that the little jingle “Drill, baby, drill” that so many seem to want, will add hundreds more of these oil platforms in the gulf and along the eastern seaboard. The platforms are right in the path of worsening storms. Inevitably there will be more oil spills, killing more sea life above and beyond the devastation from the storms. And the storms will get worse as global warming continues to fire up from the pollution created from using oil to begin with. Can we not see we are our own worst environmental enemy in this instance?

It seems to me we’re on a destructive path literally rubbing salt in the wound of global warming by adding yet more oil drills along our coastlines, especially since we are currently witnessing what conservation can do, albeit forced conservation. Over six hundred thousand jobs have been lost in the U.S. so commuting to work is at a low. As a result of lowered demand, oil prices are dropping. In light of this drop in oil prices, doesn’t it seem prudent to conserve first before we rush to drill for more oil? After all, I don’t know too many parents that continuously fuel their kids with money when the kids haven’t shown that they are responsible with the cash in the first place by blowing it on everything they can. Ditto for U.S. oil usage. We consume way too much oil, and just as spoiled children have no business asking for more until we bring our oil habit under control.