Our World and Everything in It

 

Last year was one of the worst years on record for climate related natural disasters according to (ENS) Environmental News Service. Costs associated with damage were 200 billion dollars and thousands of lives as well.

We’re into a new year with a new president. The ENS article stated: “At the annual UN climate conference set for Copenhagen in December 2009, governments are expected to agree on a treaty to limit climate warming greenhouse gas emissions to follow the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012.”

Hopefully, the U.S. will see its way to joining the rest of the world in a combined effort toward climate neutrality, which is “living in a way which produces no net greenhouse gas emissions, achievable by reducing emissions, and using carbon offsets to neutralize the remaining emissions.”

 

We CAN do this.

 

Read the whole article: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2008/2008-12-31-03.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.

Is it just me or are there more earthquakes happening in more spots around the world? Not long ago, Ohio had tremors, and now Virgin Island residents woke to a 6.1 rumble on Saturday morning. Luckily no injuries or problems were reported.

This was the strongest earthquake to hit Puerto Rico in 20 years according to an article on Newsday.com, and it happened on the 90^th anniversary of the worst earthquake to ever hit Puerto Rico, “a magnitude 7.3 quake that killed 118 people in the western half of the U.S. Caribbean territory.” What are the odds of that happening on the exact same day?

Since earthquakes seem to be making the rounds in unlikely places, maybe Michigan will hear a rumble or two again. Earlier this year in April, earthquake tremors were felt in Kalamazoo from the 5.2 earthquake in Illinois. And I remember the Michigan earthquake in the 70’s. I want to say 1978, but I don’t remember the exact year. I do remember what most people report, “it felt like a truck hit the building,” and that’s exactly what I thought. The way my apartment shook at Charlotte Arms, I thought someone overshot their parking space and rammed the building.

I’m not keen on feeling that again anytime too soon.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-cb-virgin-islands-earthquake,0,5022590.story.

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.

Gas will more than likely shoot to $6 per gallon because Ike is now the size of Texas itself and will more than likely destroy rigs and pipeline. So we are to drill elsewhere for more? Isn’t that perpetuating a problem?

We’ve been told by science, not politicians that man may have a hand in the rapid global warming we’re seeing. The administration in play for the past 8 years is an oil administration. They would do and say whatever to keep oil flowing and have. As a result, Americans are doubtful about global warming; more so than citizens of other developed countries that don’t simply shrug global warming off on Al Gore. Other countries are trying to affect change.

Meanwhile, this administration has flat out lied to us about a war, what would make us think especially after the latest news that government regulators party with oil lobbyists that maybe we’ve been lied to by this government about the environment?

And what about all the offshore drilling that everyone wants? Those rigs aren’t hurricane proof either. Hurricane Hannah ran up the side of the east coast, the gulf is getting lambasted now, and the west coast took a beating late winter and early spring this past year. There really is not safe place for a rig, except maybe in your backyard.

But why should we open up our backyards to more oil exploration in the first place when we have almost 70 million acres leased for oil that is producing NADA—absolutely nothing. That type of production would boost our oil by 5 million barrels per day, and enough time to progress with alternatives. Alternatives will insure we no longer have to worry about pipelines and oil rigs getting damaged from what will assuredly be intensified storms due to global warming we’re helping to grow. 

The real fear is that hurricanes running too closely together might join into one mammoth and frightening proposition. Ditto for tornadoes.  Oil is only an interim fix, we need to harness the power of some of that nature we’re seeing attack us.

I wonder how much energy Ike is putting out?

http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/23/news/economy/oil_drilling/index.htm?cnn=yes.

The sun is getting brighter and hotter. We’ll feel it again on Friday when the temperature is supposed to hit 89. To stand with bare skin in the sun really burns hot regardless of a breeze. So we’re told to wear sunscreen, lots of sunscreen, and try to stay out of it.   

I do use it, but wondered why my face felt like I have gravel under my skin whenever I applied sunscreen, especially the really good stuff. And I get darker and darker anyway. I’ve got a pretty good tan considering I wear 45 SPF, a big hat, and long sleeve men’s shirts for yard work. I’ve been telling my doctor for years that I do apply sunscreen, lots of it, but I tan anyway. Now I read this article that the FDA was warned to provide more information about sunscreen.

 According to the article on World Wire:

Sunscreens pose scientifically well-documented risks. While well known for over a decade, they remain unregulated by the FDA, and ignored by the industry.

Sunscreens are based on six ingredients, some of which actively penetrate the skin, accumulate in the body, and have been identified in urine and breast milk. More ominously, these ingredients have toxic hormonal effects, known technically as “endocrine disruptive.” Evidence for these effects has been well documented over the last decade. This includes stimulation of human breast cancer cells in test tube experiments, and increased uterine growth in immature female rats following skin painting or feeding.

Of major concern, and still ignored by the FDA, is the increasing addition to sunscreens of unlabeled atom or molecule size zinc oxide or titanium dioxide particles. Technically known as nanoparticles, they increase the durability and effectiveness of these products. However, as reported in over two dozen scientific publications since 2003, including those by an Environmental Protection Agency research team and the International Center for Technology Assessment, nanoparticles can penetrate the skin, invade blood vessels, and produce devastating distant toxic effects.

I think I’ll stick to just the big and big shirt until this mess gets straightened out.

Read more: http://world-wire.com/news/0808070001.html

If you ever had any questions about a anything relating to earth and its functions, how it all happened, how our climate is changing and why, how we know this stuff, and many other things, watch National Geographic’s presentation “Planet Earth.” This is family stuff, enlightening, interesting, and a little bit scary.

Some of the presentations are explosive. It’s a little mind boggling how they are able to present prehistoric earth with video footage of events and places from the present. I watched the one about ice mass, and last night was about earthquakes, ending with volcanic eruptions. There is as much action as the latest Rambo movie. My husband was perturbed we changed channels from the movie “Mash,” but said it was really a great presentation and he wants to see more of it now. You’ll find yourself saying “Wow”  and “I didn’t know that!” more than once.

I know some people don’t get the National Geographic Channel, but the DVD set of “Planet Earth” is available. It’s better than any encyclopedia books I was brought up with. Maybe if they had this type of learning tool back then more of us would have went into science.

“Planet Earth” is on every night this week, beginning at 9:00 pm on the National Geographic Channel. Tune in.

I love this. Canadian citizens as part of an environmental group called Friends of Canada are suing their country for breech of the Kyoto Treaty. Out of 180 countries that signed the Kyoto Protocol, Canada is the first to be brought to court for neglecting its legal commitment to fight global warming.

Canada’s government is conservative right now and evidently playing to big business polluters. Sounds like the U.S. As the chief exec of Friends of Earth stated: ‘While other industrialized countries actively work to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change, our government has offered pollution holidays for emitters for decades to come.’

So Canadians are taking their country to court over the environment. I wonder if they’re going to get specific and if it will affect Canada’s drilling for oil in the Great Lakes? The Friends of Canada exec said: ‘This government has broken the law [] and, as Canadian citizens, we have both a moral and legal imperative to insist on enforcement of our own laws on climate action.’

Geez, I wish Bush would have signed the Kyoto Treaty. He slid away from it with a promise to enforce our own environmental laws. We see what happened there.

This is going to be pretty interesting. It’s setting a precedent for one, and it could force the Canadian government to come up with detailed plans on how they plan to lower their emissions six percent below 1990 levels. This is legally binding but Canada says it cannot meet that goal. It seems to me the more a government monkeys around and stalls on actively and earnestly trying to produce alternative sources for energy the more impossible it is to meet specific goals that will curb catastrophic events down the line.

Mother Nature certainly isn’t going to wait around for us to figure out how to conserve. Look at the floods in corn country. It kinda puts a damper on massive ethanol production. We’re still not getting who is in charge here. The environment trumps just about everything. We absolutely need the cooperation of weather for so many things. Maybe gas prices are high to truck food to us, but without the cooperation of the climate, there simply won’t be any food to truck. There isn’t much we can do about Mother Nature. We can’t shoot missiles at her. We can’t blow her up. We can’t place embargos on her. There isn’t much we can do to Mother Nature except abuse or nurture her. If we decide to nurture, we make our own paradise where we live in harmony with our world and everything in it. Or we can continue the abuse until MN kills us out of self defense.

Read more: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jun2008/2008-06-18-02.asp

The floodwaters in the middle of our country may be dangerous. People are lining up for tetanus shots. If you figure this is America’s farm country, then figure there is a lot of animal dung, pesticides, and fertilizer floating around. Oh and some 55 gallon drums labeled, “corrosive,” are in the swill, like the raunchy flood waters needed any help. 

People returning to their flooded out homes are frightened because the smell is a mix of all the above along with the gas slick that appears on top of stagnant water. One man said he could hardly stand it. And another woman who had a gas mask on said she could still smell it. I’d be worried about someone lighting a match!

Water damage is one thing but to not really know what just traveled through everything in your house is a health hazard. That and the millions of mosquitoes that are spawning from all the standing water. I’m looking around to see if anyone is reporting what the water samples turned up.

Meanwhile, read more about this horrible disaster. Pray that the 27 questionable levees along the swelling Mississippi stay in place, and be thankful that we haven’t seen this kind of action here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25198134

For those of us in Michigan or anywhere else that think global warming or any of the climate events happening elsewhere won’t/don’t affect us guess again. Just like yesterday’s blog about Dead Zones that affects our penchant for shrimp, crab, and select fish like grouper, the California fires are in wine country.  So that perfect glass of wine to accompany that already vulnerable seafood dinner may not materialize at all.

Floods in the Midwest have caused a huge loss in corn crops also. So much for ethanol as an alternative. The loss of corn is going to cause an even greater problem with food shortages worldwide, which really can’t take another hit. As a result we’ll soon see food prices climb even higher here.

It simply amazes me that we’re experiencing such drastic degrees of bad weather at the same time. Look at the flood risk this year: http://www.nws.noaa.gov/oh/hic/nho/. Hundreds of people have lost homes and irreplaceable keepsakes due to flood damage.

Does anyone remember some of the prophecies about the future from the likes of  Nostradamus, Cayce, and Dixon? One of the prophecies was that the  U.S. would be divided by water eventually. The water rose through the middle of the country separating the east from the west. This doesn’t bode well considering the middle of our country is flooding.

As for fires, it looks like a fifth of California is burning: http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/sto/cafw/. Eighty homes and other structures have been destroyed by fires, while more homes are still threatened. If fires sweep through wine country there will be zilch for the year 2008.

And for those of us that have always grown things we know weather problems affect our little gardens, fruit trees, and whatever we grow just like the big guys.  The wind that ripped the shingles off my house on Monday would have caused a big loss in my vegetable garden had it been later in the season when the plants were bigger. I’m saying this because I see many more gardens planted this year than ever before, and I just wonder if the novices realize that the survival technique of growing our own food can backfire on us easily if Mother Nature doesn’t cooperate. The idea of living like our forefathers or Grizzly Adams if we have to won’t cut it without the support of a decent environment, so relying on ourselves for survival may not be viable if the weather continues to be extreme.  Like the old commercial for butter used to say: “It’s not nice [or wise] to fool with Mother Nature.”