Our World and Everything in It

One of my blogs was about the forests lost to forest fires and that it was really odd to see the woods of Minnesota burn since the state is noted for its many inland lakes. Then I read that the global warming impact of forest fires in our western states is the equivalent of a more severe hurricane season in the gulf. But hurricanes are over in a few days, forest fires can burn for months. About.com stated: “Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of Arizona found four times as many large wildfires occurred in Western forests between 1987 and 2003 compared to the previous 16 years.”

Everything about fires has increased due to global warming. The latest fires burned 6.5 times more land, increased from around 8 days to 37 days in duration, and the whole fire season has expanded 78 more days. Here’s the interesting part. You know there are television personalities like Regis Philbin who make fun of a one degree weather change, but most of the increase in our fires corresponds with a simple 1.5 degree rise in temperature out west during the same time frame of 87 to 2003. The slightly warmer temperatures lead to longer, drier seasons that are ideal for a flash fire.

This is the first study that links global warming and forest fires. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “The researchers examined U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service records of every forest fire that burned at least 1,000 acres from 1970 to 2003. They found that of 1,166 fires in that period, four-fifths of them, or about 900, occurred after 1987.” The article went on to say, “Steven Running, a professor in the School of Forestry at the University of Montana who wrote an accompanying article about the report for Science hopes to include Westerling’s findings in a report on the ecological consequences of climate change for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

I don’t doubt that sooner or later science will find a link between all major eruptions on earth such as volcanoes, and earthquakes with the rise in hurricanes, flooding, fires, etc., that are due to man’s impact on this same environment with some form of pollution. We simply haven’t given much thought to our ever increasing world population in ratio to its output of pollution. Imagine if every growing population turned into a capitalist society like ours where demand for everything under the sun in huge amounts is an everyday occurrence. Capitalism to me is more a throw away society than a recycling society right now. It doesn’t have to be that way, however. We’re into supply and demand and haven’t caught on that some of the supply can come from what has already been used. It’s simply not a good thing for the earth to start from scratch every time when there is perfectly good base material out there to be recycled.

This has just given me an idea to blog about what is currently offered in the recycled goods market and for what use. I do know that recycled plastics offer picnic tables, park benches, and even parking curbs out of high density plastic material instead of wood that rots or concrete that eventually cracks. Every Parks and Recreation Commission in all cities should be looking into recycled products like these for all of our recreational areas. It would make all of us feel a little better about all the plastic products we consume and throw away into a trash dump versus the local park or for some future use wouldn’t it? We should see how truly efficient we can be. After all our country should be viewed as a business and isn’t that the essence of business anyway to garner the greatest profit with the least overhead, and the least waste?
.