Crocodiles repelled

Although all of us don’t live in Florida with a threat of crocodiles, we are all at one time or another threatened by wildlife around us. Deer can cause serious damage if you hit one with your car, skunks can basically burn out your eyeballs with stench, raccoons and squirrels are pests, and the list goes on.

One method to keep crocodiles in Florida away from residential areas is magnets. By temporarily taping magnets to the crocodiles heads, their “homing” abilities are disrupted.

AP IMAGES

Crocodiles are notorious for giving trouble when biologists try to m ove them from urban areas to new homes in the wild because they go back to the place they were captured. Scientists believe they rely on Earth’s magnetic fields to navigate partly, and the magnets taped to their heads disorients them.

Hopefully the situation will  get resolved, considering crocodiles are an endangered species.

(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29387470/)

Bush plans scrapped

I’m not going to lie. I’m glad they threw away that old useless stuff and are reenergizing the energy policy with a new president. Government has done away with Bush’s old energy policy having to do with oil shale development in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming.

I’m so glad members of government have stepped up, withdrawing solicitations that were flawed, scrapping 5% royalty rates on shale production, etc.

I personally didn’t know oil shale was so important in the production of a large amount of American oil. 800 billion barrels of oil is apparently locked within fine-grained rock known as shale. Energy Companies are going about the extraction the right way though, by first attempting to figure out how to extract it exonomically. Unfortuantely, oil shale is very expensive to produce. But, whoever is in charge of this is going about it the right way.

AP IMAGES

(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29390971/)

Carbon permits

It comes at the perfect time! Just as we talked about permits in class today for other air pollutants, it turns out Obama had the same thing on his mind when in his plan for the the future of the United States.

It  would require large sources of greenhouse gases to purchase permits from the government for the gasses they emit, including carbon dioxide. The government would use the good old cap and trade system to put a limit on the total emission of greenhouse gases.

I, personally, am a huge fan of the cap-and-trade system. This gives companies an option. Either stop polluting or pay huge amounts to keep doing so. Either way, something is being done. Businesses will realize it’s easier to invest in less-polluting equipment, or will have to pay the price. Either way, the sum of greenhouse gas emitted with be constant, and never exceed the allowed amount.

Although it doesn’t seem likely that a bill containing this sort of legistration will be approved this year, at least it is mentioned. And it is likely that Congress will strongly support these green ideas, so I have hope. The ball has started to roll.

AP IMAGES

(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29395517/)

Yellowstone Earthquakes

In a movie we watched in class, the wildlife and condition of Yellowstone National Park was addressed. It has changed so much in the past few decades for the worse. Especially we watched the wolves. When the last wolf died, the environment in Yellowstone definitely took a turn down the wrong road. Forests were dying, as well as animal populations, streams were drying up, and many other hazards wreaked havoc in the Yellowstone area.

Now, earthquakes have jumped on the bandwagon when it comes to harming Yellowstone. In the past eight days, over 400 earthquakes have shaken the park. Although they haven’t done serious harm to the park, the people who are trying to keep Yellowstone going, the rangers, are taken aback and affected.

It isn’t unusual for earthquakes to occur, just like it’s not unusual for the earth to get warmer. But, like global warming, the earthquakes do not usually reach such a magnitude and frequency in a week’s time period.
There’s no imminent danger associated with these little earthquakes, and there’s no need to worry about the supervolcano errupting, but still it’s unusual and causes need to just watch out.

(http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98981519&ft=1&f=1025)

Could the cause of these earthquakes be something we as humans did to the environment? Or could the earthquakes be linked to the loss of something? Like how the environment was changing rapidly due to the death of the last wolf? Has something gone extinct? Probably not, I’m sure the cause could be more suited to global warming and greenhouse gases. Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s the human’s fault.

AP IMAGES

Worth the Money?

Time and time again I hear that environmental issues have been thrown to the side because they are not cost-efficient, repairing them costs too much, and the effort is not worth it. I can’t believe recycling has at times been deemed “not worth it.” How could it not be worth it? After all these years of getting “Reduce reuse recycle” drilled into my head by adults, adults are cutting the very program I live by.

Not only that, but to think that people are putting into question the idea of recycling just rattles my brains.This blog is in response to an article I read. People had been questioning whether recycling was actually worth it. I went on to read that in certain cities like New York, in 2002, was losing money so it cut back recycling. RECYCLING IS ESSENTIAL!

The Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Defense stated that recycling is beneficial, municipal recylcing programs reduce pollution and decrease the huge amount of garbage and need for landfill space, for less that the cost of regular garbage pick up.

New York changed it ways because of the price increase after a while. Everything is run on money. (http://environment.about.com/od/recycling/a/benefit_vs_cost.htm)

more people need to recycle. not that hard, see:

Car batteries gone bad

At first glance it looked like a horror movie. Some mysterious substance muted the goats and paralyzed them. Next chickens, then dogs. After this children stopped talking and stopped walking. They died at young ages. No one knew the cause and the outside world had no idea what was going on. Parents plead for an investigation, doctors ordered more tests.

This poor African town believed it was a curse. In fact, it was lead.

Lead, built up over years of extracting it from old car batteries, was left in the dirt. When lead became more expensive, residents dug it up from the earth. After all the government cleanup, it’s still an extremely contaminated area.

I’m sure this little town didn’t even use the car battery. It just shows how much destruction we are doing by modernizing everything. The car battery of a car has killed lifestock and people in far away towns that we don’t see. But it’s still there. And it’s still a problem.

How do we fix the irreparable damage done?

(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28484477/)

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Wind Power

If Nicaragua can turn to wind power, why can’t we? Why can’t the United States, an international superpower, one of the mightiest nations in the world turn to alternate energy when a small little country like Nicaragua can? Why does a country have to search for alternate, better forms of energy when they are energy starved? Why can’t the United States get it together?

Yes, I’m happy for them, just disappointed with the United States. Nevertheless, I will describe to you the situation in Nicaragua: Not only are they using wind power, a third of the country’s energy comes from from geothermal, dams, and ethanol.

This month, Nicaragua will begin operating nineteen windmills, being able to generate forty megawatts of energy, being able to contribute six percent of the country’s energy needs.

This 91 million dollar project is well worth it. Nicaragua will save about nine million dollars in fuel costs a year.

This whole wind project is Nicaragua’s attempt to reduce it’s dependence on oil to three percent by 2013. And I’d say it’s going quite swimmingly.

Congrats Nicaragua!

Get with it, U.S.

(http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28421541/)

AP IMAGES

The Dungeness Crabs

Yes we’ve heard over and over again about species going endangered, becoming so incredibly rare, and then going extinct. The Dungeness crabs will certainly be no exception. This once flourishing crab, that was easy to fish and very popular has now become endangered. Fishers make a mad dash to get to them in the morning before other crabbers. An article I read goes into much more detail about the situation. But, what struck me most about this article was this statement:

“Two-thirds of California’s commercial fishermen have abandoned their businesses in the past 15 years.”

And still they make a mad dash to get to the crabs. How much have we impacted sea life through overfishing and other activities that two thirds of fisherman have to quit, and still that’s not enough to bring back a solid population.

The article goes on to say that the Dungeness crab IS a success story. They’ve put limits on fishing the crab so that it may repopulate: the crabbers can only fish the male crabs, and only during a certain season.

Although apparently overfishing isn’t necessarily harmful to crabs, over eighty percent of the Dungeness crabs are caught in the first two weeks of fishing.

There’s a cause and effect here too. More fisherman are turning towards Dungeness crabs, depleting that population, because they gave up catching salmon, which they had overfished.

Not only that, but crab fishing is quite dangerous, the most dangerous on the West Coast. Because fishers are in an arms race to catch the crab, they don’t take into account the weather,they spite the conditions.

At leas they are trying to control themselves in general when it comes to crab fishing!

(http://www.npr.org/templates/stor /story.php?storyId=98788991&ft=1&f=1025)

Apple in the past year

After I read Catherine Mary’s article about the new Macbook- Apple’s Green Notebook- I decided I should probably look more into it, considering I’m actually considering getting one within the next year. I first went to the Apple website and looked up it’s environmental status report.

I found that not only what Catherine Mary stated about the arsenic free glass and mercury free LED backlit display to be impressive, but I also found that the new computers are BFR free and PVC free.

BFRs are brominated flame retardants.PVC stants for polyvinyl chloride plastics. Both are hazards to the environment and human health.

As I read a man name Bryan Gardiner’s blog about Apple, he said how unimpressive environmentalists thought the MacBook air was for the environment. And I was really surprised considering how cool the new green notebooks are! Then I read the date of the blog and it was written almost a year ago.

So now, instead of completely disregarding this whole blog post, I decided to compare Mac over the past year. One year ago environmentalists were totally unimpressed with Apple because all they could say is they’ve decreased the amount of PVC and BFR, and that it was made of mostly aluminum. Now, the list goes on of the advantages of the new Green Notebook! I read into Bryan Gardiner’s blog and he said how everyone seriously doubted that Apple could meet the goals it set for making a greener notebook by this year. But, I would say they definitely achieved their goals. There are so many advantages of the green laptop over a laptop made last year, so good job Apple, you’ve done pretty well!

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/news/2008/01/green_apple

http://www.apple.com/mac/green-notebooks/

Coal Sludge Problem

With all the wacky weather, something bad was bound to happen. And it did. In Tennessee, there was a huge coal “spill” in Harriman Tennessee. The ashy sludge broke through a dike in a coal-fired plant, causing serious damage covering hundreds of acres.  Environmentalists are extremely concerned about the toxic chemicals that could seep in to the ground or could be flowing in rivers. No one died, and no one was seriously injured, and the people living around the coal plant expected it, considering there have been quite a few “mini blowouts” leading up to this disaster. But, it doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences.

Because around 2.6 million cubic yards of this ashy coal sludge  broke free of its pond, cleanup could take more than just weeks, it could take years. The coal ash, which turns into sludge when it’s put in the pond at the coal burning plant, carries substances like mercury, arsenic, and lead. We know what kind of problems these toxins can make. These toxins in the sludge, when broken free of the dike, travelled into the  Emory River. The Emory river leads to the Clinch, which flows into the Tennessee River. That’s a problem.

And yet that stupid plant is still operating.

Don’t they get it? Just another justifiable reason that burning coal for electricity is bad news. Very bad news.

The positives of burning coal for electricity? When terrible stuff like this happens, I would definitely say that the negatives outweigh the positives, no contest.

(http://www.truthout.org/122408N)