Australians Must Pray For Rain
I was reading an article on-line about how Australia is suffering from a terrible drought, and it is getting to the point where Prime Minister John Howard is saying that irrigation systems may have to be cut off to parts of the country where most of the food is grown. This, as you can imagine, will hugely devastate Australian farmers, and it will also effect consumers because the prices of goods are expected to drastically increase. Howard said, “It is a grim situation and there is no point in pretending to Australia otherwise. We must all hope and pray there is rain.”
The only way that the irrigation system will not need to be turned off is if there by some miracle is a massive amount of rainfall in the country in the very near future. Otherwise, it looks like the water irrigation systems will be turned off around mid-May. The Murray-Darling River Basin is where the problem is most prevalent. This is where the country’s farms are, and it “accounts for 41 percent of Australia’s agriculture.” You can imagine how much the country will suffer if this area is not able to produce crops any longer.
The green section of this map is the Murray-Darling River basin. As you can see it takes up an extremely large portion of the country, and this is the area that is most effected by the drought.
Image source: http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/7/7b/250px-Murray-catchment-map_MJC02.png
Some of the more effected industries are: cotton, wine, rice producers. For example, “Cotton lint production has plummeted to 250,000 tonnes in 2006/07 from 597,000 tonnes the year before, and from 819,000 tonnes worth almost A$2 billion in 2000/01, before the drought.” If this trend continues cotton production in this area will essentially not exist in about 2 years. Wine production has been greatly suffering from the drought as well. The amount produced this year was down 30% from the previous year and was the smallest amount that has been harvested since 2000. Rice production has drastically dropped as well. “Australia may not have a rice crop at all this season if it gets no irrigation allocations, Laurie Arthur, president of the Ricegrowers Association, told Reuters.”
This is a terrible situation that this country is in, and parts of it have been suffering from this terrible drough for nearly 10 years. However, “the March end of the El Nino Pacific Ocean weather pattern which brings severe drought to Australia’s populated east has also heartened farmers.” I sincerely hope that the Australians’ prayers for rain are answered and that the country is able to recover successfully after this what seems to be a never-ending drought is over.
Source: http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/41474/story.htm
Climate Change is Hot News
I went to Scotland and then to London for a few days this spring break. After our long days of touring, I would go back to the hotel room and turn on the TV. Well, it turns out that over in Scotland and England, they do not have the best TV show choices…so most of the time I ended up watching the news. And let me tell you, I was shocked at what I was hearing. It seemed like every other news story they would break with an update about global warming and climate change. I was thinking to myself as if I haven’t had enough of this from my class at school now I’m getting it on TV while I’m on break too! But, I guess this just goes to show you what a huge problem this issue is. I know I’ve written about this before, but I just thought maybe this trip could shed a little bit of a different light on it.
My mom and I went on “The Big Bus Tour” ride for one of the days on our trip to London and I noticed on the side of the bus that there was a sign that stated that all of the buses that “The Big Bus Tour” Company uses have special environmentally friendly engines. This would be especially important since pretty much everywhere you go, you can see one of these Big Buses passing by. So with so many, you want to make sure that they are not going to end up hurting the environment to a huge extent.
The “Big Bus Tour” Bus
Image from: http://www.showbus.co.uk/photos/ohm712y.JPG
I thought it was so interesting how the people over there seem to have much more concern for the issue or at least much more open concern. Over here in America it seems like there’s a lot of doubters, meaning a lot of people who don’t believe that climate change is actually a reality. While I was over there I was just overcome with this overwhelming feeling of everyone wanting to make an effort and inform the people about what they can do to help reduce the effects of climate change. It was definitely an eye opening experience because we aren’t really bombarded with a whole lot of information on TV on a regular basis. I think that it’s starting to pick up a little bit, however. For example, today on 101.9FM “The Mix” they had a brief little message, I think they called it a “Green Message” or something like that, updating the listeners on one thing they could do to help our environment. Today’s particular “Green Message” was to encourage shoppers to use cloth bags as opposed to plastic bags. They stated that one plastic bag contains enough petroleum to fuel a car for a mile! So I think that over in the UK they are really trying to make a difference, and I think it’s starting to rub off over here as well, which is of course very good news.
Aveda–Making A Difference
About 2 weeks ago, I got my haircut at Salon Efthemia in Elmhurst. As I was leaving, I started looking at some of their products and by their Aveda products, which is the most prominent brand of hair products they sell in the salon, there was a flyer that said “Every 15 seconds a child dies from lack of access to clean water.” Also on the flyer, it says that they are now celebrating Earth Month 2007 and they want to “make clean water a human right.” After I saw this flyer, it really hit me. I counted to 15 and then thought, a child has just died because they don’t have water! How wrong is that. For us it’s so different. Anytime we want a glass of water we just go into the fridge and grap a bottle or grab a glass and fill it up at the sink.
Also, this line of hair products is very conscious of recycling. If you bring in one of your emptied hair product bottles, you can get a discount on your next purchase of Aveda products. I was very impressed with this because of how much we have been talking about and blogging about all of the little things that we could do to save our environment. And, in this case, you benefit 100% because you are making the world a better place and saving money!
Another way I know that they are conscious of recycling is because of a breif message that is on the back of the flyer I mentioned earlier. This message says, “Soy ink on 100% post-consumer paper.” On the flyer it also says that, “All proceeds go to Global Greengrants Fund for water-related projects around the world.” The website is www.greengrants.org. I decided to check out the site. Green Grants is a public charity funded by foundations and individuals making a difference for the planet.” “Here are some of the things that they’ve accomplished and some of their goals: ”Over the past 12 years, we have provided over 3,000 grants in 120 different countries. We believe that grassroots groups are a key to solving the intractable problems of poverty, powerlessness and environmental destruction. Our experience has shown that there is no better investment than supporting passionate people with great ideas. We bridge the gap between those who can offer financial support and grassroots groups in developing countries that can make effective use of that support. We help donors overcome the barriers to grassroots grantmaking by identifying worthy organizations and moving funds at minimal cost.”As you can see, it is a very impressive organization that is really trying to make a difference in our world. They are definitely trying to reduce the amount of children who die around the world from lack of clean water, and we should too. Visit the site to find out ways that you can donate to their funds.
Image from: http://www.globalfundforhealing.org/graphics/logos/GlobalGreenGrants.jpg
Source: http://www.greengrants.org/index.php
How does sugar effect our enviornment?
When most people think of sugar, they typically think good things: sweet, delicious, candy, etc. However, sugar can actually have some bad effects on our enviornment. I honestly never would have guessed this could be true.
A sugar cane farm.
Image source:
http://www.abc.net.au/tropic/stories/Photo_of_c_m1111305.jpg
Sugar production is surprisingly pretty harmful to our environment. It is responsible for our environment’s loss of biodiversity more than any other plant. There are several reasons for this, which include: “destruction of habitat to make way for plantations, its intensive use of water for irrigation, its heavy use of agricultural chemicals, and the polluted wastewater that is routinely discharged in the sugar production process.” Also, there is about 121 countries that produce sugar, and around 145 million tons of sugar is produced from these countries every year. This is a lot of sugar production and a lot of places for all of these harmful things to happen to our environment. As you can see sugar may not be so sweet after all.
As some of you may know, the Great Barrier Reef is just the coast of Australia. It is the biggest coral reef in the world. The reef is greatly effected by climate change and global warming and it is also very sensitive to the effects that sugar production can have. “Waters around the reef suffer from large quantities of effluents, pesticides and sediment from sugar farms, and the reef itself is threatened by the clearing of land, which has destroyed the wetlands that are an integral part of the reef’s ecology.” Also, many of the world’s greatest rivers, such as the Niger and the Zambazei, are being effected by sugar production. They are being dried up because all of the sugar plantations are draining them out in order to water their sugar crop. In Florida, much of the everglades are being destroyed as well because of sugar production. “Tens of thousands of acres of the Everglades have been converted from teeming sub-tropical forest to lifeless marshland due to excessive fertilizer run-off and drainage for irrigation.”
The Great Barrier Reef
Image source:
http://www.the-great-barrier-reef-experience.com/image-files/great-barrier-reef.jpg
So, who’s to blame for the massive amount of sugar production? Well, according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) the biggest contributors to the problem are Europe and the U.S. “The world has a growing appetite for sugar,” says Elizabeth Guttenstein of the World Wildlife Fund. “Industry, consumers and policy makers must work together to make sure that in the future sugar is produced in ways that least harm the environment.” Europe and the U.S. have been producing so much because of how profitable they have been from sugar production, but they need to cut back in order to save the environment.
The Florida Everglades
Image Source: (AP Photo/Phil Sandlin)
As I was reading this article, I was so shocked and I kept thinking to myself what could be done to solve this problem, because it’s not really like we can live without sugar. However, we can definitely cut back on the excessive amount that we have been producing just to make a profit. I was glad to read at the end of the article that in the Florida Everglades there is a restoration effort in place in order to try and get the beautiful everglades back to their usual state. This is something that most people may not be as aware of, especially since climate change is what’s on most people’s minds these days. However, it is still important that we give this the attention it deserves and try to fix the problems that overproduction of sugar has done to our environment.
Source:
Should we have coal fuel our cars?
As I was searching around for interesting things to write about, I found one aritcle on whether or not we should start fueling our cars with coal as opposed to gasoline. Coal companies are really pushing for this (obviously) and this is also I guess getting a lot of support from politicians. I’m assuming that the reason that all of this is coming about is because of the high prices of gas over the past years, and I’m sure that people are trying to offset the cost. However, this idea has a huge flaw. Burning coal and using it to fuel our cars will emit almost double the amount of carbon into our atmosphere that we would if we just stuck with gasoline. (By the way, I forgot to say that this would be liquid coal, sort of gasoline like). The reason for this is because the way this liquid coal is manufactured. Apparently though, if we improve our technology that is used to manufacture these coal-to-liquid fuels, these then could be used and they would be less harmful to our atmosphere than they are now.
Image from:
http://auto.sohu.com/piclib/toyota/toyota/corolla/big/Toyota%20Corolla034.jpg
Many say that President Bush is in favor of this idea because in his State of the Union speech he said, “United States needs to produce 35 billion gallons of “alternative fuel” by 2017.” These coal-to-liquid fuels would fall under this category, especially since we don’t produce enough corn in the U.S. to produce the 35 billion gallons that Bush was demanding. Also, Senator Barack Obama is a great supporter of these coal-to-liquid fuels as well. While I can understand how this might be a good idea because it would mean that we would be relying less on foreign oil and then oil prices would drop, I still feel kind of skeptical of this whole idea. Besides, it doesn’t really sound like the new technology is going to reduce the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere so that we can try to reduce the effects of global warming. It just sounds like it will be an equal fuel source to gasoline we use now. The only benefit I see in doing this is that gas prices will drop. Even Elizabeth Martin-Perera, who’s an analyst for the National Resources Defense Council, says that, “We want more energy security, too, but we’re fighting this coal-to-liquids concept because it’s just so bad for global warming.”
Well, there is definitely an argument for both sides, however, I’m just not convinced that using these coal-to-liquid fuels is going to benefit a huge amount in the long run. Besides, there aren’t even enough plants producing this fuel in the U.S. to meet President Bush’s goal of 35 billion gallons of alternative fuel. So, really I see no point, but that’s just me.
Source:
Oscars Go Green
Image Source:
http://www.bankblog.info/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2006/03/oscars.jpg
If anyone was watching the Oscars this year, you could definitely sense the push for the environment and how more people are becoming more aware of how important it is that we take action and try to protect our Earth. Al Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, was nominated for an Oscar and they ended up taking one home! Also, Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio were presenting together on their thoughts on the issue and urging the world to take action. When they were up there, Gore said how this year there were many more actions taken to make the production of the Oscars more environmentally friendly. I thought I would research into this a little bit to find out just exactly what they were doing to help prevent more harmful things from happening to our environment.
Image source:
http://freedomeden.blogspot.com/2007/02/al-gore-leonardo-dicaprio-and-oscar.html
One thing I found was that many of the cars that the stars were showing up in were the latest brands of hybrid cars. As we all know from our studies this year, these cars are much more environmentally friendly since they run on a battery which is re-chargeable. This means that much less gasoline has to be used, which then ultimately means less harmful greenhouse gas emissions produced from the car. In one of the articles that I found on this issue, it was said that “this year was the first time many stars seemed to want to talk about environmental vehicles rather than their designer clothes and movie roles.” Many more stars, such as Leonardo DiCaprio, are becoming aware of these issues and are making it known to the public how important it is that we also let others know about these issues and take any actions that we can in order to help improve our environment. Another thing I found in my research was that the famous Orlando Bloom is building a new house in England and he’s making sure that it is environmentally friendly. He started talking about with someone after he arrived at the Oscars in his hybrid car. He said, “It’s as green as I can make it. It’s got solar panels on the roof, energy efficient light bulbs – newer technology basically that is environmentally friendly.” I think that this is really important that all these people that are talked about all the time are getting involved in this issue. I mean if you think about it, whenever any of these starts some sort of new fashion trend, everyone else follows that trend practically within the next day. Hopefully, this new trend of being aware of our environment will soon rub off on everyone as well, and we will then hopefully begin to see an improvement in the quality of our environment.
Image source:
The telecast producer of this year’s Oscars mainhttp://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070222/ENTERTAIN/70222004/-1/ENTERTAIN05 goal was “to select supplies and services with a sensitivity toward reducing the threats we face from global warming, species extinction, deforestation, toxic waste, and hazardous chemicals in our water and food.” All the people involved in the production realized how easy it can be to make a difference for our environment by simply doing things such as carpooling or turning off the lights when you leave the room. On the website: (http://www.oscar.com/oscarnight/?pn=green) there is a very extensive list of the many things all of us can do to reduce these threats to our environment. I encourage you all to visit it and to even carry out some of their suggestions.
Overall, I think the Oscars were very successful in making it known to people the situation our world is in, and their feelings toward this issue I hope will continue into the future.
Sources:
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070224/ENT02/702240371/1148/rss25
http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070222/ENTERTAIN/70222004/-1/ENTERTAIN05
http://www.oscar.com/oscarnight/?pn=green
Superbowl vs. Greenhouse Gases?
Image from: http://www.jazzsports.com/super-bowl-2006/images/bowl_XLI.jpg
As you all know, Superbowl XLI is on Sunday. However, it turns out that not only will the Chicago Bears be versing the Indianapolis Colts, but the Superbowl itself will also be versing Greenhouse Gases. What exactly is meant by this?
The NFL is anticipating a high amount of heat-trapping gas emissions to be released at the game on Sunday, and in anticipation of this they are planting 3,000 magrove trees and some other native Florida trees. This will end up being nearly a year long project, since they started to plant these trees in August and won’t finish planting them until May. These trees are being planted in hopes that they will help to take in some of the very harmful greenhouse gas emissions that will be produced because of all the events of the Superbowl. The greenhouse gas that the NFL is concerned about these trees absorbing is CO2: ”make the games “carbon neutral” because the trees will eventually absorb carbon dioxide (CO2), the main greenhouse gas, emitted at the events.” This massive amount of tree planting has also been done for the last 2 superbowls. I was trying to find out exactly how effective this project was the last 2 years, but I couldn’t. I have to believe though that it must have been somewhat successful for the NFL to continue doing this for the third year in a row.
In total, the events surrounding the Superbowl, there will be about 500 tons of CO2 emissions. This is resulting from power for the game, the Superbowl theme park that is next to the stadium, and approxiamtely 1,200 vehicles or more. It sure seems like all these news posts in the last couple of days have really started to reach to people. Ideally I guess the NFL should be trying to encourage these CO2 emissions from being produced in the first place, however, it is still a good start for them to do their tree planting project.
One of the major news realeases that have been coming out recently concerning global warming was from the U.N. which stated that there was a 90% chance that all of the things that have been happening in terms of global warming in the last 50 years have been the fault of humans and human activity. I personally feel that this percentage is probably a little higher based on my knowledge that I have gained on the topic this year from Mr. McKinley’s class and blogging. It just seems to me like every time I post on global warming the articles usually end with some thoughts on how we humans need to stop some of the things that we’re doing in order to reduce the effects of global warming. Typicall on this list are things such as: ride your bike instead of driving, or even carpool, use the electricity in your house sparingly, and so many other things.
Some other good news that was mentioned in this article is that many of the 2008 candidates for the Presidency are considering making laws that limit the amount of greenhouse gases that are produced. This would definitely have a very positive effect on our environment. Also, “That could place value on offset projects by creating a market where industry might invest in green projects in exchange for the right to pollute.”
So, I think it was good to know that more important things went into the Superbowl this year, I mean not to say that the game and the commercials aren’t important, I just think that this shows that now people are starting to catch on to how important of an issue this is. Hopefully the trend will continue.
Source:
http://timethief.wordpress.com/2007/01/31/trees-take-on-greenhouse-gases-at-super-bowl/
The Oceans and Climate Change
So as I have been trying to look up new things to write about and add to my blog, I keep coming across articles and news reports on global warming and climate change over and over and over again. I realized that this was a huge and important issue that we all need to become more knowledgeable on and that we need to do something about it because of all the things we have talked about in class and all the other blogs I’ve done on this issue this year. But, I don’t think it really hit me until tonight. I so wanted to find some new, exciting topic to write about, but this global warming thing is so hot right now, and it just made me realize just how much of an impact the results of it could have on our lives. People wouldn’t be posting news articles about it constantly if it wasn’t that important of an issue. Obviously people are trying to get the word out, and I have to believe that it is starting to catch on. I now hear about global warming and climate change almost every day or at least every week. I know I have said this before in other posts, but this really is an issue that we need to help put an end to.
Image from: http://www.dicander.com/pix/files/wave.jpg
As I was looking around, I saw one article that started off with this sentence: “Wars will be fought over water, not oil, with the planet staring down the barrel of a global catastrophe driven by climate change.” For some reason this thought just really struck me. It seems ridiculous enough to me that we have to fight wars over oil because we use so much of that everyday, however, I can’t even imagine people having to fight wars over water because freshwater may become more scarce because of the effects of climate change and global warming. If this is what the world is going to come to, then we have to take action now. I don’t think that it’s smart for us to keep putting this off. In this article I was reading, a scientist Jim Renwick said that “climate change would eventually lead to massive changes in the world’s freshwater distribution.”
Ocean Water Circulation Conveyor Belt
Image from: http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/Library/nationalassessment/images/COBelt2.jpg
The ocean water and other freshwater sources are certainly not going to be the only things effected by the global climate change, but the changes that happen to the oceans and other water sources will greatly effect so many other aspects of how the Earth works. As we just learned the oceans effect our weather patterns because of the way the ocean currents flow. If the weather changes were drastic enough, then ecosystems around the globe would be greatly effected and often times they would be greatly harmed. In the article it said that scientists are expecting “In New Zealand, more heavy dumps of rain, floods and landslides in western areas, and more severe droughts in the east.” Also, “Coastal infrastructure will come under greater pressure from rising sea levels and stronger storm surges.” Since so many of the problems our Earth is experiencing is because of us humans, we have to be the ones to take action and try and fix our mistakes, or least make sure that things will not get any worse. If we do this, there is no way that one person will not benefit.
If we don’t take action and try to reduce the chances of harmful effects from global warming, hurricanes and other strong storms such as this one may become more abundant occurances in our Earth.
Image from: http://www.elements.nb.ca/theme/oceans06/igor/hurricane-ritaLG.jpg
Source:
World Wetlands Day~Feb. 2, 2007
Tomorrow, Friday February 2, 2007, was proclaimed as being World Wetlands Day by Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Baton Rouge, Louisianna. The state of Louisianna is in great need of more coastal development and protection because they are rapidly losing their wetlands. Louisianna is known as America’s wetlands and ever since Hurricane Katrina, they have been majorly suffering from the losses of coastal lands. Governor Blanco proposed this World Wetlands Day in order to make not only the residents Louisianna more aware of the problem at hand, but also to make the entire world aware of this problem.
Louisianna Wetlands
Image from: http://www.leeric.lsu.edu/outreach/wint9596/limg0079.gif
Louisianna can typically be expected to have about 6,000 square miles of wetlands. However, if the state continues to lose coastal wetlands there will be anywhere near this amount of wetlands. In the 1990s, 230 square miles of coastal lands were lost. The amount of coastal wetlands lost after the horrible hurricanes that Louisianna experienced have increased the amount of wetlands that are going to be lost this decade. In Governor Blanco’s proposal, she lists an extensive list of all the many reasons that protecting the coastal wetlands is so beneficial and vital to Louisianna’s ecosystem. These are some of the reasons that stood out to me in her proposal:
- “America’s WETLAND is an area of world ecological significance and of strategic importance to our national economy and energy security, and is at great risk;
- America’s WETLAND is the wintering habitat for millions of waterfowl and migratory birds whose habitat is lost as the wetlands disappear, and the nation relies on Louisiana’s working wetlands to provide protection for oil and gas pipelines that serve as a major artery for delivering more than 25 percent of the nations energy;
- the state has lost 2,100 square miles of land since the 1930′s and is expected to lose another 500 square miles over the next 50 years if nothing is done to save it;”
Image from: http://www.leeric.lsu.edu/outreach/wint9596/limg0085.gif
As you can see, it is vital that the people in Louisianna take notice of this World Wetlands Day and try to become more active participants in helping to preserve such a fragile part of their environment since it is so important to how their ecosystem works. It is also very important that the rest of us get involved and are also supportive of this issue and try to become more knowledgable on the issue on World Wetlands Day. We should take note of all the issues that Governor Blanco brought up and do everything in our power to make sure that these coastal wetlands are not lost.
Source:
http://www.americaswetland.com/article.cfm?id=485&cateid=2&pageid=3
Nobel Peace Prize for Al Gore?
I was searching the web today, when I came across this article about how Al Gore has just recently been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. After watching his movie An Inconvenient Truth, I couldn’t help but read this article and I felt that it would be worthwhile to inform all of the rest of you on this news.
A Nobel Peace Prize Medal.
Image from: http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/thumb/d/d5/175px-Nobel_Peace_Prize_Medal.gif
Gore is being nominated for the Nobel Prize because of his efforts in trying to educate the public on how important it is that we are aware of how climate change is going to or could effect our lives. He is trying to make a difference in our world by encouraging people to take action and do something about global warming before it’s too late. “A prerequisite for winning the Nobel Peace Prize is making a difference, and Al Gore has made a difference,” said by Member of Parliament Boerge Brende. Not only are his efforts from his work recently and with his documentary the reasons he is being recognized, but he is also being recognized for all of his efforts with this issue of global warming when he was Vice President. Al Gore really was a huge contributor to many of the efforts that have been put forth since his time in office. Gore will find out if he is the winner in October, but the prize will be presented on December 10, since that is the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death.
Source:
