Hurricane Sandy- Polluted Rivers

A week ago, Hurricane Sandy hit the North East. The storm has left the rivers in a terrible state. An abundance of toxic chemicals has been washed into the New York Harbor, as well as the areas nearby rivers.  According to the New York Daily News, more than 630  storm-related oils spills have been reported in the state of New York. Floodwater that had been collected in Lower Manhattan tested positive for E. coli and coli form. Just knowing that all of the pollutants that soaked themselves into the city streets are now being carried out to sea is unsettling. This will only lead to more concerns about fish as a source of food.

Innoventions Vision House

Global warming and going green are two topics that have been shoved down our throats for a few years now. Not that it isn’t important, just it’s getting a little repetitive.

Regardless, it is the topic of the week and it is happening in today’s world.

Last weekend I went to Disney Wold for my birthday and we (my sister and I) did spend a few hours at EPCOT. There we went to Innoventions for a while like always and planned on touring the house of tomorrow like we have for year.

Only we get into the section and have to do a double take for the house we had known for years was gone and replaced by a new Go Green house.

We had no choice but to get in on the next one for our mom would kill us if we said that there was a new house and we hadn’t gone in.

The outside was very beautiful as was the inside with it’s zoning layout.

Everything was added in to maximize efficiency and lower bills and carbon footprints. From the brick siding to keep the heat, to the dishwasher with half load options Disney had thought of everything.

When inside we noticed a few things that we already had such as the stove top which was the electric type that needs special pots and pans to work. The reason being that on area will get hot except for that of the special cookware since it uses a magnet system. It’s really nice to not have to worry about surrounding areas being hot and it boils things a lot faster than gas and normal electric.

Of course some things were silly. Really, a toilet that plays your iPod, had lights, and heats up the seat. Is that really necessary?

Anyway, it was still very cool. If you want to know more about it and the products used inside and out just google: EPCOT innoventions vision house.

Climate change

Starting with the crazy people on the corners of busy streets in major cities, climate change is a very big topic and is something that almost all of my generation is familiar with. According to them it is our God that watches over us, disappointed in what he sees, what we receive is punishment or a sign that the world is ending. While I’m sure that could be the case it’s more likely that it’s actually an effect of global worming. We are all aware of green house gasses and how they work and have all been informed about the horrors that await us, or our children or our children’s children, if things do not change and we begin to take better care of our planet. Think of it this way; we are Ebenezer Scrooge and the ghosts of the pasts show us how the world once was, flourishing, thriving, healthy. The ghost of the present shows us the differences between then and now, how many places are dying, deforestation, pollution, plastic islands forming in the oceans, and most notably a whole in the ozone layer. Causing such terrible things to happen with the weather such as glaciers melting and places like New York having hurricanes like Sandy. And then of course the ghost of our future haunts us even now before it has even happened. Because we are aware of what a downward spiral we are headed too, we see post apocyolptic movies all the time now depicting our future , movies like 2012 and ‘The Day After Tomorrow’, and sometimes those movies make more then just a visual impact on our brains. For one I think Wall-e helped get the message across about how horribly we treat our planet, like one big trash can and one today it will cease to be livable for humans.I think we have enough things to help us do little things in our lives to stop leaving carbon footprints.

Satellites!

Here is an interesting title that you might not expect from a regular article on global warming. “Global Warming felt by space junk, satellites.” What does that even mean? How does anything in space have anything to do with rising Co2 Levels on Earth? Well, according to some research that is being done, it is said that the rising carbon dioxide levels at the edge of our stratosphere has been having some affect on the satellites and space junk. This hypothesis is then that the carbon dioxide levels have effects on the Earth that are larger then expected. If your wondering what scientist have uncovered that resulted in this hypothesis then I will explain it to you. In the highest reaches of the atmosphere, carbon dioxide can actually have an opposite effect then the Earth’s surface and have a cooling effect instead of heating affect. The main effects of carbon dioxide up there come from its collision with oxygen atoms.

These impacts excite carbon dioxide molecules, making them radiate heat. The density of carbon dioxide is too thin above the altitudes of 30 miles (50 kilometers) for the molecules to recapture the heat. This means that a lot of the heat is then lost where it escapes into the expanse of space. This in turn, by cooling the upper atmosphere and causing it to contract, it exerts less drag on items in space. This could have extremely dangerous affects on space stations such as on the Skylab, where it could come crashing down to Earth like an asteroid and blast a hole big enough to annihilate a city like San Francisco. So that in mind…Let’s cut down on our carbon emissions!

Polluted oceans

The true impact of discarded garbage is not something I have truly realized the effect of  until recently. Those photos of baby seabirds starved to death by debris is something that has stuck with me all week, and not something I will forget soon. I’m always mindful of where I throw my garbage (I don’t litter) but I’ve decided to try and avoid plastic products whenever I can.

What I want to know is why isn’t there a global effort to reduce the damage caused by ocean-bound garbage? Even besides damage to the wildlife it is an eyesore, and certainly it is causing some damage to society’s drinking water or recreational water. It was mentioned that the effort to clean up the oceans is too great for one country to take alone, so why doesn’t UN or something do something about it? Even just moving a lot of the solid plastics to landfills would help. I know here in Sarasota we have a yearly day for volunteer work to clean up the shores, but think of how powerful a month-long effort by thousands of people could be in cleaning up our oceans.

We can’t educate the sea birds on what is and what isn’t food, but maybe something could be done to drive them away from nesting on pollution-heavy shores, some kind of sonic wave or noise machine. This might not be a permanent solution, but it could help save their lives until humanity can figure out how to get our garbage problem under control. Unfortunately that only solves one species’ problem–there are still creatures like turtles that mistake plastic bags or other containers for things like jellyfish. but pollution prevention and educating the public on the more visceral effects of carelessness is the first step to keeping our oceans clean.