Seven Generational Ruminations

A short, academic essay on plastic grocery bags and their environmental impact: http://www.healthgoods.com/Education/Environment_Information/Solid_Waste/paper_or_plastic.htm Reduce: How to reduce the number of plastic grocery bags used by yourself and your community The main way people seem to be working to reduce the usage of plastic grocery bags is through the use of reusable canvas bags.

Charlotte Brody is the executive director of Commonweal, an organization that works on health and environmental issues. I recently heard her speak at the Bioneers 2007 conference about chemical pollution in the environment, and how much of it mimics estrogen and is leading to biological mutation of sex characteristics in all kinds of animals.

The acidity of the ocean has increased by 30% since pre-industrial times and is predicted to double by 2100 because of increased uptake of CO2 according to expatriate Australian Australia’s leading oceanographer, Dr Tony Haymet, former Chief of Marine and Atmospheric Science at CSIRO, now director of the prestigious Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Vice Chancellor of Marine Sciences at the University of California.

Catalytic converters use Palladium as a catalyst to remove pollution out of car exhaust. But in this BBC report we are taken to a city in a remote region of Siberia which is one of the major producers of Palladium, producing almost half of the worlds supply.

Rising sea levels and melting polar ice-sheets are at upper limits of projections, leaving some human population centres already unable to cope, top world scientists say as they analyse latest satellite data.

...But even in east Antarctica, which is insulated from global warming by extreme cold temperatures and high-altitudes, new information shows the height of the Tottenham Glacier near Australia's Casey Base has fallen by 10 metres over 15-16 years.

Apparently while scientists are applauding the attention Al Gore is bringing to the issue of global warming, they're (some of them) concerned about the little details and wish he would cool the hype. It's not clear whether this article is the typical bashing that's been aimed in the direction of Al Gore and his movie An Inconvenient Truth, bashing that says he's full of bunk or that there is a legitimate debate going on.

Weather records have been kept for a bit over a hundred years, so in terms of global climate this is pretty scant evidence given the age of the planet. Still the last 10 years has seen record warm winters year after year. That sure indicates a trend. This last winter was the warmest yet on record, a thought we shouldn't be surprised over given how warm it was in January. There were several reports throughout the winter where bears were not hibernating, because it wasn't cold enough to trigger that response. In Moscow, Russia, they didn't have a white christmas. etc.

Regardless to the truth of the idea of human-caused climate change, carbon dioxide growth in the oceans is still a problem. This is from a study published in the March 9, 2007, issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters authored by Ken Caldeira from the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution at Stanford University and Long Cao and Atul Jain of the University of Illinois. Increasing absorption of carbon dioxide is acidifying global oceans, because carbon dioxide absorbed into water becomes carbonic acid.

According to Tree Hugger, Audubon Society "Strongly Supports Wind Power" even though many environmentalists get knots in their stomach thinking about the birds being killed by wind turbines. There have been studies recording birds being killed by being hit by wind turbine blades, but there are other studies on why birds get killed by wind turbines, how to avoid the bird deaths, and in any case the rates of bird death due to wind turbines are lower than birds killed by flying into skyscrapers.

WILL WARMING END SNOW SPORTS? is a report from EcoShock News about winter sports, the issue of retreating glaciers, and related issues. One of the effects of the retreating glaciers is to threaten the possible continuation of "winter sports" such as Skiing. This then threatens the livelihood of those whose life is those winter sports, such as professional competition skiers, skiing competitions, and ski resorts.