When reading about Europeans getting blown goes right

This week I'm writing about the article that covers wind energy. More specifically, how offshore wind farms work in Europe and the benefits they present to our impending energy Armageddon. According to one company, a single turn of the blades can power a European home for a day, so the output from these farms is no joke. Around 230,000 households will have all their electricity come solely from wind energy. With 12% of all wind farms now offshore and over $15 billion invested in the field, its clear that many people see this method of generation to be the future. The major problem that prevents this boom from becoming our main source is the fact that the energy storage industry can't keep up fast enough. Companies shave nowhere to put the excess energy they receive. Once the governments of Europe work together to establish a new grid system, renewable energy can continue to expand and Europe will be one step closer to complete use of renewable energy.

This relates to our project in class. Our group is learning about hydroelectric power, and its many drawbacks. The problem with using wind and hydroelectric power is the fact that water doesn't always gush and the wind doesn't always blow super hard. On those days, what are we supposed to do about electricity. Without nuclear or solar energy infrastructure, there could be serious problems with that plan of Europe.

A question I have is about wind farms. How much would it cost Houston to set up a bunch of these farms in Galveston to power the entire city? It would be a great example for the world considering our size. I can see some of the oil companies not letting that happen though.

Tired of all this mother-fracking oil in my mother-fracking water

Fracking is a topic of controversy that most people with even the smallest amount of knowledge regarding environmental science know about. What I didn't know was that these techniques have been around since the 40's, and that fracking is only legal due to a loophole in regulations. Fracking is the process of drilling holes near previously unreachable oil deposits, and shooting high volumes of water into the areas to break up the earth an leaving oil vulnerable to extraction. The dangers of such activity include but are not limited to groundwater contamination, minor earthquakes, air pollution, gas explosions, and infrastructure degradation. In class we have discussed this topic and its many side effects.

My family's ranch has been a staple of me and my two sibling's childhood for all our lives. We all shot our first animals there, learned how to drive a car, and hosted numerous amounts of Thanksgiving dinners and New Years celebrations. It was our home away from home. When my family purchased it from the previous ones, they took it withe the promise that we would take good care of the land and use it as a tool to help raise future generations and allow us to develop an appreciation for nature. That ended up being a pile of cow shit.
The previous owners kept the mineral rights, which we had no issue with since there was no available oil beneath us. Fracking activity moving closer to our Pleasanton home proved otherwise. In just a few months our sanctuary turned into a well oiled machine with workers driving in and out building more and more noise makers to scare the animals and decimate any chance of a peaceful afternoon ever again. we were bullied into selling our land, all because the previous owners saw a chance to make a bit of cash on the side. So much for family values.

A question I have is about that loophole. Will the Safe water Drinking Act ever be updated or revisited in any way? I imagine not, but if people become more passionate about this issue, and spun this as a health crisis then some real change could happen. I don't expect it to, but maybe if people cared.

That's Coal Country, Sir

The articles I read covered coal mining and some of the effects that it has on the environment. One such effect is coal combustion waste. This is the nation's second largest waste stream after municipal solid waste. Rain hits the waste that is dumped in landfills and allows the toxic metals to be leached into the soil. Another example is mercury pollution. Mercury is used sometimes to extract coal from rocks and accounts for 41 percent of mercury pollution in the country. Also, a huge issue is air pollution from coal. Sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides,a d heavy metals are all released in the air and can cause acid rain, smog, and diseases of people and animals alike.

In class we did an activity that involved mining for chocolate chips. Our group made such a huge mess we ended up $384 million in the hole. Its not surprising to see how companies may want to loosen regulations and how people may into care about the environment when money is involved. We also discussed real world examples of leaching occurring in many old landfills that exist because of coal mining. Some of these areas will effectively be poisoned in the years to come.

A question I have is about acid rain. If a lake can become acidic enough to kill a flock of birds, which areas are most likely to eventually rain water that is just as acidic? Will West Virginia ever have true acid rain?

When doing Acid is not as fun as you remember

The first article we got this week covered acid drainage and its harmful effects. We talked about it in class to some length, but there were still aspects discussed ere that I may not have fully grasped. One example is just how far the drainage travels. I was unaware beforehand that some acid drainage goes over 8 miles downstream, affecting every fish, plant, or human that comes in contact with it. In addition to sulfuric acid, much of the leakage is other metals, which is what creates that rust colored lining on the bottom of some river beds. These are actually a huge problem as metals don't simply break down and disappear; they linger for years and years until someone physically cleans it out.

Two ways this info relates to class is our studies of mining. When companies use explosives or other disruptive techniques in their mines, many minerals are deposited where they shouldn't be. This creates the acid drainage we just talked about. It also goes hand in and with our lab we did today: the mining simulation. Our group was so concerned with making enough money to not be in debt that we didn't care if we made any smears (acid drainage) while mining. It's not hard to see how a company that's $200 million in the hole may not care about how clean the streams are.

A question I have is about coal mining. How long does it last? As the apparent most advanced country in the nation, we can't always stay on such cruel forms of energy such as coal, right? When does West Virginia become a solar energy capital of the world?

The Irrigation Situation

I read the second article that was provided this week and learn all about irrigation salinity. More specifically, the how, why and what is being down about his problem. It occurs because of over watering and irrigation use on farms this allows minerals underground to rise through the pools of water, effectively poisoning the soil. This usually is involved with salt, which is notoriously bad for crops (see Sherman's March to the Sea). People now are starting to be better about managing their land and water use to prevent the loss of usable soil.

As we learned in lass, it takes hundreds of years just to build a layer of soil only a few centimeters deep. Salting the limited Earth we have creates serious problems. Another thing we discussed in class was the growing human population. We actually need MORE food an land, yet we somehow continue to destroy it all. This is problematic when you think about how our population will potentially double in the next 40 years.

A question I have is about the amount of fertile land that is currently sitting on fertile soil. How much usable and rich soil is unusable because skyscrapers now sit on top. I wonder if there is anyway to get people to move off this land and onto the sandy areas that aren't good for growing anything. Then we could all live on a sunny beach like grandma wanted.

PCBs (Plastic Causing Bad stuff)

This week I chose the second of the two articles given to us, the one about PCBs. I only know what we learned in class, so my knowledge doesn't extend as far as it probably could. From the reading, I learned about exposure to PCBs, health effects to this exposure, and laws that regulate PCB use. People years ago were exposed to this compound because many facilities improperly dumped excess waste all over the place! Even though it was a long time ago, it takes a very long amount of time for the compound to properly break down and no longer be a threat to our health. Prolonged consumption of PCBs can cause may forms of cancer and do permanent damage to your nervous, immune, reproductive, and endocrine system. The United States enacted the Toxic Substances Control Act in 1976, which stopped the usage of PCBs. Despite this, the effects of their use will linger for many decades until it all finally decomposes.

This information was brought up in class today when discussing the different types of harm that a disease or substance can have on the body. Based on the information from the article, PCBs are a carcinogen, endocrine disruptor, and neurotoxin. This also comes into play when we discuss different ways to avoid these kind of harmful substances. Having an aluminum water bottle would help us not only to save plastic but to avoid PCBs or other Harmful chemicals from entering our bodies.

A question I have is about the people affected by PCBs. Do they get to sue people who released the chemicals and used them in their products? What if the manufacturers honestly didn't know what they were doing was wrong?

Ew, there's a weird lookin' Population Growth on my back!

Three things that I have learned from the video posted today were how industrialization affects population growth (birth rates, life expectancy, and child mortality rates). As countries become more industrialized, they encounter greater education, better medicine, and more power for women. Birth rates actually decrease, as contraceptives use and more choice for women becomes widespread. Life expectancy goes up as sanitation and accessible medicine is introduced into daily life. Child mortality rates decrease due to more immunization and increased food supply. All these factors show how  more industrialization can actually create a more populated ans stable country (eventually).

Two ways this information ties back into class is during our observation of exponential growth and human impact on the natural world. When we think of more people, we think of more habitat loss and resource use, which is true. However, as we saw in the other video (s/o to Hans), eventually the population should level out as people keep reproducing at a smaller rate. Currently, the population of the world is growing exponentially, but hopefully will slow down around 12 billion.

A question I have is what will happen to countries with decreasing populations. I imagine economic conditions will blow, and the amount of empty space will be pretty sad. It makes me curious what the future of places like Norway or Japan have in store.