Enviornmental Science, The Final Post

Hey everyone, unfortunately it has come down to the final post for this semester's environmental science class. For this weeks post I am to discuss what is/are the most important environmental issue today. After I determine in my opinion which is the most important, I am to back this up with some cold hard facts, as well as what we can do to make a change. After this I am to discuss in my opinion one of the most interesting things that I learned this semester (which should be fun because I learned a lot of cool things). This will be my last blog post for the semester so I am going to try and have some fun with this one, so here it goes.



In my opinion I feel that one of the most important topics that we discussed this semester in the Environmental Science class would have to be Global Warming. Global Warming is in my opinion one of the most controversial topics discussed today. When I did my blog post on Global Warming, I noted that it has a strong effect on our daily lives. The rise in climate can affect our food production, fresh water resources, as well as animal habitats. The thing that makes this topic so controversial are there are so many skeptics out there that think it is a government publicity stunt. The truth is, the climate is rising, and more toxic gasses are being pumped into the atmosphere daily.

What we as a society can do to reduce the cause of Global Warming is, cut back on our energy use, carbon emissions, and pollution in general. Switching over to solar power energy rather than using electricity is a good way to cut back, as well as having vehicles that produce less carbon emissions (electric cars). If society as a whole can cut back on the things that we use in excess we can reduce the amount of animal habitats being destroyed, the amount of glaciers that are melting due to a rise in temperatures and lowering the overall average temperature.

Next we will discuss what I as an individual can do to reduce the cause of Global Warming. One major thing I can think of is to drive my car less. I drive everywhere, if I have to go to the store, to work or school I take my car. When I was growing up, I would walk everywhere, it didn't matter if it was 1 mile or 10 miles, I would walk. Now days I have the ease and convenience of driving my car everywhere I need to go which adds to the Carbon dioxide in the air. Another thing I can do to help prevent Global Warming is to turn off and unplug all of my electronics when they are not in use. I am notorious for leaving my TV on while I sleep and keeping my computer/Laptop on while I am gone. If I can manage to reduce the amount of driving, and electronics use I feel that could be a positive way to reduce my effect of Global Warming.



For the last part of my post I get to discuss what I thought was the most interesting thing that I learned about this semester. The most interesting thing that I learned this semester is how much food we as a country throw out annually. We watched a movie in class called "Dive" it was about a group of people who dumpster dive at grocery stores to find their food. Some grocery stores thrown out perfectly good food because it is passed their best if used by date. The date on the label is not the actual expiration date but a suggested date for the food to be consumed by for the best quality. These people that dove for their food had more than enough to last them a few months. Just imagine, we have people around the world starving and dying of hunger and we throw out millions of pounds of food each year. The people in this film went to a local grocery store to get their excess holiday turkeys that were being thrown out, so they can take them to the local food shelter, but rather than being given the turkeys, they ended up in the dumpster with a lock on it. It is sad that we do so little to help those in need just to satisfy personal gain, but in this situation does anyone really win? This concludes my final blog post.

Trash Reduction!

Hey everyone, for this weeks blog, I am here to talk about trash/waste, and the reduction of it. So for the assignment this week we were told to either weigh the amount of trash, or go off of the amount of pieces myself or my house hold produces within a three day period. Next, I am to do some research and find some ways to reduce the amount of trash and for the next three days implement those waste reduction techniques to see how much waste we reduced within that short period of time. So here it goes, for the first three days I decided to measure out how much trash my household accumulated, but before I get to that let me tell you about my household size. I currently have at my home, my mother, Step-father, brother and myself. So for the household size of four people over a three day span, the amount of trash in weight was approximately 12 lbs. This weight was taking in account of my brother moving home, so there was a lot of packing material that was tossed out, but other than that the rest was due to day to day waste (wrapping from food, grocery bags, open containers, plastic cups etc). This amount of trash was including recyclable items like aluminum cans, boxes, newspapers and bottles.


Now on to ways to reduce trash reduction. According to http://www.johnsrefuse.com/blog/bid/135627/What-Are-Some-Waste-Reduction-Strategies-at-Home they suggest: Re-using food containers, Purchase more re-usable items, buying in bulk and using non toxic cleaning substances. These are some great ways of reducing waste, but one way that I have found helps reduce waste so much more is, only using what you need when you need it. Grocery bags are a prime example, after going to the grocery store and receiving your plastic bags, rather than tossing them out right away, keep them for the little things, they are the perfect bag for a small trashcan. Small reductions like this can go a long way. Purchasing in bulk is a great way to reduce waste because when you buy bulk items, they typically come with less packaging materials than individually wrapped items. Using no toxic chemicals is also a great way for waste reduction because toxic chemicals do not break down substances nearly as easily as non toxic chemicals.



So after three three days of implementing some waste reduction techniques not only myself but my household in general cut back on about four pounds of waste for a three day period. For the last three days we have cut back on the amount of trash that we have been producing by, using less in general. For meals, we cut out foods that had lots of packaging, utilized our own grocery bags at the store, we used more re-usable food containers. When going to the store, we had only purchased food items that we planned on making for the next few days and nothing that required multiple ingredients. Not only did we cut back on food waste and trash, the amount of recyclables that we were putting into the bin was cut down as well, that's not to say we stopped buying recyclable items, but the less we purchased, the less we threw out. The recyclable weight was cut down by about a pound whereas normal day to day trash was cut back about three pounds. One of the good things about cutting back on the waste was it also helped us to eat better, we were purchasing more vegetables that required little to no waste,  we purchased more fruits because they don't require much packaging, we cut back to having more soup to reduce the amount of waste from multiple ingredient packages. All in all, I believe that one waste reduction method I will stick to is purchasing in bulk, not only does it save money, but as I stated previously, there is less packaging materials that come with it. I also like the idea of only purchasing what you need rather than what sounds good. The saying, "Don't go to the store hungry" is completely true, when you are hungry and at the store, most people tend to impulse purchase more often.

Climate change. Fact or Fiction?

Hey Everyone,
 For this weeks blog assignment we are discussing the on going topic of climate, and how it can our society and world. We have been given a few sources to answer a few questions. Some of the questions we have been asked are as follows:

According to evidence, is climate changing right now?
What does evidence role say about humans role in the changing climate?
How is climate change likely to affect our society and world?

One of the sources I used to research these questions is, http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/index.html.
This website, gave me so much more insight to global warming and changing climate than I though really existed. Most of the population believes global warming is just a myth and something that some environmentalist's have come up with to scare us into a "better way of living" but the truth is, the Earth is warming up year by year and science can prove it. I will now answer the questions provided above based off of the information from http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/index.html.

According to evidence, is climate changing right now?

The answer to this question is YES! The World's climate has been steadily rising since the dawn of the industrial revolution. In 1750, we were introduced to the industrial revolution, which was great for us, the economy, and the world, but who knew the negative affects that it could potentially have for us in the future. With the industrial revolution brought on heat trapping greenhouse gasses that would later prove to be disastrous to today's current and future economies. These greenhouse gases have affected, temperature, precipitation, sea level and storms.


 What does evidence role say about humans role in the changing climate?

According to http://climate.nasa.gov/causes/ , some of the gasses causing climate change, and global warming are: Water vapor, Carbon dioxide, Methane, Nitrous oxide and Chlorofluorocarbons. Carbon dioxide or CO2 is a leading greenhouse gas causing global warming, CO2 is released through human activities like, deforestation, and the burning of fossil fuels when we drive our cars. Since the 1750's the amount of CO2 has gone up about a third. Methane is another leading greenhouse gas causing climate change. Methane is release through human activities such as the decomposition of trash and waste in landfills, machine use for growing agriculture.



How is climate change likely to affect our society and world?

Climate change is a big part of our society and can affect our everyday lives if global warming becomes more of a problem than it already is. Climate plays a bigger role in our daily lives more than people think. Rising climates can affect food production, as the heat increases it makes it more difficult for certain crops to produce. Fresh water is becoming more scarce due to droughts and less snow packs because of the rising climate. As the climate increases fire becomes a bigger occurrence, and a fire that runs through places that have a higher drought rate will burn harder and longer. Here is a website I found useful or more information on the hazards the growing climate has on us. http://greenliving.nationalgeographic.com/global-warming-affect-daily-life-2680.html



Going back to the beginning of this post, I stated that there are many people that are skeptical about global warming. According to http://heartland.org/ideas/global-warming-not-crisis ( a website dedicated to proving global warming is not a crisis) states that ,": Probably two-thirds of the warming in the 1990s was due to natural causes; the warming trend already has stopped and forecasts of future warming are unreliable; and the benefits of a moderate warming are likely to outweigh the costs." These skeptics believe that global warming is due more in part to natural causes rather than human interaction. Their main argument is that there is not enough scientific proven data to show that global warming is being brought on by human interaction. I think this skepticism still exists because of conspiracy theorist that has been s. Again, as I stated earlier, I believe that most people think global warming is a myth that some environmentalists came up with to try and get us to "go green" and live a better life in their eyes.

From everything that I have read about, I personally believe that global warming is an issue and something that should be addressed more often. I recently saw a movie that really brought the issue of global warming to light for me, this movie was called, "An Inconvenient Truth" by Al Gore. In this documentary Al Gore, shows a graph of the amount of CO2, Methane and Carbon dioxide that has been admitted into the atmosphere in the last thousand plus years. I personally feel that if we continue living the way that we have been living, producing the same toxic chemicals that are causing climate change, there could be a possibility of a full enviornmental collapse in the next 50 years. If we don't do something about the way we live, we could soon deplete the earth of it's natural resources which we so desperately need.