Recapping #2: Plasticized

Another movie review, I chosen to watch for additional 5pts extra credit it was "Plasticized". This movie was an intimate account of a first hand journey aboard the Sea Dragon with 5 Gyres Institute on the very first scientific expedition, focused on plastic waste, through the centre of the South Atlantic Ocean. Their global mission was to study the effects, reality, and scale of plastic pollution around the world. The project was inspired by Charles Moore and partnered with the Algalita Marine Research Foundation. He wanted to raise awareness to other people about this massive soup of buoyant plastics, now known as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch." Regarding to where the trash of plastics come from is a global problem. Plastic pollution can be found at every coastline and ocean in the world. All the plastic are washed into the sea from every continents of the world. The whole clean up will require an international world help to solve the problem. It took 31 days on the sea to do the mission from California to South Africa, and completed 4,000+ miles of sailing. Some people that I may mention their bibliography can be found at this site http://5gyres.org/who_we_are/advisors_and_staff/ .

Ana Cummins said it best, "What they are doing with 5 Gyers and Algalita is looking at distribution of plastic. Scam the surface of the ocean, count pieces of plastic in lab, and share the results." The goal for trawling is 15-50,000 miles until they get to South Africa is to deploy the sea surface trawls. The plastic can be traced from our footsteps in the United States all the way to Japan. We don't have to ever be at Japan at all, but our plastic can travel over there. Chelsea Rochman is like an environmental chemistry or toxicology professional, and she notice a lot of nurdel of plastics, and these are virgin of plastic found 100 miles offshore. Her project throughout the trip was to research the plastic, the manufactures of plastics that absorbs onto the ocean. How that effect the animals if it transfer to their tissue and toxic effects of that. There was a control survey of feeding the fish plastics in the ocean for 3 months or straight out the manufacture plastics. They did ate the plastic, they looked for toxic effects, losing weight, anemic, single cell losses in the liver.

Chelsea Rochman and Nurdels

Plastic Pollution is a big concern of the causes of plastic being the ocean. Jody Lemmon mentioned "The Ocean is sick in away of pollution, we don't the extend of the problem is, and the damages of the long terms.The pollutants are proven to stick to plastics, and transfer into the dissolve into the organism of the animals. It can also mess up their reproductive systems, and hormones to be mimic. Color of white plastic can disrupt the food source of animals because it can mimic their natural food source in the ocean or on the surface. Visible at night or looks like a fish egg or Zooplankton. 3rd world country does not realized their plastics does not absorbs into the ground, everything we use as plastic throw it on the ground will go back into the Earth. Plastic only biodegrades in the right conditions, so it does it in the ocean from the sunlight and it not a good thing in this area of the world. In addition, 3rd world countries does not know plastic will stay around 400-1000 years.Therefore, new chemical formulas needs to be created, so there can be biodegradable products.

Ever since WWII we started making single use of plastic, no body was thinking about the environmental nightmares outcomes. Unlike thinking about our useful purpose of plastic, we need to go safe our beautiful planet from plastic being produce and sent into the ocean. There are a lot of animals dying from the plastics we produce into the ocean. In fact, we are producing 10's of 1,000's of trash plastic just floating in the ocean. Overall, anyone can learn a lot of what impact plastic can do onto our ocean. I believe it's a 10/10 movie.
 

 

Recapping Movie: Chasing Ice

Throughout my environmental science course, the class was given a chance to do any combination of movie reviews, field trips, movie nights on campus, visit the garden day on campus, book reviews, and 5 hours community service for a separate 5 points each to equal 20 points cumulative available extra credit. Therefore, I chosen a movie called "Chasing Ice" and I can say it really did open up my eyes on the matters of Global Warming or Climate Change. James Balog was the person who directed this movie, and he is an professional scientist in the geography and geomophology, but he always had the love and passion for photography with natural environmental surrounding. He love the subductive fashion to help people to be pulled into, and forces people to think about our environment. One thing he knows for fact about Global Warming was that Climate Change it connects behind ice. National Geographic is where Mr. Balog worked at for his career, and one of its company most popular and well read magazine in five years was his glacier and ice work "The Big Thaw Cover Magazine Story".  

James Balog had a goal to capture all the changes among glacier ice melt in 6 months apart, so he would scatter cameras around to get the images. Extreme Ice Survey (EIS) was a company that created at the beginning of his mission. The company was to provide 25 cameras for every 3 hours only daylight, download pictures into video clips to show people how the landscape was changing. There was a big group of teammates to be assembled for this mission such as Adam Lewinter - EIS Engineer, Svavar Jonatanson Photo Assistant, Dr. Jason Boy Climatologist Ohio State Univeristy professor, and Dr. Tad Pfeffer Glaciologist and best known as the grandfather of glacier in Alaska. There goal was to help people believe in global warming by visualizing it's happening through ice melting photo magic images. EIS cameras are suppose to withstand some harshes part of the environment such as Hurricane Force wind, -40° temperature, not the nicest environment for technology.They ended up installing a dozen cameras in Greenland, 5 in Iceland and Alaska, and 2 in Montana. There were also some trouble shooting that were caused by voltage and computer timer to tell the camera to shoot pictures. Several other technical problems were such as rocks crushing on them, buried under snow 15ft to 20ft, pixie glass window,sand blasted, battery explode inside camera boxes, birds peak at them, foxes chew up the cable chords, and a lot of money wasted. Luckily, their engineer Adam was able to work with National Geographic to redesign controllers, new circuit that use less power and was lot more reliable because simple electronic circuitry inside it. Then it was the was the turn around part, so they had to wait for a new season and to make sure they were working.

Cryconite Illustration

Now I can start talking about the evidence that James Balog and his crew had gather through the successful photography. The facts are worrisome bare the truth because we mankind are destroying the glacial ice. In fact, 800,000 years ago or so atmosphere carbon dioxide were never higher than approximately 280 parts per million. Humans added way more carbon dioxide to our planet, so it's 390 parts per year and 40% higher. Now carbon dioxide is 5,000 parts per million+. Mass extinction on plants and animals can occur from this about in 200 to 300 years from now. They are going extinct already 1000 x"s faster now than 10,000 years ago. Glacier does a trimming and thinning motion, such as air letting out of a balloon. In 1984, the trimming in Alaska was as tall as the New York Empire Statue.Melt zone up and down the edges of the sheet that melts and stored water is running out to the sea.100 thousand years ago ice been entering into ocean. Now Greenland been dumping even more ice into water. The term ice caving (when glacier break gigantic ice bergs into the ocean) it can cause rise of sea level. James Balog also notice that there were Cryoconite Holes surround Greenland snow. Cryconite are caused by natural dust from the Dessert Central Asia, carbon wildfire, fine particle of soft wildlife, and algae. Black and absorbs a lot more heat than the surrounding ice. Melting away and filling up with water, ancient bubbles now being released as the ice sheet melts. Greenhouse gases are one of the biggest reason for Climate Change because it can create way more carbon dioxide. Then it eventually melts the ice sheet around the edges and cause seal level rises. Dr. Tad mentioned "Climate is warm it can shrink, and Climate is cooler it can grow. Too warm and thin volume drops and cross tipping climate will not matter because it will be unreversible. 

Store Glacier Biggest Ice Calving Event

There were some amazing moments through the Chasing Ice movie that on my own believe made me enjoy watching this movie. I was amazed how fast the glaciers were melting in a short amount of time, and I know there is nothing to reverse the motion of this action. The only thing we can do is stop what human impacts that is being done at this moment. One thing I did like was the video capture of Store Glacier in Greenland because it's the mother of all glacier in the Western Hemisphere. Store Glacier was rumored to be the glacier to put out an ice berg to sink the Titanic. The video camera crew captured the longest ice calving event on tape within 75 minutes.The cabin faces was 300 ft -400 ft tall, pieces of ice were shouting up 600 ft and falling. Pretty much like Manhattan breaking up in your eyes. James Balog is one big risk taker and dare devil because he do whatever it takes to capture the breathe taking moments into his pictures. Not even a bad knee or a doctor words would not keep him doing his love passion in life, and this  is why this movie is one to watch.

He mentioned about "Taking a picture at night, places mind on a surface on a planet. No longer a human being walking around on a regular world, your a human animal striding around the surface of the planet. Out on the insight of middle of galaxy." "As a culture we forgetting we are actually naturally organism, very deep contact with nature and depend on it."            

   

Why Is Global Warming Still A Debate?

Have you ever felt like the weather was hotter than it usually should be? This may be because it's Global Warming that is existing on our present geological times. My environmental assignment this week is to do some research on the famous debate if Global Warming is really occurring. I was suppose to find out what the evidence of climate changes are saying right now, what roles humans may impact on it and how, what type of damages are happening on our society and our world. Then I'm to write a brief section on what skeptism on climate denial is being said around the world and why it still exist. In addition, I would give a small brief on what the world would be like in 50 years if we continue with our current current path and do nothing to slow it done.

Global Warming should not be a debatable topic anymore because there plenty of facts can be proven it is happening. This can be based on statics from past, present or future, and physical changes or impact loses.I have found out in the Climate Change at the National Academies website, that the Earth's average surface air temperature has increased by about 0.8°C (1.4°F) since 1900.Majority of this warming took place since the mid 1970's. Thermometer records is the clearest evidence for surface warming evidence provided tool. The tool extends back to 19th century, now the temperatures are monitored at many thousands of locations, over both the land and ocean surface. Tree rings and ice core can help place recent temperature changes in the context of the past, and the estimate of the temperature change to be known. Indirect estimates of average surface temperature on Earth's it shows that 1983-2012 was probably the warmest 30 years period in more than 800 years.A monitoring system measurements can be a helpful tool for scientist to figure out how the lower atmosphere and the upper layers of the ocean have also warmed, snow and ice cover are decreasing. In fact, snow cover has declined by some 10% since the late 1960's in the mid/high latitudes of the Northen Hemisphere. A lot of recorded mountain glaciers in non - polar regions have retreated during this time as well. Recent decades, the extent of Antarctic sea-ice in the spring and summer has decreased by about 10-15% and the ice has likely thinned by 40% during the late summer and early autumn. The mean sea level has risen by 10 to 20 cm, as the upper layers of the oceans warm, water expands and sea levels rises.

Some people may be wondering, what are the impacts humans are causing to our planet Earth? There are several impacts that mankind had already caused upon our planet, and majority of the truth are scary to bare.The rising levels of green house gases are one of the biggest concern of Global Warming. This had risen Global temperature by about 0.6C over the 20th century.Scientist had found CO2 to be one of the main green house gases of importance to Earth's energy balance since mid - 1800s. Direct measurement of CO2 in the atmosphere and in air trapped in ice show tha atmospheric CO2 increased by 40% from 1800 to 2012. Methan and Nitrous oxide known from green house gases are also increasing as a consequence of human activities. Emission of green house gases comes from a variety of human activities, including burning fossil fuels for heat and energy, clearing forests, fertilizing crops, storing waste in landfills, raising livestock, and producing some kinds of industrial products.The Earth's climate is driven by a continuous flow of energy from the sun. It comes from visible light 30% is scattered back into space, but 70% passes down through the atmosphere to warm Earth's surface.Green house gases can block the infrared radiation from escaping directly from the surface to space. Additional activities that humans help make matter worse are agricultural or road constructions, and emission of small particles, known as aerosols. Carbon dioxide is produced when fossils fuels are used to generate energy and when forest are cut down and burned. Methane and Nitrous occur by agricultural activities and changes in land and other sources. Industrial processes can release halocarbans, and other long - lived gases such as sukphure hexaflouride. Lower atmosphere of Ozone can be generated indirected by automobile exhausted fumes and other sources.

Next question is about what are the type of damages that are happening on our society and world? Now once again there are a lot that is taking place in this present, past, and future. Climate Changes can can affect our way of life in many ways. Heat waves can be the cruelness impact to have on our human health. This can lead to heat strokes and dehydration, and are the most common causes of weather - related deaths. Young children, older adults, people with medical conditions, the poor are more vulnerable than others to heart - related illness. There will be longer heat waves in the summer. Increase demand for electricity would another matter because of hotter summers will use more air conditioner to run longer. This will create air pollution and green house gas emissions from power plants. Los Angeles annual heat - related - deaths are projected to increase two - to seven - fold by the end of 21st century, depending on the future growth of green house gas emissions. Fresh foods and water would reduced in availability. With more server warming, floods, and drought reduce crop yields. There will be disease that we will have to consider about with the climate changes. Allergens will come much early and last longer. Pathogens disease can be transmitted through food, water, and animals. Food borne disease will arrive, higher temperature causes salmonella and other bacteria related food poisoning environments. These disease can cause gastrointestinal distress and in sever cases cause death. Water borne disease from heavy rainfall or flooding, so it creates cryptospridium and giradia that are in drinking water. Once again causes of death are known. Mosquitoes are to increase with warmer weather, wet climates and can spread diseases such as West Nile virus. Additional problems can be rising sea levels threaten coastal communities and ecosystem, severe weather conditions, altering where species lives and how they interact.

Another website that I went on to visit was from the Heartland Institute website http://heartland.org/ideas/global-warming-not-crisis. Heartland Institute is an economics focus group that have been studying global warming since 1994. This group are aware that scientist have some gathers believes on global warming, but scientist are unsure how large a role human activity may have played. Heartland Institute are here to help people determine what warming is done by nature or humans. Two - thirds of the warming in the 1990's are due to natural causes. "Real and Crisis" are the words scientist use a lot to talk about Global Warming, so Heartland Institute had realize majority of scientist don't understand what they are saying. In fact, they caught 60% of the scientist to conclude Global Warming is not a crisis. More than 300,000 scientists have signed a petition saying there is no threat to humanity or nature (Petition Project). Klaus - Martin Schulte did a recent study research that 928 scientific paper published from 2004 - Feburary 2007 found fewer than half explicit or implicit endorse the so called consensus and only 7 percent did so explicitly.

Finally, I do see Global Warming in 50 years is only going to get worse. My point of view is that natural causes alone are always making the weather heat up, but  human civilization is speeding the process. Average sea level will be predicted to rise by 9 to 88 cm by 2100, and mainly due to thermal expansion. If the Earth's temperature continue to rise at the rate of the past three decades, the planet would see only 1.23 degrees C warming over the course of an entire century. I don't see the Global Warming getting any better if we work together as a whole, and reduce the causes we human create

http://heartland.org/ideas/global-warming-not-crisis 

http://nas-sites.org/americasclimatechoices/

 

A Field Trip To A Landfill

On May 9th 2014 of a Friday, I went on a class field trip to the Bandlands Landfield located in Moreno Valley. It was a 20 minutes drive from Riverside city county, and basically it was part of Moreno Valleys Mountains (you can visit their web site from here www.rivcowm.org. The real name that they go by is Riverside City Waste Management Department, and they had started up since 1966 as a burning trash site. Because burning trash would pollute the environment, they switched over to landfill in 1970.This landfiled owns 11 hundred acres which is equivalent to 7 Disneyland parks. Bandlands Landfield is consider the end of the line for all trash waste products. A dosser would compact the trash together into a box shape because it is better and safe for the environment. Density and landfill last 120 to 120 feets and invated solution to safing.   There are several monitoring programs such as national Pollutant Discharge and Elimination System, Groundwater Monitoring, Gas Monitoring, and Gas Collection System. 

Riverside City Waste Management Department would normally take in 2200 tons a day, and can be 1 and half houses stack a day. This can be about 150 acers, and 10,000 tons to check each around to not take waste. An interesting fact is a that there are a lot of seahawks flying around the trash, but there is a hawk control man to help with this problem.The hawk man releases the hawk each day, so the hawk can keep the birds away from trash. The Waste Management company also uses a tarp to cover the trash when the day is over because no other ground animals can get into the trash. There is also a cage like fence that can catch the trash before it get out of their site. Then there will be some workers who will clean the fence, so the place can be kept clean. The trash is converted into gas fuels because trash would get buried, turn into liquid, and gets used a burner. The burner would create half methane and dioxide anorabic breaks down and to the land field. More fuel than less dioxide 1,000 or 15,000 to power Southern California Edison it goes to 100 mega watts. It counts to 1.3 millions dollar, and 1 million ahead.There shouldn’t be any drainage such as hazard, methane, and water. Water leaking is the most important for them to make sure there is not drainage of water, so the other places’ water don’t get any polluted water from the landfill. Visiting the main websites on Riverside City Waste Management, you can learn about what they can recycle, what is not good to recycle, fees punishments, and what other landfill sites there are with organization company. Mostly electronic waste, appliances tires, and metals are good recylceable.  The landfill designated as Class 3 facility by Title 27 California Code of Regulations. They are only permitted max tonnage of 4,000 tons per day. Once landfill filled up with trashes, and there is not any more space, they close, nothing goes out of landfill, and everything can be recycled. The linear system layer of landfill structure was 7 for typical bottom liner system, and 5 layers for typical side slope liner system. At times there are inspection on the people monitors the landfills because to see if they are good to keep landfill.

Acceptable Items 

 Solid Waste 

 Household Refuse 

 Yard Trimmings 

 Furniture 

 Tires 

 Appliances (i.e. 

Microwaves, 

Refrigerators, Washers, 

Dryers, etc.) 

 TV’s and Computers 

 Electronic Waste 

Unacceptable Items 

 Hazardous Waste 

 Household Hazardous 

Waste (i.e. Cleaners, 

Chemicals, Pesticides, 

Pool Chemicals, Paints, 

Aerosol Cans, Propane 

Tanks, etc.) 

 Explosives or 

Ammunition 

 Untreated Medical/

Infectious Waste 

(including Sharps) 

 Asbestos (including 

floor tile and roofing 

material containing 

asbestos) 

Snack: Corn Nuts

This week's blog, I'll be doing a research on one of my favorite food or snack. My research should focus on what my food or snack ingredients are, where did my food or snacks come from. how was it grown or raised, who raised/ grew/ produced/ manufactured it, what are it's environmental impacts, and what health effects might it have. Now my type of snack came to while I deciding what should I talk about or bring to school as a potluck. While sitting on my desk were a bag of Corn Nuts - Chile Picante, which my grandfather normally would put on my desk as a snack, or sometimes he will bring real homemade beef jerky from a store in Anaheim. He works in the city of Anaheim that is why I mentioned it. Corn Nuts are a favorite type for all types of ages with teeth. They have a lot of flavor to them, so in fact there are 6 types of flavors. The flavors are Chile Picante, Original, Ranch, BBQ, Nacho Cheese, Salsa Jalisco. In 1936, Corn Nuts were originally named Olin's Brown Jug Toasted Corn by Albert Holloawy who invented and sold it. As a beginning life, Corn Nuts were served as tavern snacks, and made from sweet corn. Originated in Oakland and Salina Valley California, so it's basically the central California near Monetary. . Below are the ingredients that are contained in the Corn Nuts.

Ingredients: Corn, Corn Oil, Maltodextrin, Spices, Onions and Garlic, and Tomatoe(s) Powder, Pepper(s), Chili Dried, Monosodium Glutamate Flavors Enhance, Citric Acid for (tartness), Flavor(s) Natural and Artificial, Paprika Extract Vegetable(s)

Corn Nuts are not actually nuts, they're made from kernels corns that are soaked in water, roasted toasted or deep fried. The crunchy nut - like texture and not the taste was the reason for the name of Corn Nuts.Kernels are soaked because they shrink during the harvesting and cleaning process, and re-hydration returns them to the original size. They are fried in one hundred percent natural vegetable oil. Maltodextin is more described as white powder often used in process foods as a thickener or a filler and it's fairly inexpensive. Mostly found in canned fruits, snacks, cereal, desserts, instant pudding, sauces, and salad, dressings.As a result for containing fewer calories than sugar, it's also found in sugar substitutes. Normally, Maltodextrin are used in small amounts that it doesn't have a significant impact in terms of the amount of protein, carbohydrates, or fiber that it adds to food. Monosodium Glutamate Flavors Enhancers is also known as sodium glutamate, and one of the most abundant naturally occurring non-essential amino acids. It helps breakdown product of proteins, and a common ingredients for Asian cooking.

Regarding healthy food choice, Cor Nuts does not meet some criteria because one point it's high in calories. This means if your watching your weight, corn nuts goes over the calories limit. In the fat categories, corn nuts holds 8 grams of fat per 48 grams, fulling 12 percent of the daily value. Only 1 grams is saturated and the rest is the healthy, unsaturated fat. Then unsaturated fats may lower levels of "bad" LDL cholesterol, according to the American Heart Association.If corn nuts are high in fat, they are also rich in calories, with 210 per 48 grams. Snacks rich in protein delays the emptying of food and keeps you feeling satisfied after eating. Corn nuts contain some protein with, 4 grams of protein per 48 rams or 1/4 cup of corn nuts. It's not as high as some other snacks such as peanuts, which contain more than 7 grams in just 28 grams of nuts. The were some information that I can not find which were how the corn was manufacture, transportation, and the environmental impact of them. I know one fact that it get package in 6 different sizes from 0.8oz to 0.7oz bags. Now day Corn nuts are made from Cuzco corn hybrid corn found in every bag. Mr. Holloway and his sons learned of Cuzco corn found in an article in the local paper about a corn in Peru that grew kernels bigger than a quarter. The corn they used were gigante and raised by farmers 9,000 ft up in the rugged Andes mountains. Still cooked in Peru and in Peru restaurants in America. In addition, Corn Nuts are also effect carbohydrates, fiber, and sodium among the snack or human health. High in carbohydrates, but low in sugars. Can be a health risk, if you have diabetes or are at risk for the disease 1/3 of cup serving contains just under 20 grams of carbs, and 7% of recommended daily allowance if you follow a 2,000 calorie diet. Corn nuts can help up a fiber intake, but not too much corn nuts can do good though. Corn nuts contain few nutrients outside of carbohydrate and fat. A serving of corn nuts supplies no vitamin A,C or calcium, and not particularly high in protein. There are high amounts of sodium. Flavored brands often contain more sodium. Age 51 or over, African American descent or have high blood pressure, these people must not consume no more than 1,500 milligrams of sodium per day; a serving of corn nuts would supply more than 100% of your allowed sodium.
   http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/corn-nuts-healthy-4293.html