Filed under: Tidbit
It’s late in the game, but have a look at their website. Try to get tickets for some of the amazing events. This year’s festival is about environmental issues and especially global warming. It’s officially called “Climate of Concern.”
I’ll bet that Al Gore fellow had something to do with this.
Filed under: News
http://www.slate.com/id/2176566/?GT1=10538
This story reports recent arguments between Canada and Russia over who actually owns the arctic. Thanks to good old global warming, thawing ice is opening up previously inaccessible waterways and natural resources. To add to the controversy, the U.S. Coast Guard is planning to establish its first arctic base in the area.
I find the story to be laughable and alarming. I couldn’t believe the aggressive melting of the arctic incited chatter of ownership. The real issue is that the North Pole is melting before our eyes and the effects of global warming are becoming more and more tangible each day.
Let’s get our priorities straight, people.
Filed under: News
A whole country is melting, and polar bears are not the tropical beasts we once pinned them as.
CNN’s “Planet in Peril” tonight focused on the global warming part of environmentalism, the thing that everyone is talking about now. Of course, it deserves the looks it’s getting. Some scientists and politicians disagree, but the fact does remain that with as many doomsday predictions as there are out there, doesn’t it require a very serious look, even for skeptics?
One aspect of the show I noticed was the use of the phrase “climate change” instead of “global warming.” I’m sure it was an intention shift of words, but what was the reason? Was it to get away from the rest of the mass media’s use of the term “global warming”?
Former VP Al Gore, the “global warming” knight-errant himself, has even begun to use this term. It pops up in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.
I understand that it’s a more blanket statement: “warming” means temps are climbing. “Climate change” leaves more room for speculation. It is also the preferred term within the political area, where the debate over whether the globe IS warming is very much not settled.
This episode focused on the heavy theory and models that are what drive the global warming debate. It did, however, give us a few great images of measly little fish and a science lab for studying the ice in Greenland (and its tiny underground fridge).
Check out the reruns if you can, and keep searching the Internet for copies of the show. Jeff Corwin, Anderson Cooper, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, and the polar bears would appreciate listening to their message in whatever way you can.
As for spoilers in the episode, the bears failed to bite Corwin OR Cooper this time.
Filed under: Opinion
If “Planet in Peril” taught me one thing, it’s that elephants should bite Jeff Corwin more often. This is solely for ratings.
The “landmark television special” tackled a range of issues in its first two hours on Tuesday, and it promises more on Wednesday.
About an hour of the show focused on poaching, especially southeast Asia, where tigers, elephants, and several cute weasel-like creatures face overhunting. The segment where the park rangers (including the hosts of the show, Jeff Corwin and Anderson Cooper) set off snares held my attention. The snapping noise of those traps stuck in my brain.
Then there was the infamous bite: Corwin and Cooper got to play with elephants. One (the elephants, not Cooper) playfully chomped on Corwin’s arm while he wasn’t looking. Corwin’s yelp made me laugh until I realized it really was biting hard. It left bruises.
One very unique lesson of the show was how one species affects an environment, and they exemplified it in a positive way with wolves. Gray wolves, over-hunted in America, were entirely gone from Yellowstone Park. Elk and bison populations exploded, vegetation was trampled and eaten faster than the ecosystem could regrow, and many species on the lower rungs of the food chain disappeared.
With the reintroduction of wolves in the 1990’s, the park fared much better. The ecosystem restored itself, proving a point: even a small effort to restore the natural balance can have tremendous positive effects.
Here’s the site again. Make sure to watch the second part tonight on CNN at 8 p.m. CT, and if an online link to the entire documentary becomes available (legally), I will post it.
Presidential hopeful and Sen. Barack Obama said last week that one point on humanity’s moral compass is environmentalism. It is not just “a scientific… issue.”
Is humanity morally obligated to protect the environment? Trailside Museum in River Forest, Ill., which I did a profile story on, hung up a sign on its wall. It stated, “We don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.”
So what if we think of it that way? When we borrow something, we must be ready to return it, and it should be in Mickey Mantle rookie-card condition.
Tuesday and Wednesday night at 9 p.m. ET (8 p.m. CT), CNN will be airing a two-part series on global warming and pretty much every environmental issue you can shake a recycled stick at. It’s called “Planet in Peril.” Here’s the plan: you watch it, I watch it, and we meet up here to discuss it later. Okay?
Filed under: Opinion
So, can we please NOW bomb our neighbors to the east? Indiana deserves it at this point.
After my thrilling expose in August on my other blog and a whole lot of help from the boycott/death threats, BP decided not to use the permit it was granted by Indiana to dump a whole lot more chemicals into Lake Michigan.
Now it’s US Steel’s turn for a-lashin’.
The Chicago Tribune has reported the last few days that Indiana is at it again, giving US Steel a huge break with its permits. The level of dumping would raise in one of the most polluted rivers leading into one of the most polluted lakes in one of the most polluted states in one of the most polluted countries in one of the most polluted worlds ever?
That sentence makes me a proud neighbor.
However, this time the EPA stood up to the plate and succeeded in getting the proposals blocked… until further review!
Indiana feels they have the right to continually pound a laundry list of pollutants into the Great Lakes. The list includes various toxins, poisons, corrosive cleaners, and very few vitamins (to be fair, there are a few of those).
At this point, I think we have to forget about the companies and just boycott the state of Indiana.
Shouldn’t every environmental publication be writing about former Vice President Al Gore and his Peace Prize now?
Gore’s done a lot for environmental causes, certainly more than he could do as vice president.
My mom and I met Gore during his presidential run in 2000 at Chicago’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Nice guy, really: a firm handshake.
I give him my congrats.
Turns out there really will be everything on the Internet within ten years.
Think of how conservation groups like Wildlife Warriors (created by the late Steve Irwin) have found a home online. Now think about how often you run to Wikipedia for a quick rundown on a P-38 Lightning or maybe the beginning of Rachel Weiss’ career?
Think about those together, and you have a very new project called the Encyclopedia of Life.
I got to check out a lecture by Mark Westneat, curator of zoology at the Field Museum. He discussed this very new system.
Ambitious but not done, the EOL promises to provide a huge resource for biology searches.
The promise is to upload and scan all possible works on zoology, botany, and the other branches of biology involving the kingdoms (you do remember those from Bio, right?). The project has about 80 million pages from pre-1923 and 120-150 million for after that. The post-1923 pages will have to wait: they are copyrighted works. EOL expects to begin work on those pages within five years, after the non-copyrighted works are done.
Chicago’s own Field Museum is meant to be a base for a lot of the action on the project, but there will also be room for contributions from the general public. There will be ways to write and post your own pictures, “like Wikipedia,” Westneat says.
Westneat himself got involved due to his work on a similar site with smaller goals, Fish Base. This site has 100,000+ species of fish on it. Neat, right?
The partners creating the EOL hope their efforts might aid future conservation projects, besides the random websurfer wanting to know about the red-rumped agouti.
In a continuation of my post yesterday, hold on to your hats. It’s really blowing out there.
Yesterday, we saw a few reasons for wind power not being feasible in Chicago. What else can we do?
We could burn the river for fuel, but it’s a lot cleaner since we last tried that. It might not work anymore.
Alternatively, we could set fire to the Cubs’ baseball bats. It’s more than they could do with them in the playoffs.
Besides those unique solutions, we can still find green yet economic ways to power our city. Wind is not out.
I was at the Museum of Science and Industry for unrelated reasons, and I walked into a room labeled “The Canary Project.” Pictures capturing global warming, all in high definition. It was depressing.
That was the first room though. The second room geared itself toward solutions, and one Chicago-based picture caught my eye (it is unfortunately not on The Canary Project’s website). I had to look up the subject of the photo online. I found this.
This is something I had on the back of my mind as I wrote yesterday. Would rooftop wind generators be possible? They are the solution to the spacial problems of a big city.
In a nutshell, a project called Aerotecture is being tested here in the city. Several structures are already built, and these are designed to maximize wind efficiency. Plus, you have a pretty good view of the Hancock Tower through the turbines, which look kind of like sculptures in themselves.
It seems we just might have a few solutions to my questions.
If you’re still not convinced we’ll find enough wind, we could always put a few hundred turbines in the council chambers for whenever the alderman talk about alternative energy.
