Fat Boy Slim Evolution Video

Fat Boy Slim: Right Here, Right Now

A very cool geological time scale video all the way from the coalescing of the quantum vacuum to were mankind is today. Amazing graphics and cool song. just 3 minutes of your life!

Managing Carbon Emissions

Should we tamper with nature specifically to alter carbon emissions?

There is some thought that we could decrease the amount of carbon dioxide in the ocean if we add iron to parts of the ocean to cause an increase in phytoplankton. Phytoplankton in the ocean are responsible for recycling half of the carbon dioxide on earth via photosynthesis.

Iron Hypothesis

NASA new carbon emissions tracking satellite plummets into the pacific ocean near antartica.

NASA Satellite Crashes

Should humans manipulate forests for maximum tree growth? Canada is taking seeds from trees that grow normally in the United States and replanting them higher north to see if they will fare better in the cooler climate as an experiment in forest management in the face of global warming. Some see playing God with nature as potentially disrupting balance as an unintended consequence.

HOT ISSUE: Should we deliberately move species?

Life As We Know It?

Why should we care about global climate change? Are we trying to preserve life as we know it, or lifestyle as we know it?

Greening the Grave

We learn a lot about sustainable living and not leaving too big of a carbon footprint, but here is a place in Oregon that will help you choose a biodegradable casket!

Pale Blue Dot: This Precious Earth

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
"Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
"The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
"It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994 (Source: www.planetary.org)

Global Climate Change

IPCC

The world authority on environment control.

Environmental Protection Agency: Global Climate Change

The obvious source of US informtion about the environment.

Department of Energy: Biological and Environmental Research

The not-so-obvious source of US information about the environment--kinda scary section on the use of "human subjects" for research...

NOAA Climate Watch

From the surface of the earth to the stratosphere, they are on it.

Earthtrends:World Resources Institute

An international non-governmental organization promoting responsible environmentalism.

Nature Transformed

Nature Transformed

A website about Native American history and their impact on the environment up to present day US global climate change effects.

The National Humanities Center developed the site. Issues include things I never thought about such as "environmental racism" which locates toxic waste dumps in primarily black neighborhoods.

Very interesting information about natural climate changes thousands of years ago and extinction.

Also links to the various Natural History Museums of the US.

Geological Time Scale

Geological Time Scale puts things into perspective. The earth has been here for 4.6 billion years. Life (single celled creatures with no nucleus) began 3.8 billion years ago. Human civilizations have only been on earth about 10,000 years. The United States only 233 years. Marylhurst University 150 years. We, the students of ENV103A, less than 50 years.

What do you want to be remembered for?

Ethics: Geothermal Digging Vs. Potential Earthquakes

This is a really interesting computer model of how geothermal digging works and a California company that wants to dig 2 1/2 miles underground and break up the rock and pump water through it to create steam. There is a corresponding NY Times article about the controversy and a blog of comments on the various sides of the issue.

Geothermal Digging and Earthquakes

Opinions in the comments section varied from disdain to approval at the hopeful new source of clean, renewable energy.

This guy sums up my opinion:

Greed and stupidity among the human species will eventually be the death of us all and quite frankly mass extinction is what we deserve for trashing the planet and thinking that cheap energy sources is more important than a healthy planet!"--Norm

"There are no energy sources that do not have consequences resulting from exploitation. If we want energy, we have to decide which consequences we can tolerate. Otherwise, we need to go back to being hunter-gatherers."--Eric

Others had scientific responses that dubbed the article scare mongering and bad science. Another commenter pointed out that there is a greater travesty unfolding under the earth around NYC that is "hydraulic fracturing" to get at the layers of shale from which to extract natural gas. There is a fear that this will taint the water supply of millions.

As we accumulate more and more information we can each make up our own minds about the degree of the problem, how satisfactory are potential solutions, and what we each can do individually to try to make it better for all. The main thing to take from all of this is not to trust those with political or greed motives and to learn and evaluate for ourselves.