Ecology and the Environment

I want to go green. I don't know how to. Can you suggest some eco- friendly products?

February 5th 2009 *Note: Immediate Action Required! As far back as the 1970's, several scientists tried to warn the world of an impending mass extinction event in progress. Most people brushed this off as lunatic-fringe heresy and went on with their 'business as usual' self-centered and shallow attitudes. By 1994, it was becoming obvious across the globe for general biological observers, to notice that a major cascading extinction was really taking place, and that something had to be done about it immediately. Even average people could witness definitely strange changes in their own back-yard. Seasons came 30 days earlier with plants and trees producin…

One can politely compartmentalize the disrelated weather events which occurred over the past seven days and call those a coincidence, or one can imagine the horrors Dr. James Lovelock has warned could occur as this century unfolds, as he told us a year ago. A week ago, Cyclone Gonu was recorded as the strongest tropical storm since 1945 in the Arabic Gulf region. It peaked as a Category 5 along the coastline of the Gulf of Oman. At the time, many worried it might disrupt oil exports from the Middle East. It was the first cyclone in recorded history to enter the Gulf of Oman. Eastern Australia was battered by heavy rains and suffered major flooding and landslides this …

I am trying to find out where the carbon in oil, coal and gas would have gone eventually if we had not excavated and used it, so I would be grateful if a climate scientist could tell me if the following is correct. I have searched the 2007 IPCC report but have not found an answer there: 1. Trees and other plants which died and were then squashed and degraded to make oil, coal and gas took CO2 out of the atmosphere when they grew. 2. Under a natural cycle covering tens of millions of years, the oil, coal and gas would have degraded back to elements and compounds useful to life and been taken up by plants. Carbon would have been incorporated in those compounds. …

In early April, an American satellite spotted a dense yellow cloud of gases, chemical and desert sands floating across Seoul (Korea) – emissions from China’s coal-fired smokestacks. This weekend, the Korean government retaliated by launching Greenbelt Plantation Project. The Korean forestry service plans to plant 1.5 million trees in Mongolia to help reduce sandstorms wafting across the Yellow Sea, which bring its residents respiratory illnesses. It is not that China is ignoring the problem, but that the country’s breakneck GDP growth rate is not only impacting global commodity prices (oil, copper, nickel, uranium, etc), but could also be accelerating the effects of a…

Does anyone have, or can point me to, information on the rate of saltwater mangrove root growth? Thanks in advance!

i went out today to get some exercise and do something useful at the same time by volunteering at a local tree hugging/planting/trail making sort of organization. i had never done this sort of thing, but we (the volunteers) met up at a local park, and we spent the day killing blackberries. the whole time, i was wondering why i was doing it. after a quick internet search at home, i found that the species we were removing were Himalayan blackberries, which are apparently overrunning the NW (i live in seattle) from first glance, it looked like they were taking over the local tree/brush so that the area would turn into basically a mass of bramble bush - so it would ch…

So what would be best for the planet? Supposedly the 2C warming level would be set at 450ppm, though I personally would prefer a stronger limit of 1C warming and 350ppm. However if the recent Hansen study is correct (a reasonable debate at this point), and climate sensitivity to CO2 doubling (long term) is about 6C instead of 3C, then this means we'd need to halve the CO2 excess over pre-industrial values. What are the scientific arguments about the climate sensitivity estimates? In other words, would CO2 at 350ppm still yield 2C warming anyway? What should the warming limit be in terms of both CO2 levels and long-term temperature rise? There is also a "safe" limi…

By the way, what's the story on these micro-nuclear power plants? http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/09/miniature-nuclear-reactors-los-alamos

Well, we've had quite the thread discussing various data errors in sources scientists use to build a comprehensive picture in our climate system. However, are these errors affecting the bigger picture, in the form of model outputs? Now that the errors have been corrected, are we seeing a radically different picture of the climate system? As far as I'm aware, we are not...

I am slightly confused about polarisation can anyone throw any light on the subject , we look at this first law of science again . Continual heating up and in the opposite do we have reaction of perhaps a new ace age beginning . I find that ironic because will we deliberately have to start heating the planet up again? please do prompt me , if we see the beginning of an new ice age forming that could indeed be a disaster , i propose we use a spectrally enhanced space optic for reheating the globe placed in space another use for this would be farming and providing enough energy in field enhancement for solar energy. The only thing that puzzles me would we effect th…

Nothing bugs me more than global warming deniers except being lied to about global warming. Who exactly is lying is something I can't say, but someone definitely is. I want to start this thread so that I can post articles I've come across contradicting the evidence in support of global warming and/or the anthropocentric account of it. I don't know who to trust and I feel like a helpless child in a custody battle - who gets to convert me over to their side? - and I feel like shouting out "Just tell me the goddam truth!!!" I'll accept the words of the noble scientists on SFN, but that's not to say I won't challenge them. I'll take whatever you say and pit it aga…

How can we estimate the age of objects? I know radiocarbon dating, but people tell me anything over 50,000 years old is impossible to estimate? Thanks!

:confused:Hi guys, How can we enhance the degradability of plastics in nature? You think waste waters will contain any plastic eating microbe? Or You think we can modify a microbe's metabolism by depriving it of a limiting nutrient factor( eg- Carbon) so that it uses up the carbon present in the plastics?

Ok, i was digging around in a friend's garden helping her do so weeding when with my shovel i hit this really strange plant (unfortunately cutting it in half). I bagged it, put it on ice and then proceeded to wonder what the hell it was! It was purple and porous, kind of like a sponge to the touch. Smelt like... shit, to put it bluntly and these little red things that look like dendrites (like basic diagrams at least) that protrude from the outer rim of the top of the bulbous, tubular structures which make up the bulk of the plant. Inside the tubes are slimy with black (what i think are superficial), verticle stripes. The root system is pretty contained as t…

so what you know about biofuel you the good stuff ethanol fuels also i wouldnt mind you giving me an opinion on the subject so let me have it baby

Just finished reading an editorial in New Scientist, in which the author suggests that towns like Galviston on the hurricane prone sea coast, should be abandoned rather than rebuilt. This struck me as rather a weird suggestion, since I think we can build protections that would keep up with any reasonably predictable increased sea level and hurricane risk. This led me to the question as to whether hurricane risk is actually increasing that much. While hurricanes have been a little more frequent and a little more severe in the last decade or so, there is no way to tell for sure whether this is due to anthopogenic global warming, or just a natural cycle. It seems …

You know something, given the amount of stupidity that has been going on in this sub-forum for the past year and a half or so, spouted by all those self proclaimed "skeptics", I'd thought I would try something different. I'm going to argue from the viewpoint of the deni--err, skeptic!!!! ======================================================= Well, gee, you just know this whole global warming thing is a complete crock. I mean, the predictions are most likely going to be wrong. There is no possible way the ocean levels will rise by 2 meters over the next century or so, or that the average temperature will rise by more than a degree! After all, we can't eve…

A good suggestion to practice when considering purchasing fish aquariums and fish would be to research the various fish and the different needs in caring for the fish. Once everything checks out and is ready, you can now in small amounts start to add your fish to your aquarium

The following url selection is but a small sample of current event information, with two following conclusions drawn in the form of (2) petitions, that are just beginning: CNN: "NASA: Ice Melting Across Globe Is Accelerating": http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/12/16/melting.ice/index.html CNN: "Climate Change Is 'Unequivocal'": http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/12/09/poznan.climate.ap/index.html CNN: "Poznan Climate Talks; What's The Forecast?": http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/12/08/poznan.climate/index.html CNN: "Our Planet Is Running Out Of Clean Water": http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/09/17/water.crisis/index.html CNN: "Great Lak…

Why the atmosphere is thinner over the poles (600km) while the average is 800km? Is it thicker somewhere else and what's the reason for this? Thank you for your help! This is something that I didn't understand during my geography class.

If this has been touched on before, I apologise. However, I have a dumb question to ask. If global warming continues, so the story goes, low lying nations will be swamped by the rising sea levels etc... However I seem to remember an examination question many years back where an ice cube was floating in a glass of water full to the brim and the students were asked to calculate the amount of water that would accumulate under the glass if the ice melted. The answer was that the glass would stay exactly as before because the ice had already displaced its own mass. The question - doesn't this happen on a global scale if large parts of the ice cap melt? Why are we…

I have gone to the beach on a biology excursion and examined the variation in the number of species living from one particular region of the beach to two others. I have also been told to make a vertical distribution diagram according the results received during the day of the excursion. However, unfortunately I was away during the day in which my class was told how to make a vertical distribution diagram. Could someone please explain to me on how to make one? Or send me to websites that can teach me? Any help will be appreciated.

the talkorigins of global warming Basically, i've seen the same (crappy) arguments come up time and time again against GW, and have to be refuted, at great length, ad nausium. It's allready been observed that GW deniers have more than a passing similarity to creationists. So, i suggest a talkorigins-esque database of the more common crap and a canned refutation for each argument, that we can link to during discussions, thus saving ourselves time and hopefully allowing for some saner (and less longwinded) threads about GW. thoughts?

Hi, My question is about salinity of seas. Why is the Red Sea (45 promilles) saltier than the World Ocean (35 promilles)? And why is the Dead Sea even saltier - 67 promilles? What are the natural causes of these differences?