LikeBathing in a Bucket is a Luxury
Mrs Rosibel Martinez and her grandson at the new well. Photo courtesy of Blue Planet Run Foundation.
Blue Planet Run Foundation, along with others, were responsible for funding the new well. You can read Rosibel’s complete story on Blue Planet’s website.
Hamster Trapped in Computer Monitor: Is This Worth $1,000?
Earth Day is just a few days away. The Earth Day Action Center is offering $1,000 for the best idea on how to reuse stuff instead of throwing it away. To enter, you’ll need to make a You Tube quality video. Not too many people have entered yet, so your chances are good!
One entrant shows how he converted an old-style computer monitor into a hamster cage.
Bill Clinton Diggs Climate Change
President Bill Clinton
In the meantime, you might want to visit the William J. Clinton Foundation website, whose purpose is to look for solutions to:
” . . . global problems, including climate change and sustainable growth and development, through the Foundation’s Clinton Climate Initiative, the Clinton-Hunter Development Initiative, and the Clinton Global Initiative. They focus on increasing efficiency in cities, catalyzing the large-scale supply of clean energy, and working to stop deforestation.”
Chagas Disease Increases Stroke Risk
Some time ago I wrote about Chagas (Break the Silence: Get the Word Out About Chagas). It recently turned up in the BBC News as a cause of stroke. Chagas disease is caused by a parasite passed on by a blood-sucking insect. The insect sucks your blood and leaves you a present—trypanosoma cruzi. This is one present you don’t want.
If you get Chagas, your risk of stroke increases. Find out more by reading Parasite ‘a growing stroke risk.’
Orland, CA Loses Water Rights to Crystal Geyser
Crystal Geyser won the right to build a bottling plant, take water from Orland, CA, and sell it all over the world. Save Our Water Resources, a citizens’ group, was unsuccessful in blocking the effort.
If you drink Crystal Geyser—or any other bottled water—consider stopping. You are taking water from another community. Not only are you robbing a community of its water, but you are paying an outrageous amount for something that every member of that community gets for free out of the tap. If you can afford bottled water, you most likely live in a community that has perfectly good tap water.
For details, see:
Protecting the Waters of Mt. Shasta
As the bottled water industry grows, communities must be more and ore vigilant about protecting their water. Otherwise that water might end up going elsewhere instead of back into the watershed, where it belongs. Protect Our Waters watches over the waters that originate from magnificent Mt. Shasta in Northern California—the Shasta, the Upper Sacramento and the McCloud rivers.
At one point, Nestle tried to get McCloud water for bottling. Fortunately for McCloud, Nestle dropped its pursuit.
Protect Our Waters has a cartoon that sums up some of the issues with exporting water from a community.
Beaver Fever: You don’t want to catch this
Giardia lamlia. Photo from Bergen Community College.
“I have sometimes also seen tiny creatures moving very prettily; some of them a bit bigger, others a bit less, than a blood-globule but all of one and the same make.”
He thought these creatures were normal inhabitants of his intestine. But they weren’t. They were giardia lamblia, the cause of giardiasis, or “beaver fever.” You get giardiasis by eating infective cysts. Typically people in the USA get giradia by drinking unfiltered water, often from what looks like a pure, fresh stream. Animals, such as beavers, can carry the giardia cysts. When the animal’s feces end up in the water, so do the cysts.
After you ingest the cysts, stomach acid causes them to release trophozoites. These emulsify and attach to the intestinal wall. Then the symptoms appear — diarrhea, cramps, fatigue, and more. You don’t want this disease even though it is easily cured. You can avoid it by filtering water.
Ice Shelves Disappearing on Antarctic Peninsula
This image shows ice-front retreat in part of the southern Antarctic Peninsula from 1947 to 2009. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey
This article appears courtesy of the USGS. Thanks to Elizabeth Laden of Island Park News for the tip.
Ice shelves are retreating in the southern section of the Antarctic Peninsula due to climate change. This could result in glacier retreat and sea-level rise if warming continues, threatening coastal communities and low-lying islands worldwide.
Research by the U.S. Geological Survey is the first to document that every ice front in the southern part of the Antarctic Peninsula has been retreating overall from 1947 to 2009, with the most dramatic changes occurring since 1990. The USGS previously documented that the majority of ice fronts on the entire Peninsula have also retreated during the late 20th century and into the early 21st century.
The ice shelves are attached to the continent and already floating, holding in place the Antarctic ice sheet that covers about 98 percent of the Antarctic continent. As the ice shelves break off, it is easier for outlet glaciers and ice streams from the ice sheet to flow into the sea. The transition of that ice from land to the ocean is what raises sea level.
This research is part of a larger ongoing USGS project that is for the first time studying the entire Antarctic coastline in detail, and this is important because the Antarctic ice sheet contains 91 percent of Earth’s glacier ice,” said USGS scientist Jane Ferrigno. “The loss of ice shelves is evidence of the effects of global warming. We need to be alert and continually understand and observe how our climate system is changing.”
The Peninsula is one of Antarctica’s most rapidly changing areas because it is farthest away from the South Pole, and its ice shelf loss may be a forecast of changes in other parts of Antarctica and the world if warming continues.
Retreat along the southern part of the Peninsula is of particular interest because that area has the Peninsula’s coolest temperatures, demonstrating that global warming is affecting the entire length of the Peninsula.
The Antarctic Peninsula’s southern section as described in this study contains five major ice shelves: Wilkins, George VI, Bach, Stange and the southern portion of Larsen Ice Shelf. The ice lost since 1998 from the Wilkins Ice Shelf alone totals more than 4,000 square kilometers, an area larger than the state of Rhode Island.
The USGS is working collaboratively on this project with the British Antarctic Survey, with the assistance of the Scott Polar Research Institute and Germany’s Bundesamt f?r Kartographie und Geodäsie. The research is also part of the USGS Glacier Studies Project, which is monitoring and describing glacier extent and change over the whole planet using satellite imagery.
The report, “Coastal-Change and Glaciological Map of the Palmer Land Area, Antarctica: 1947—2009” and its accompanying map is available online.
The other completed reports in the Coastal Change and Glaciological Maps of Antarctica series can be viewed online.
A Creative Approach to the Clean-Water Issue
Check out the Seed Magazine’s interview with Ranjiv Khush (microbiologist) and Jeff Alberts (hydrologist) about how to bring clean water to developing countries. The Mom-and-Pop Water Shop discusses the water-refill industry, which purifies water on-site for local business.
Khush and Alberts are the driving forces behind the Aquaya Insitute which was started in 2005 . .
… by scientists intent on bridging the divide between academic research and field implementation of measures to expand access to safe drinking water in the developing world. We help design new products and services, build and improve upon successful delivery models, and measure the health and socioeconomic impacts of water and sanitation programs using rigorous techniques.
Thanks to Greg Laden for this lead.