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Showing posts from September, 2020

Land use(land fills)

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Land fills are a huge problem with other small problems around the world because it causes smog or bad air quality and it makes it hard for people with asthma. The US alone has around 148 million metric tons of co2 in 2014. We might have even more now. The EPA and the U.S deep art meant of agriculture plans to reduce food waste by 50 percent by 2030. After that, they plan to reduce yard waste by making it turn into compost instead of sending it to land fill. They know turning it into compost still create methane also but at least we can figure out a way to reduce it easier. So the whole overall plan is to get rid of trash/waste out of Land fills and reduce methane/co2. https://ensia.com/features/methane-landfills/:~:text=But%20at%20the%20landfill,%20the,worsening%20health%20problems%20like%20asthma.

New Technologies for Climate Change #2 - Lici Mixson

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 With scientists all over the world looking for new ways to combat climate change and develop new technologies along the way including what is known as carbon capture. In short carbon capture is a process that involves capturing the CO2 emissions at the source then transporting and storing them to a storage location. These storage facilities are usually deep underground to prevent the accidental release of the CO2 back into the atmosphere. Some anticipated benefits of carbon capture are that it would reduce the need for alternative sources of fuel and energy and would allow for the continued use of fossil fuels until an alternate source could be made abundantly available. There are of course downsides to carbon captures such as the cost and the potential to leak contaminated CO2 into the nearby ground. Carbon capture is not a sure-fire way to significantly reduce our use and dependence on fossil fuels, but it is a way that would allow us more time to find more sustainable ways to r...

Land Use #2

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 Land Fills Kara McQuerrey Landfills take up a big amount of land on the planet. It's not a good thing, trash releases about 800 million metric tons of C02 globally. The United States had one of the highest total quantity of methane emissions from landfills in the year 2010. We really need to reduce methane release from landfills. Some of the larger landfills are required to control methane emissions by installing gas collection systems. After it's captured it's burned for energy. Around 652 landfills have methane capturing facilities. These are said to have helped reduce the release of more than 345 million metric tons of C02 equivalent. The thing about this is that you don't know how much trash is exactly being brought into the landfill. This means you can't tell how much the control on it helps.  The number one way to reduce methane release is to reduce the amount of trash you have. https://ensia.com/features/methane-landfills/#:~:text=But%20at%20the%20landfill%2...

Land Use Blog #2

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       The use of our land is actually very important and is why climate change is rising drastically.  The article I was reading was talking about how the worlds vegetation and soil acts as a carbon sink by storing carbon dioxide through photosynthesis.  As the land is disturbed, methane mixed with carbon dioxide and nitrogenous oxide get released in the atmosphere with the carbon dioxide that is constantly being released by motorized vehicles. Now I understand, why  public transportation is becoming a big thing as the years go with us abusing our land use with more building and less land for agriculture. As I kept reading, I learned that there are 2 types of land change. There's direct and indirect changes with direct being the famous deforestation and indirect being the changes in carbon, the stuff that just happens naturally. I always knew deforestation was bad but only because animals would lose their homes but theirs more to it tha...

Conservation/Extinction

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  Brennan Moots Eastern Lowland Gorilla Eastern Lowland Gorillas are obviously a breed of Gorilla that live in the Democratic Republic of     Congo. They are on the Critically Endangered list. Not only are they being killed for meat and medicines, they are losing there homes and safe places. Scientists predict that the population of Eastern Lowland Gorillas have decreased by more than 50% (of the original population of 17,000) since the 1990’s. Much of the forests have been destroyed for things like farms, livestock, and mining. Mining also brings tourists who poach and kill the gorillas. The WWF is working hard to protect these animals by expanding protected areas and monitoring them.  Post #2 https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/eastern-lowland-gorilla

Anthony Cooper Blog post 2

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We as humans consume so much resources that it has gotten out of hand. The  UN Environment Program, says rising consumption driven by a growing middle class has seen resources extraction increase from 22 billion tons in 1970 to 70 billon tons in 2010. This really refers to natural materials like fossil fuels. If we keep staying on this path we will ultimate use all of our resources up and  cause serious shortages of critical materials and risking conflict.

Zach hall blog post 2

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         Energy comes in many forms and the most common is by using natural gases and coal. These work but are very harmful to our environment and atmosphere. Wind energy is probably one of the most flexible types. What I mean by this is that we need to use more wind turbines because there will always be wind no matter what. It’s just one of those things that is always gonna be there. The American Wind Energy Association is working on making more turbines to produce cleaner energy. In a course of a year a two turbine wind turbine can produce over 17,000 megawatts. That could power up almost a whole neighborhood for 6months. The wind turbines and windmills we make and use the better off we’re gonna be.   

Extinction

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 Alameen Abdul                                                                                                    09/29/2020                                         Close extinction of the Sumatran Elephant        In Southeast Asia , the lower islands which is located right on the equator you will find this elephant. The Sumatran Elephant. It’s name comes from the island Forrest it’s mostly located on , Sumatra. Sumatran elephants are herbivores and feed on plants and seeds. Although this is not the only endangered species located over there, the Sumatran tiger, rhino and even orangutan are starting to become endangere...

Conservation/extinction

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I wanted to talk about the Pryenean ibex because they used to roam(grazed) through mountains of Spain. We hunted down most of them throughout the 20th century. By 1989 there were only a dozen left. The last one of them was a female we named Celia, was killed under a tree in 2000. We could have saved the last dozen in 1989 and let them repopulate but us being human beings we just hunted the rest down without thinking. But there have been tests about being them back to life. There has been a few cases of them coming back but they die almost right away. 

Alternative Energy Sources (Lici Mixson)

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 Currently, the worlds leading source of energy is derived from fossil fuels including coal, oil, and natural gas. Every year globally, we use and burn roughly 15 billion tones of these fossil fuels, which in turn has resulted in decreased air quality in many cities and nations around the world, massive oil spills into oceans, lakes, and rivers, contamination of water sources, is a major contributor to our climate crisis today, and it has caused most countries to become dependent on a very finite resource that is predicted to be completely depleted by the year 2060 if we continue to use them at our current rate.   For many years scientists and climate experts have been researching new ways to provide the world's energy, one of which, being wind energy. Wind energy is using the naturally occurring winds of the earth to power generators and convert to electricity. Wind energy is seen as a viable energy alternative for many reasons, one being that wind is a renewable resource, be...

Resources: Blog 1

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Human consumption of the Earth's resources declined in 2020  The rate of humanities consuming resources has declined in a major way because of the COVID-19 Pandemic according to researchers. Constantly  Earth Overshoot Day, the point at which  human consumption  exceeds the amount nature can regenerate in a year, has moved back by over three weeks from 29 July in 2019 to 22 August this year. The pandemic made humanities ecological footprint go down 9.3% compared to last years results. This is the biggest shift the earth has ever seen since 1970. There was also a large drop in CO2 emissions. The number dropped by almost 15% because of the lockdown Sources:  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/21/human-consumption-of-the-earths-resources-declined-in-2020 By:Anthony Cooper

The Land Use Of America #1

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As climate change is becoming a serious problem everyday, we have to start looking at how we are using our land to see if that is a factor of our problem. I read an article from Bloomberg about how America uses their land  in which I will provide the link at the bottom. The first thing that they bring up is how our economy is the largest and grew at a rate of 4.1% and how the employment rate is at the lowest it been since the last half century.  The more I read, I realized that our land use is probably the biggest factor in climate change because we are beginning to average a growth of 1 million urban area acres a year which is  equivalent to adding a big city such as Los Angeles, Houston, and Phoenix combined. I'm from a city in Texas down the street from the Houston Area and I haven't seen all of Houston so I could barely imagine adding Los Angeles and Phoenix in the picture because that's a crap ton of land that increases carbon dioxide which all the cars  driving...

Land Use Blog #1

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Kara McQuerrey   Land use is becoming a bigger and bigger problem in America especially for agricultural life. This is one of the biggest threats to us right now. In the article I read it talked about how more and more agricultural practices are unsustainable. It also talked about a way to help maintain the local ecosystem and making agricultural production more efficient. Right now it’s causes more and more fertilizers to be used. An example they used to help make agricultural life more efficient was on a coffee farm. They put a coffee farm within one kilometer of an intact tropical forest.  This was to use the wild pollinators to boost bean quality and crop yield, and it did by 20%. I think this article helped me realize there was more to land use than there being not enough land to use. It helped show me that there is land out there that can benefit our agricultural need that we don’t even use. https://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/july27/lands-072705.html

Conservation/Extinction

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Brennan Moots Black rhinos are a breed of rhinos that live in Africa. They are critically endangered due to poachers. In the past 20 years the population has doubled in help of conservation efforts in Africa. Rhinos are the oldest living mammal group. People poach them for their horns or for the sport of killing. They use the horns for medicinal purposes. Typically selling the horns on the black market the horns are worth a lot of money.  Post#1 https://www.worldwildlife.org/species/rhino

Land use

 Hi I got here!