Post #12 Corkscrew Sanctuary

Despite the excruciating heat and humidity the field trip to the corkscrew swamp sanctuary turned out to be a fun and very educational endeavor. When I first arrived at the sanctuary I wasn’t sure what to think, I had in my mind that it was going to be a small area of protected land with a few planet species along with a little bit of animal diversity. To my surprise when I got there this sanctuary was enormous, there were birds, bugs, plants, and trees everywhere. As I walked up to the front door of the entrance I saw the life-machine. It is very welcoming and scary at the same time to know that within the living machine the water in the first state of its cleaning is as clean as 90% of all drinking water around the world. To my understanding the natural fresh water on our planet is diminishing, we as a whole (man kind) must find a way to filter either salt water or other contaminated water. Seeing this living machine shows how our worlds technology is being put to good use and finding adaptive ways to conserve and elicit sustainability.

Once I made it on to the board walk I initially felt that I had almost taken a step back into the past. Seeing the lush vegetation and the birds flying around, it was great to see nature in its primal form, besides the board walk the swamp look like it not been touched for hundreds of years.  Continuing my walk down the board walk I began to notice some irregularities. For this time of the year “wet season” and this to be a swamp, there was not very much water. I took a picture of a measuring stick to see how much water this is but it was stuck straight in the ground with no water surrounding it at all to be measured. I did not think much of it until I came to two men that worked for the sanctuary and they explained how the wet and dry seasons are marked, and this is by hurricane season. Once the hurricanes begin hitting and precipitation is more frequent the water level of the swamp will begin to rise. These men also pointed out to me a female alligator lying in a puddle. I was instantly intrigued and this excitement grew even more when they pointed out that the female was actually a mother of 9 baby alligators resting on a log in front of her. I began to speak with these gentlemen more and the spoke of estivation, which is when an alligator is almost hibernating during summer. They mentioned this because the male alligator was performing this task in the nest that they had created. During this estivation the alligator lives off the fat that they store in their tails. Another unique thing that the men pointed out to me was a red shouldered hawk. At first they were looking to see if he was feeding but they came to realize that he was doing what they called “anting”. “Anting” is a term that they use when a bird spreads their wings while sitting in the sun in hopes to baked the insects and mites out of their feathers.

From this field trip I gathered a completely new appreciation for what our environment has to offer us. It was great being able to look out off the boardwalk at the lookout point and see nothing but vegetation. It is refreshing to know that we still have parts of our world where our environment hasn’t be tampered with or overcome with the growth of our societies.

Post #11 Ding Darling

On my trip at ding darling I experienced many different things, many that some people may never see. Although I may not have fulfilled my requirement of taking a picture at the area where the park pumps in and out the water (I asked the tram driver but he forgot) I feel as if I experienced a great deal of things. Within this refuge there are only two species of nocturnal birds, the yellow crown night herring and the black crown night herring, both of these were out during the day time doing their daily routine. Even more significant about one of these birds, the yellow crown night herring, is that it is now endangered but we were lucky enough to see a female protecting her nest with several eggs within it. Another bird that we were lucky enough to capture a view during its primal hunting of fish was the reddish egret, the reason this is such a lucky even is because there are only 3000 left in the entire world and only 300 of them live in the state of Florida. These birds are not entirely red or red at all they are mostly grey with a hint of red going up their neck into their head, hence the name reddish egret. The other thing that I found extremely interesting is that although the ground looked solid we would not be able to cross through that refuge without that manmade road. This is because the firm ground that looks like is there are actually just the roots of the mangroves sprouting up. Within the park there are two kinds of mangroves the red mangrove and the black mangroves. The red mangroves have long roots that stick up very high allowing it to be in an area of significant tide change but the black mangrove has short finger like roots that poke up from the water. These roots are used to gather oxygen for the mangrove from the air instead of from the water. Like all mangroves, the ones within this refuge al started in Indonesia and were then carried to the United States by natural storms and seeds were then replanted. This park made for an excellent field trip and allowed me to take in significant amount of information about a lot of the wildlife that we now have with in florida.

Post #10 Dimming sun

Millions of dollars are being spent on the effect of global warming leaving other environmental issues to be over looked. The work of one man, Jerry Stanhill, a biologist that was working in Israel setting up irrigation systems was responsible for determining how strong the sun shown. His study was used to determine how much water was need for the agriculture to survive. 20 years later Jerry thought that it would be a good idea to check his work to determine if there had been changes. To his astonishment there had been a reduction of sunlight by 22% in those 20 years. Jerry tried bringing his information to the public but was quickly out casted because it contradicted the idea of global warming. There are reports of a decrease of sunlight all over the world, 9% in Antarctica, 10% in the United States, 16% in the British islands, and even 30% in some parts of Russia. This decrease in sunlight technically should decrease the temperature on the planet but that wasn’t the case which led many to believe that the “global dimming” phenomenon was fake. Two men, Michael Rodrick and Gram Farquar, studied evaporation rates via the pan evaporation rate in Australia, which measures how much water is evaporated from one day to the next. The idea is that with the increasing temperature in the world that the evaporation rates would increase. This was not the case, over the last 30 years there has been an average of 100 mL difference.  With further studies being done it was determined that it is not the heat that causes evaporation but the overall sunlight that forces the water molecules into the air. This showed a decrease in sunlight that agreed with the idea of Jerry Stanhill. The first idea was to look at the atmosphere and what changes have occurred to it over the last 30 or so years.  Maldives Islands was the home of Endo-X, a study that was to measure the difference in polluted air to clean air. This study showed that there was a 10% decrease in sunlight in areas of polluted skies then the ones not polluted. The cause of this is because the pollution molecules bind to other molecules within the clouds producing a mirror effect bounce the sunlight back to space. Although there are changes taking place to limit the pollution and limit the global dimming effect this could in turn cause more of an issue. The combination between the loss of diming and the ever growing effect of burning fossil fuels is causing a “perfect storm”. This perfect storm could lead to outrageous effects on our environment due to the rapid temperature change that could take place.

Post # 9 Rewriting the Science

                Rewriting of science has been happening to our county for decades, but recently the Bush administration has been especially guilty for this. It is showing that our environment is dealing with a global warming that is accelerating at an alarming rate. A good testament to this is the melting artic and Antarctica; we are losing much of this ice that forms the land there to the sea due to increasing temperatures. In the video “rewriting the science” James Hanson talks about how humans are now in control of the changing environment and the burning of the fossil fuels we use is completely dwarfing the natural changes that occur. Hanson’s research shows that if humans do not change and begin to reduce their greenhouse gas emission within the next 10 years we may reach a tipping point of global warming where it will reach an unstoppable state. Our country has been constantly silencing those who wish to go against what the government wants us to think. Ralf Sisceron (atmospheric chemist) the president of The National Academy of Sciences has been trying to get his research out to the public but is being stifled but the government. The moment he made the announcement saying “I find a willingness to listen to only those portions of scientific results that fit predetermined and flexible positions, this I believe is a recipe for natural disasters.” NASA has had Sisceron under close watch. He has had opportunities to speak on national radio and many other interviews but he was always made to defer these offers to a NASA representative. The only reason he was allowed to speak to 60 minutes is because he had a NASA representative in the room recording the interview. Another significant way the government has been rewriting our science is by editing information. There is a report writing annually called “our changing planet” and every year that it is sent to the white house for editing it comes back with a large amount of edits hand written on the hard copy. These edits are not done by an environmentalist or a scientist but by Phil Cooney, a lawyer that works for the white house. Most of the time edits change a word here or there but Cooney has completely taken out anything on human health risk, raising urgency, and significant information on our melting ice sheets and glaciers. This information is then replaced with “straying from research strategy into speculative findings”. Without the help of our government our world will soon reach this 10 year tipping point that Hanson talks about. Once this tipping point occurs it will no longer matter if the government gives us their support of not, it will be too late.

POST #8 as the world burns

“As the world burns” it truly shows how politics play a large role with in the environment and energy consumption. With a possible bill approaching the point of passing that would change the American economy and the emissions of gases forever, McCain, one of the leaders of the bill was met with a challenge for his senate position in Arizona. With the fear of losing his senate position this challenge caused McCain to pump the breaks and slowly step away from his portion of the bill that would soon pass. This is a prime example to how the government recognizes that there is a problem that needs to be addressed, but when something else comes up environmental issues get placed on the back burner.

Even though a lot of people do place current issues on the back burner, when president Obama was elected he saw the urgency in addressing the climate issues of our nation.  Him along with many politicians took the step to determine what is important to our nation with health care and our climate issues. Obama’s staff planned to attack these simultaneously hoping that it would be the turning point that our nation needed. As time progressed Obama’s party began to follow that old path of pushing things off to the side. Once health care took the main spot light, his party began to focus its attention on this leaving the global environment issues to be once again pushed on the back burner. If our society and the rest of the world continue to do this it will be too late by the time they realize it is truly important.