From the news: “INCHEON, South Korea — A landmark report from the United Nations’ scientific panel on climate change paints a far more dire picture of the immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought and says that avoiding the damage requires transforming the world economy at a speed and scale that has “no documented historic precedent.”
Naturally, the release of the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has prompted another round of useless debate about climate change. Changes in the composition of the earth’s atmosphere, the average temperature of the plant, the reduction of Arctic Sea ice, the thinning of the glaciers in Greenland, the retreat of glaciers elsewhere, and the rise in sea level are all measurable phenomena, but apparently that is not enough to convince some people of the existence, let alone the urgency of the problem.
It does seem ironic that in the United States, the “conservative” position is to defer any possible action as long as possible. Given that it is indisputable that humans are altering the composition of the earth’s atmosphere and that the consequences, while uncertain, are possibly catastrophic and are undoubtedly irreversible, it would seem that the conservative approach would be to act to prevent possible disaster. Isn’t that why we wear seat belts and build tornado shelters?
Rather than deny the ever-accumulating weight of evidence, shouldn’t we recognize that our understanding of the issue is a gift that makes it possible for us to prevent significant harm to ourselves and, more importantly, to our descendants?
Of course, history is littered with examples of warnings that were ignored, so I guess we haven’t learned as much as we might like.
The Great Lakes, which provide drinking water for 30 million people, are increasingly littered with plastic, and that plastic is being ingested by humans with unknown consequences says a researcher from the State University of New York at Fredonia. Tiny particles of plastic – either manufactured as microbeads or created by the disintegration of larger plastic items – are not removed by water treatment processes and are regularly consumed in drinking water. While the exact effects of plastic ingestion on human health are still being studied, the possibility of significant harm should encourage us to reduce the amount of plastic in our daily lives, said Dr. Sherri Mason, a professor of Chemistry at SUNY Fredonia.
“Skip the straw, bag the bag, boot the bottle.”
“I believe in the precautionary principle,” said Mason. “If something is suspected of having an adverse health impact, stop it.”
Mason spoke at the Cleveland City Club yesterday on the state of the Great Lakes. In 2012 she led the first scientific survey of plastic loading in the Great Lakes, and has continued to study the extent of plastic contamination of the lakes. The most recent sampling found that Lake Erie contained 46,000 bits of plastic per square kilometer of water, a concentration higher than in any of the world’s oceans. Lake Ontario, downstream from Lake Erie, contained 230,000 particles per square kilometer.
While there is no conclusive evidence that ingested plastic itself is harmful to human health, certain chemicals which are known to be harmful readily bind to plastic, said Mason. These chemicals have been linked to obesity, cancer, ADHD, autism, and decreased sperm counts.
Mason’s research helped convince the federal government to ban the use of plastic microbeads in personal care products in 2015. That ban took effect on July 1, 2018, and Mason expects that it will reduce plastic levels in the lakes by about 10 percent.
But microbeads are just a fraction of the 22 million pounds of discarded plastic that finds its way into the Great Lakes each year, said Mason. The lakes provide drinking water for more than 30 million people, and inevitably those people are consuming tiny particles of plastic with each glass of water.
Switching to bottled water isn’t going to help, said Mason, as bottled water, which is nearly always packed in plastic bottles, contains twice the amount of microplastic as does tap water. The picture is not completely bleak, however. “Based on all evidence, beer is cleaner than water,” said Mason.
But switching from water to beer might not be the best solution. A better answer, said Mason, is stopping, or greatly reducing, the flow of plastic into the Great Lakes. “We are the problem,” said Mason, “we are also the solution.”
As a society, we can look to replace plastic with other materials. Plastic has been in widespread use for less than 75 years. Every product made of plastic today was once made from other materials. “There is no reason we cannot replace plastic with less harmful alternatives,” said Mason.
But consumers don’t have to wait for industry or government to take action. There are simple steps that individuals can take that can make a difference. Three common products – plastic bags, plastic straws, and plastic bottles – account for 65 percent of the plastic market in the United States, said Mason. By reducing their use of these three items, consumers can make an appreciable dent on the amount of plastic in our environment.
Mason cited several policies that can make a difference:
Stores can charge fees for providing single-use plastic bags, especially if the fees increase over time.
Restaurants can stop providing plastic straws automatically and can provide them only upon request.
Public education campaigns.
In addition, individual consumers can change personal behaviors to reduce the amount of plastic we use:
Prefer products with less plastic packaging
Reduce use of single-use plastic products, especially plastic water bottles.
Prefer goods made from other materials (wood, paper, metal, glass, cotton, etc.)
Over time, plastic has replaced many of these materials for convenience. But we are only now realizing the long-term cost of that convenience. “We shouldn’t underestimate our influence,” said Mason. “The more we demand it, the more likely we are to see action.”
I have just returned from the past, where everything is wonderful.
It’s no secret that dogs have a much keener sense of smell than humans. But while we can easily see that dogs rely on their sense of smell much more than we do, we are mostly unaware of the vast quantity of information available to dogs through their noses.
Surprisingly, while dogs have been living with humans for thousands of years, no one actually knows how strong their sense of smell is. Estimates range from 10,000 times as sensitive as humans to 100,000 times as sensitive. Since dogs can’t – or won’t – tell us, it is difficult to determine exactly what information they can obtain through smell.
But research continues, and some things are fairly certain. Here are five things you might not have realized about your best friend’s nose:
A dog’s nose is better-designed than yours. Your nose is a like a leaky shed out behind the garden, useful mostly to keep the rain off a handful of rarely-used shovels and rakes. A dog’s nose, on the other hand, is like a nuclear-powered submarine. Exquisitely designed, meticulously constructed, and fantastically well-adapted to its operating environment.
Dogs have a scent-detecting organ that you don’t have. This explains some of the discrepancy between their ability and yours, but not all of it. This extra organ is called the vomeronasal organ and it helps dogs detect pheromones.
Dogs smell in 3-D. This is not the title of a budget flick, but instead, is a statement that helps explain how dogs can track someone. In the same way that your eyes combine two slightly different perspectives to create depth perception, a dog senses a scent separately through each nostril. This enables them to detect which direction a person was traveling in when they left behind a scent by recognizing in which direction a scent is getting stronger and in which direction it is getting weaker.
Dogs can small certain medical conditions in humans. If you are diabetic, your dog can detect sharp drops in your blood sugar by smelling isoprene – which rises significantly as your blood sugar drops – on your breath. Dogs can also detect cancer cells, which, apparently, have a different scent than healthy cells.
Dog noses are cold, wet time machines. When you walk down a sidewalk, you can see, and, when the weather is right, smell someone else walking toward you. But your dog not only knows who is there now, he can tell, by the scents they left behind, who was on the sidewalk an hour ago, a day ago, and, if their hygiene was poor enough, a week ago.
In observance of Mother’s Day, we’d like to commend the female cardinal who is zealously guarding her nest right outside our kitchen window.
Over the past few weeks we have watched spellbound as the cardinal pair carefully built a nest just a few feet from our window. Admittedly, the nest doesn’t look like much. Apparently, cardinals aren’t the Frank Lloyd Wrights of the avian world. But it works, and now there are a couple of eggs in there.
Female cardinal on nest.
With eggs to defend, Mrs. Cardinal hardly ever leaves the nest. And when she does go out, she is back in a few minutes. Mr. Cardinal also stays close, and he stops by the nest every now and then to see how things are going.
As with everything else, there are two ways to look at this. One, while Mr. Cardinal is hard at work doing important cardinal stuff, Mrs. Cardinal is home all day sitting around the house.
Or, Mrs. Cardinal is hard at work taking care of the house and the kids all day and night while Mr. Cardinal is out with his bird-brained friends.
Since it’s Mother’s Day, we’ll give Mrs. Cardinal credit for keeping everything running smooth at home.
“All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.”
Adult elephants stand guard while young elephants rest in the shade. Photo by Carl Safina: http://beyond-words.net/
The Trump administration is considering elimination of a ban on importation of elephant “trophies.” Administration officials have offered a somewhat dubious rationale that the fees paid by hunters will support elephant conservation efforts. This seems unlikely, as the amount of revenue expected to be raised is a tiny fraction of the cost of conservation. Some thoughts:
Getting on a plane and flying to Africa to kill large endangered mammals (and make no mistake, pretty much all of the wildlife in Africa is endangered or at least imperiled by habitat loss, agricultural development, and poaching.) with a high-powered weapon from a safe distance seems unsporting and remarkably thoughtless. I suppose I would ask a “trophy hunter,” what did that animal ever do to you? Can you make an elephant? If not, what gives you the right to destroy one?
These “trophy animals” aren’t paper or plastic targets. Why should they be subjected to pain, distress, and death for some hunters’ momentary excitement?
Elephants, especially, are intelligent, social animals that communicate with each other, assist each other, take pleasure in the company of others, and grieve the loss of others. Here are some facts about elephants:
The basic unit of elephant society is a female and her children.
Elephant families share infant care and child-rearing.
Elephants maintain extensive social networks, recognizing and communicating with family members and members of other families who live nearby.
Even in times of distress and danger, elephants behave with kindness and tolerance to their own kind, and maintain family ties.
Elephants gain status through age. Experience that comes with age determines the survival of elephant families.
Death of an elephant matriarch threatens the well-being and survival of the entire family unit.
For a thoughtful and riveting account of elephant society, see Beyond Words, by Carl Safina (Holt and Company, NY, 2015).
