On-Mountain Environmental Efforts

Of course, recent years have brought new technology and new ideas in attempts to augment the “green” movement.  While the release of fossil fuels is certainly key to global climate change, the destruction of natural habitats can harbor some effects that are just as devastating.  Humans desire to develop these habitats in multiple ways including for housing developments and commercial buildings.  Yet one of the most interesting ways to develop a natural habitat is for outdoor enjoyment such as that of a ski resort.  A ski resort can encompass hundreds of acres--many of which the trees are cleared from, not to mention the building of base areas and villages which strains the natural resources of the area.  Recently, some mountain companies have made a conscious effort to make environmentally friendly decisions when expanding terrain or adding new technology to their resort. 

First, let’s examine some of the efforts of Stowe Mountain Resort, located in northwestern Vermont.  The newly constructed base area has been designed to be so environmentally friendly that it was designated the recipient of the Audobon’s “Green Community Award.”  It is the first mountain in the nation to receive such an honor. Their efforts include securing a 2,000 acre wildlife preserve, installing energy efficient rooms in the base hotel, using recycled paper, and creating a 110 million gallon snowmaking lake that protects nearby streams from potentially negative water quality impacts. A second mountain that has tried to make an effort is Mount Snow, located in southwestern Vermont.  An upgrade in the snowmaking systems there has eliminated the need for over 200,000 gallon of diesel fuel which equates to approximately 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide. Looking out west, resorts like Deer Valley, located in Utah, are also showing an environmental commitment.   Like Stowe, they have formed a protected area that encompasses close to 1,000 acres as well as maintaing a constant forest management plan.  They also test the water that runs off the mountain, cleaning it of any “total suspended solids.”

It is clear that the call to help the environment is being heard by all.  It will be interesting to see how mountains  continue to make environmentally friendly decisions while still using the land’s resources.

Panda Genome

Courtesy of T Abele:

I read a very interesting article in science news that pertained to a very unique anima, the panda bear. This article was published on December 13,2009. Laura Sanders wrote the article. The name of this piece is “Panda Genome Unveiled.”

The article focuses on a female white and black panda named “Jingjing.” Her recent DNA discovery helps scientists and researchers understand why pandas tend to have such picky diets and therefore can help in the efforts of saving this “endangered species.”

A group of scientists made a discovery of the fact that the panda’s genome is in fact smaller than humans. An interesting fact was that pandas have 21,000 genes for encoding proteins and humans have almost the same amount.

By understanding how these genes work, scientists also made another discovery. This was discovering that inbreeding was not the case for jingjing. Inbreeding is a method that scares scientists because it is unnatural to the animal and harmful to the panda population. Saunders wrote“ Jingjing’s two copies of DNA in each of her cells differed in many places, demonstrating a surprisingly high rate of heterozygosity.” The term heterozygosity means a presence of different alleles at one or more loci on homologous chromosomes. This discovery has caused scientists to believe that the inbreeding is not the main cause of the small population of pandas that is reaching extinction.

By researching jingjing’s genes scientists have learned the rate at which pandas “ genetic makeup” changes. The rate is very little and one scientist in the article compared pandas to a “living fossil.”

This discovery of the genetic makeup leads to the understanding of why pandas have such a picky diet consisting mainly of bamboo. “T1R1 “ is a gene that was decoded. This gene does not allow pandas to taste certain food groups such as meat and broths. This explains their dislike for other foods, it does not appeal to them. Scientists also discovered that pandas are in fact capable of digesting meat and that bamboo is actually harder to digest.

The article concludes that the discovery of these new genes can help the panda population. The more we understand about these mammals the more we can help the population and try to limit extinction.

“Cataclysmic” flood in Mediterranean Sea

Courtesy of T Abele:

I recently read an article from science news that had to do with a water channel. This article was called “The Big Spill: Flood Could Have Filled Mediterranean In Less Than Two Years.” This article was published on December 9,2009. Lisa Grossman wrote the article.

This article talks about a “cataclysmic” flood that affected the Mediterranean Sea. This occurred several millions of years ago. The main point of this article is how the Mediterranean Sea was not always a sea. In fact for a long time it was a big empty basin. Scientists are saying a large flood from the Atlantic Ocean was so powerful that it filled this basin and shaped the form of what is now called the Mediterranean Sea. The flood was very powerful and shaped the rocks and soil on the edges of the sea.

The calculations of this flood are intense. The height of water was more than ten meters high. An interesting statistic from Daniel Garcia-Castellanos is “The model shows one hundred million cubic centimeters of water flow through the channel per second, with water gushing at speeds of 100 kilometers an hour.”

The article also talks about how early models showed this data put not on a time line. Scientists can now get a more accurate measure of how many years ago this basin was filled and transformed into the Mediterranean Sea.
This flood is debated to have taken anywhere from four months to two years to fill the entire Mediterranean Sea. Also this flood is said to have a large impact on the ecosystem and could have ties to affecting previous global climate. The article says sea levels dropped 9.5 meters due to this gigantic flood.

Scientists have also discovered a smaller flood that took place in North America in a more recent timeline. This flood occurred 12,000 years ago. This flood is linked to other different climate conditions. It was linked to a “cold snap.” Scientists are now researching whether the flood at the Mediterranean could of have had similar effects.

“Conditions Ripe for a White Christmas”

Courtesy of Alex Smith:

Everyone dreams of having snow on Christmas morning, well this year it could be snow to places that normally don’t experience a white Christmas.

Normally the chances of having a white Christmas are more than seventy-five percent in the north part of the United States and in the mountains in the west. These chances are increasing with an El Nino coming and having colder weather than normal this time of year in the deep south and Eastern Seaboard.

Meteorologists have been using computers that help find long-range forecasts. This computer has seen that temperatures in the whole eastern part of the country to be one to three degrees colder than normal throughout the whole month of December.

Just because the air is cold doesn’t automatically include snow, there needs to be a storm first. This is more likely to happen because there is an El Nino that is getting stronger each day. “An El Nino is when sea surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific are warmer than normal, and the moisture and energy from this warm ocean water promotes a storm track across the southern part of the United States.” The storms most likely happen along the East Coast.

Because of this weather snow has already fallen in Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, states that normally don’t see an inch of snow each year.

I found this article interesting because my cousin’s who live down south always are jealous on how I have a white Christmas every year. This year might be there chance at getting one too!

http://www.sphere.com/nation/article/cold-temperatures-plus-el-nino-storms-could-bring-snow-for-christmas/19273488?icid=main|main|dl1|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sphere.com%2Fnation%2Farticle%2Fcold-temperatures-plus-el-nino-storms-could-bring-snow-for-christmas%2F19273488

“Do Stars Spawn Giant Black Holes?”

Courtesy of Alex Smith:

The most confusing part of space has been the biggest black holes in the universe. Scientists have been wondering how black holes have formed for years. There has been new evidence recently that says they could have been started “inside giant cocoon-like stars”. This is completely different then the theory that large black holes are “created by the clumping together of smaller black holes.”

The galaxy scientists are looking at is NGC-1097 that has a huge black hold that is surrounded by stars in its center. University of Colorado scientists think that the biggest black holes have been created by huge stars that were formed soon after the Big Bang.

But astrophysicist, Mitchell Begelman, of the University of Colorado at Boulder, thinks they have been formed “in the middle of even larger supermassive stars that could have held tens of millions times the mass of our sun.” He says “until recently, the thinking by many has been that supermassive black holes got their start from the merging of numerous, small black holes in the universe, this new model of black hole development indicates a possible alternate route to their formation.”
Begelman has been studying how the stars have formed and how they could have given a rise to huge black holes. The stars could have been formed a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. Begelman feels the “cores of the giant stars had burned all their hydrogen, they would have collapsed, forming dense black holes.”
The gas from the stars would have remind but over time the black holes would “have swallowed all remaining stellar matter within their reach, ballooning rapidly to staggering weights. Begelman thonks that it is possible that both methods could have happened.
I tought this was really interesting because black holes are seen as a mystery to what happens after things get sucked up into them. Maybe if finding a new way they were formed can help us figure out what really happens.

http://news.aol.com/article/do-stars-spawn-giant-black-holes/807764?icid=main|main|dl5|link4|http%3A%2F%2Fnews.aol.com%2Farticle%2Fdo-stars-spawn-giant-black-holes%2F807764

"Chu to Unveil $350 Million Plan to Spread Clean Energy"

The largest city in Denmark, Copenhagen, is launching a $350 over five-year project to “spread renewable and non-polluting energy technologies in developing countries.” The plan is called Renewable and Efficiency Deployment Initiative. The project was designed by a handful of countries including the United States to make efforts to limit the amount of greenhouse gases that are emitted.

There are four major components to the plan. The first step is to “accelerate the deployment of affordable solar home energy systems and LED lanterns in communities lacking electricity.” By doing this the homes will be run by solar renewable energy that does not emit pollutions into the Earth. Solar energy is a great and efficient way to obtain electricity and is Earth friendly. The second component to the plan is to spread high efficiency appliances. The third component mentioned in the article is to establish a web-based exchange to promote actions of clean energy technology. The final component of the plan is “to offer policy support and technical assistance to low income countries”. All of the elements in the plan are intended to help out with Earth’s global warming and help prevent further pollution.

The Renewable and Efficiency Deployment Initiative is a plan with much potential. All of the components plan to tackle the crisis of global warming. It is necessary for all countries to take part in this plan and put money towards it. Countries such as America emit the most pollution in the world and it is their job to help cope with the damage that is done. Copenhagen is a developing country and it is a great place launching point for this plan.

Are dishwashers good for the environment?

http://environment.about.com/od/greenlivingdesign/a/dishwashers.htm

In this article, it describes how dishwashers use less water, energy, and soap than hand washing. "Scientists at the University of Bonn in Germany who studied the issue found that the dishwasher uses only half the energy, one-sixth of the water, and less soap than hand-washing an identical set of dirty dishes". The article then goes on to talk about how dishwashers have improved over the years, how they have become more efficient and are now using less water than compared to even the early 90's. While you might think that dishwashers use more energy, newer models of dishwashers are now passing standards from the EPA and saving around $25 a year on energy costs. Using techniques such as running the dishwasher only when it is full, and propping the door open a little after the last cleaning cycle can also save energy on newer models that have more features.

Who would have thought that using a dishwasher would save more energy than cleaning the dishes by hand? Modern technology and advances are now making it easier for us to do less work and also helping the environment. Not only does the dishwasher use less water and energy but also soap. These days inventors are coming up with new ways to package soap, using little plastic squares and comprising the soap into a tiny little package. Using this is a lot less soap than you would normally use to hand wash these dishes. I agree with this article and not only are dishwashers modernized, but now companies are also thinking about the environment as well.