Posts Tagged ‘Ecological Systems’
More on water produced by coal bed methane…
Posted by Jeremy Cody in Entangled_Citizens on May 8th, 2009
A good overview…
Coal Bed Methane effects on water in the Powder River Basin
Posted by Jeremy Cody in Entangled_Citizens on May 8th, 2009
I mentioned this earlier in the class regarding the problems with coal production in Wyoming. Not only does it affect the soil, but it has political, monetary, and social ramifications as well.
Posted by Matthew Friday in Entangled_Citizens on April 30th, 2009
AP – An Envisat Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) image dated April 28, 2009 and made available on … 
BERLIN – Massive ice chunks are crumbling away from a shelf in the western Antarctic Peninsula, researchers said Wednesday, warning that 1,300 square miles of ice — an area larger than Rhode Island — was in danger of breaking off in coming weeks.
The Wilkins Ice Shelf had been stable for most of the last century, but began retreating in the 1990s. Researchers believe it was held in place by an ice bridge linking Charcot Island to the Antarctic mainland.
But the 127-square-mile (330-square-kilometer) bridge lost two large chunks last year and then shattered completely on April 5.
“As a consequence of the collapse, the rifts, which had already featured along the northern ice front, widened and new cracks formed as the ice adjusted,” the European Space Agency said in a statement Wednesday on its Web site, citing new satellite images.
The first icebergs broke away on Friday, and since then some 270 square miles (700 square kilometers) of ice have dropped into the sea, according to the satellite data.
“There is little doubt that these changes are the result of atmospheric warming,” said David Vaughan of the British Antarctic Survey.
The falling away of Antarctic ice shelves does not, in itself, raise sea levels, since the ice was already floating in the sea. But such coastal tables of ice usually hold back glaciers, and when they disintegrate that land ice will often flow more quickly into the sea, contributing to sea-level rise.read more
Top 10 Myths about Sustainability
Posted by Jeff Lovett in Entangled_Citizens on April 19th, 2009
I have had some misunderstandings about what the term Sustainability really means. It is a complex word that references to much more than its literal definition. In my mind it had become a cultural catch all that is rarely thought out.
The following article clears some of my most basic concerns up.
From the March 2009 Special Editions
Top 10 Myths about Sustainability
Even advocates for more responsible, environmentally benign ways of life harbor misunderstandings of what “sustainability” is all about
When a word becomes so popular you begin hearing it everywhere, in all sorts of marginally related or even unrelated contexts, it means one of two things. Either the word has devolved into a meaningless cliché, or it has real conceptual heft. “Green” (or, even worse, “going green”) falls squarely into the first category. But “sustainable,” which at first conjures up a similarly vague sense of environmental virtue, actually belongs in the second. True, you hear it applied to everything from cars to agriculture to economics. But that’s because the concept of sustainability is at its heart so simple that it legitimately applies to all these areas and more.
Despite its simplicity, however, sustainability is a concept people have a hard time wrapping their minds around. To help, Scientific American Earth 3.0 has consulted with several experts on the topic to find out what kinds of misconceptions they most often encounter. The result is this take on the top 10 myths about sustainability. And after this introduction, it’s clear which myth has to come first….
Continue the article at: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=top-10-myths-about-sustainability
50 Most Hazardous Waste Sites in US Get Stimulus Funds for Cleanup
Posted by Jeff Lovett in Entangled_Citizens on April 17th, 2009
Pulled from Tree Hugger: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/04/50-hazardous-waste-site-epa-cleanup.php
The EPA announced that 50 of the most polluted, most hazardous waste sites in the country will be cleaned up, thanks to $582 million in stimulus funds. Each of the sites is heavily contaminated with mining waste, out-of-control landfills, and chemical spillage—just to name a few. As you might recall, Superfund cleanup was one of the green projects included the stimulus–here’s how it’s going to help.
Waste Site Cleanup
Four of the waste sites, or Superfund sites, are going to get dangerously contaminated soil removed from hundreds of residential lawns, according to the AP.
The stimulus funds are also going to get 180 families access to clean drinking water—after decades of going without. From the AP:
“Up to $25 million will connect 180 houses in southeastern North Dakota to public drinking water. Their wells were tainted with arsenic from bait applied to control grasshoppers in the ’30s and ’40s. The people who live there have been supplied with bottled water since their wells were contaminated.”
Yet another project involves the dredging up of contaminated mud from the harbor in Bedford, Massachusetts—a project that was estimated to take 38 years without renewed funding.
In many of the sites, cleanup efforts had already been underway but were halted last year due to a lack of funding. Others still were planning on running out of funding this year, before the stimulus swooped in to clean up the day.
Stumbling Superfund
All this stimulus money going to help Superfund waste sites helps draw attention to another issue: the program is hopelessly underfunded. The tax on hazardous chemicals intended to keep it afloat was cut off by Congress in 1995. Since then, the program’s budget has shriveled, and hundreds of hazardous waste sites have been left a mess.
Obama plans to reinstate the tax in 2011, which would generate around $1 billion annually for the program. Perhaps then hazardous waste sites won’t have to languish for decades—posing health threats to those who live nearby in the process.
More on Hazardous Waste Sites
EPA Reforms Rule on Hazardous Waste , Boosts Recycling
EPA Gets Coal Ash Hazardous Waste Regulation Do Over in Obama Administration
Continued Consideration of the Role of the Artist
Posted by Elizabeth Dobson in Entangled_Citizens on April 10th, 2009
Pulled From: http://repositories.cdlib.org/imbs/socdyn/sdeas/vol2/iss3/art3/
Volume 2, Issue 3
Public Culture and Sustainable Practices: Peninsula Europe from an ecodiversity perspective, posing questions to Complexity Scientists
Helen Mayer Harrison, Professor Emeritus, Visual Arts, UCSD
Newton Harrison, Professor Emeritus, Visual Arts, UCSD
ABSTRACT:
This is the second of Structure and Dynamics’ thought-provoking series on potential impacts of iconic representations in communicating and helping to implement sustainable human practices. This discussion focuses on ways to expand broad cultural dialogs on solutions to sustainability. The definition of sustainability that is employed here insists that cultural behaviors as they work out in the landscape behave in manners similar to those of natural systems. The complexities and instabilities of ecosystems in relation to anthropic climate change are represented through use of eco-systems theory as subject matter in art-making. They describe and instantiate this in a series of museum installations and dialogs intended to catch the attention and engage scientific researchers, planners, policymakers, and the public in rethinking sustainability. Part I, “Peninsula Europe: The High Ground”, begins by the rethinking of clean-water sourcing, maintenance of ecosystem diversity, reconceptualizing the role of mountain high grounds and river systems as regional Trans-European identities. This then is the basis of interdependencies expressed between cities, agriculture, and industry. Part II, “The Rising of Waters, the Warming of Lands,” brings these issues and dialogs into proactive alignment, sketching the imperative to fund and form grounded thinking-acting groups that would take up the broadest range of issues and proposals, and offer possible solutions as human responses to the cultural and ecological shockwaves that will be coming upon us as outcomes from global warming. Part III discusses the public-dialog ecological art projects leading to “Peninsula Europe” and assesses the impact of these museum installations on the regions and the cultural practices that are envisioned in the work…
Read More: http://repositories.cdlib.org/imbs/socdyn/sdeas/vol2/iss3/art3/