Category: Science

Happy Belated Earth Day. How we doing?

April 24, 2024Bad Guys, Climate Change, General, Good Guys, Politics, Science, Solutions, , , , , , , Leave a comment

Listen above, or read below…

Pretty sure we’re the ball.

As is my habit, I left this til the last minute, and now I’m late. So . . . Happy Day-After-Earth-Day!!

Yesterday’s theme was “Planet vs. Plastics.” If you missed the celebrations like I did (my day included running some errands, playing ball with my neighbor’s doggo in the backyard, reading a few pages of Silent Spring “for fun” — oh, and getting Wordle in two), here’s a spoiler alert: We’re losing the above match-up.

Lately I’ve also been trying to finish Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but I keep lagging . . . because I know it doesn’t end well. But now that I think of it, a dawning-Industrial-Era novel about man battling his own creation is so freaking appropriate to what’s happening with our climate that I should’ve treated myself to reading that yesterday. I mean, a dark story of life, death, man versus nature? Come on.

A basket of poisons randomly sitting in an aisle at CVS on Earth Day. I guess they’re stocking up for the summer season…?

That said, my brother texted me a link to an article last night from USA Today titled “Why You Should Celebrate Climate Change Optimism.” Neither of us are USA Today people, but it was nice to see a little good news collected into one story. I just wish it wasn’t “news” like, “Hey, remember 35 years ago when we banned chlorofluorocarbons to repair a big hole in the ozone layer, saving our population of 5 billion (at the time) from a dire future? Maybe we could do something like that now, for climate change. Anyone . . . ?”

The phasing out of those CFCs was thanks to the Montreal Protocol of 1987, signed on behalf the U.S. by Ronald Reagan, back when Republican politicians got that we need to take that stuff seriously.

(Take my fun quiz on which environmental rules the MAGA party rolled back during the Trump Presidency.)

More recently than 1987 — like January 2024 — the state of Hawaii, after declaring itself “Coal-Free by ’23” and legally committing to 100% clean energy within 21 years, put a ginormous battery near Honolulu into full operation. The “battery,” sitting pretty on industrial land, stores clean energy, and looks a bit like 157 clean white shipping containers. Aloha!

The guy on the left became our President. We’re weird here.

And this very month, the EPA set “unprecedented” limits on the toxic “forever chemicals” (aka PFAS) in Americans’ drinking water. What do these chemicals do to the human body? Oh, ya know, cardiovascular disease, bladder cancer (which took my dad out), strokes, heart attacks, preeclampsia and low birth weights, to name a few. Of course, 3M and DuPont hid the health harms of PFAS for decades.

(And FYI, one group of these toxins is known as GenX chemicals, and I don’t know how I feel about that. Apparently, when GenX contacts water, it becomes a strong acid that deprotonates into its conjugate base, which can then be detected in the water.)

Lemme say that again: GenX deprotonates into its conjugate base. Take that, Gen Y. Of course, now the actual phasing out begins.

It’s hard to believe that the first time I wrote about Earth Day on this blog (“It’s Earth Day, Bitches“), Greta Thunberg was just a kid. We still have a lot of work to do. Hopefully the climate will get some cool, legally enforceable rules in the other 49 U.S. states soon.

Unlike the story of Frankenstein, we have a chance to change the ending to this story.

xo,
Deb

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I went to mass on Sunday. The priest quoted Tucker Carlson.

June 20, 2023General, Science 6 Comments

LISTEN to the audio version — or keep reading . . .

It being a day on which I needed to hear a different take on things, on which the week prior had been somewhat challenging, and I was in want of something to break through my thinking that surely I’m doing something wrong in life . . . I ended up at a Catholic mass at a church in my village.

I still need to do a follow-up on my reconnaissance mission from last time — specifically the solar-panel throwdown going on in my neck of the woods — although that’ll probably happen in my next post.

The young Charles Darwin. Who knew?

But yeah, I have good friends of all faiths. Me, I’m a bit of heathen, without the bat blood or astrological consultants or whatever heathens partake in. Actually, I’m more of a science girl. I nerd out on Charles Darwin and plate tectonics. I never have been a “God” person — although Darwin was, despite his impious discoveries and Bible-breaking ideas, which upset quite a few people back in the 1800s.

See, back in the way early days, humans didn’t know how a lot of things worked. They were confused about most everything — like where the sun went every night, and how fossils of seashells could be found on mountains. Also, where did we come from? And what happens after we die? They wanted answers. So they made them up.

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Let’s Make Climate Solutions CUTE :-)

March 28, 2023Climate Change, Politics, Science 7 Comments
LISTEN to this post — or read on . . .

So, what wackadoodle stuff happened last week? Let’s see . . .

Oops.

> Well, I accidentally voted for a climate denier.

> A pretty dire climate report came out from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

> And Donald Trump claimed he would be arrested, and called on his supporters to “protest.” (I assume he meant the ones who aren’t already in jail themselves.)

Which do you think got all the press?

Definitely not the first one, which is why I walked over to my town hall after the polls opened on Tuesday and cast a vote for three people running unopposed: The mayor, a Democrat who was running for re-election, and who I really like. A good friend of mine, a moderate running for re-election as a village trustee, and who has helped me with everything from burst pipes in the basement to getting to urgent care after a dog bit me. And a third guy who I’ve met once or twice, newly running for one of the other trustee positions. I knew he was a Republican, which is not my party, but in little villages like this, positions like village trustee aren’t particularly party-oriented.

I was back home about half an hour later when I got a text from a friend a few doors down:

Hi Deb! (I’ll paraphrase the rest of her text.) Vote for the first two candidates, even though they’re unopposed, but DON’T vote for the third guy, who’s an ultra-right-wing Trumper. Instead vote for the write-in candidate who’s been added to the ballot by some concerned villagers.

Wait, what write-in candidate?

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