PA Ecology IV

When I went outside yesterday looking for an animal to do my blog on, I thought that all I was gonna find was going to be some kind of rabbit or a squirrel. And I was right, I only saw one squirrel! It was too fast for me to take a picture of it as it leaped through the tree, but this picture I found is nearly the same as what I saw. The eastern gray squirrel is a tree squirrel that lives in the eastern and midwestern United States (called simply gray squirrel in midwest). It is one of the most common of squirrels, with
a designation of least concern on its conservation status.

The eastern gray squirrel is mostly gray on top with a white belly and long bushy tail. Sometimes the coat will contain traces of brown in the top mixed into the gray, but this is semi-uncommon. They are typically between nine and twelve inches long without the tail. The tail adds between seven and ten inches to the total length. The eastern ground squirrel typically weighs half a kilogram.

It lives in trees and hoards food away there during the fall months to survive through the winter. They eat primarily nuts, bark, berries, and certain types of mushrooms. While they prefer to live in dense woodland, they can also thrive in suburban areas when enough trees are available. They prefer White Oak, American Beech, American Elm, and Red Maple to other trees. They build their nests of sort up high in the branches away from their predators, or which there are many, My dogs have killed probably six or seven squirrels in the past two years, and they aren't even the biggest threat.

Predators to the eastern gray squirrel include coyotes, foxes, cats, dogs, owls, raccoons, and snakes. They are very attentive and are always on the lookout for danger. Squirrels can dash up trees in the blink of the eye, allowing them to escape most of their pursuers.

While squirrels are not the most important members of their ecosystems, they still have a lot to offer to their communities. Every creature plays it's own role, the squirrel only eats certain plants and nuts within it's niche, allowing other animals to coexist with it.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_gray_squirrel

http://www.fcps.edu/islandcreekes/ecology/eastern_gray_squirrel.htm

http://www.dnr.state.oh.us/tabid/6646/Default.aspx

http://www.animalspot.net/eastern-gray-squirrel.html

http://www.psu.edu/dept/nkbiology/naturetrail/speciespages/graysquirrel.htm

http://www.dnr.sc.gov/marine/mrri/acechar/specgal/squirrel.htm

Muckraking

Corruption is not new in Washington, every company on the planet has used some less than legal tactics to get lawmakers to support them. Bribery, soliciting votes, and fraud have all been used to increase the perks received by corporations from people in power. One of the largest industrial in the world is energy, with most of our energy coming from petroleum products. The American Petroleum Institute is an entity that represents the interests of Exxon, Shell, BP, and many other oil giants. They put the spin that they want people to believe on issues of huge importance, and they pay government officials to back them up. While they are not alone in these dirty practices, they sure do it a lot more than everyone else does.

The API pays officials and lobbyists such that their concerns are delegated more talking time, importance, whatever. API tells them what to say and how to say it. The APi says that oil is good for us, we aren't harming the environment, and that we'll have plenty for many decades to come. But none of that is true, they know it isn't true, but they spout it so they can keep filling their coffers regardless of the consequences to our health our planet and our future. Petroleum puts CO2, CO, and many other harmful chemicals into the atmosphere that decrease not only the lifespan of the average organsim, but of the earth as well. The average temperature of the earth has risen greatly over the past few decades, and will continue to do so unless we fix the problem. That problem is perpetuated by a society based entirely on wealth that allows companies like API to do something they shouldn't be able to do: further themselves at the cost of bringing irreparable harm to others.

Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas that causes more sunlight to be trapped within the atmosphere, causing the temperature to rise. As this graph shows, the industrial revolution and continued abuse of fossil fuels has exponentially increased the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere to levels that have been untouched for at least the last 400, THOUSAND, years. That is a very long time. This increase in temperature causes dramatic shifts in climate across the earth, and will result in mass flooding and huge changes in what can be grown where, and what can live where as well. Entire ecosystems will be tossed around, leaving little left to survive. While we can just throw on the A/C and use filters to keep out the toxins produced by burning petroleum, we will be unable to save most livestock and nearly all edible plant life. That is the future we are heading to if we do not quell our use of fossil fuels.

The API knows all of this will happen, but they figure that if they have all the money, they'll be able to perpetuate their own existences long past ours, as we're the dumb consumer who gave them all the money just so they could kill us. We give them money, they buy parts of the government, they can then pollute more legally, and by that point we have to refill our tanks. It's good business, they know exactly what they have to do to make money. They're missing one thing though: we can't buy their product if we're all dead. It is in the API's best interest to invest in alternative energy, to continue their monopoly on energy. Why they don't I have no clue, but they better figure out what they're going to do before we've lost our environment and can never get any of it back.

Sources:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr.png

http://oilsandsfactcheck.org/what-are-oil-sands/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/climate-skeptic-group-works-to-reverse-renewable-energy-mandates/2012/11/24/124faaa0-3517-11e2-9cfa-e41bac906cc9_story.html

http://www.api.org/

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/08/sensitive_oil_industry_memo_lays_out_plan_for_astr.php

http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/images/science/ScenarioTempGraph-large.jpg

http://wpcontent.answcdn.com/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/Air_Pollution-Causes%26Effects.svg/350px-Air_Pollution-Causes%26Effects.svg.png

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/08/19/the-browning-of-grassroots.html

Viewpoint - Arctic Sea Ice Decline

          The sea ice of the arctic ocean has been receding over time, and this year set a new minimum for square miles of total ice. Not only is the surface area of the ice smaller, but it is also thinner making it even more susceptible to changes in temperature. This article provides wonderful evidence for climate change, and while some do not believe in the scientific findings herein I find it impossible to ignore. If we choose to not heed the warnings granted to us by nature, we will be unable to reverse our polluting ways in time for us to 'save' the dwindling sea ice.
          This is not a new phenomenon, the past six years have been the top six record holders for least amount of arctic sea ice. This is not something that happened all at once, we built up to this. The graph referenced to in the nature.com article shows the trend we have created. The ice has slowly but surely been shrinking in size not only at its minimum, but at its maximum as well. This means that not only are we hotter on average than we used to be, but we also have a bigger degree difference between the seasons than we had before: the gap has gotten larger and has been shifted upwards.
          Somehow people can still deny this information. With superstorm Sandy only hitting us three weeks ago, for people to say that climate change did not play a role in its immense scope and power is incredible. But America is accustomed to science denialists, and it is important to understand that some people make their living on causing controversy by denying science and scientific impacts. Some people have other beliefs, such as religion, that cause them to null and void facts that go against their most cherished thoughts. While everyone is entitled to their own beliefs, they are not entitled to their own facts. When we create walls against facts and those walls begin to impact how we as a nation address issues of national importance, there is a problem.
          This article shows how blind we seem to others around the world, and that is very scary when the most powerful country on earth will not acknowledge an issue that affects everyone on earth. We make up five percent of the global population, but our actions impact one hundred percent of the total life on earth, of which the human race is an even smaller segment (0.1% of total biomass on Earth (and the Universe for all we know) is humans). I invite anyone who happens to read my blog to comment on climate change. I do not mind views on either end of the spectrum, talking politics and large issues is something I like to do for fun, I guess I'm kind of a junkie that way.

Sources:

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/science/120826/98-percent-canadians-believe-climate-change-do-they-know-something-we-d

http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/08/arctic-sea-ice-declines-to-record-low.html

http://blogs.nature.com/news/files/2012/08/sea.ice_.extent.2012.aug_.27.NSIDC_.graphic.png

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/04/america-theologians-climate-science-denial

http://www.alternet.org/story/154252/the_republican_brain%3A_why_even_educated_conservatives_deny_science_--_and_reality

Ecology III

With the impending weather explosion about to be upon us, I thought I'd better get out there and find something to blog about before it blows away forever! This storm is looking to be one of the worst in many years, so you never know what's going to happen in the ensuing days. After looking around for a while I decided to do this tree, the pinus virginiana:

I have many of these trees in my backyard, but this picture was taken last December when my family and I were out getting our Christmas tree. The tree is evergreen, resinous, and coniferous. It grows well in weak soil, of which there is a lot around Harrisburg. As an evergreen, it retains its needles all year, unlike deciduous trees that lose their leaves in the fall. The tree provides food and shelter for many different kinds of squirrels, chipmunks, birds, rabbits, and other small animals. These animals eat not only the needles, but also the cones and bark of the tree. The many branches provide ample shade, cover, and perching area.

The trees daily activities usually consist as follows: standing. And sometimes they are trimmed and chopped down by humans for holidays, firewood, just because we can, and a whole host of other reasons. Although I have listed much more extensive activities for my other blog posts, those were animals, they do things. Trees stand there and absorb sunlight, water, and CO2, and then emit O2 and 'eat' the sugar they also produce.

The Virginia Pine usually grows to heights of approximately 9-18 meters, but the ones most of us use as Christmas trees are more in the range of about 10 feet tall. At the ten foot height they have a base of about 5 feet in diameter. If allowed to grow naturally many live to be 65-95 years old. The Virginia pine is found in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and of course Virginia and West Virginia.

Trees are vital to the continued existence of life on earth. Without them we would quickly consume all the oxygen we have and then everything would die. Not a very good picture. We are killing our forests and we need to stop before we find that we can no longer replant all that we have destroyed. There are consequences to a more comfortable lifestyle, but dying should not be one of them.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine

http://www.2020site.org/trees/pine.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinus_virginiana

http://www.fcps.edu/islandcreekes/ecology/virginia_pine.htm

http://www.na.fs.fed.us/pubs/silvics_manual/Volume_1/pinus/virginiana.htm

Presidential Debate

The Presidential debate on 10/16/12 was one to remember. Not only did President Obama come back from an awful performance against Mitt Romney on 10/3/12, but Obama arguably had his best debate performance ever. He was attentive, knew what he was talking about, and corrected Etch-a-Sketch Mitt on many occasions, one of which was before he even finished the sentence. Romney became flustered at points, he knew Obama brought his A-game today, this debate was not going to be as easy as the first.

They hit environmental issues early, with the second question being "Your energy secretary, Steven Chu, has now been on record three times stating it’s not policy of his department to help lower gas prices. Do you agree with Secretary Chu that this is not the job of the Energy Department?" Obama responded by saying that the department focuses on meeting the energy needs of the country. We have the highest amount of gas drilling in sixteen years, we have more natural gas plants than ever before, and we are also working on wind, solar, and biofuels to help power America. Obama said that we have lowered our oil imports to a record low level, but didn't quite answer the question about lowering gas prices.

Romney rebutted by saying that under the Obama administration, the number of licenses for drilling have been cut in half. He also said that as president he will get America self sufficient in terms of energy. He will make sure there is funding for solar wind, renewable sources as well as coal, oil, and natural gas. To this Obama said that Romeny had once said as governor of Massachusetts in front of a coal plant and said "This plant kills?" and that now he's flip flopped to Mr. Big Coal.

It is clear that these two candidates can never agree on anything, even if what they both claim to believe in are the same things. After Obama finished talking, the two just kept speaking into their microphones until Candy Crowley finally had them stop and move onto the next question. Nobody knows for certain who will be the next President at this point but we all have a very strange next four years to look forward to.

PA Ecology II

I was driving home late after the game on Friday, and on a particularly dark stretch of road on Elmerton Avenue I saw a deer standing in the middle of the road. When I came home I looked it up and found that it was a Pennsylvania white-tailed deer. The white-tailed deer, or Odocoileus virginianus, is very common all across most of North America, but most people see them very infrequently.

They tend to hide during the day and come out at night in favor of easier camouflage. Deer are very comfortable living in woods or open prairie lands; they are very adaptable due to their large diet. They eat legumes, leaves, grass, cacti, mushrooms, poison ivy, acorns, corn and fruits. Like cows they have a four chambered stomach system which allows them to not only eat such a large variety of foods, but to digest said foods at more opportune times when they are not out and about or being pursued by predators.

         White-tailed deer fall prey every year to wolves, alligators, bears, wolverines, cougars, coyotes, and especially humans. To get away from all these things that would try to eat them, they can run up to approximately 47 mph, and can jump 33 feet lengthwise and nearly 9 feet vertically. They have white tails (duh), four legs with large muscles for bounding, a head designed for near all around vision with ears that swivel to pinpoint noises easier. They grow to weights 200 pounds, lengths of up to 87 inches long and a shoulder height of approximately 40 inches. These dimensions change depending on which subspecies of white-tailed deer you are dealing with, but these specs are close to deer in our area which are on the high medium to low large sized deer.

While I did not get the chance to take a picture of the deer myself, this is a picture I found which looks close to what I almost hit. I was on Elmerton Avenue at about 10:30 PM on 10/12/12 when I encountered the deer that could have cost me my car. As I slowed down it began to look at me, and after I flashed my high beams a few times it decided to turn and bound away into a patch of trees by the post office. I had only seen a deer this big once before, and that was at 6 AM when I was walking my dogs some months ago. Usually my dogs bark at whatever they see, but this time they stood stock still, not really sure what they were looking at or what to do.

Sources:

http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/deer/11949

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White-tailed_deer

http://www.nhptv.org/natureworks/whitetaileddeer.htm

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/white-tailed-deer/

http://www.desertusa.com/mag99/june/papr/wtdeer.html

PA Ecology

While wandering around my yard this weekend, I was fortunate enough to stumble upon several newborn baby rabbits. Through a bit of research I found that they are almost definitely eastern cottontail rabbits, or Sylvilagus floridanus. I have seen many of its adult counterparts in my yard over the years, and my dogs have seen even more! Many of them get away, but if we let our dogs out to run in the yard and the bunnies don't hear them right away, they sometimes have gotten caught. They have such soft fur; my brother used some of it to make the inside of his gloves warmer.

The eastern cottontail lives across a wide berth of the eastern United States, as its name suggests. They prefer to live in forests and fields where they can obtain cover easily, under bushes shrubs and the like. They'll eat just about anything, from grass to leaves to bark to dandelions to fruits. They give birth to litters about three to four times per year, with a maximum of approximately nine baby bunnies per litter. They give birth to so many young because they are very prone to diseases and predators, of which they have many. Like I said before, dogs will eat them, but also will cats birds snakes opossums owls and skunks.

They have it tough out there, so it's a good thing that their bodies are extremely well designed, or selected I should say, to their environment. They have large ears to detect predators easily, strong hind legs that let them leap up to fifteen feet, and a highly acute nose, just to name a few. Their bodies curl up very small so it is easier to keep warm in the winter, for which they also grow a thicker coat of fur. While the babies were only about 5-6 inches long, adults can grow upwards of 19 inches in length.

When I found these little guys they were just sitting in their makeshift den. They were just laying there keeping warm at approximately 2:00 PM 10/06/12. They were in my front yard, which is a really good thing because we let our dogs run in the back yard, but not the front. Nature showed a little bit of kindness to these barely week old babies.

When I began to search around my yard, I began to see more than when I usually did. I saw all different kinds of insects, many different weeds and grasses, and too many different kinds of animal droppings to walk outside barefoot again. But seeing it this way makes me appreciate it that much more, so I'll be more careful the next time I mow the lawn, dig a hole for a plant or just run around with reckless abandon, because who knows what I could run over or bury or stomp when I'm out there, nature has a lot to offer that many of us will never see.

Sources:

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/cottontail-rabbit/

http://www.nhptv.org/natureworks/easterncottontail.htm

http://www.psu.edu/dept/nkbiology/naturetrail/speciespages/cottontail.htm

http://www.naturalresources.msstate.edu/wildlife/eastern-cottontail-rabbit.html

Bret Baier: For or Against the Environment?

        Baier is a “journalist” for the Fox “News” Corporation. He hosts the Special Report, and it sure is special all right. Bret Baier, along with every other “news” anchor at Fox, is involved in a campaign to misinform their viewers about global warming and climate change. For years they have said that the Earth is not warming, but they go even further than that and say that the Earth is actually cooling. Through misuse of sources they fool their viewers into believing whatever the dirty money in their pockets tells them to say.
        Bret Baier believes that the Earth is not warming, but cooling, contrary to what nearly every scientist who actually has the data and the expertise to render judgment on the topic. Environmental issues are dismissed by every Fox employee as the liberal-elite-media and scientists trying to control your lives, when in reality Fox is controlling people by giving them deliberate misinformation. Is Bret Baier attempting to help the environment and the problems it faces in a world where most people don’t give a second thought to any needs but their own? No. Bret Baier is the epitome of the problem, that the environment is fine on its own, it doesn’t need our help, nothing is wrong with it.
        This type of thinking is very short sighted; we can only let so much polar ice melt before our coastal cities are flooded. At that point there won’t be very much we can do, there will be too much carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide trapping the suns rays for us to get rid of, CO and CO2 are very difficult to get out of the atmosphere in large quantities. Thinking for the long term would cause Bret to tell people that conserving resources and reducing pollution is the only way to sustain our way of life. If the planet dies, we die with it.
        Baier and the rest of Fox aren’t considering all the effects that a diseased planet will have on our health. With more carbon mono- and dioxide in the air, our lung health will deteriorate. Has anyone considered that at a certain point, breathing conditions will be so poor that sports records will never be broken again. Athletes won’t be able to get enough oxygen to use their muscles to their fullest extent. What then will the neanderthals at Fox have to do on Sundays besides attempt to host meaningful discussions about what really matters. By giving environmental stresses and science as a whole the middle finger, Bret Baier and Fox News have made nearly half of America distrust science and loath environmental protection. There are no benefits to doing this if you live in the real world, there are only costs. But when you live in a world where you'll say anything to get money from companies that kill the environment for profit, there can only be benefits in what you say, never a cost, never a penalty. Bret Baier is incredibly selfish, incredibly naive, and entirely a puppet owned by the big oil companies and others who have a stake in low environmental regulation. Who needs air when you've got all this money?

Sources:

http://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2012/07/12/surprise-fox-news-fails-paleoclimatology/187086

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,579269,00.html

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html

http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0927/1224324469890.html

http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2012/09/arctic-sea-ice-extent-settles-at-record-seasonal-minimum/

Cornucopia vs. Cassandra

            Since the population of the earth began to increase exponentially since the start of the industrial revolution, human beings have wondered whether or not there would be enough resources to sustain our existence. There are now two major viewpoints we have rallied around: the earth will run out of resources eventually, or the earth can sustain our growing population forever. These opinions are classified as cornucopia or cassandra. Cornucopia, as the name suggests, is the belief that the earth will always have enough resources to provide for humanity and the rest of nature. Cassandra conversely is the theory that our population will get so large that at some point the earth’s resources will be depleted. Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, but you have to be able to back it up.

            In Greek mythology, the cornucopia was a magical horn that would magically and endlessly refill itself with food and drink. Today’s cornucopian believes that man’s advances in science and technology will allow us to engineer enough resources to ensure the survival of the human race, no matter how large it becomes. This is just an unsustainable viewpoint. We cannot create something from nothing, we would need to find these resources somewhere in the universe in order for us to take advantage of them. Technology will not be able to increase at the rate necessary for deep space long-term travel before the earth runs dry. America on the whole seems to share this opinion, because we use more goods than almost any other nation on this earth. We aren’t even the most populous country, why do we have permission to destroy the earth faster than anyone else? We view the environment as future-America’s problem, but if we can’t see it as now-America’s problem, future-America is going to be overwhelmed. Cornucopian's are thinking short term issues will be solved by technology in time.

            Cassandra’s have a much more realistic outlook on life and how it will be affected by the lack of resources available. We, yes I am a Cassandra, see the world as being a place inadequate to support the amount of humans here right now, let alone how many will be here in twenty years or so. China is seeing the world this way. They are now attempting to get rid of all the pollution in their atmosphere to make the world a better place for their future generations. The only problem here is that China cannot yet innovate very well. They can clone any existing industry nearly perfectly, but making one from scratch is difficult. China normally copies what we do, seeing as we are always innovating and making things better. Sadly America does not see the world as finite; therefore we do not have a large industry in place for caring for the environment. The largest country on earth can’t get good enough blueprints from us, so they have not yet been able to attempt to fix their environmental issues. We are thinking of the long term affects we will experience from overuse of the earth, cornucopian's are not in the slightest. Cassandra’s are stifled by not only the Cornucopian’s, but also by the conditions that ideology has created. 

            We all know what the earth looks like, all those famous blue marble pictures from the moon. Now imagine if that marble’s green patches all started to look brown and gray, lifeless and empty. And at the same time the oceans are getting darker, filled with pollution. Not a very nice image is it? Well it’s what’s going to happen eventually if we as a species cannot control our intake of limited resources. Our technological advancements will slow down the decay of the earth, but it is impossible for it to be stopped. We have to find a long-term solution right now, or our future generations will be cursed to live with our mistakes. And it's not just them, we are harming everything on this planet. Dogs, trees, cats, monkeys, humans, apples, dolphins, rats, germs, roses, and every other type of flora and fauna now has a decreased lifespan, species-wise, thanks to our misuse of the earth. Congrats.

References:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/23/AR2008052302456.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/opinion/19friedman.html

http://andrewsidea.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/walle1.png

http://www.sane.org.za/docs/views/showviews.asp?ID=115

http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/10/cornucopians-vs-malthusians.html