nuclear pipedream

The one thing I have taken from this article and from our in class discussions about the oil spill in the gulf is that you can make numbers say whatever you want. In Kurt Kleiner's article on nuclear emissions you had us read for this assignment, he references Benjamin Sovacool a research fellow from Singapore University. He studied over 100 different lifecylce studies and found a range of carbon emissions from 1.6 grams of carbon dioxide equivilant per kilowatt-hour upto 288grams. This is very similar to the situation we brought up in class with the estimates on the oil spill. Even Sovacool had his own numbers. He certainly has alot to gain by proving this point. This is where I don't understand science. I thought it was a precise exercise but when humans and egos and money come into play all bets are off.
Another point from this article I found interesting was the amount of "front-end" emissions a nuclear plant would have. As far as mining the uranium the construction and so forth. Kleiner said it would take at least ten years just to construct a huge nuclear plant. Anyone who has driven to Chicago rescently has seen the huge on shore wind farm outside of Remington Indiana. That seemed to go up over night and the impact to the farm land was minimal. The landscape looks a little different now, but Im sure residents would rather look at soom really cool looking fans with no noise as opposed to a nucear facility and all the added security and not to mention the effect on their land.

oil and how it bcomes fuel

I have learned several new ideas and facts from this class. From why I should not be smoking, to what is in our drinking water, to things I can do to reduce my carbon footprint. The concept I found to be most interesting was the process by which we refine crude oil into all the finished products, such as gasoline. I knew the gasoline we put in our cars was not the stuff that came out of the ground, but I was pretty clueless about the process. Also the amount of different products that result from burning off at different temperatures was interesting as well.
Upon further investigating the wild and wonderful world of oil refineries I found and interesting aspect of the process to be the coking and cracking aspect.Cracking is essentially the breaking down of hydrogen molecules into lighter molecules at extremely high temperatures (600 degrees Cecilius). A cocker is used to heat and compress the crude oil into a hard coal like substance used for industrial fuel. I wonder if there is anyway to store hydrogen in a form like this? There is another form of molecular conversion known as alkylation. This process takes gas byproduct from cracking and combines them, essentially cracking in reverse. These three processes are part of the larger process at the refinery known as conversion.

tap water the clear winner

I have always been a supporter of tap water. I grew up in a rural area and drank well water for the first 10 years of my life. The water tasted like straight sulfur. So I have never been pick about how my water tasted and I could not fathom paying for something that comes right out of the faucet. Also the waste of disposable water bottles has taken its toll on our land scape. You cannot look in any direction and not see and old dasani or aquafina bottle. I discovered through my research that the only real advantages to bottled water is that they use less harsh methods of purification, as opposed to tap water which is purified through chlorine and other harsh methods. However mineral water or private water companies are not required to check their water as often as the public companies. Also most disposable water bottles are made of cheap plastic that leach toxins into your water and accumulate in your body over time. The best containment for tap water is in a water bottle that is BPA free and thus will not leak toxins into your water. Most water bottles today are BPA free.
I got my information fromhttp://www.ehso.com/ehshome/DrWater/drinkingwater.php#Overview

the painful realization littlebigfoot has a big carbon footprint

I calculated my carbon footprint at http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx. The results of my calculations showed me to have a whopping 22.7 metric tons of carbon waste annually. Significantly higher than the national average of 20.4 metric tons. I was baffled. I try to live my life in an environmentally conscious way and by no means have and extravagant life style. So what was the deal? The cool feature about this site, which is supposedly the web's leading carbon footprint calculator (they all said something of that nature), is that it breaks your total footprint down into sections of your life and diagrams where the majority of your carbon is wasted. I noticed a glaring statistic when i saw my results. I used 12.84 tons on my cars alone, over half my footprint. That got me thinking about all the trips I make during the course of the week. Everything from coming home to eat lunch instead of staying on campus to driving to the store to get ingredients every time I wanted to cook. So that is my major change that I am making in an effort to be green and reduce my carbon footprint, I am planning every evening in an effort to make the minimum amount of trips in the car. I have limited myself to once a week at the grocery store unless I am going by there to do something else and packing lunch work out clothes and entertainment for days on campus so I only drive to and back once. I even took the bus two days, not as bad as I thought I had my iPod and could do homework while I rode. So that and keeping up with routine maintenance on my car I should reduce my foot print significantly. As for my house I have shut off my central heating and cooling unit and relied on blankets and fans to keep me warm or cool. I also built a compost pile for our garden and have been trying to recycle or compost all my waste.

So these are the three changes I am making as a result of this calculation.
1. I am walking or long boarding instead of driving, and when it cannot be avoided I will plan carefully so i get the most out of each trip.

2. I have been making a conscious effort to recycle or compost all my waste that I can. I even made this trashcan compost pile. Picture of composter coming soon ran out of camera battery.
3. My third change is turning off my central heating and cooling when reasonable and keeping them on at a minimum level when it is necessary to activate them. Note the dial is off and the base temp is set at 65 degrees (f).

ozones

I feel these governments, including our own, really jumped the gun on this one. I am one of the most environmentally conscientious people i know and I agree with the argument about how sea salt in the ocean and volcanoes contribute to way higher CFC levels than humans do. I am of the mind set that every little bit helps, but i feel it should be more in the hands of the consumers and manufacturers to use restraint on the amount the use and how they dispose of these. To ban them all together when nature is produceing them at the volume she is seems rash. I mean couldn't we be putting the effort used to regulate this into something more detremental to our society. Like eliminating our dependence on petrolium.

great expectations (not the lame book)

I have very high expectations for this course. Being a very environmentally aware person I was excited to see this class offered and that it fulfilled a requirement for graduation. I am very keen to learn about our environment on a molecular level. On the first day I was thrilled to see the format for this class. All to often we get teachers who settle into a routine and teach the same course over and over and loose the element of progression that is essential in a respected institution of higher learning. I think the blog format is a great idea and a good way to make the class relevant.