Genetically modified organism’s or GMO’s are a new source of technology that allows scientists to genetically alter organisms to allow them to express certain genes. In plants they are also able to change their genome to give them enhanced abilities, such as resistance to weeds, insects or drought. It can be thought of as giving super powers to plants. However with these mutations comes loss of problems, such as the changed species negative impact on its ecosystem as well as cross-pollination.  GMO’s are shown to have a negative impact on their surrounding environment in an article by Tom Philpott titled “Researchers: GM Crops Are Killing Monarch Butterflies, After All”. He states that a study from the University of Minnesota has given evidence to prove that this is causing a rapid decline in the population of the monarch butterfly. This is because the butterflies relay on milkweed to lay their eggs, which is a weed commonly found on the edges of cornfields. However in 1996 “Roundup Ready” was introduced to the farmers, which were essentially genetically modified seeds that are more resistant to the Roundup herbicide, which is very deadly to milkweed. Since farmers were now able to spray the herbicide all they wanted without fear of damage to their crops the milkweed population quickly diminished by 58% by 2010 and so did the monarch butterflies population by 81%. This article shows the negative impacts of GMO’s through the greater food web. Another concern of genetically modified organisms is there negative impact through cross-pollination. Farmers in Rogue Valley have banned GMO’s because cross pollination can cause farmers not using GMO’s to end up with GMO seeds, which they are not legally allowed to grow or sell the crops of. Cross-pollination is a very real threat since seeds can travel up to 6 miles, potentially making a lot of farmers land unusable once infected with GMO’s. By banning these organisms from the area farmers are able to sell to local markets and protect their livelihood and business from cross contamination.

Works Cited

Researchers: GM Crops Are Killing Monarch Butterflies, After All

http://www.examiner.com/city-buzz-in-medford/genetically-modified-crops-threat-rallies-rogue-valley

Vancouver metro makes data for concentration of different emissions in the atmosphere available for all different cities through out the province. Each air monitoring station in Vancouver represents about 112 km2, and serves about 8400 people. Tokyo, has approximately 83 air monitoring sites, in an area of 13 500 km2 and services about 36.6 million people. This means each air monitoring station represents about 440 000 people, and covers and area of about 166 km2. The volume of Tokyo is he making air pollution much harder to control since it is so densely populated. However Tokyo varies in its density, the downtown core would have many more people, but in the down town more people take subways and public transit as well offsetting there pollution. Studies have shown that the air pollution is improving in Tokyo in recent years. All automobile emissions measuring station met the environmental standards of suspended particulate matter in recent years. Since 1970 the government of Japan has been much more strict with its environmental standards for air quality, with the CO2 now at 1/5th of what it used to be in 1970. Overall Tokyo has made large improvements in air quality considering its vast population.

When observing the Gap Minder graphs, I noticed a trend between mean ages of first marriage for women and mean number of years in school for women between the ages of 15 to 44.  Overall the trending pattern was the higher the mean number of years spent in school the later woman tended to get married. When comparing this trend with a comparative study done by Josef Bruderl, “Education and Marriage”, some reasons for this trend were given. It says that marriage is delayed by the institution effect and once individuals graduate it is delayed by the human capital effect. The institution effect explains that both genders tend to not get married while attending an educational institute due to students being unprepared for adult roles, a majority of their time is spent with school related activities and that individuals feel the need to be able to financially support them self before getting married. The human capital effect which states that women are less likely to want to get married after an extended amount of time spent in school, since they tend to be more career driven and feel as though opportunities will be missed if they are married. In the gap minder display of this effect the highest average age of marriage of 33 corresponded to an average of 11 years in school. What was also interesting about this graph is that Canada had the highest average number of years in school for women at 14 years; Afghanistan had the lowest at only 0.6 years.

Works Citied

Burderl, Josef. Education and Marriage. Munich Institute of Sociology, May 1997. Web. 15 Feb. 2012. <http://www.sowi.uni-mannheim.de/lehrstuehle/lessm/papers/marriage.pdf>.

Discovering my ecological footprint was very enlightening. I like to think I am relatively green person; I recycle and take the bus whenever I can but my footprint was still massive 4.9 global hectares! When I was playing around with the settings I noticed that by reducing my transportation, even though it was by bus, had a huge reduction on my footprint. The shows that the global hectares per person could be greatly reduced if people lived very close to there work and stores. I also noticed that by having a large amount of people living in a small space, about 2 people per bedroom also reduced my footprint a lot. However even when I reduced nearly all of factors in consideration of my ecological foot print, I noticed that it would still require 2 earths for everyone to live like me. I got an environmentally unfriendly friend of mine to take the test and he scored well above the Canadian average at 7.7 global hectares.  The reason why his footprint was so high I think was partially due to the amount of meat, dairy and processed foods he consumes. By reducing the number of meals you eat with meat and dairy a week also has a big impact on your footprint. Overall I’ve noticed that for everyone on the planet to have similar standards of living we would have to dramatically change our lives and our standards we have come accustomed to such as having our own bedroom and eating meat with at least 1 meal a day.

The Canadian action plan for reducing green house gas emissions is effective in meeting the wedge standards presented by Pacala and Socolow in “Stabilization Wedges: Solving the Climate Problem for the Next 50 Years with Current Technologies”. The goal presented by the Canadian government is to reduce Canada’s green house gas emissions by 17 % from the 2005 levels by 2020. While this is a national objective not a global one, it makes a significant contribution to a wedge which requires a reduction 1 billion carbon tons per year. If other countries employed this approach then at least one wedge would be fulfilled. Green house gas regulations have been enforced in Canada’s transportation and electricity sections, the two largest CO₂ emitters. These regulations include standards for fuel efficiency on new light duty vehicles, which are currently being sold. The description of required car efficiency form Pacala and Socolow’s stabilization wedge requirement is that cars in 2054 be twice as efficient as they are now. The regulations currently imposed for efficiency in Canada are aligned with ones in United States, and the regulation states that by 2016 cars must be 25% more efficient than in 2008. This target has the potential to beat Pacala and Socolow’s goals by 2054 if technology continues to progress at this rate. These standards of efficiency are currently in effect for 2011 to 2016 models, and future plans are in the process of being drafted. This plan is very feasible, since it has already gone into effect. The demand for new cars in the North America is high which will provide significant pressure on car suppliers to meet these regulations for efficient vehicles. Hopefully by implementing this plan other countries will be encouraged to enforce similar regulations and globally we will be able to fill at least one wedge if not more.

A local meeting was recently held to gather thoughts on the current controversial issue of biofuels. The University of British Columbia was flooded with experts in all areas concerning biofuels, from farmers to Politians. The debate mainly revolved around the production of ethanol. A large issue for those against ethanol production was that in order to obtain enough ethanol, we would need to import it form other countries, and that this transportation would make ethanol no longer CO₂ neutral. The idea of CO₂ neutral is that however much carbon dioxide is put into the atmosphere is reabsorbed, essentially reducing all impacts of green house gas through the new fuel source. While this is a good point the team against biofuels failed to provide any ideas of an alternate ways to disperse energy over the globe. The type of alternative energy the anti-ethanol group supported energy produced via solar, wind and water. The heated debate continued and while lots of valid reasons were made against ethanol, there were no descriptions of plans that could be made to use valid alternatives. The pro ethanol groups gave lots of reasons to support ethanol; ethanol has economic benefits, it is a way to reuse our waste products, and the consumption of ethanol will lowering green house gas emissions. However they failed to give a description of how they would set up the infrastructure for an ethanol run society. The debate provided excellent insight to ethanol production, but little was said about other biofuel’s such as propanol. When a fellow reporter raised a question about other biofuels, the panel of experts fell silent. This unconsidered alternative was surprisingly a novel idea. From this meeting both groups seemed to be at the consensuses that something needs to change in our energy consumption, and that we need to re-evaluate the best way to produce energy. While the two groups have a difference in opinion of how we will go about this change, they do have a common goal to protect the environment.

A team in Berkeley, California has engineered a new type of E. coli bacteria that can feed off of the sugars in seaweed and produce ethanol.  The scientist’s have engineered an enzyme in these E. coli that allow us to use all the major sugars in seaweed, making it incredibly efficient. This idea is revolutionary because one of the major points against bio fuels is that in order to grow enough corn to produce biofuels it would require giving up some agricultural space.  These scientists claim that less than 3% of the world’s coast could produce enough seaweed to replace 60 billion gallons of fossil fuels. A site in Chile is already in place to take advantage of aqua farming with 4 sites available. However some things to consider after reading this article include, what kind of effects would this have on the ocean population since seaweed is a keystone species? Also one must wonder how they would contain this E. coli to keep it from spreading to surrounding areas.

http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Scientists+report+breakthrough+turning+seaweed+into+biofuel/6026302/story.html

The ongoing dispute of climate change has brought relevance to CO­­₂ emissions, depletion of the o-zone layer, changes in global temperature, and an influx in ocean volume.  As discussed by Duncan Wingham in the article “Polar Scientists on Thin Ice,” there has recently been evidence to support that Antarctica’s ice sheet has been melting, potentially leading to a rise in sea level. Dr. Wingham states that if all of Antarctica’s ice were to melt, the change in water elevation would cover a vast majority of the lowlands that are homes to millions of people and agricultural land that feeds tens of millions of people. (2007, Wingham)

However, as Wingham explains there is strong evidence to support that Antarctica is not in fact melting. He states that a research station set up by the United States in the Antarctic has actually reported local temperatures decreasing over the past fifty-years. Also, Dr. Wingham’s collection of satellite data provides evidence that Antarctic ice thinning is as common as thickening. These findings are used to explain the recent collapse of a 1600 squared kilometer ice shelf.  Wingham states that the collapse could be attributed to an ocean current fluctuation as opposed to global warming. In addition, the satellite data has observed that in the East and West of the Antarctic ice sheet it is growing in each direction by 5 millimeters a year. According to the author’s estimates this growth of the Antarctic ice sheet will lower sea levels by 0.08 millimeters a year.

Duncan Wingham attended Leeds and Bath Universities where he completed a Bachelor in Science and a PhD in Physics. He is currently the head of the Department of Earth Sciences and a chair member of the Department of Space and Climate. Also, Dr. Wingham is a member of the National Environmental Research Council’s Science and Technology Boars and Earth Observation Experts Group. In addition, he is a director of the NERC Centre for Polar Observation Experts Group.

Dr. Wingham provides a strong argument to convince the reader that climate change is not causing a depletion of the Antarctic ice sheet. His research analyzes the entire ice sheet of Antarctica as opposed to focusing on specific sections. However, Wingham does not disprove the evidence his colleagues have collected that support climate change theories. Wingham engages in using the either/or fallacy, by not suggesting that the changes in the ice shelf could have been due to a combination of climate change and current fluctuation. Duncan Wingham proposes a different idea as to what could be causing changes in the Antarctic, one that should be considered by other scientists since it could impact research of climate change.

Works Citied

NASA. Larsen B Ice Shelf Breakup. 2002. Photograph. National Geographic, Antarctica. National Geogrphic. Web. <http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/photos/antarctica-gallery/#/larsen-b-iceshelf_265_600x450.jpg>.

Wingham, Duncan. “Polar Scientists on Thin Ice.” The National Post. Canada.com, 2 Feb. 2007. Web. 11 Jan. 2012. <http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=b228f4b0-a869-4f85-ba08-902b95c45dcf&k=0>.