The Changing Face of the Earth

We are changing the Earth faster than ever.  Large scale building of roads and homes is using an ever larger percentage of land as our need to grow and expand never ceases.

Affecting the Earth on a far larger scale is our use of land for agriculture for food production and now on an increasing scale, fuel.  In many cases the use is not so dramatic as building but there are still significant changes in the local ecology when land is used for agriculture compared to being left wild.

Deer

The biodiversity of land is far lower when converted to agriculture.   The wide open spaces leave little room for small animals and remove most of the natural plant life too except in the relatively small areas of hedgerows.  Compare this against the huge diversity of natural woodland for example, which once covered a large percentage of many areas of the world, and the difference is stark.

Hypermiling – Practical Advice on Saving Fuel

To be honest, i am not quite sure why i got an email today from hypermilling.co.uk but having had diesel cars now for over fifteen years i could not resist taking a look.

The site covers some basic advice and techniques for driving in a way that can help save fuel and therefore money.  Of course, if everyone ran small efficient cars, we would collectively save an awful lot of money.  The implications for the environment would of course be positive as well.

Personally my record on driving is very mixed.  I have had economical cars in diesels but I have failed miserably on the number of miles I drive, primarily in the course of work but by no means exclusively.

Renault Megane 1.5 diesel

Save the seals

I am on a mailing list for Care2, the international charity and i received an email from them about the impending seal kill in Canada.

Seals under threat

Read on to see the content of the email and sign the petition to help stop this practise…

Team Individuals – Evolution and Beyond

We are all individuals and we are all part of teams.  Note that in this context I am using the word team in a fairly generic sense to mean any group of people that collaborates in some way.  The extent to which each individual enters into team behaviour varies from the individual that escapes to the mountains and has very little contact with the rest of society right through to the party extrovert who wants constant interaction with other people.

Whatever the level of team behaviour of each and every one of us there is no escape from the fact that to survive as individuals we need to be part of teams – we are team individuals.

Transition Required

A couple of things that I have said in earlier posts need some more explanation.

Individual Self Interest

Talking about the turtles I asked why fishermen don’t act to save turtles of their own accord rather than having to be forced to do so by laws.  My answer was, perhaps too simply, money.

That does not mean that all of the individuals concerned are simply looking to get rich.  No, money is a means to an end, it equates to self preservation. We live in a society where we no longer have to protect ourselves from wild animals and others intent on taking our food, at least in principle, and in most parts of the world.  But, if we are to live comfortably and provide for our families, we all have to work and earn money.

In a world where many people specialise in their work it is difficult to make moral choices that might jeopardise their livelihoods.  And for that reason I could not criticise people who act in ways to provide for themselves and their families at the expense of the environment around them.

Temporary Relief for Turtles

Every now and then I receive emails from charities and other organisations that look interesting.  This is from a press release from Oceana about action being taken to reduce the number of turtles being killed by a fishing technique called Bottom Longline in the Gulf of Mexico.

Loggerhead sea turtle

Apparently the technique was responsible for the deaths of almost 1000 turtles in just 18 months.   A temporary ban on using the technique in shallow waters has been put in place for six months until a long term solution is found.

The article can be found here.

For me, the underlying issue here is an all too familiar one.  Why do the fishermen not adjust their fishing practises to avoid killing the turtles in the first place?   The immediate answer is of course obvious – money.  We live in a world that is dominated by money and until we do something about that we will forever be patching up the results with laws.

Sounds like another topic for when I have more time than late on a snowy Sunday night…

Polar ice will soon be gone !

I don’t think so.

If you look at the antarctic the figures speak for themselves, the amount of ice at the south pole has been steadily increasing over the last thirty years (while we have had satellite records).  The amount of ice at any one time is now normally above the long term average and last year it set a record high !    In all honesty, no one really expected the antartic ice to melt in  hurry but sometimes the message in the media is not always totally clear so its best to get that bit straightened out first.

So, what about the north pole?  The trend over the last thirty years has indeed been downwards.  Last year in 2008 not only did the summer low reach a new record it did so by some large margin.  Pretty worrying.  However it turns out unusual wind patterns blew a lot of ice into the wider atlantic where it then melted and this winter has seen a very impressive receovery of the ice, quickly catching the average of the last five years.

Polar Bear numbers are increasing !

This winter has also seen some really cold temperatures in some parts of the world.  Large parts of the nortern and eastern USA are currently seeing record cold temperatures and here in the UK we had snow in London at the earliest point in the year for about 70 years. Of course that has to be balanced with some really warm temperatures in parts of Russia earlier.