Droughts

Droughts are caused by essentially a lack of rain. If there is not enough water vapor in the sky for it to rain, then there will be a dry spell. This means that droughts are most common in high pressure areas where air is more likely to fall towards that ground than rise into the sky. This is because water vapors are generally carried into the sky by air currents. It is natural for some areas to cycle between times of low and high pressure, even daily. But when there is consistent high pressure a drought occurs. High pressure can get trapped in an area via a wave of fast-moving air called a Jetstream, and air pressure can also change based on water currents. Sometimes, however, even if water vapors are rising into the air, there might not be a strong enough wind to carry them to where they need to go. Generally water vapors will be carried up from the ocean and blown to other areas that need them. If that does not happen, then a drought can occur. Mountains are like roadblocks for wind carrying water vapor. The wind is forced to rise to get past the mountains, and sometimes when this happens the water vapors will condense into rain or snow and fall on top of the mountains, thus leaving less water vapor for other areas. The is why droughts often occur on a side of a mountain that is facing away from the ocean—because by the time the air rises and gets over the first half of the mountain there is little or no water vapor left. (Source: http://library.thinkquest.org/C003603/english/droughts/causesofdroughts.shtml

Washington State has suffered two droughts since 1971. Droughts cause crops to wither and die during the summer due to lack of water. They also threaten the water supply of humans, and can cause plants and animals in forests to die due to lack of water. When streams dry up due to drought, thousands of fish die, too. There is also less irrigation of soil, meaning that our soil dries up leaving us less viable places to plant stuff in the future. Also when human’s water supplies dry up, that means that businesses that rely on water to survive are threatened. If our temperature gets even 3.6 degrees warmer, major droughts will happen five times as frequently. Also, the more dried up dead trees there are lying around, the higher chance of a forest fire happening. In the past 40 years the amount of forest fires in Washington state has more than tripled. Carbon dioxide (CO₂) from cars, industries and power plants trap heat near the earth's surface. More heat means more energy. Adding so much energy to the atmosphere creates the potential for more extremes.  As recent as 2006, we have faced major weather problems. Five years ago, rains caused rivers to overflow and created landslides and floods throughout Western Washington. This was followed by a period of extreme cold, followed by intense winds that caused 14 deaths and 1 million power outages. Climate change will also have a huge economic impact with tens of millions of dollars having to go towards wildfire damage control, hundreds of millions of dollars being lost because of crops withering before they are harvested, and billions of dollars going towards larger water reservoirs to better prepare ourselves for water shortages. With our current economic problems, we can’t really afford to spend all of these billions of dollars on droughts for just our state alone, and all of these issues would be solved if people were not releasing so much Co2 into the atmosphere, speeding up global warming. (Source: http://www.ecy.wa.gov/climatechange/effects.htm

After keeping track of my water usage for a week and thinking about ways I waste water in general, I have realized that there are a lot of easy ways I could be conserving water that I just never gave a second thought before. I could conserve water by making a compost been instead of using the garbage disposal. I have a garden at my house, so I could use the compost as fertilizer for the plants and save on resources in two different ways at once. Plus it would help to retain moisture in the ground. I could also keep an a better eye on my water bill to make sure that there are no leaks in my house, as leaks can cause tens of thousands of gallons of water to be wasted if not caught early on. I tend to spend a lot of time in the shower, so I could try to cut down on shower times, or even failing that I could get a more water-efficient showerhead. Another way to conserve water would be to set my lawnmower’s setting higher, since longer grass will allow the ground to retain more moisture and will provide shade for plant roots. Even little things like turning off the water while brushing my teeth or washing my hands could save a significant amount of resources. (Source: http://www.wateruseitwisely.com/100-ways-to-conserve/index.php

Animal Aggression

Seeing as I can write about anything I want this week, I figured an interesting topic to go into a bit might be animal aggression and how it relates back to either the way we condition them as humans or the way we act as humans.

Cats naturally, being predators, will want to kill rats and eat them. However, an experiment that was done by Zing Yang Kuo, a renowned biologist, has shown that it is possible to train cats to not be aggressive towards rats. The way Kuo proved this is by raising a cat in the same cage as a rat companion from when it was a kitten up until it was full grown. He found that instead of attacking the rat, the cat became friends with it. Not only that, but the cat refused to go after any other rats because it had been put in a situation where it learned that rats are friends and not to be hunted. This experiment shows that certain instinctual aggressive behaviors in animals can be stifled based on how they are raised or what role they are taught to play. This does not mean that aggressive behaviors in animals are not often instinctual. In fact, there have been experiments in which rats are raised without any contact with other rats. Once they are introduced to another rat for the first time, they will attack it in the same exact pattern that any other rat would attack someone threatening their territory. What this all is meant to show is that some aggressive behaviors certainly come naturally, but humans have the capacity to override those aggressive behaviors by the way the raise animals (or possibly other humans, as the case may be). 

Chimps and bonobos are two species that share over 95% of the same DNA as humans, but they each handle aggression in very different ways. For instance, some chimps, especially the males, will track down other chimps that they deem as threatening with the intent to kill. Bonobos on the other hand will do everything in their power to avoid violence. They will even go as far as to have sex before doing something that they believe would otherwise cause conflict. An example of this is when multiple bonobos choose the same area to scavenge for food, they will engage in group sex before eating to avoid fighting over the limited resources they are attempting to share. Chimps on the other hand will violently fight with each other if forced to compete for food. An interesting part of all of this is that chimps are in male-dominated societies, while bonobos are in female dominated societies. Because of this it there is speculation that males are programmed to be aggressive, while females are programmed to be more sympathetic.

It is worth noting that most animals utilize aggression as a sort of survival instinct, and have the ability to turn off their aggressive tendencies when it would be optimal to do so. So it could just be that the bonobos have evolved under fortunate enough circumstances that they have not had to develop major aggressive tendencies to survive. Sherwood Washburn, a monkey anthropologist, has discovered that generally in groups of monkeys the role of dominance will be given to the strongest and most aggressive male. This is because of that same natural aggressive instinct that most animals need to survive. Another scientist, Steven Pinker, has discovered that establishing an aggressive leader creates less overall aggression amongst groups of monkeys because they know who their leader is, and they fear him. Not only is this good for general reproduction, but it also allows the strongest monkey in the group to pass on his genes to future generations, thus strengthening the species overall. In this way, aggression in animals can be a good thing. Another example of this is elephant seals. Burney LeBoeuf, a biologist, discovered that before mating, male elephant seals will battle each other for dominance. The seal that gains dominance through this aggression will obtain the position of alpha male, and go on to have sex with more females than any of the other seals in the pack. In fact, the alpha male will have between 50% and 100% of the sex, depending on the size of the group he is in. This helps the species pass on the genes of the strongest elephant seals, while letting the weaker ones die without reproducing. These examples of aggression being beneficial for animals have prompted some scientists to make the conclusion that aggression is also beneficial for humans and so we should not work so hard to stifle it.

Other scientists have argued that solving problems without the use of aggression is usually more beneficial. This is shown through interactions between groups of insects, like bees or ants who communicate in large hives/colonies as a unified workforce. Even animals known for their violent behavior, like chimps, can find working together to be beneficial. For instance if a chimp has food and another chimp begins to beg for said food, the first chimp will often give the begging chimp some of his food, even if the first chimp does not want to give up any of his meal. This is meant to show that even though aggression runs rampant throughout the animal kingdom, animals also have the capacity to work together for the greater good, or just out of pure compassion.

Popcorn (Orville Redenbacher’s)

Popcorn consists mainly of popping corn and palm oil. There are small amounts of salt, potassium chloride, “natural and artificial flavor”, butter (cream, annatto) and food coloring. TBHQ and citric acid are used as preservatives. 

The popping corn itself is just kernels taken from corn. The moisture and starch inside of them causes them to pop when heated because of the pressure that builds up. Popcorn tends to be high in fiber, sugar free, and low in fat. This brand has 4g of fiber and only 2g of fat per serving. (Source: http://online.prevention.com/healthfoodimpostors/list/1.shtml). It also is fairly low calorie, with only 120 calories per serving. So while popcorn is for the most part empty calories, there’s nothing terribly unhealthy about it. Though high fiber diets do help keep down blood sugar, cholesterol, and weight. And they also help with constipation. (Source: http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/fiber/NU00033). 

Palm oil is taken from the pulp of palm trees. Palm oil contains some saturated fats, which can produce similar effects that having high cholesterol would, even though it does not actually contain any cholesterol. The oil also contains high amounts of vitamin E (an antioxidant) and beta-carotene (which turns it orange and means it likely contains vitamin A). 

Salt is a mineral made up of mostly sodium chloride. The salt used in popcorn is what is commonly referred to as table salt, meaning it is refined as opposed to unrefined salt, like sea salt for instance. Refined salt is defined as having 97%-99% sodium chloride. There is also usually an element added to keep the salt grains from sticking together.  Refined salt is made by first evaporating sea water so that only the salt remains. This is often done in shallow basins where the sun has already warmed up the water. Next the salt is covered in brine mixed with other chemicals that remove the magnesium and calcium particles from the salt. After that the brine and salt solution is evaporated multiple times until all that is left is pure sodium chloride. Then the sodium chloride is put in an insulated oven where the temperature is controlled so that it the sodium chloride crystals can dry out. This whole process is called recrystallization. Not getting the right amount of salt (which can mean not consuming enough salt, as well as consuming too much of it) can cause dehydration and many other health problems such as cramping (as a result of dehydration), high blood pressure, heartburn, and osteoporosis (too much of it reduces bone density in women). 

Potassium chloride is a chemical composed of potassium and chlorine. In its natural form, potassium chloride is a crystal called sylvite, which is mined in order to obtain the potassium chloride compounds. It can also be obtained from salt water via the aforementioned crystallization method. The chemical has few health risks or benefits when consumed in extremely small doses like what you would find in popcorn. However, if one were to consume roughly 2.5 grams of potassium chloride in a short amount of time, they would go under cardiac arrest and die. Because of this, the chemical is even used in lethal injections. 

Natural flavor comes from anything organic like animals, plants, or minerals. They are almost always processed before we eat them, but they do not have anything artificial added to them. Artificial flavor on the other hand have added chemicals or substances like tar from coal or crude oil.

Annato is an ingredient used to give the butter its yellowish-orange color. It is created via using the pulp of a achiote tree. Though it is a natural ingredient it is known for causing a large percent of food allergies. The butter itself is created by churning cream. Before it can be churned, the cream has to be cooled so that it hardens and the globs of fat cluster together. While being churned, the fat globs cluster together into larger and larger clumps. At first these clumps work with the air bubbles that the churning creates to form a foam, but as the clumps increase in size there are less areas to trap the air cells, and so the air bubbles pop creating a runny liquid called buttermilk. The buttermilk is then separated out from the actual butter. After that, the butter is kneaded to remove any remaining liquid and then it is frozen into cubes. Butter contains milk, which many people are allergic to, in addition to having large amounts of saturated fat, which can increase cholesterol. 

TBHQ, also known as tert-Butylhydroquinone, is a preservative chemical that doubles as an antioxidant. There are not negative health benefits for consuming this chemical so long as it is used sparingly. If high quantities of this are consumed, it can cause stomach tumors or damage to one’s DNA. For this reason, the FDA strictly regulates how much TBHQ can be put into any given food. Another preservative used in popcorn is citric acid. Citric acid can cause damage to eyes, skin, or tooth enamel when they are exposed to high quantities of it (like splashing lemon juice all over yourself), but in something like popcorn the chemical is harmless.

Orville Redenbacher’s popcorn is made by ConAgra Foods, which is located in Omaha, Nebraska. Because Nebraska has a large corn market, ConAgra Foods is lucky enough to get their corn locally. This is both cost and environmentally efficient because the corn does not have to be shipped from someplace else, meaning that they do not have to spend nearly as much money/resources on fuel and transportation vehicles. I would guess the other ingredients are shipped, though, because not only do things like palm trees not tend to grow in Nebraska, but factories that produce salt, palm oil, and things like that do not tend to be made in Nebraska. The exception to this would be butter because there are a lot of farms in Nebraska, so it would not be a stretch to think that they order their butter locally. And of course the popcorn is shipped from ConAgra Foods to my local supermarket, so it would be more environmentally friendly to try and figure out if there is a local company from which I could purchase my popcorn.

The corn Orville Redenbacher uses contains herbicides and insecticides which can be harmful for human consumption. These allow for corn to be grown cheaper and easier which in turn allows them to price their popcorn reasonably. Herbicides are useful for killing unwanted weeds that can be harmful to plant growth. In corn’s case, these weeds can include giant ragweed, common cocklebur, fall panicum, and giant foxtail, among other things. Because of the prominence of weeds in corn fields it can be difficult to successfully grow corn organically without devoting a lot of extra labor to it, which in turn will significantly increase the cost of the corn you produce. However, it may be worth the extra cost to buy organically, because herbicides can cause problems such as Parkinson’s and skin rashes, and have enough toxicity to kill many surrounding birds and endanger their populations. Insecticides on the other hand, are used to kill insects that can damage corn crops. It has the same similar issues as herbicides in terms of keeping corn cheap to produce. But insecticides are also detrimental to the environment. They can kill nearby bird species, as well as helpful insects like bees. So again, it may be worth considering paying a bit extra to buy organically. 

The packaging includes a cardboard box in addition to each popcorn bag being individually wrapped in plastic, and of course all each bag of popcorn uses paper, too since that is what the bags are made out of. The bags of popcorn are made and packaged in a typical production line manner. I could not figure out exactly how the production line a ConAgra Foods works or how much their workers get paid or anything like that because they would not tell me, but a lot of factory workers get paid fairly poorly so I would guess the people making money off of this would mainly be the people in high up positions of ConAgra Foods, like the managers and executives. Corn farmers barely get paid enough to live off of and generally have pretty tough working conditions, so I would say this is one of those businesses where the rich get richer and the poor get just enough money to keep them from rebelling.  Though Nebraska actually has a unionized “National Corn Grower’s Association” (NCGA) so they are probably better off than a lot of farmers, especially those that utilize immigrant workers. Here’s the NCGA’s website: http://www.necga.org/. If you are interested in learning more about them, it is actually kind of interesting how close-knit the corn community is in Nebraska.

Overall, I would not say Orville Redenbacher’s popcorn is any worse for people or the environment than any other processed foods. And actually, even though popcorn gets a junk food reputation it is not that terrible for people. But of course it is still better to buy locally when possible.

Carbon Foot Print

Recently I measured my carbon foot print--or attempted to. What I found was that most of the things I was asked about I didn't even know the answer to. I have no idea how much gas, electricity, water, etc. I use per year. But that in and of itself it a fairly important revelation. I mean, these are things that are worth keeping track of (depending on your world view at least). It's hard to be environmentally conscious when you don't know what damage you're doing. I won't post the results or anything because those are meaningless since everything is way off and I just went with the "average" estimates for most things. And I also won't say I gained too much from doing this, though as I said, I did gain something. It's just that, I'm already well aware that my carbon foot print is huge, and am doing what I can to reduce it, so the reminder isn't really necessary in my case. But I will try and keep better track of the specifics.