Experts

Coping with environmental change through research.

teachermanca — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 02:06:40 -0600

It has been nine days since my last entry. Thanks to Michael for his comment. I have been thinking carefully about what I wrote and would like to pose the following for thought and I hope some thoughtful commentary.

It is easy to rant! My first entry was a bit of a rant. The comment was also a bit of a rant. The are so many things that an individual can do to support a more “green” society and so many others pointing out additional avenues to promote a greening of our world. It is relatively easy to put many of these green initiatives into practice.

What is difficult is getting countries, states, industries, and other political entities to take action; initiating policies and programs that respond to the environmental crisis we face. It seems to be a matter of the kinetics of change and because of the lag in action by so many countries, the kinetics seem to favor the increasing degradation of our climate. Global warming, and other serious environmental challenges we face, may be reaching the tipping point. What can we do about relentless degradation of our environment if we are indeed at the tipping point?

Consider the following proposition. We must consider that even if all the initiatives and personal actions to make the world greener, we are in for some serious changes to our environment. Therefore, in addition to fostering individual actions and lobbying our governments and industries to make needed changes, we need to also follow another path. That path is research based on the idea that we will need to develop technologies to cope with the changes to come. Not only green technologies, but also technologies that can allow the peoples of the earth to survive in the altered states of our environment to are projected. I have some ideas of areas of research that need to be exploited. I propose we start a discussion on line to generate research directions that will promote discoveries and techniques that will allow us to cope with the effects of global warming and the increased toxicity of our environment. What are your thoughts?

garment reincarnation process

ralph555 — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 02:57:20 -0600

my name is Ralph and i would like to know if anyone can give me any onformation on the GARMENT REINCARNATION PROCESS. what kinds of machines are used and what are their names and where can i find information on these machines. any help that anyone can give me will be greatly appreciated... please email me as well with your reply and with the information, my email is rafaelg1220@yahoo.com ... thank you for your time and always think positive

" IMAGINATION IS EVERYTHING, IT IS A PREVIEW OF LIFES COMING ATTRACTIONS"

- ALBERT EINSTEIN

" WHETHER YOU THINK YOU CAN OR THINK YOU CANT, EITHER WAY YOU ARE RIGHT"

-HENRY FORD

11th hour news

Ana Irene Burle Rodríguez — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 21:21:28 -0600

Changing our own house makes the difference

the.fayne — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 01:10:39 -0600

renewable energy

fachtna.murphy — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 00:08:11 -0600

www.siendo-humanos.blogspot.com

alvaro — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 12:39:48 -0600

www.siendo-humanos.blogspot.com

Siendo Humanos

¿Por qué elegir estas dos palabras cómo nombre de un blog?
Por que básicamente, para expresar un trabajo ya iniciado, debemos nominarlo. Por ello elegimos SIENDO para mostrar nuestro ser en movimiento, inquieto, abierto, en búsqueda permanente de la Verdad, representando así nuestro ser, nuestro hacer o no hacer, nuestra conducta y sobre todo nuestra actitud ante todo lo que a diario nos toca vivir.Es lo ontológico.Y HUMANOS, esta palabra viene de Humus: Tierra. No sólo hace referencia a la tierra en sí, sino a todo lo que ella representa: la necesidad de un cambio de actitud en el tratamiento al medio ambiente, el proceder de la voluntad humana libre, con advertencia del bien o mal que se hace a la Naturaleza en todas sus manifestaciones.

SIENDO HUMANOS, es una iniciativa dirigida a cambiar la mentalidad de esta sociedad del Siglo XXI por medio de un cambio de actitud.

Más allá del tratamiento de la temática ambiental específica, es un nuevo espacio donde nos proponemos compartir una visión esperanzadora de nuestra realidad ecológica, con toda la sociedad. No sólo limitándonos a plantear la problemática existente, sino, esencialmente, a buscar las soluciones. Debemos empezar a dejar de crear conflictos y confrontar, para aprender a confraternizar y encontrar las alternativas de solución. El saber vencer los problemas no es un arte; el arte está en ser capaces de esquivar la confrontación., desarrollando el ingenio, la creatividad, para no destruir la armonía ecológica. Donde algunos vean la necesidad del encontronazo, otros veremos la salida. Los que encuentran la salida, tienen más talla. Nos hace ser más personas, más HUMANOS, porque hemos dado con una solución sin violencia. Por ello la generosidad y la fraternidad deben aparecer claramente en SIENDO HUMANOS.
Si seguimos sin darnos cuenta de lo que pasa, sin saber en qué consiste la realidad, cómo son las cosas, necesariamente se repiten los errores, se insiste en fórmulas cansadas, se dejan pasar oportunidades, se acentúa la pobreza y sería menos posible un mejor tratamiento del medio ambiente. SIENDO HUMANOS habrá de ser entonces, un espacio que procurará desarrollar una manera nueva de entender los problemas, tratando de:

· Cambiar, básicamente, la actitud que tenemos con respecto a la naturaleza:
· Recuperar el optimismo con la confianza en nuestras capacidades y posibilidades;
· Entender lo que ocurre y cómo y por qué ocurre;
· Ver en el mundo no sólo acechanzas y amenazas sino también, y sobre todo, las oportunidades;
· Abrirnos, desde nuestra cultura, a la fascinante realidad global para integrarse a ella;
· Apoyarnos en la ciencia y en la razón en lugar de hacerlo en la magia o los seres providenciales, pero siempre con respeto a Dios, como el gran Hacedor, puesto que existe un correlato entre Ciencia y religión.
· Corregir el rumbo con agilidad y la gracia de la inteligencia;
· Reducir con urgencia los graves problemas ambientales;
· Capacitarse con la constancia, la lectura, el estudio, el trabajo;
· No dejar pasar el tren de la Historia, que nunca vuelve atrás.
· Empezar a construir y hacer que aparezcan nuevas maneras de enfrentar la problemática del medioambiente sin esperar de una decisión en las alturas;
· Compartir generosamente lo conseguido y la forma de hacerlo,
· Proceder con fraternidad,
· Luchar contra la pobreza y sus raíces, contra la ignorancia, la manipulación, la indiferencia
· Pero sobre todo tratarse BIEN.

Si en este mundo se viviera SIENDO HUMANOS, nos trataríamos todos bien, con cortesía. Esto es, básicamente, PENSAR EN LOS DEMAS. Trataremos desde este espacio de recuperar y alentar la cortesía, dar la palabra, escuchar, respetar a los mayores que hicieron mucho y a los jóvenes que inician el difícil sendero de la vida, pensar en los demás. No como un manual de buenas maneras sino como un método de cohesión social a aplicarse como un propósito de urgencia.
En SIENDO HUMANOS aprenderemos a practicar el ASOMBRO. Porque si no sabemos admirar aquello que está bien hecho, acertado, inteligente, creador, habremos elegido la mediocridad y jamás valoraremos todo lo que el medioambiente representa en nuestra vida
SIENDO HUMANOS empieza hoy, a caminar …como un espacio abierto, receptivo, generoso, profundo y ancho.
Al cambiar nuestra mirada y nuestra conciencia; si logramos que se libere de ideas petrificadas, para llenarla de ideas creativas, el nuevo gesto, el cambio de la actitud, será posible y nos dará la opción de la construcción de un camino común, con posibilidades de realización y felicidad.
Si cada mañana, al iniciar el día, lo hacemos SIENDO HUMANOS, nuestra vinculación con el mundo, nuestra interacción con los hombres y el medio ambiente, empezará a hacernos sentir en armonía con nosotros mismos y pero sobre todo..... con los demás.

Bienvenidos a SIENDO HUMANOS

11th Hour Expert, Dr. Theo Colborn receives the 2008 Goteborg Award for Sustainable Development

11thhouraction — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 18:48:45 -0600

The Endocrine Disruption Exchange (TEDX) is proud to announce that Theo Colborn has been chosen to receive this year’s prestigious Göteborg Award. The award was founded in 1999 by the Swedish city of Göteborg and several interested companies. Its purpose is to “stimulate and encourage strategic work for national and international sustainable development”.

Dr. Colborn has worked tirelessly over the past 20 years to bring the science of endocrine disruption to the forefront of public health policy in the United States and abroad. As the founder and president of TEDX, she has developed an organization dedicated to providing others with the sound scientific evidence they need to prevent further harm to our health and our environment from endocrine disrupting chemicals.

This is the ninth Göteborg Award and the prize sum is one million Swedish crowns. The award is shared by Dr. Colborn, European Commission Vice President Margot Wallström, environmental engineer Jan Ahlbom and toxicologist Ulf Duus. Please see the attached press release for more details of the award. For more information on TEDX and the pioneering work of Dr. Colborn, go to www.endocrinedisruption.org.

11th Hour Action congratulates Dr. Colborn for this award recognizing her important work. To learn more about Theo Colborn and her work please check out the Ideas and Experts page.

http://11thhouraction.com/ideasandexperts/theocolb...

ALL plastic in the ocean is WRONG

oceanrev — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:34:12 -0500

Are 'microplastics' marine pollutants?
Experts start to ask if tiny particles might be clogging ocean food chain
By Jessica Marshall Discovery Channel
We've all heard about sea turtles, dolphins or seabirds dying from entanglement in six-pack rings, plastic bags or other detritus - or from bellies full of mistakenly swallowed plastic. But some marine researchers are concerned about the effect that much smaller bits of plastic may be having on the seas.
So-called "microplastics" may concentrate pollutants, be ingestible by the ocean's tiny denizens - from zooplankton to filter feeders like clams and mussels - and move up the food chain.
A group of scientists gathered this month to identify what's known about this problem and where more research is needed.
"We know that stuff breaks down, and as it breaks down, it forms smaller and smaller pieces of plastic," said workshop organizer Joel Baker of the University of Washington, Tacoma. "But there's another story, and that is that there are some processes that either purposefully or inadvertently create microplastic particles in their own right."   One such source is nurdles, the little plastic pellets used as the raw material that's molded or extruded into plastic products.
A growing source is tiny plastic spheres - less than a millimeter across, and in some cases just microns in diameter - used in new industrial abrasives or in cosmetics as exfoliants, Baker said.
"Because they're used as abrasives, presumably they're pretty hard and pretty resilient to breakup," he said. "The general rule of thumb is, if it doesn't break down pretty quickly, it ends up in the ocean. We don't have any way of monitoring for them. We have no idea, really, if they're having any impact on any organisms."
Estimates of exactly how many particles are in the ocean give a wide range.
"You tend to have numbers that are much less than one per cubic meter," Baker said. "But if you do that in terms of the number of pieces per square kilometer of sea surface, it's tens of thousands."   Amphipods, lugworms, barnacles and mussels take up microplastic in aquarium experiments. Fish and birds in the wild have been found with microplastic pieces in their bodies. But the extent and effect of this ingestion is not yet known.   Plastic specks in the oceans appear to adsorb poorly water-soluble pollutants, such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and persistant pesticides like DDT. This might give creatures that ingest pellets a superdose of toxins that can accumulate up the food chain.   "There's some indication that when the animal ingests those, they not only get the physical damage to the gut, but those pollutants can desorb into the animal," said workshop participant Douglas Helton of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Marine Debris Program, in Silver Spring, Md.   On the other hand, the pellets might act like pollutant sponges that mop up the contaminants and sequester them out of harm's way, Baker said.   One study presented at the meeting suggested that the amount of pollutant accumulated by one type of marine worm decreased when more plastic was added to sediment in an aquarium, suggesting the latter mechanism may work in that case.   One of the outcomes of the workshop was to identify areas where the greatest effects are likely to be seen.   "There are probably areas where it floats on the surface, and those are lagoons and marshes," Baker said. "The other place is coastal urban sediments, where it has settled to the bottom."   These are good starting points for additional research, because if microplastics are causing problems, such locations should show the effects most directly, he added. In the meantime, taking steps to reduce plastic debris - large and small - is a good idea, Helton said. "I don't think there's any right amount of plastic to dump in the ocean."   (c) 2008 Discovery Channel URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26994478/

HACEMOS CONSUMO RESPONSABLE

indi — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 21:11:24 -0500

Buenos Aires Action Group

NO ACEPTAMOS BOLSAS DE PLASTICO

indi — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 20:00:44 -0500

Buenos Aires Action Group