Those Dang Natural Disasters...

Throughout the presentations, I've learned the real destruction natural disasters cause.  They travel through cities killing many people and animals.  They also destroy the property of a lot of citizens.  I've also learned that they can come in a second without a warning.  They can also be prepared for if noticed before it occurs.  The devastation can be truly terrible as you can see.  

The PBS Now Sea Climate Change Thing

The president of Maldives thinks the sea level is going to rise because ice caps are melting due to the climate change.  If the sea was really heating up, it would cause other problems as well.  The sea animals could be in a lot of danger.  This is why he shouldnt be worried because these things would have happened already.

Global Warming

The video we watched on global warming was also very boring.  I dont know why we was forced to watch it.  All it really said was that global warming isn't caused by humans.  I agree with this.  I think global warming has more to do with a naturally occuring type of thing.  I didn' get to see the first part of the video because I had a softball game.  So i dont really know what happened on that part.

Natural Disaster Documentary

Since Mr. Chahl is forcing me to catch up on work, I guess I have to do this...

 You see, we watched this one documentary that had a guy in it that I couldn't stand to listen to.  He had a terrible accent that irritated me.  The documentary was about natural disasters.  It explained how osme natural disasters can be preventable due to our modern technology advancements, but others may not be.  It mainly talked about how tsunamis and earthquakes can be detected ahead of time.  This is great because it can save many more people from these horrible events.  An example of one of the unpreventable events would be the earthquake in Japan in March of 2011.  They had no time to prepare for a HUGE earthquake.  Even worse, they had to time to get away from the tsunami that was coming their way an hour later due to the earthquake.  Japan has a wall that protects them from tsunamis.  However, they were not lucky this time.  The tsunami waves cleared the wall easily.  This wasn't the end of the disaster either.  The next day, a nuclear powerplant exploded and created a radiation leak. Yeah, it sucks to have been in Japan during that.

Water Pollution Is Butt.

Have you ever thought about what kinds of pollutants are in your water? Water pollution is any chemical, physical or biological change in the quality of water that has a harmful effect on any living thing that drinks, uses, or lives in it. Their are different types of water pollution. For example: nutrient pollution means that there is too much nutrients and it creates weeds and algae. Oxygen depletion is when too much biodegradable material is added to water, the number of micro organisms increase and use up the available oxygen. Ground water pollution is when drinking water coming from aquifers are polluted. Surface water pollution is when oceans, rivers, or lakes become polluted. We detect water pollution by small samples of water can be analyzed in a lab to detect water pollution or they can find water pollution through organisms that live in purified water. One of the largest water pollution disasters has recently happened. It was the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

YES, Cow Poop Is Good.

In some places people are using cow poop is being used to make energy.  This is done by a machine called a digestor.  There are only two dozen in the United States.  The farms that own these get paid by the electric company to run home in the town where the digestor is placed.  The digestor also makes many byproducts as one farmer said.  It heats his house, his milk house, makes bedding for his cows, fertilizes his farms, dries his corn and pasteurize the milk he feeds his calves.  Not only that, it saves him MONEY.  All the digestor does is transfer tiny bacteria particles to methane used for power, and it leaves behind liquid for fertilizing and a solid for cow beds.  It was created so that there was a non-polluting way to get rid of poop, and a form of clean energy in which the U.S. is in need of.  The only downfall is whether the machine will produce water pollution because of the run-off of cow poop from the farms.  The process done by the digestor can be done with both cow and piggy poop.  Even though it takes 20 days for one batch of poop to be completed it is still a large money saver, and a clean energy act.  I'm sure their will be more used around the U.S.

Oil Spills & What Not.

1.) A containment dome is a 4 story, 7o ton structure that BP plans to lower into place over one of the three leaks to catch the escaping oil and allow it to to be pumped to the surface.  Another method they wanted to use was to install a shut off valve at the site of one of the leaks.  They also wanted to cement and seal the well to control the pressure from the oil and gas beneath the surface.
2.) Blowout preventers are devices that are meant to seal leaks.  It didn't work because natural gas started to come through the wells.
3.) Halliburton and Transocean have vested their time and interest in this problem.  BP leased the rig from Transocean and Halliburton was providing several services for the rig.  Transocean can be faced with large overhang of investor worry.
4.)They need to be less worried about how much money is spent and more about the safety of workers and environment.

Chemical Pollution in Water

There was seven ions we were testing for in our experiment.  These include:  Carbonate, Chloride, Chromate, Iron, Lead, Phosphate, and Sulfate.  First we tested the water from our water fountains in school.  None of the tests came out positive.  It was clean, suprisingly.  Therefore even if it looks nasty and cloudy, it may not be containated.  The second thing we tested was water from a faucet in Fairchance.  We did suspect it was polluted because it was kind of purple, but it turns out there was no pollutants in the water.  We didnt find anything unordinary in the water, so maybe we wont die from our disgusting water.

TOO MUCH CHROMIUM=BAD

The types of chromium discussed in the movie Erin Brockovich was chromium three and chromium six (hexavalent chromium).  Chromium three was okay to have in the water, but the water in Hinkley was contaminated by chromium six.  It got into all of the water going through the city.  Chromium six leads to a large amount of serious health problems.  These health risks include:   skin rashes, upset stomachs, ulcers, respiratory problems, weakened immune systems, kidney and liver damage, alteration of genetic material, lung cancer, and DEATH.  As you can see chromium six is not good, but on the other hand too much of chromium three is not that big of a threat to your health.  It only causes mild skin rashes.  It's probably not a good idea to go around drinking chromium six, just saying.

My water could kill me...

I live in Fairchance and my water comes from a reservoir down the road from my house.  It's disgusting, and yes there is garbage in it.  No one wants to get a glass of water, and it's brown but guess what?  That happens constantly in Fairchance.  While doing some research, I've found out that my water contains things that could affect my health.  They have found three chemicals in Fairchance's water.  One of these chemicals is Nitrate, and it was detected around 2004.  My water also contains haloacetic acids (HAA) and trihalomethanes.  Haloacetic acids are compound usually containing chlorine and bromine  They can kill tissues of the mucous membranes and upper respiratory tracts.  Other harmful effects are sore throat, vomiting or diarrhea.It is mainly put in water to disinfect it so you won't die, but in reality you could probably die from too much HAA.  The other chemical, trihalomethanes, is pretty much chloroform.  Congratulations if you live in Fairchance and drink their water, your drinking chloroform!  It has the same effects as the HAA.  Therefore, I recommend drinking bottled water just to be safe.