Gulf Oil Spill one year later!!

Glowing Oil

Under UV light, tar from the oil spill lights up orange-yellow on the beaches of Gulf Islands National Seashore, Florida while clean sand glows purple in a long-exposure picture taken in July.

Scientists who are continuing to monitor Florida's and Alabama's beaches still see traces of the oil via UV light.



Tar Balls Aglow

Looking like gold nuggets, tiny tar balls gleam orange in UV light on a beach in Pensacola, Florida, in April.
Overall, at least for the Florida Panhandle, the environmental prognosis doesn't seem as dire as it was last summer.

Wind Power

 

Wind turbines on a cloudy day

Wind is the movement of air from an area of high pressure to an area of low pressure. In fact, wind exists because the sun unevenly heats the surface of the Earth. As hot air rises, cooler air moves in to fill the void. As long as the sun shines, the wind will blow. And as long as the wind blows, people will harness it to power their lives.
Most wind energy comes from turbines that can be as tall as a 20-story building and have three 200-foot-long (60-meter-long) blades. These contraptions look like giant airplane propellers on a stick. The wind spins the blades, which turn a shaft connected to a generator that produces electricity. Other turbines work the same way, but the turbine is on a vertical axis and the blades look like a giant egg beater.
The biggest wind turbines generate enough electricity to supply about 600 U.S. homes. Wind farms have tens and sometimes hundreds of these turbines lined up together in particularly windy spots, like along a ridge. Smaller turbines erected in a backyard can produce enough electricity for a single home or small business.
Wind is a clean source of renewable energy that produces no air or water pollution. And since the wind is free, operational costs are nearly zero once a turbine is erected. Mass production and technology advances are making turbines cheaper, and many governments offer tax incentives to spur wind-energy development.
the wind energy industry is booming. Globally, generation more than quadrupled between 2000 and 2006. At the end of last year, global capacity was more than 70,000 megawatts. In the energy-hungry United States, a single megawatt is enough electricity to power about 250 homes. Germany has the most installed wind energy capacity, followed by Spain, the United States, India, and Denmark. Development is also fast growing in France and China.
Industry experts predict that if this pace of growth continues, by 2050 the answer to one third of the world's electricity needs will be found blowing in the wind.

#8 Habitat Loss

Habitat loss—due to destruction, fragmentation or degradation of habitat—is the primary threat to the survival of wildlife in the United States.
When an ecosystem has been dramatically changed by human activities—such as agriculture, oil and gas exploration, commercial development or water diversion—it may no longer be able to provide the food, water, cover, and places to raise young. Every day there are fewer places left that wildlife can call home

 

 

 

#8 Earth's Eye

This is an assignment from my English teacher. Earth's Eye reading had alot to do with water and how people take water for grated and dont really realize how big of effect it has on us. I mean without water you wouldnt be able to shower, live, and wash clothes. There are many more ways that water has an inpact on us like the animals that live in the water. Without lakes, rivers, and oceans we wouldnt have frogs, fish, dolfins, pengins, ect. The reading also had to do with land and how properties anymore are just  being pollowed threw knocking down trees and ruiening the habitat for animals that live there! My thought on it is that people anymore dont really care about the nature all they see is dollar bill signs and thinking of themselfs and not how long wildlife has been there!!

#7 Pollution in the Ohio River!

For the second time in three eyars, advocacy group Environment America ranked the Ohio River as the most polluted river in the United States. It receives a lot of toxic discharges. The environment group's last report, released in 2009, also found that the Ohio River had the most pollution discharge in the nation. Its more recent report found that pollution discharge in the Ohio River has since increased by 1 million pounds. While some of the chemicals discharged into the water are harmless, others can be dangerous even in small doses. For example, industrial facilities released more than 274 pounds of a cancer-causing solvent called Tetrachloroethylene, often used by dry cleaners, into waterways in 2010. This is really somthing that is hard to belive that its one of the most polluted river in the United States and that we could be drinking that water and not even knowing it. Makes me wonder if half the people that get cancer might just come from the water we drink. It really goes to show that nobody really knows what they are putting into there body. Just because we may think its safe and good for us do we really know? Its scary to think that little by little even tho we dont see it or might not think we are even condributing to the pollution that its going to effect us later on down the road! Everyone should do a little to help the pollution from not spreading even more!!