The Climythology of America

Myth: Deforestation leads to less snow

There has always been myths. This story is about the myths of amereica before they were either proven right or wrong. The story states that europeins even had myths of america before thay came, which i could see. All the hype of new land just waiting to be discovered, who wouldnt want to talk about it. And when people talk, little white lies start. Those lies become popular and then turn to myths. One story in this passage got me thinking. Climate change was one big myth. In 1771, it was said that cutting down trees for wood was exposing soil. the soil is a darker color so it didnt radiate heat, but absorbed it. at the same time, winters were having less snowfall. this led people to believe that the warmer ground from soil being exposed led to the snow melting faster and longer summers.This is funny. I say this because me and my friends say our own myths, like global warming has shifted the months, it is often warmer in novemeber than what i remember when i was a child. I remember novembers where it snowed, but now it doesnt snow until december. But in reality, it is probally just a random occurance that the planet has. How many people in the last 250 years have made there ouw theories on climate change? Im sure way more than we can count. Untill there is a recorded history on weather climates over a thousand years or more, all these theories will be is myths.

A Catastrophe Notes



John Tyndall



John Tyndall could well be one of the first people to know about the atmosphere scientifically. He set out to study the sky in 1820, when he left school. His studies led him to find out about the greenhouse effect. This is essential for life. The greenhouse effect helps keep the perfect amount of energy in the atmosphere. where does this energy come from? the sun. Our star give out more energy in a second than ever human has ever made biologically. To sustain life, earth has to send and receive the same amount of energy, which was fine, but recently with global warming, the greenhouse effect is wearing off and when this happens, the planet warms up. This is not new information, Tyndall was the first to aknowledge this and that was almost 200 years ago. if we continue this trend of warming the planet and leaving it for someone else to take care of, eventually were not going to have this beautiful green and blue planet.

A warmer sky

Al Gore's Inconevient Truth Movie

This week in class we watched the movie An Inconvenient Truth. A couple weeks ago we read a short story with some quotes from Al Gore about global warming and i learned so much more during the movie than the short story. The movie had some of the same facts but it gave visual representations. I am a visual learner and I grasped so much more during the movie. One thing that he said that really intreagued me is that 20 years ago, scientists said that the glacirs in antartica wouldnt melt for another hunderd years, but in 2005, when the movie was released, the giant ice caps already started melting into the ocean. When the ice melts, it fills the ocean with water, raising the sea level. I just saw the movie Cloud Atlas. In one part of the movie, the setting was in New Soul, South Korea into the near future. New Soul was at least a hundred feet about Soul, because Soul was flooded when the ice caps were melted. I didnt think much of it, untill I saw Al Gore's movie and he said in areas like China, Russia and Korea would be effected greatly and the millions of people living there would be homeless due to the flooding. I hope that Humans can work together to prevent this or if the ice caps do melt, we as a species can make some new device that is like a giant ice ray to re freeze the water in the arctic to bring the flooding down again.

Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth

Al Gore did a lot of studies on global warming and with all of the evidence that he found, he mad a movie and a book. All Gore is a former vice president. What he found is that humans are causing global warming. According to the film, stronger hurricanes are increasing. Last week in class, we watched a video on Hurricane Katrina. The video showed how hurricans are made. One of the vital causes of them is the warm water. the warmer the water in the hurricans path, the stronger it gets. So this idea is completly practical. Global warming is melting the ice and making our oceans warmer, so it is 100% a fact that storms will be getting stronger the warmer the water gets. Another main tompic is how if global warming increases, the oceans will be warmer and could melt greenland. Greenland is a giant icecube almost the size of the main United States. if it melts, it coulr raise the water 20 feet. This would be catastrofical for the islands and countries only a few feet above sea level. the people living there would die or have to move, only populating the land elsewhere,  which would be very bad for the overpopulation on cities. This story has opened my mind on global warming and i now think differently when I see emissions leaving vehicals at stop lights.

A Warm Christmas?

The seasons are changing yet again and I am looking foreward to the change. The time changed yesterday and I went to work at four o'clock and it was almost dark, they had me working drive through, which is where i hand out food to the customers. It got dark and cool around 4:30 and which is quite different from just a month ago when it got dark around 6 or 7. I handed out one order inperticular and im not sure if it was the hot chocolate or the chilly temperature outside, but i felt like i was working on winter break, just before christmas. This intreged me because it was at least 50 degrees outside and there was no snow what so ever. tAs i thought about it more, i realized that 10 years ago there was snow every december, except last year. Last year was supposed to be one of the worst years of snowfall in recoreded history, but it only snowed in blakets a few times. So does this mean that global warming is changing the seasons? Winter and summer both got warmer. Global warming enthusists have been warning us about this for years, but most accept it like its written in stone. I believe that if we all try hard enough, we can help stop global warming in its path.

Hurrican Sandy

Just as we start learning more about hurricanes like Katrina which happened in 2007, another one hits the United States and its' name is Sandy (Left). The two storms have a lot of simularities. they both have flooded the areas that they hit leaving nasty water within buildings and the streets. Hurricane Sandy has done some serious damage to New Yorks subway system, flooding it severly (Right). This time, red cross was able to help out a decent amount of victoms that needed it. This Storm has brought water up for over a mile in some places, stunning residents. The storm has also brought snow to areas all over the East Coast. New Jersey has some sever flooding, it has sank rollercoasters and eye witnesses have reported sharks in the flooded water. To me, that is a very scary thought, imagine, you go onto your doorstep to look into the river infront that was just a week ago, a street, to see a sharks fin flying through the water. Hopefully the coast guard will start draining the cities so those people can go back to their daily lives.

Story of Stuff

My teacher showed my class a video a couple weeks ago on an organization called The Story of Stuff Project. It is a website that informs the public on what the corporations are doing behind our backs. I decided to wright my second research paper on this. Most of my research was directly from their website which came to be a quite valuable source. Story of Stuff is famous for their online videos that are easy to watch. Story of Stuff sends 100 dvds of the videos to schools and buisness every month. The videos range from facts about water bottles to cosmetics to cap and trade. The organization started when Annie Leonard (left) wondered what was happening to trash. So she investigated and found surprizing material. With the information she found, she teamed up with Free Range Studios to make short easy to understand online videos. Their first video about trash got 50,000 views real quick and that surprized her and her team. now, just five years later the video has over 5,000,000. Story of Stuff is growing day by day and anybody can join or donate. Donations are helpful because Story of Stuff is a non-profit organization and there are a lot of costs to run this organization. Its quick and simple, for more information on Story of Stuff, go to www.storyofstuff.com.

Natural Selection.

Charles Darwin(right) is famous for his theories on natural selection. I personaly liked this story. I have always been intreeged in evolution and this story had it all when it came to facts. The main point of the story is that evolution is real. All animals have evolved over time, but the thing is that evolution takes a long time to work. If a bird has to migrate for a reason like climate change for instance, the bird will have to find new sources of food. If the bird cant find food, it dies. That means that the bird couldnt adapt quick enough so in a sence, it wasn't worthy of living. It is cold but true. One point Darwin made in the story is if a bird needed to crack a nut with his beak, then he would need a strong beak. If he didnt have a strong enough beak, he would die, but if the bird adapted quick enough and could crack the nut to get the food inside, it would live on and produce more offspring with its qulaities. So now the offspring can and will be able to crack the nuts and the species will live on. Natural selection can be bull sometimes also. If the animal was in the wrong place at the wrong time and dies, technolically it wasnt fit to survive, but the animal could have lived if it wasnt there. Anotehr example is that birds hatch from eggs, but not all eggs are the same thickness. So two identical birds could be in two different thickness shells and only one could make it out if they wernt strong enough. I believe in evolution and that all animals including man have evolved from primordial states.

Evolution of Man.

Watching the movie Food Inc. changed the way that I think about the food industry. After hearing what happened with Kevin, how he ate meat that was contaminated and ended up dying makes me think about food differently. The "farms" that hold the animals are not very sanitarty and are more like factories and the animals are the product being produced. The movie said that the same places where the animals eat is also where they poop. The food then is going to become contaminated and the cows will still eat the food because they dont know any better. On top of that, they feed the cows corn. The thing is that the amount of corn they are feeding the cows causes the bacteria to stay in the animal because the corn holds it in there instead of coming out the end and the bacteria ends up becoming E. coli. When they cut up the animals to make into meat, the E. coli stays in the meat and is fed to humans, this is how kevin died. The movie made it clear that feeding cows only corn is bad and that we need to find another resource to feed them. One part that amazed me was that some cows have holes in them to where people can reach there hands inside the cows stomach to get food out. Seeing this movie has opened my eyes. All i know is that I am going to be careful with what I eat and not eat much fast food anymore.

The story Atomic Dreams, by Jason Mark, shows the contravercity in atomic power. The story tells of the pros and cons of nuclear power. My biggest concern about nuclear energy is how dangerous it can be. in 1986, a nuclear power plant in Russia blew up, killing thousands and aslo poisioning the land for thousands of years. This scares me because nuclear blasts can effect areas 40 miles away. I live in a town called Manteno, and in a town, Braidwood, which is 26 miles away has a nuclear plant. The story also sais that it is a possibility for terrists to blow up nuclear plants in america. The braidwood plant is close enough to do damage in manteno if it blew up and that scares me. On the other hand, nuclear power is a good source of power. The story sais that it is cleaner than natural gas and gives a lot more energy that natural gas. Those are two very good reasons that it is greatly useful. The cheeper cost is great because the economy is in a slump right now and so the cheeper energy is great. On top of that is the cleaner energy. The environment is slowly suffering because of all the toxics we are putting into the atmosphere, cleaner enegy helps out there also. A big downside to nuclear power plants is the inital cost of the reactor can be up to $4,000,000,000. Thats a lot of zeroes to be writing on checks for countless reactors across the country. I think that Nuclear power is good and not as scary as everyone makes it sound, the only thing is to make sure we are careful with it.

The New Wilderness Land Grab

After reading The New Wilderness Land Grab by Elizabeth Arnold, I got a little inspired. The article talked about how the last years have changed the way we think about the environment. before, the environment was just unconquered land, but now that we see how important it is, there are organizations trying to save it. Even the government took steps to help out. Making forests national parks was a great idea. It lets animals live freely and also makes sure that we don't cut down too much land. The trees being cut down effect us greatly because they give oxygen and that's a necessity. I am glad that there are national parks and forest preserves because it helps the environment out and this way, not as many animals are homeless.

English Paper

My teacher has given our class a research paper assignment on our landscape or the environment. I have decided to write my paper on how overpopulation is effecting the environment. In the paper I will state how the grow in population has come to be, what if it keeps up, what is happening to our resources and the landscape itself. Overpopulation is very bad in countries like China. There are so many people so close together, that it has become illegal to have more than one child. My paper will address ideas like this one and others.

The Purpose

This blog is for my English class. I chose the name SirCrowlzalot because my really good friend used to call me that as a nickname before he went away to college, I liked the name so much, I used it for my twitter username. Now I decided to carry on the name on my blog. What I am trying to achieve with this blog is to express my ideas with the class. The blog to me is an online journal. Some teachers have a question on the bored when students walk in the class and they would have five to ten minutes to wright there responses in there notebooks. At the end of the semester, they would turn it in for the teacher to grade. For this class, its a relative similar thing, just on blogger.com. My teacher and classmates can look on my blog whenever they want, they can comment on my posts and have a little discussion about our posts or what is happening in class.