Climate Change

We all know that the worlds climate is changing. There a a few questions we all need answered. Here's my go at it.

 

Is the climate currently changing? Yes, yes it is and one of the most recent studies shows that humans are "Extremely likely" to be the cause. This means that we're 95% of the reason the world is heating up. The average temperature around the world has risen about 1.3oF in only a century.

 

What does the evidence say about the humans impact in the changing climate? Well, we're cause for all the greenhouse gasses, like Carbon Dioxide and methane, when we do things like destroy forests, burn fossil fuels, or industrial processes. The main reason these greenhouse gasses are being released is the burning of fossil fuels that make our energy. That's the big hitter in this equation. What happens is these gasses get trapped in our atmosphere creating a heat blanket around the world.

 

How is climate change going to affect our society and world? The sea level is rising because the ice caps are melting.The heat is causing the oceans to heat up, which is changing the life in the ocean. The temperature change can also affect the rainfall around the world, some areas are getting more or less rain than normal, which drastically changes the environment. Carbon dioxide does not go away easily, so even though the world is changing and trying to reduce greenhouse emissions, the carbon is going to stick around for years to come, meaning that the globe is going to continue to get warmer. Our summers in Riverside are pretty warm, and they're only going to get hotter with the climate changes. It's not just us, either. All around the world the heat is going to get worse, which makes living in these conditions less enjoyable.

 

Did you know this is actually a huge debate? That humans are (or are not) the major cause of global warming? I didn't either, so this is what I found.

 

The argument is, how do we know humans are to blame? How do we know that the climate change isn't natural? How do we predict how much global warming is actually GOING to happen?

 

What do I think will happen in 50 years? I think that the world will still be about the same as it is now, to be honest. Will it be easy? Probably not, and it's probably going to be terrible. I mean, I know I already hate the summers here. I also believe that if we continue with the changes with our greenhouse gas emission that have already been started, we have a much better chance of keeping things the way they are. It's taken a century for the world to raise 1 degree, in 50 years I don't think the change will affect us as much as we're lead to believe.

 

 

 

 

WASTE!!!

For two days, I tracked how much waste I made. In order to make it slightly simpler for myself, I included our accumulative household waste for the most part. We ended up filling up two trash bags in that amount of time. Yep- that's two 5 gallon trash bags of just trash. At work I only had a few things to throw away, the majority of my trash was made at home. The biggest amount of what we were using were food product packaging, plastic bags for produce and things like mushroom containers, meat wrappings (I'm the only vegetarian in the house), and boxes of empty food items. The other major trash items were things like paper towels and paper plates. We always go through recyclable items such as aluminum cans and glass bottles, and within these two days I could fill a plastic bag with the recyclables.

 

Then- I tried reducing how much waste was coming out of our household for another two days. The first day I tried to reduce our food trash by buying produce that I could put in recyclable bags. When I bought my produce I used reusable bags to minimise the plastic bag usage and packaging. We reduced the amount of soda and adult beverages in the household for these two days. We only produced 4 cans.

 

Unfortunately one of my days was very disrupted, as my puppy got out of the backyard and ran away. :( This was cause for almost no trash created as none of us were home or eating. The only trash that was created was the take out we ordered late that night because I had no energy to cook, nor did I even want to try. The waste that was created that day was tissues. I should have probably used a cloth towel or something of the sort, but my head was not in the game. With that being said, I would like to try this experiment again when I have a more stable testing period. I did notice that we only had one small bag of trash that was created in these two days. I'm not sure if it was due to the changes I attempted to make, or simply because our rhythm was so messed up within the house.

 

Going forward I'm going to make a much stronger attempt of always buying my produce unpacked and with my own bags. I would like to try to reduce meat containers, but being that I'm so picky about meat touching anything else- this will take more time and some trial and error methods to figure out what works for us.

 

 

 

 

 

P.S. I know this is decently unrelated, but this is my Bonnie girl. If anyone has seen her or if anyone does see her, please let me know. There is a reward available. I just want my puppy home. :(

Amy's Farm Field Trip

On Saturday I was lucky enough to enjoy a tour of Amy's farm in Ontario. This adorable farm was located next to multiple dairy farms and I would have never known it was there if it weren't for this field trip.
Amy's farm houses lots of different animals like show cows, pigs, chickens, geese, turkeys (Bread specifically for Thanksgiving), and horses. One of the things I liked the most was that kids in the 4H program in school can keep their show cows at the farm, and the staff there will help take care of the cows.
The farm also had a full garden that had lots of seasonal veggies like radish, kale, rhubarb and lots of herbs. The produce is either put in the store at the farm, or it is used in local restaurants, which I think is great! They have a great system of using all the plants that didn't make it back into the soil, so when they turn the soil it has more nutrients in it.
I learned a lot about farming that I didn't know about. I didn't know that there was going to be an option to pretty much raise your own turkey to eat at Thanksgiving, I thought that was really interesting.
A tour of the farm is highly recommended :)