Paul Mines' R.E.A.L. Thought (Radical Environmental Awareness Learning)

Back to Posting

2010-04-30T13:48:00.003-04:00

Hey everyone,

So, it seems I took a one year hiatus from this blog thing. Since my last post in March of 2009, I left my job in Charlotte, NC the following June as a chemist working on developing new roof coating formulations and took an internship with the Environmental Engineering Dep't at the Colorado School of Mines; which subsequently developed into a paid position at the beginning of this year. One of the biggest reasons for this move was to move toward a life and career more environmentally focused, with my main focus and interest lying in the pursuit of knowledge of water research. Where, in Charlotte, I was creating new chemicals that only led to further contamination of the water and soil systems; I moved to Colorado to work on water treatment research where I am doing the exact opposite. At CSM, I am a part of the "AQWATEC" Advanced Water Technology Treatment Center, and I encourage anyone reading this to look at my center's website:

AQWATEC

My main focus and project at the moment is working on a small lab-scale version of a treatment process using a membrane biological reactor set-up. The primary concern is to evaluate the effects of different processes that involve the removal of pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and other endocrine disrupting compounds from the treatment process. This was just a quick post to get myself back in the habit of blogging here, more to come as my research moves forward and I learn more about water in general to share with everyone. By the way, the photo is myself in one of the labs with the reactor.

Forget the Oil Crisis, the Water Crisis Will Hit Much Sooner

2009-03-20T11:40:00.004-04:00

I want you to take a look at the next glass of water you drink, where do you think that water out of the tap came from? If you're from Michigan where I grew up, it most likely came from the Great Lakes, no big surprise there. If you're from Arkansas, it probably came from the Grand Prairie's Alluvial Aquifer or the Sparta Aquifer; Florida, the Florida Aquifer; and if you live anywhere from Texas to South Dakota, you're water is coming from the massive Ogallala Aquifer. Now lets think about these aquifers, where is their water coming from? Well, some of it is seeped down through the soil and bed-rock from rain and whatnot and can replenish the aquifers underneath places like Maine fairly rapidly. But the water in the Ogallala Aquifer is 10,000 years old!

Ogallala is an average of about 200 feet thick and approximately the size of Lake Huron, and in parts of Texas, the water level has already dropped about 100 feet since 1940. Whats going to happen when that water used for homes and farm irrigation runs dry? The dust bowl of the 1920's will seem like a walk in the park compared to whats going to happen there in the next century.

Okay, so thats still a little ways away, lets talk about the Florida aquifer. The State of Florida realizes how fast they are depleting it, take a guess at what they are doing to maintain the aquifer's water level. Florida is injecting treated human sewage into it! The hope is that all the gravel and such will cleanse the water before it once again becomes time to draw upwards and use to drink from. Look up "Class 1 Underground Injection Control (UIC)." If you live in Florida, you don't need to wonder why your water tastes so bad anymore. Think of all the antibiotics, medications, tranquilizers, steroids, whatever that humans excrete everyday that Florida is injecting back into Florida's water. All I know is that gravel and bedrock won't filter off most of those synthetic molecules we put into our bodies on a daily basis.

I wish I could think of an answer to this massive growing need for clean and safe water. There are plenty of chemical reactions that release water as an excess product, we could do that, but how expensive might that be?

P.S. Mexico City has fallen 30 feet in the last 100 years from over-use of the aquifer lying underneath its city streets.

China's Zipingpu Dam

2009-02-27T11:21:00.002-05:00

On May 12th of 2008, an 8.0 magnitude earthquake devastated the Central Chinese province of Sichuan. After it was all said and done, somewhere around 87,000 people had died from the quake. Curiously enough, the quake's epicenter was a mere 3.1 miles from the massive reservoir created by the Zipingpu Dam. Zipingpu has a wall of 511 feet, creating a reservoir holding 38.5 billion cubic feet of water, which is about 2.4 trillion pounds! Just before the quake struck, the reservoir's water level dropped extremely fast to a very low level. And it is a well-known fact in the geological community that after massive pressure from a dam reservoir is built up in a seismically active area, a sudden drop in pressure can easily trigger an earthquake.

In an area that is prone to earthquakes already, a dam like this becomes the straw that broke the camel's back. Think, if there is one fault line that has a quake to relieves its own pressure, and then there are say two or three fault lines within a small radius of that epicenter. Those other fault lines load up on the stress created from the original quake. Now you have a fault line pushed to the brink of an earthquake; you build a dam on it, creating a reservoir that slowly fills up, adding more pressure. Then the water level suddenly falls, its like trying to freeze a hot piece of glass, its going to shatter. And before you know it, there are 87,000 dead in Sichuan. China should have known better than to construct such a gargantuan structure over a fault line, this cataclysm was bound to happen at some point.

Communist governments and their urban planning departments are one of the absolute worst problems in the fight for a more sustainable way of life. They do whatever strikes them as a good idea at the moment with almost no regard for the potential horrific consequences of their actions. In my opinion, the Western world should be more worried about China and ousting the communist regime there, rather than dealing with Iraq and trying to establish a new government for them. It seems to me China kills a lot more of its people than Saddam Hussein ever did. Good thing there's oil in Iraq to make it "worth" fighting over.

Sources and more information found at:
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/02/05/china-quake-dam.html
http://www.physorg.com/news152986620.html

1st Summit of 2009

2009-02-20T14:37:00.003-05:00

So I got out last weekend and took advantage of the South's amazingly warm winters, and climbed my first mountain of the new year, Crowders Mountain. It was by far the easiest and lowest elevation mountain I've climbed to date, a pitiful 1,625 feet. Either way, it was close to Charlotte and I needed to get going on my Peak List for 2009. Last year I managed to climb 16 mountains, failing to summit only one of those, the highest mountain on the North Island of New Zealand, Mt. Ruapehu. That was due to a lack of proper gear and running into a pretty brutal blizzard near the crater rim, Tommy and I figured visibility to be down to less than 10 feet. Anyways, I don't mind the facileness of Crowders, I got the first peak of the year out of the way and I need to take advantage what North Carolina has to offer while I'm here.

No Faith in Corn-Ethanol

2009-02-17T16:48:00.000-05:00

Bio-ethanol produced from corn is not all its cracked up to be. It sounds so perfect on the cover, a new fuel to replace this country's dependency on petroleum. America threw millions and millions of dollars into building ethanol production facilities. Countless farmers put all their chips into playing the corn-based bio-fuel hand. We cut down acres upon acres of woodland to make way for new cornfields. And now look, gas prices fell and corn is now selling for a mere half of what it was just one year ago. How many farm foreclosures will their be by the time this is all said and done? America took a chance on corn and lost, miserably. And now its even coming to light that we shouldn't have even put so much faith in corn bio-fuels to begin with.

Until recently, studies only showed the effect bio-fuels had on greenhouse gases, but a recent report released by the Environmental Protection Agency has taken into account both the environmental and health costs of corn-based ethanol. Those costs come out to be 71 cents p/gallon for gasoline and anywhere between 72 cents and $1.45 for corn-based ethanol. One of those major health costs stems from the cultivation of the corn itself. Professor David Tilmam of the University of Minnesota's department of ecology, evolution and behavior states that "Corn requires nitrogen fertilizers and some of that comes on as ammonia, which is volatilized into the air. The ammonia particles are charged and they attract fine dust particles. They stick together and form particles of the size of 2.5 microns and that has significant health impacts. Some of this gets blown by prevailing winds into areas of higher population density - that's where you have the large number of people having the health impact which raises the cost."

America needs to abandon all hope in corn as a reasonable bio-fuel supplying our country's energy needs. Leave the purpose behind growing corn to purely food consumption and keep corn prices stable as they always have been. Any crop with the yield per acreage that corn does has no business whatsoever in the bio-fuel market. Crops like switch-grass and sugarcane need to be the sole focus of bio-fuel enterprise. Take a look at Brazil, they've been manufacturing "flex-cars" that run off pure ethanol or gasoline for years. Approximately one-third of the fuel used in Brazilian automobiles is sugar-cane ethanol! America: 3% ethanol (and mostly from corn). Here's an idea: America finally reduces its dependence on foreign oil, and instead takes up Brazil's bio-fuel model and start producing flex-cars, growing higher yield crops, and importing sugarcane from countries like Brazil rather than importing oil from the corrupt governments of the Middle East.

Sources and more information found at:
http://www.truthout.org/020309EA
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/17/AR2005061701440.html

Brazilian Amazon Deforestation

2009-02-12T13:14:00.000-05:00

One of the greatest sources of species biodiversity and atmosphere oxygenation on this planet is found in the Amazon Jungle of Brazil. Some even have labeled it "the lungs of the world." However, logging and deforestation has for decades been an extremely ravaging and profitable industry in Brazil. And just recently, that industry has once again skyrocketed and countless more acres are being harvested. In a "good" year, Brazil loses about 3,900 square miles of the Amazon to deforestation. That equates to about two or three football fields every minute! In a country that is already the fourth largest emitter of carbon dioxide, this type of behavior is unacceptable. However, the Brazilian government is saying that they plan to cut all deforestation to zero by the year 2015. That statement was released in late September of 2008, so the effects of that effort will not be seen for some time. You can see for yourself the government's monitoring of the Amazon at Brazil's website for the Ministry of Space and Technology.

Sources and more information found at:
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/02/06/brazil-rainforest.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7206165.stm
http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0926-brazil.html

Europe's Summer Heat Wave of 2003

2009-02-12T11:43:00.001-05:00

For those of you who don't believe in global warming, or just think that it is just a normal part of the climatic cycles that control Earth, do some research on the heat wave that ravaged Europe in the Summer of 2003. Initial reports as of August 2003 estimated that the heat wave had taken 35,000 lives, with over 14,000 of those in France alone. Temperatures were reported of 104°F, and remained at those levels for about two weeks. As of the Summer of 2006, after sufficient time had elapsed and the effects had all come full circle; the death toll due to the heat wave was estimated at around 52,000! And this is Europe we are talking about, a continent with, for the most part, the technology and resources to properly handle extreme situations. This heat wave didn't just affect people through heat stroke and exhaustion, crop yields were devastated. In Italy and France, the corn yield dropped by30%. According to agricultural economist David Bittisti of the University of Washington, there is somewhere around a 90% chance that by the year 2100, the typical summers will be hotter than the hottest off the summers from 1900-2006.

Sources used and further information found at:
http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update29.htm
http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2006/Update56.htm
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/01/21/heat-temperatures.html