The Fishbowl Earth Project

Over at NOAA's  climate.gov  site, there is a great explanation of why carbon dioxide matters in our atmosphere.  What is carbon dioxide, anyway?  Why is it a "greenhouse gas," and why are the effects of C02 more profound than other greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide?   Greenhouse gasses are capable of storing heat and releasing it over time, just like a greenhouse.   Charles Lucien Bonaparte  gets credit for the modern greenhouse design, which is a structure with a transparent roof and walls that allow light from the sun to come in and warm the contents (earth, plants, etc.) of the greenhouse, which causes the temperature inside the greenhouse to rise. Carbon dioxide lasts the longest  of Earth’s  long-lived greenhouse gases . It absorbs heat and stores it, and then releases it over time, which heats up the Earth.  Normally, that's a good thing: Without C02 in our atmosphere, the average temperature...

Un-perma-frost? Frost? Water? It's hard to escape the sudden flurry of articles about the Arctic right now, like this one, in which scientists are "shocked" by permafrost melting 70 years sooner than expected.  I come from a Scientific Family, so I can tell you from personal experience with various family members that scientists don't get shocked very often.  Well, maybe electrical engineers.  Zing. In my experience, the pendulum swung the other way - stoicism, reserve, and calculation would be good adjectives.  Like the Professor on Gilligan's Island. Not shocked. That seems bad.  Maybe the scientists are shocked by How Wrong they were in predicting that the permafrost would melt like this 70 years from now.  I've been seeing a fair amount of that watching the news lately.  The Forecaster will bravely make a forecast about the temperature for the day, only to be proven wrong by the actual high reported by the evening news.  That s...

Hi!  Welcome to Fishbowl Earth.  The idea behind this blog is simple: imagine that instead of people walking around a planet, we're actually fish inside of a fishbowl.  As more and more of us fill it up, our environment works harder and harder to keep up, until it ultimately fails.  What's a poor fishy to do? Well, at the aquarium store they sell stuff for keeping a clean, aerated fish bowl (or tank) that keeps the environment nice and fresh for fish.  Filters, air stones, pumps, nets, sponges, snails, and probably some other environment-fresheners I'm not thinking of to avoid... The Toxic Tank. You know, when the tank gets all green and nasty with algae blooms and the water turns toxic and the fish can't breathe in their own water.  Scientists are tackling these problems for the Earth, and proving (at least at the experimental level) that solutions will work - IF deployed at scale.  And scale takes money. Without funding, these ideas are s...

When I was a kid, my Dad carried around a big, white handkerchief.   It was usually in his pocket, so when he had to sneeze, he would pull it out, and ha-choo!   Sneeze accomplished, the square of cloth would go back in the pocket, until my Mom washed it, and then the cycle repeated itself.   Come to think of it, he had a stack of these hand kerchiefs.   I never got one.   Birthdays came and went, milestones were celebrated, I graduated from high school, but a handy hanky was never bestowed upon me.   Instead, I was relegated to using tissue when I had to sneeze, if I was lucky.   Otherwise… it was my hand or the wind. Ha-CHOO!   Ew, now I have to wash my hand. HA-Choo!   Sorry, huge crowd of people I happen to be standing in. HA-CHOO!   Almost made it to the box of tissues in the kitchen - sneezed on dinner instead. Fast forward to today: Everyone sneezes in their elbow!     What a practical...