The things NASA sees

Came across this article today, and thought I would share it. Now I know we all think that a nice warm spring, summer, fall, and winter are nice, but there are consequences...




The Earth's rapid warming has pushed temperatures to their hottest level in nearly 12,000 years and within a hairbreadth of a million years, a study by the U.S. space agency NASA showed.

Global warming, which has added 0.2 degree Celsius (0.36 degree Fahrenheit) per decade over the past 30 years, has caused temperatures to reach and now pass through the warmest levels in the current interglacial period, which lasted almost 12,000 years, according to the study led by James Hansen, a leading climatologist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

The study, published in the September 26 of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said that Earth was now within about 1.0 C (1.8 F) of the maximum estimated temperature of the past million years.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration researcher said that was the most important finding of the team's research.

"That means that further global warming of 1.0 degree Celsius defines a critical level. If warming is kept less than that, effects of global warming may be relatively manageable. During the warmest interglacial periods the Earth was reasonably similar to today," Hansen said.

"But if further global warming reaches 2.0 or 3.0 degrees Celsius, we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet than the one we know."

Hansen pointed out that the last time it was that warm was in the middle Pliocene, about three million years ago, when the sea level was estimated to have been about 25 meters (80 feet) higher than today.

The researchers recalled that a study published in 2003 by the British science journal Nature shows that 1,700 varieties of plants and animal and insect species had migrated toward the North Pole at an average 6.0 kilometers (3.7 miles) per decade in the second half of the 20th century.

a shot at

I found this amateur video on youtube and thought it was very fitting for the blog. Smart Smart girl

Some of them are getting it.

This past week after receiving my monthly subscription of Canadian Living and getting a few flyers in the mail, I realized that some big companies out there are "getting it". Take for example the Cotton Ginny Flyer I got. Made from 100% recycled paper and 30% post consumer waste paper. The flyer gets even better!!! It is promoting their new line of ORGANIC COTTON!!!! The inside leaflet says Sustainable style and one of the pages has this great little blurb.

"Organic. Cotton Ginny is on a step by step mission to reduce environmental impact of textile products by supporting farmers who grow organic cotton. We are constantly looking for new avenues to use organic cotton in garments that suit your casual lifestyle..."

I'm saying KUDOS to Cotton Ginny as well as every other business out there that is embracing the "GREENER lifestyle" We will win this battle one step at a time.

Things you look for

I am seriously considering running for candidate in the MacLeod Riding for MP and these thoughts run thru my head.... "what is important for you as a citizen, to have in your MP?" Is there criteria? personality traits? values that are important? What would make the best candidate in a rural riding? It is a huge commitment, but it is something that I strongly believe in. Time will tell...

A united front

I know that I am going to sound fictional when I write this, but sometimes I think the most positive thing we can do is dream. I hear daily about inequality, oppression, race, sexual orientation, loneliness and people divided. I read of people involved in causes that DO matter saying things that if they thought about it just for a moment, would realize that these words actually hurt their cause. "why aren't there more women involved in blah blah blah?" "when do the oppressed get to be represented?" "where is the diversity in this?"....

Everyone in this country DOES have a voice. Everyone in this country CAN make a difference. Everyone in this country has someone that will speak out for them!!! Does it occur to people that we are all HUMANS? We all deserve to be heard and when I stand up and talk or type about issues, I am not simply standing for myself or as a women or a mother. I am standing up as a citizen of Canada, wanting to protect and give hope to every Canadian. Whether they are man, woman, child, black, white, christian, jewish, heterosexual, homosexual, rich, poor, isolated or needed. Everyone in this country has equal rights and equal opportunity. If you can not speak up for something you believe in, have someone else speak up for you. But don't think that just because you stood quietly, that you are being oppressed. We all have the tools, and it is our choice how to use them.

a few words to inspire

We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children. ~Native American Proverb


The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river. ~Ross Perot

It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment. ~Ansel Adams

The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too. ~Chief Luther Standing Bear

There is hope if people will begin to awaken that spiritual part of themselves, that heartfelt knowledge that we are caretakers of this planet. ~Brooke Medicine Eagle

A society is defined not only by what it creates, but by what it refuses to destroy."

— John Sawhill
former president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy

Only when the last tree has been cut down,
Only when the last river has been poisoned,
Only when the last fish has been caught,
Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.

— Cree Indian Prophecy

"When the earth is sick and polluted, human health is impossible.... To heal ourselves we must heal our planet, and to heal our planet we must heal ourselves."

— Bobby McLeod (Koori activist, aboriginal)

I knew there was a reason

Doesn't it ever cross your mind if these big corporations do anything to help the environment? Help humanity? or help fix what we've broken? Well in doing a little bit of research on my Bank TD Canada Trust, I found that they truly do care for many reasons and here is one that got my attention.

http://www.wwf.ca/HowYouCanHelp/GCSC.asp

TD will be keeping my business for a very long time.

really healthy food choices

Now of course a lot of you are thinking that I am talking about no more chips, chocolate or sugar. Come on do you think I'd give up chocolate??? I don't think so, but I did come across a great article in "Mother Earth News" that give 20 easy tips for buying healthier food that is organic and local. Two very important things because buying organic keeps harmful pesticides, GMO's and toxins out of your body and buying locally supports the small businesses in society that are being chomped up by the BIG BOX stores. Start small, because I love Walmart too, but if each one of us does these little things, they will make huge differences to our bodies (we be healthier I promise) and to our environment. Now saving both of those important things is a great idea don't ya think!!??!!

1. Start somewhere. Begin by taking baby steps, such as committing to spend $10 a week on locally grown foods.


2. Do it now. With gardens and farmers markets in full swing, August has emerged as high season for local eating. In 2005, the first week of August was proclaimed “Eat In, Act Out Week” by The Food Project, a Massachusetts-based program in which more than 100 teenagers produce 250,000 pounds of locally grown food each year. This year’s dates are July 31 through August 6, and Eat In, Act Out Week has already become an international phenomenon. Last year, Food Project volunteers took to the streets of Boston to hand out locally grown carrots. In Vancouver, British Columbia, teen local-food activists descended on area farmers markets, giving out informative ribbons and great recipes. Within a week, visits to the British Columbia Farmers’ Markets Web site doubled.


3. Phase in gradually. “As an ‘everything in moderation’ kind of guy, I’d find a strict local food diet fascinating but obsessive and intimidating,” says Peter Marks, program coordinator for theAppalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project in Asheville, N.C. He suggests a more gradual approach: “Every week or month, replace one food in your diet that’s provided by a big, faraway company with a locally grown food.”


4. Become a tailgate shopper. Check out farmers markets, roadside farm stands and tailgate markets (where parking lots are temporarily transformed into areas of commerce), and don’t be afraid to ask questions about where the food is grown.


5. Pick your own. Strawberries, blueberries and many other kinds of fruit often are available from farms that allow you to do the harvesting (or not, if you prefer to pay for the cost of picking). Many fruits are easy to freeze, and apples will keep all winter in a cool corner of the garage.


6. Join a CSA. Short for Community Supported Agriculture, a CSA is a member-supported farm, in which shares are paid back to members in weekly deliveries of fresh produce, flowers and sometimes eggs and dairy products. Twenty years after the first American CSA was established at Indian Line Farm in South Egremont, Mass., CSAs now number in the thousands (see “Finding Local Food”).


7. Enlarge your garden. The most local food of all comes from your own garden. Plant a new garden, enlarge the one you already have, or extend your growing season by using row covers and cloches.


8. Connect with a community garden. No space to garden? North America is home to more than 18,000 community gardens, in which members work individual plots. Locate a garden near you through the American Community Gardening Association.


9. Think like a squirrel. It’s easy to take locally abundant foods for granted when they’re in season, but you can enjoy many locally produced foods out of season by stocking up. Storing big baskets of hazelnuts (in the Northwest) or pecans (in the Southeast) will come naturally if you start thinking like a squirrel. Look for foods that keep well, such as nuts, honey, winter squash and sweet potatoes — and stock up.


10. Explore new foods. Bringing more local produce into your kitchen may leave you wondering what to do with unusual things such as Jerusalem artichokes, kohlrabi or mizuna. “I get requests all the time from CSAs asking permission to put my recipes into their delivery boxes,” Madison says. “I always say yes.” Get a good produce-based cookbook and don’t be reluctant to ask for recipe ideas from growers.


11. Rediscover old treasures. If you were to turn back the clock 100 years, what would gardeners in your area be growing? Try regional heirloom varieties of garden standbys such as beans, squash, tomatoes and melons, which were selected for their flavors and reliability in the days when personal survival often depended upon a garden’s success. Appalachian “greasy” beans or creamy New England-bred butternut squash can help open the door to great flavors from the past.


12. Double your recipes. Time for cooking is often in short supply, but you can cut cooking time in half by making large batches and eating the leftovers another day. In an age when the average American spends only 32 minutes a day preparing food, strategy is crucial to increasing your consumption of local food.


13. Track down specials and buy in bulk. You can save money and eat more local food by looking for great buys on oddly shaped potatoes, overripe peaches or slightly bruised apples (they make great applesauce). Get to know local growers as you visit orchards, farm stands or tailgate markets, and ask them to let you know when they have great deals.


14. Look for like-minded restaurants. Many restaurants are part of the local food loop, too. Several of the databases listed in “Finding Local Food” include restaurants. If you’re traveling and want to try local food restaurants away from home, you can use the Chefs Collaborative member list to plan your next food safari. The 1,000-plus Chefs Collaborative members seek to “promote sustainable cuisine by celebrating the joys of local, seasonal and artisanal cooking.” Many regional groups such as Vermont Fresh Network host gourmet meals at member restaurants, featuring local produce, meats and wines.


15. Freeze some meat. As proof that more people are looking for meat from grass-fed animals that aren’t pumped up on antibiotics, hormones and unnatural high-grain diets, the Eat Wild database gets more than 4,000 visits a day. It’s a good place to find locally grown meat or dairy products, but because most of the sources are small farms (rather than meat-packing plants), you may have to buy a quarter of a cow, pig or lamb. The meat can be cut and wrapped to order, and you can pick it up already frozen.


16. Log your food miles. Cultivate an awareness of how far your food travels. When Rich Pirog, Food Systems Program Leader for the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, tracked the miles traveled for 16 types of produce, he found that locally sourced fruits and vegetables such as apples, lettuce and tomatoes traveled an average of 56 miles, compared to 1,494 miles — nearly 27 times farther — for the same fruits and vegetables delivered through conventional retail channels. Things get stickier with combination foods, strawberry yogurt for example. Pirog came up with 2,216 miles by adding up the distance traveled for the yogurt’s milk, sugar and strawberries. That figure could be slashed by 90 percent if you buy plain yogurt and stir in some locally grown honey and fruit.


17. Follow the trail. Food miles translate into greenhouse gas emissions, which are highest for foods that travel by air (South American tomatoes), or in refrigerated trucks (dairy, meat and seafood products). In comparison, grain products that travel by rail carry a much lower emission rating. Weight is a huge factor in the financial and environmental costs of transporting food. Put high priority on finding local sources for heavy, truck-transported items such as meat and dairy products, as well as highly perishable foods that travel long distances by air. The Life Cycles Project of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, has an online food miles calculator that figures greenhouse gas emissions for incoming food.


18. Go to school. Several states have programs that bring local food into school cafeterias. (Search by state at www.farmtoschool.org.) The U.S. Department of Agriculture publishes a guide to help bring together communities, schools and farms (visit www.fns.usda.gov and search for “small farms/school meals”). Or you might want to actually grow food right at a local school, which then can be served to the students. That’s how it’s done at the Edible Schoolyard at Martin Luther King Middle School in Berkeley, Calif., which is considered to be a model program. Numerous chapters of Slow Food USA have provided funds and labor for the establishment of school food gardens from Arizona to Maine.


19. Share the journey. Teaming up to locate the foods you want can alleviate frustration. For example, a small group of “concerned culinary adventurers” in the San Francisco Bay area launched www.locavores.com, which has become a meeting place for fans of local food. In a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C., Renee Brooks Catacalos and Kristi Bahrenburg Janzen joined forces to make Finding Local Foods easier during their month-long local food challenge (see “Taking On a Local Food Challenge”).


20. Have a party. Instead of counting time or distance, simply enjoy the pleasures of local food by organizing a potluck meal in which everything must be local. Keep your fingers crossed that someone will splurge on handmade goat cheese, and don’t forget some local wine, beer or juice. If you’re organizing a big catered event, the Society for Nutrition Education has a downloadable brochure to help you line up local food resources.