We’ve Got the Whole World in Our Hands…Now What?

April 21st, 2009

We’ve Got the Whole World in Our Hands, Now What Will We Do With It?

by W. Sean Chamberlin, PhD, Professor, Earth Sciences

What kind of world will we leave for future generations? Do we subject them to extremes in heat and cold? Do we commit them to mass migration as low lying elevations are flooded by rising seas? Do we unleash intense hurricanes of greater frequency and duration? Do we infect them with deadly tropical diseases whose range with rising temperatures? Do we deliver more severe megadroughts, that lead to hunger, famine, lack of water, all the hell that Mother Nature can unleash?

Will humans one day be forced to move to Antarctica, as the last refuge where water and habitable temperatures exist? Will our diet consist of krill and BBQ penguin? Will we live in rock caves and igloos, buffeted by ferocious winds, bone numbing temperatures in winter, and breathlessly hot temperatures in summer?

The decisions we make today as individuals, as communities, as states, as nations, as a species, will set in motion the climate pendulums of the coming centuries and millennia. Carbon dioxide, the most abundant greenhouse gas, persists in Earth’s atmosphere for hundreds of years before natural processes remove it and bury it under ground. Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, Earth’s average temperature would continue to rise for at least a hundred years as a new climate equilibrium is established.

If we fail to act, if we conduct business as usual, if we do not begin to slow and eventually reverse the flow of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, we commit our planet to a rise in temperature that will make it uninhabitable for humans. Scientists predict that a six-degree rise will create a planet with unsurvivable conditions of temperature, water availability, weather extremes, disease, and food availability. We’ve already experienced a 1-degree rise. Are you willing to gamble the future of humanity on five more degrees?

There are no easy solutions. The low hanging fruit of energy efficiency, conservation, recycling, reforestation, and alternative practices is just a start. It will take a massive, global shift in how we conduct business on the planet, how we live, how we recreate, how we treat the natural systems that provide our oxygen, food, and habitable temperatures. It will take bold leadership and international cooperation on a scale never before witnessed in human history to avoid catastrophic consequences. It will take rapid and comprehensive adoption of sustainable practices in energy and resource utilization. It will mean reducing our carbon footprint to a size zero.

We have met the enemy and the enemy is us. We’ve got the whole world in our hands. What will we do with it? Are we intelligent and willful enough to defeat our unsustainable ways? I hope so.

W. Sean Chamberlin, Earth Day, April 22, 2009

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Southern California’s Golden Ocean

January 24th, 2009

What is it about Southern California that makes life here so fabulous? Why, our ocean and climate, of course! Our warm and dry summers, tempered by cool ocean breezes, and our cool and rainy winters, punctuated by hot Santa Ana winds, create a perfect combination of conditions for just about any lifestyle you choose. Love the outdoors? California offers hiking, camping, biking, skateboarding, rollerblading, surfing, skimboarding, bodyboarding, swimming, snow skiing, snowboarding, windsurfing, kiteboarding, wakeboarding, water skiing, sailing, yachting, jet skiing, and just about any other kind of outdoor recreation you can think of. Prefer milder forms of recreation? Southern California’s climate is ideal for convertibles, motor cycles, scooters, outdoor malls, golf courses, theme parks, boardwalks, piers, fishing, arboretums, outdoor concerts, outdoor aquariums, and even museums that host outdoor exhibits. When you think about it, Southern California’s climate is the #1 attraction on which all other attractions of our Southern California lifestyle depend.

But what if Southern California’s ocean and climate were different? What if some global force caused it to change? How would we deal with a Southern California that was hot and humid in the summer and downright Bladerunner-like with continuous rains in the winter? What if Southern California was baked bone dry like a desert? What if sea level rose by several feet? Would our lifestyle survive? Would we survive?

It’s not very pleasant to think about but it could happen. In a span of 40-50 years, life in Southern California may be much different than anything we have ever known. Many of the things that make life here so fabulous could make life here downright miserable. Warmer summers and drier winters are a recipe for drought. Rising nighttime temperatures may wreck havoc on crops, especially grapes, which depend on cool nights for maximum productivity. Lack of snow means no snow sports. Hot summers mean less pleasant mountain retreats, wicked summer hiking and camping, and just plain less pleasant anything outdoors. More frequent and intense Santa Ana winds may favor the sailing crowds, but a stiff offshore breeze makes it tough to return to port or the beach. And air quality suffers miserably during Santa Anas. Warmer air will bring invasions of insects that cause damage to crops and trees. Warmer ocean temperatures have already brought swarms of highly aggressive jumbo squid that threaten local fisheries and perhaps, even divers and swimmers. Warmer ocean temperatures and melting glaciers have begun an inexorable rise in sea level, which threatens coastal structures and homes. Bigger waves might be a boon for surfers but they could undermine the fabric of a billion-dollar coastal economy as beaches disappear and shoreside resorts plunge into the sea. The near-term outlook for Southern California is one of more intense and more frequent episodes of severe weather—by air and by sea.

To make yourself ready for the coming climate change (and yes, it is coming, there is no doubt of that!), it’s useful (if not essential) to have some understanding of what it is that makes Southern California’s ocean and climate tick. Underlying the basic climate patterns that gild our region are the close interactions between the ocean and the atmosphere, not just locally but globally. The world ocean and Earth’s atmosphere are intimately connected and it’s that connection that generates the pleasant climate to which we have grown accustomed. These interactions govern most of the world’s climate, affecting where and how we live, what we eat, and what we do for fun and recreation.

Having a basic knowledge of the world ocean and Earth’s atmosphere and how the climate of our regional ocean and atmosphere fuel a trillion-dollar state economy can help you make intelligent choices in your career and life. For example, building a ski lodge at Big Bear in a future climate where snow appears increasingly rare might be a bad investment. On the other hand, pursuing a career in surf merchandise or drought-tolerant landscaping might reap greater benefits in a future climate where big waves and lack of rainfall are increasingly common. Knowledge of the ocean and atmosphere has practical benefits. It can help you decide where to live and raise a family. It can help you choose the best times and places to take vacations. It can even save you money as you equip your home with water-saving and energy-saving technologies. Perhaps you can think of some examples of how knowledge of the ocean and atmosphere might affect your career and life. (You will be given an opportunity to do this in our first homework assignment.)

Let’s begin with a review of the good, the bad, and the ugly of California’s Golden Life. Our climate and ocean generate vast riches, supporting a healthy local, regional, and global economy. At the same time, our climate and ocean are in danger of being loved to death. Smog, airborne particles, and a myriad of other atmospheric pollutants threaten the air we breathe. Sustained drought, more frequent extreme winds, and rising air temperatures loom in the near future. In our local waters. overfishing, habitat destruction, eutrophication, increases in harmful algae and bacteria, chemical pollutants, invasive species, marine debris, and a number of other human impacts have clobbered marine ecosystems. Though some improvements have been made, our air and ocean remain threatened and vulnerable to disastrous decline. Fortunately, people who live here are well aware of the importance of air and water quality to our lives and careers. A survey of Orange County residents in 2005 found widespread support (>80%) for efforts to protect water quality and other important natural resources, even if such efforts required increases in taxes or fees (Fairbank, Metz, and O’Shaughnessy, 2005).

Southern California’s Coastal Resources
If you’ve lived in California your whole life, you may not appreciate the riches that abound in the Golden State. To a non-native Californian (like myself), California’s marvelous bounty becomes apparent from the moment you step out of baggage claim. The cool ocean breeze that wafts over LAX (and John Wayne airport, too) lures the visitor straight to the beach. Seriously, it’s the first place most visitors want to visit and the experience does not disappoint! (Admittedly, I’m an oceanographer, so I may be a bit biased.) Standing on the edge of the mighty Pacific at Dockweiler State Beach, you can see a parking lot of Winnebagos and campers; a parade of rollerbladers, bikers, and joggers; a carpet of sunbathers and multi-colored umbrellas; the antennae-like poles of fishermen on the jetties; the jagged lines of surfers bobbing in the waves; the angular slab of a giant supertanker unloading oil; the verdant cliffs of Palos Verdes; the checkered hills of Malibu; and the hazy shadows of Catalina Island set against the sun glint of the cool horizonless ocean. It’s a panoply of recreational and commercial enterprises spawned by the ocean.

No doubt native Californians share some of the enthusiasm of the first-time visitor or new resident. It’s just that once you live here a while, you learn to temper the theme-park-like giddiness that California inspires. “Look at that, a dog on a surfboard wearing sunglasses,” the newbie screams. “Yeah, it’s cool,” you remark, then pull your shades back over your eyes. You’re secure in your belief that California is the best place on Earth to live. After all, you probably work for a company that caters to tourists, who come here for the beaches and Disneyland and movie stars, in that order.

Directly or indirectly, your livelihood (or the livelihood of the person supporting you) depends on the ocean. Check this out: ocean-related industries employed nearly 700,000 people in 2000 and generated $1.15 trillion dollars, or 86% of the state’s total economic activity (Kildow and Colgan, 2005). California ranks first in employment and gross state product in US Ocean Economies. On top of that, California ranks in the top ten of the world’s economies (CIA World Factbook, 2007). So it’s safe to say that California has one of the largest ocean economies in the world.

Table 1.1 in Exploring the World Ocean (Chamberlin and Dickey, 2008) lists three major resources obtained from the world ocean: 1) Energy resources; 2) Mineral resources; and 3) Biological resources. Among ocean energy resources, California extracts petroleum and natural gas, and has plans to develop wave power and tide power. California ocean mineral resources include sea salts (and compounds derived from them), sand and gravel, oyster shells, which are used in cement, poultry feed, and soil conditioner, and small amounts of jade, found along the coast of Big Sur. Biological resources, also known as living resources, are the ones with which most of us are familiar. Fish and shellfish, including abalone, clams, oysters, mussels, urchins, sea cucumbers, lobsters, and crabs (the latter of which are not shell-bearing mollusks but are thrown in with shellfish anyway) are caught (and overcaught) all along the California coast. Aquaculture of abalone, oysters, and mussels represents a burgeoning industry. California even boasts a million-dollar kelp harvesting industry, the products of which are an integral part of many medicines, cosmetics, and food items, including toothpaste, shaving cream, and ice cream.

In their study, Kildow and Colgan (2000) examined the economic output of six major sectors of the California Ocean Economy: 1) coastal construction; 2) living resources; 3) offshore minerals; 4) ship building; 5) maritime transportation; and 6) tourism and recreation. By far, ocean-related tourism ranked (59%) highest, followed by transportation (33%; see Figures 2-6 and 2-2 from their paper). Ocean-related tourism and recreation experienced a surge in growth from 1990-2000, and made up 50% of the US ocean tourism and recreation economy. Ocean-related transportation declined from 1990 to 2000, owing to reductions in deep-sea freight and declines in production of search and navigation equipment. Nonetheless, the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Oakland account for 40% of the goods imported into the US. Perhaps more impressive is that the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles combined account for one of the largest volumes of container traffic in the world, eclipsed only by Hong Kong and Singapore.

Suffice it to say that intuitively and statistically, California’s ocean plays a major role in how we enjoy our lives and how we make a living. It’s the bread and butter of our California lifestyle.

Southern California’s Surf Culture
There is arguably an even greater role that the California ocean plays in the grand scheme of world affairs. Beyond the shores of California, indeed, across the globe, the California ocean and associated lifestyle tug at the heartstrings of people across the world. How else can you explain David Hasselhoff’s popularity in Europe? Why else do young boys and girls from Japan to Indonesia to Africa to South America dream of surfing the waves at Malibu? Why would Posh and Beck, enormously accomplished overseas, drag their family to Beverly Hills to start their life anew? Surf culture, dude!

California’s surf culture is legendary. Most historians cite the surf movie Gidget (1959) as one of beginning of the modern surf culture movement. Movies that followed, including Ride the Wild Surf (1964), The Endless Summer (1966), and Beach Blanket Bingo (1965), among many others, fueled an explosive growth of surfing and surf-related industries. Today, the surf industry generated $7.48 billion in 2006 (Surf Industry Manufacturer’s Association, 2007), not a bad sum for a sport most often associated with irresponsibility and drunkenness. For a good look at the history of big wave riding and some of the culture it inspired, check out Stacy Peralta’s Riding Giants (2004). Another great film on surfing and surf culture is Dana Brown’s Step Into Liquid (2003). A google search on “surf culture” and “surf culture industry” will turn up a variety of semi-decent descriptions.

California’s surf culture inspires a number of products and services, directly and indirectly. In addition to surfing gear (surfboards, wet suits, and board shorts), surf-related or surf-inspired gear includes men’s, women’s, and children’s apparel (shirts, pants, shoes, belts, etc), sunglasses, jewelry, watches, hats, and bags, among others. Surf tourism, packaged vacation trips to hot surf spots, is a burgeoning industry. Surf and surf-culture books, magazines, videos, and web sites continue to grow along with surfing art, music, and sculpture. And we shouldn’t forget that internet-based surf forecasting, a la Surfline, is becoming more popular with surfers and beach-goers. These commercial activities bring storefronts that serve as a magnet for tourists to beach cities and malls, having a positive effect on nearby eateries, coffee shops, newsstands, and other shops catering to tourists.
Like it or not, we live at ground zero for surf culture. Despite the perception of its carefree and chill attitude, the surf-inspired culture of California, and especially Southern California, has made its mark on the world big time.

Human Impacts on the California Ocean
I’d be remiss in my summary of Southern California’s Golden Ocean if I did not mention a few of the negative impacts that humans are having on our local waters. As you can imagine in a region with nearly 16 million people (LA County = 9.98M, OC = 3.0M, SD = 2.94M), the impacts on water quality, habitat resiliency, biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and human health are quite significant. Nonetheless, because Californians place great value on our ocean resources, economically and aesthetically, we are, in some ways, ahead of other regions in our protection of the ocean.

Table 1.2 in Exploring the World Ocean (Chamberlin and Dickey, 2008) summarizes the major human impacts on the world ocean. Unfortunately, many of these problems apply to our local waters as well. Global warming threatens coastal homes and structures as sea level rise will inundate these structures and make them more susceptible to storm waves. Coastal development has severely diminished the extent of valuable coastal estuaries, which act as nurseries for fish and birds and which trap sediments and harmful chemicals and nutrients that otherwise spill into the ocean. Overfishing remains an enormous challenge for California policymakers as it pits the lives of fishermen, commercial and recreational, against the interests of ecologists, conservationists, tour operators (whale-watching boats, dive boats, eco-tourism operators), and people who simply enjoy unfettered nature. Runoff of toxic metals, oil, and debris, especially plastic and cigarette butts, threaten the lives of organisms directly and make our waters unhealthy for human activities. An especially difficult problem is the “greening” of our coastal waters as substances that promote algal growth—namely the nitrogen products in sewage and agricultural runoff—continue to run unabated into our waters. The excessive growth of algae and phytoplankton leads to an imbalance in marine ecosystems which, ironically, leads to oxygen depletion. Hypoxic waters plague many marinas, such as Dana Point, and parts of bays, including San Francisco Bay and Newport Back Bay. Historically, oil spills have been a major issue in our local waters, especially in Santa Barbara and Huntington Beach, the site of previous oil spills. While numerous technologies and safe practices have been adopted to prevent oil spills, the continued presence of oil tankers and oil platforms offshore remind us of the need for ever-constant vigilance to avoid a catastrophic spill. Finally, the release of non-native species, such as the seaweeds Caulerpa and Sargassum, fishes, such as non-native sea lamprey and gobies, and even non-vertebrate chordates, such as sea squirts, have negative impacts on structures (docks, boats, intake pipes) and ecosystems (displacing native species). The degree to which any of these impacts affect a specific location depends on the concentration and type of human activities, but few regions of California’s coastline, including the pristine Big Sur and Lost Coast regions, remain completely unscathed.

Despite the gloom and doom, there is hope for Southern California’s Golden Ocean. Recently, more than 110 square nautical miles of land and waters surrounding the Channel Islands were designated as no-take marine reserves within the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, the largest in the continental US. (The Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine Sanctuary is the largest in the US). Fishing in these waters is prohibited although recreational boating and diving are still allowed. No-take zones allow populations of marine organisms to survive and reproduce for their entire life span, the result of which is increased productivity and greater viability of larval and juvenile populations. At the same time, no-take zones export invertebrates and fishes to non-protected waters, thereby increasing their productivity and economic viability. Though contentious, the end result is a win-win situation for fishermen and conservationists alike. Ultimately, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) plans to designate more than 240 square nautical miles as marine reserve within the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary.

Of course, the most profound hope for the future of our local waters, the world ocean, and our planet rests with the young men and women who have devoted a part of their lives to learning more about the ocean and how we affect it. Yes, that’s YOU! Your willingness to engage in a semester-long study of oceanography and your efforts towards gaining the knowledge and understanding of the world ocean will play an important role in the healthy and vitality of our local waters. The knowledge and understanding that you share with your family and friends, your support of ocean conservation groups, your participation in ocean conservation events, your expressed opinion as a citizen, and your decisions as a voter will help insure the long-term protection and conservation of that which we love so much. As Meryl Streep says in one of my favorite documentaries, The Living Sea, “we can’t protect what we don’t understand.” So dive into your studies with a passion. Adopt the persona and attitude of an ocean advocate and scholar. Be all the oceanographer that you can be. Our world ocean and, indeed, our planet, needs you.

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A Once-In-A-Lifetime Opportunity for Fullerton College Students

January 17th, 2009

Project GPS2: Guiding and Preparing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Students, A Once-In-A-Lifetime Opportunity for Fullerton College Students

Never in our nation’s history has the need for scientists and science-dependent workers (technicians, educators, environmentalists, businesspeople) been greater than it is now. The challenge of reducing greenhouse gases and air pollution to human-survivable levels; the challenge of ending our addiction to oil and creating a new energy future; the challenge of fighting diseases, improving human health, and expanding the human life span; the challenge of finding food and water for a growing human population; the challenge of building green buildings, constructing smart highways and bridges, and the green infrastructure that will deliver energy and needed resources to towns and cities; the challenge of transporting people across the world in a way that doesn’t harm the world or the planet; the challenge of ending wars and creating lasting peace; the challenge of creating a sustainable, healthy, prosperous, and bountiful world in which every human is valued and treasured. Nothing less than this defines the mission and goals of our nation’s scientists.

I know that most of you have never given a moment’s thought to being a scientist. Perhaps the word scientist conjures visions of men in white coats in a small, dark lab, somewhere on the edge of nowhere. Perhaps it strikes fear in you in the thought that scientists are the men that alter genes, create monsters, and destroy the world! Perhaps you just thought that to be a scientist, you had to be a whiz at math, have an extraordinary aptitude for puzzles, and be good at building contraptions. In fact, there are scientists like that…in the movies!

Real-world scientists come from all walks of life, from all schools of thought, from all corners of the Earth. They are everyday people—like you and me—and they are extraordinary people—like the few men and women honored each year by the Nobel Prize Committee. There are scientists who suck at math, scientists who hate puzzles, and scientists who couldn’t put two clothespins together.

In truth, anyone can be a scientist…if they have the desire to learn a craft and a passion for discovering something that could change the world.

What’s more, even if you aren’t the kind of person bent on discovering things and figuring them out, there is a huge demand for people to help the scientist! Most of the much-needed jobs in science aren’t for scientists. They are for people with a background in science who can talk the language of science and use scientific tools. Marine technicians, biotechnology assistants, environmental surveyors, and horticulturalists employ their knowledge of science in satisfying tasks that benefit other people. Even jobs you might not have thought about, like solar panel installers. biodiesel mechanics, green businesspeople, or teachers, require a knowledge of science to do their job.

The Chancellor of our college, Ned Doffoney, is fond of this quote from a video called Shift Happens: “We are training students for jobs that don’t yet exist using tools that haven’t been invented to solve problems that we aren’t even aware of yet.”

What this means is that if we don’t train students to learn how to learn, if we don’t train students to think on their own two feet, if we don’t train students rise to the challenges of unforeseen problems, then we haven’t done our job. That’s what college is all about. And that’s what I am here to prepare you for!

Think about it. Before 1990, there was no such thing as surfing the web. Before 2000, a phone was something attached to a cable in your house! And not too many years ago, video was something produced in a studio and shown on a TV. Today, any nut with a camera can make his or her own videos and show them on YouTube. Shift happens!

Okay, let me give you one last angle on it, and then I will tell you about an extraordinary opportunity for students who might just have some inkling to do science, or who, at the very least, are willing to consider what a science or science-based career has to offer.

Many of you plan to transfer to a four-year college where you will earn a Bachelor’s degree in your chosen field. Along the way, many of you plan to meet the requirements for an AA degree while attending Fullerton College. Have you ever thought that an AA and BA in the same field is, well, redundant? If you have a BA in Business, what good does an AA in Business do for you? But, say, if you had a BA in Business, and an AA in Environmental Science or Geology, well, that’s puts a whole new spin on it. Say you had a BA in English with an AA in Biology or Chemistry. Your job opportunities expand considerably, as you are now qualified to pen articles in newspapers or journals that cover environmental or science topics. A science background—even an AA—combined with any other degree gives you a big advantage over other applicants in the job world.

And if you are already a science major? Wouldn’t an AA in your major be redundant, too? Of course it would! Which is why, if you are clever, you will pick a related, supporting science major for your AA. Majoring in biology? Get an AA in chemistry. There’s a ton of value in having a solid chemistry background, whether you are a molecular biologist or a systems ecologist. They all use chemistry!. If you are a geology major, consider an AA in physics. Studies of earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunami, and rocks (among others) demand a solid background in physics. And believe it or not, most oceanographers don’t have AAs or BAs in oceanography. It’s such a multidisciplinary field that oceanographers come from all disciplines, geology, physics, chemistry, biology, and the innumerable related fields.

The point here is to think outside the box. Everything is related and the expert who has an interdisciplinary background, who can speak the language of other disciplines, who can solve problems in more than one subject, will be enormously successful and highly employable.

Alright, alright, enough of the “yes you should.” Let’s turn that desire into a plan of action! Yes we can!

Fullerton College is the recipient of a major grant from the National Science Foundation whose purpose is to attract, recruit, enroll, improve, and graduate students with AAs in science, technology, engineering, and math (aka STEM). It’s called Guiding and Preparing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Students, or Project GPS2 (that’s GPS-squared, meant to remind you of a global positioning system, or a lighthouse). Yours truly, Professor Sean, along with a few other outstanding professors in the STEM disciplines, the amazing Director of Special Programs, Karen Rose, and her brilliant staff and student helpers, make up the crew of incredible project. What’s more, we (and Santa Ana College) are doing it with folks at Cal State Fullerton, so there are opportunities to meet and interact with students and professors at a future transfer college.

What does Project GPS2 do for you?

Here’s where I’m pulling out all the stops, pushing it to the limit, going full throttle! I’ve made it my personal mission to see this project succeed because, I really truly believe that there is an unprecedented need and opportunity for science-savvy people to take on the many challenges the world faces. If you join this project and make good on its promises, you will help blaze a positive, productive, sustainable future for all.

Here are the requirements to join Project GPS2:

1. Officially declare yourself a STEM (science, technology, engineering or math) major.
2. Take at least one STEM class every semester.
3. Attend two (2) Project GPS2 events every semester (seminars, field trips, workshops, other activities)
4. Fill out tracking questionnaires on a regular basis (once or twice per semester)
5. Agree to let appropriate project personnel access your transcripts for data reporting.

Here’s what Project GPS2 provides for you:

1. Improve your grade point average (GPA) with access to individualized tutoring in science and other subjects.
2. Gain access to our book-loan program that lends you a science textbook for the semester.
3. Take the shortest path to graduation with personalized counseling.
4. Make studying easier by joining one of our study groups and attending our science study sessions.
5. Make studying more enjoyable in one of our quiet, soothing, science study halls.
6. Gain access to technology, such as video cameras and iPods, available only to Project GPS2 students.
7. Meet like-minded people during member-only events on campus and around town.
8. Meet scientists and science-related professionals on our student-parent science nights.
9. Experience science adventures, such as whalewatching, aquarium visits, or field trips, at no cost.
10. Get the fast track on a part-time job, internships or future career opportunities through our workforce connections and career path counseling.
11. Make yourself well-known to faculty that can write you letters of recommendation for college or careers.
12. Get help applying for scholarships, college admissions, or job applications.
13. Feel personally satisfaction helping others by joining us on K-12 visits, service learning projects, and similar community service activities.
14. Gain experience and satisfaction as one of our STEM summer camp volunteers.
15. Learn about the environment by joining our reef tank project, Earth Day activities, or special iTunes U video projects.
16. Be part of a life-changing, noble-minded, high-spirit effort to make this world a better place!

Seriously, if you have any inkling of an interest in science, come talk to me. Don’t let your fear of science or math, or your belief that you can’t do science, or your thought that your parents or friends might think you are crazy for pursuing science, prevent you from doing what’s in your heart and mind to do.

We will help you succeed! Yes we can!

If you are uncertain what you want to do in life, if you want to make a difference in the world, if you have an open mind and a willingness to give science, technology, engineering, or math a try, then contact me, Professor Sean. Remember, this is my personal mission, too. Your success is my success. I will help you in any and every way that’s in my power to help you.

My goal is to sign up fifty (50) students to this program this semester.

The world needs you. Are you ready to take the leap? Yes you can!

For more information on Project GPS2, contact:

W. Sean Chamberlin, PhD, Professor, Earth Sciences
Office: 1254-01, MW, 1030-Noon, Th, 9-11am and by appointment
schamberlin@fullcoll.edu
sean@exploreworldocean.com
Office: 714-992-7443
Text Message: 714-253-2714
Contact me on Facebook or MySpace
Join my Marine Life Social Network: http://exploreworldocean.ning.com

Karen Rose, Special Programs
Room 225, M-F, 9-5
krose@fullcoll.edu
Office: 714-992-7067

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My students are squirrels and I am a nut

January 14th, 2009

Dear Oceanography Students,
In my freshman year (1974) at the University of Washington, my lecture classes seemed the size of small stadiums. With 300-400-600 students, there was decidedly plenty of room to hide, and plenty of opportunity to ditch class. (Who would know?) A brilliant professor would lecture at the front of the class (where I never sat) and we would obediently write notes as fast as we could (and try not to daydream). In those days, the professor was the “fountain” of knowledge and anything he said was fair game for the midterm or final. (We only had two exams in those days and that was what our whole grade was based on.) Sure, the 900-page, phone-book-sized textbook, was required reading, but he expected us to know everything he lectured on as well.
This classic approach to education is known as teacher-centered learning. The professor passed down knowledge to the students and the measure of whether they “got it” were the scores on the exams. My, how times have changed. After decades of educational research, institutions of higher learning recognized that the students are the central player in teaching and learning. Learning happens best when instructors help students acquire tools for learning, help students construct knowledge based on a logical mental framework, and help students develop the skills for applying what their knowledge and understanding to the real world. Student-centered learning is at the heart of this class, if not, many of the classes you take at Fullerton College.
In short, what that means is that YOU are ultimately responsible for your own learning. How you learn, what you learn, and how you apply that learning to real life is your job. That isn’t to say you are on your own. On the contrary, it means that instructors act as facilitators, guides, sherpas, if you will, to lead you to the higher planes of learning. We work with you to develop the life-long learning tools you’ll need to succeed. We help you figure out which tools work, when and where they are appropriate, and how those tools can help you conquer the world. Before you know it, you’ll be standing on the bow of a ship screaming “I’m King of the World.”
Rather than the “sage on the stage,” you should see me as your “guide on the side.” Sure, I’ve picked the mountains we’re going to climb, but I haven’t necessarily picked the path you’ll take to ascend them. Given that, I expect you to actively pursue your education, willingly participate in the activities that help you learn, and passionately apply what you know to your life and career. And, most importantly, I expect you to ask questions and suggest alternatives if you think you can achieve a learning outcome in a different way than the one I’ve prescribed. Being intelligent means asking lots of questions, not fewer. Smart people know they don’t know everything. But they also know when and who to ask when the occasion arises. So be curious, explore, and ask me when we come to something you don’t understand.
You are what you learn and I am here to help you make the most of your learning experience.

Sincerely yours,

William Sean Chamberlin, PhD, aka “Professor Sean”

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Dear Oceanography Student

January 10th, 2009

Welcome to the world I love! Oceanography, the study of our planet’s world ocean and all of its inhabitants, holds special meaning for me. I started chasing plankton and fish a few days after I was born in Feb 1956. As a young lad growing up in West Palm Beach, Florida, I slapped on a mask and snorkel and explored the reefs every chance I got. As a teenager, I learned how to Scuba dive and took a weekend job in a dive shop. I watched reality TV about the ocean religiously. Jacques Cousteau, the inventor of Scuba and a famous ocean explorer, was the first person to televise weekly shows from the undersea world, and I was there with him in my living room. Because of him, I fell in love with the idea of pursuing a career studying the world ocean. Twelve years of college, a post-doc, and a few industry jobs later, I found my place in the world teaching at Fullerton College, where I’ve been since August 1996. I haven’t regretted it for a minute!
Now there’s three reasons I’m writing you this letter. First, I think it helps you to get to know me better, a good thing since we’re going to be spending the next 16 weeks together, right? I hope you’ll let me get to know you better in return. Second, I really hope that you will find something in this class that sparks your interest, opens your mind to new possibilities, provides you with useful skills and ways of thinking, and generally gives you a leg up on your life and career. College means more than just getting a grade. It means exploring new horizons and gaining the tools and confidence to do anything you set your mind to. Thirdly, I secretly desire to convince a few of you to pursue a degree in science, and, especially, ocean science. We desperately need more scientists if we are going to save the world from all its problems. I am here to show you that if a poor kid who grew up on the wrong side of the railroad tracks, and who had lousy math teachers, parents that fought, and a wild taste for booze, can live his dreams, well, then so can you.
Now I know that many of you share my passion for the ocean. Let’s build on that. And those of you who are not quite yet warmed up to the ocean, we’ll help you get your toes wet. As the saying goes, “there’s more than one way to skin a catfish.” If you struggle with science, aren’t too keen on math, have a bit of trouble reading English, stumble when writing and speaking, and just generally feel dazed and confused by this whole college thing, fear not! We–me, your classmates, and the staff and faculty of the college–are here to help you. I mean that in the most sincere way. I am here to help you be successful in college and life. That’s not just my job, it’s my dream.
If you have any questions, raise your hand, see me in class, e-mail or text me, or find me on a social networking site. I’d love to hear from you!
Sincerely yours,

William Sean Chamberlin, PhD, aka “Professor Sean”

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Favorite Quotes

January 9th, 2009

My favorite new quote…

“We are preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist using technologies that have not been invented to solve problems that we don’t even know about yet.”

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The Headlines on Your Doorstep

January 6th, 2009

Imagine waking up in the morning, opening the front door to grab the newspaper (if you are one of those few people like me who actually get the print version of a morning newspaper and if you are one of those people not like me whose newspaper is actually delivered to the front door), and finding the ocean at your doorstep. (Quite a feat if you live in Kansas, though Kansas had an ocean once and now boasts some of the best shark’s teeth in the world). Or imagine finding a raging fire…or a flood of Biblical proportions…or a crowd of neighbors begging for food…or a small girl named Dorothy apologizing for the farm house she landed in your front yard. Well, in fact, if you read the newspaper, you will find exactly that.

Nearly every day there is breaking news about some natural horror tragically devastatinig some part of the world. Open today’s newspaper and check it out (or check your favorite internet news). New high temperature records, record droughts, record floods, record hurricane impacts, record low ice pack, record low sea ice, endangered polar bears, bettle-infested pine trees, bee colony collapse disorder, expanding tropical diseases, bleached coral reefs, an acid ocean…all of these bear the fingerprint of global warming. Yes, I know, specific natural catastrophes can’t be linked directly to global warming because weather is one thing (the day to day fluctuations in atmospheric and oceanic conditions) and climate is another (the long term average of atmospheric and oceanic conditions). But despite the tip-toeing of scientists to avoid the weather-versus-climate trap, I’m beating a path down this path.

The weather and weater-related extremes being experienced around the world in the 21st century occur within an envelope of atmospheric and oceanic possibilities driven by global warming. What that means is that these extremes are consistent with a climate that is warming. It’s not rocket science…high temperatures aren’t caused by global warming on any given day but to get global warming, the long-term average in air temperatures at Earth’s surface has to go up, meaning you have to have higher temperatures more times than not somewhere on the planet. They don’t have to be record setting but the arrow has to point upwards. Otherwise, we’d be experiencing global cooling or global nada (the temperature remains the same).

Imagine it this way: if you wanted to reach the top of a basketball hoop to dunk a basketball, you need to be incredibly tall, or incredibly talented, or both. Alternatively, you could build a set of steps that get you closer to the basket. At some point, the steps would be high enough so that you could slam-dunk with ease. Each jump attempt you make on your journey up the steps is like the weather—a jump and a landing, with or without success. The steps are like global warming—it gives you a head start towards some higher state (your slam dunk). Extreme events, like the ones listed above, used to be once-in-a-lifetime events, as likely as me at 5’ 10” dunking a basketball. But add energy to the atmosphere and ocean, lower the bar, so to speak, on the threshold for such events, and they become commonplace (or, at least, more frequent). So just like it’s not the steps that cause me to dunk the ball, they help, just like global warming makes extreme events more likely. Scientifically speaking, global warming increases the probability of extreme weather events.

But what about that record snowfall in the US Northeast? Or that fact that the eastern Antarctic ice cap is growing in size? Doesn’t that disprove global warming, doesn’t it, doesn’t it? Ahh, this kind of thinking leaves out some of the important consequences of global warming, indeed, what to many seem like paradoxes, but which to scientists are consistent with a warming world. First, global warming is a global phenomenon so equating specific weather events at specific locations with global warming or global cooling forgets what we learned above. (Sometimes we make the dunk and sometimes we fall off the steps and land on the floor!) Second, global warming causes an increase in evaporation over land and sea, and with more water in the atmosphere, we get more rain- and snowfall as a result. Thirdly, global warming rearranges the “building blocks” of Earth’s climate system, causing persistent high and low pressure systems to move locations, causing wind patterns to change, causing the natural see-saw of ocean and atmosphere processes to see and saw in different ways. It’s these connections between processes in one part of the planet with processes in another—what are called global telecononections—that explain some of the odd and seemingly paradoxical weather that we observe.

Here’s another way to think about it. Driving along the freeway at 55 miles an hour lets you respond pretty decently to idiots on cell phones that weave into your lane. If you’re like me, you shoot them the finger, maybe shake your fist, and give them a few well-mouthed words that can’t be mistaken through tinted glass. All in all, you remain intact, on the road, safely burning carbon to your destination. But what if you were going 90 miles an hour, or 120? Your reaction times would be severely compromised, and when the idiot starts drifting over to your side, you might whip on the steering wheel at the edge of control. Overcompensating, you whip it back to get the car under control. You might do a couple of these back and forths, zipping past the texting-fool, before you pull it all together. Weather, fueled by global warming, whips back and forth, like a crazy, high-speed driver.

One last one…weather and climate are like a person on a stepladder. At the lower rungs, the stepladder is quite stable, holding the weight of the person quite nicely. As the person climbs to higher rungs, however, the ladder becomes less stable, even wobbling back and forth a bit. And if the person ignores the warnings—DON’T STAND ABOVE THIS STEP—then the whole ladder just might come tumbling down.

It’s that upper step that concerns climate scientists the most. If the climate system reaches the top step, so to speak, it could pass a tipping point, a point of no return, and switch into a different state. Earth’s past reveals signs of sudden climate change, what scientists call abrupt climate change. Hard to say if we’ve reached the tipping point yet but we should know in twenty years or so.

There’s one more little kernel of knowledge that we can glean from the 24-hour daily breaking climate news headlines delivered in cabon-rich newsprint at our doorstep. Weather and climate are also a lot like butterflies. Yes, butterflies, those flimsy, colorful, diaphonous marvels of insect engineering that twtich this way and that in our gardens. Just the slightest breath of wind will alter their path. Frankly, I don’t see how they ever go anywhere, if indeed, there is any purposeful going in their flight. Given a sufficient density of food-giving flowers, they probably would survive quite well on a random course. But let’s just assume that butterflies do fly with purpose. Despite their intention to go from Flower A to Flower B, their actual flight path might take them in circles, loops, and dips, closer to or further away from their intended destination until miraculously they reach it or very near it. There is, as it were, a certain chaos to their flight. Yes, that’s it. Chaos, those slight perturbations in initial conditions that lead to quite dramatic differences in their final outcome. Chaos, the small, even imperceptible differences in one day’s weather or the next that spell the difference between a tolerable day or a heat wave. Chaos, the seemingly random nature of climate change when measured on short time scales. At their heart, Earth systems are chaotic, meaning only that their behavior at any given time and location is unpredictable. But chaos, like the path of the butterfly, like those beautiful acid-trip looking fractal images so popular in the 90s, does produce definitive patterns. We can forecast the weather with reasonable certainty a few days in advance. We do know where climate will end up on century-long time scales. But what the weather will be two weeks from now or the climate two decades from now is less certain. We know in general what the weather and climate and whereabouts of the butterfly will be but the specifics are not possible to predict…because of chaos! It’s useful to keep that in mind when short-term events cloud the long-term outlook.

The mood swings of global warming are intensifying, a consequence predicted by scientists decades ago. The headlines on our doorstep reveal a world that is changing and becoming more fierce. The old addage about the only constant is change might be the only contant is change and change is a bitch!

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Cat Dawn

January 4th, 2009

If everyone had a cat, there would be no need for electricity-guzzling alarm clocks, and perhaps we wouldn’t be in this predicament of a global warming. Of course, since cats can’t tell time, nor even seem to have much of a use for it, preferring instead to mark the day by the tick-tock of hunger-time, nap-time, and the obligatory bird-and-butterfly hunting time, we would all be dreadfully early for our appointments or terribly late if the day moved by the clock of the cat instead of the clock of the human. As a result, we cat-owners live at the dawn of two worlds, the real world with its clock-like drumbeat of precision time-making and cat world with its I’ll-get-back-to-you-on-that-after-my-nap mentality. This particular morning I awoke decidely in cat world.

BeBe head-butted my arm twice before I shoved her to one side and rolled over, determined to get five more seconds of sleep. Head-butt to the back, head butt to the shoulder, climb on top of the head.

“Enough! Okay, I’m awake. What do you want?”
“The Sun is coming up.”
“Really? It comes up every morning, stupid cat. Why don’t you find the mouse that you left behind the book case. I’m sure he would be thrilled to know that the Sun is coming up.”
“Isn’t it amazing?”
“Nothing is amazing at 5:30 in the morning, not you, not the mouse, not even the Sun.”
“It’s 93 million miles away yet it still manages to penetrate that glass over there and shine a light on your pillow.”
“I’d be more amazed if it vaporized you instantaneously and turned you into a constellation.”
“That’s not funny. Cats deserve a constellation more than a dog does. A hunting dog, nonetheless.”
“Don’t be hating. I love Orion…and his dog.”
“Pitiful. Don’t you have to be somewhere this morning?”

And so it goes on the mornings I wake up in cat world. But there are advantages. Once the cat settles down, the sounds of the day come alive in the soft glow of the California dawn. The gurgle of the fountain spitting to life, dutifully timed to the rising and falling sun which begs the question of why I am using expensive, carbon-polluting electricity to power a device that holds water of which there is precious little in this drought-wracked desert. The soft cooing of the doves as they peck at store-bought bird feed whose bits of corn make me wonder why there’s a food crisis where millions of people are starving yet a couple glorified pigeons in my back yard are having a feast; the rustle of the banana leaves and palm fronds and bamboo shoots who as tropical plants living in the subtropics have but one word for global warming: bringiton!; the hiss of automatic sprinklers moistening the atmosphere above the toast-colored parkway that greets visitors to the herbal and acupuncture center across the alley; the faraway sounds of a train lumbering down the tracks; a jet passing overhead; a helicopter rushing to the scene of breaking news; the roar of a bus carrying those who can’t afford gas or a car or those who had their driver’s licenses taken away or those who simply can’t drive or the one or two do-gooders who do it for the environment; the screech of a car whose uncaffeinated driver just noticed the stop sign in the middle of the block; the ear-shredding buzz of a weed whacker at the hands of a likely illegal immigrant just trying to earn a decent living by starting his work day at the crack of dawn so he can mow fourteen lawns, one an hour, on the long and hot summer days, and earn maybe a hundred bucks after gas and a few bucks for his helper; the tribal pounding of hammers framing a new room onto an old house on the next block over; and the sound of the next door bathrobed neighbor dragging his slippers and scratching his testicles and grunting and coughing on his way to retreive the morning newspaper from his new clay brick driveway. Ahh, the sounds of a carbon-driven world! The cat world sounds of Orange County suburbia unfiltered through the bedroom window for my listening pleasure. In the real world, I only get the cackling of Ryan Seacrest on a tin-box clock radio in the morning.

Cat world doesn’t last long. My mother was getting up. I could hear the scruf-scruf-scuf of her 83-year-old bare feet on the fake-wood floors. The twist of the squeaky antique door handle. The creak of the crooked bedroom door. More scruf-scruf-scruf as she held one hand to the wall and inched her way towards the bathroom for the umpteenth time. Today is our last day together. She doesn’t know and I have to tell her but I am not sure how or even when to break that news. Will she understand that she is going away? Will she get it that the world has changed and she’s being left behind? Am I being selfish for farming her out, sending her to the corn field, as it were, like some spoiled, psychotic, Night Gallery brat with special talent?

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Swimming With Thoreau

January 4th, 2009

PREFACE
Thank you, reader, for picking up my book and giving it a shake. It’s a real book, I assure you, and it will entertain you, I promise, and it will be worth your while reading, you can count on that. The following is a deeply personal account, some parts of it true and some parts of it made up, so don’t go telling Oprah that it’s true and then I’m having to go on her show and tell her no it’s not and then get in trouble like that other guy did. I’m telling my story this way with the hopes that the true parts ring a bell and offer up a pearl of wisdom or two about something, and that the stretched parts add a bit of the dramatic to the telling so that you keep turning the pages all the way to the end. To be honest, it’s a literary device to keep the reader engaged in the book and make it worth her or his time. It’s also a coyote trick, something I learned from Tom Brown’s Grandfather, who said that sometimes you have to trick people into learning, something called coyote teaching, because to the Apache, the coyote is a trickster. I was never much of a magician and I’m really not trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes but sometimes a made-up example or two or a dramatic story gets the point across better than a straight telling.

While it’s a story, in the truest sense, it’s also my reflections on the subject of global warming. So you will learn something about global warming, how you (and a few billion people like you, even the ones without cars) have caused it, what it’s going to do to your weekends (hell, your entire week), and why if you don’t do something about it now, your children (or your relative’s children if you don’t have any of your own) are going to stomp on our grave. It’s a bit grim, but not without hope, and not without lots of laughs (because I seriously can’t take anything too seriously), even though we’re talking about the end of the world as we know it (but I am getting ahead of my story).

This book is something I just had to write, and I know all authors say that, but in this case, I had to write it not because I needed to unload 52 years of angst but because I truly hope that it will inspire a few people to do something positive for the planet. Maybe even write a book about something positive they did for the planet…

Before we begin our little journey together as author and reader, I have a few confessions to make so that you know who I am and where I’m coming from and why I wrote this book and to keep you from thinking that I am some loony or some tree-hugging, bunny-kissing radical, or worse, a politician or lawyer (okay, that was a joke, I love looniess, tree-hugging bunny-kissers, and politicians). I don’t have a long and colorful patriotic career like Al Gore or a sexy blue-eyed charm like Leonardo DiCaprio (though I deeply admire both men for what they are doing to fight global warming and would love to mee them some day over a cup of local grown, free-trade coffee, dark roast, of course).

First, I am, at heart, a scientist. I’ve been a scientist since, oh, say, the age of ten, when I pronounced my intentions to become an astronaut (I’m still intending…). My parents were aghast. “You can’t fly to the moon, you’ll get killed…an asteroid will hit you…you’ll run out of air…what will you eat?” So I deftly switched careers (still at the age of ten) to aquanaut, an underwater astronaut of sorts, keeping secret the fact that astronauts trained underwater anyways, so aquanauting was kind of like an apprenticeship to astronauting. I’d just take a little underwater detour on my way to space, parents be damned. That side trip consumes me still and I love it to no end, but there remains a part of me that would like to jump on a space ship and get the hell out of here before the planet blows up. (But I am getting ahead of my story again.)

Second, my decision to become a scientist was a deeply personal one, shaped by the circumstances of my upbringing, which, all in all, were pretty decent, despite the tumult of family dysfunction, fatherly alcoholism, motherly abuse, self self-loathing, and the oh-too-slow realization that I was not like the other boys. Okay, it was hell growing up, and science offered a safe, sane, and solitary haven from which I could shut out the roller coaster of emotions that gripped my early years until I was old enough to drink. I equated science with logic, with providing an explanation for everything, with mapping out a rational approach to an otherwise insane existence. Science was an intellectual sanctuary for a young boy who would have rather not thought about (or deal with) all the emotional baggage that was piling up in the “real” world. Yes, I admit it now, I was a nerd.

Third, I love to write, which is funny, because I don’t really like to talk that much. Oh, I can lecture for hours…my students will attest to that…and I think I am a fair lecturer. I like to move about the room and wave my hands and change the cadence of my voice and occasionally stand on a desk. But in the classroom, I get to control the subject of the conversation (“The Professor is King.”). Just don’t sit me on a couch in a room of well-meaning friends or relatives and expect me to carry on about the new tile in the bathroom or the marvelous stainless steel, Energy-Star, split-door, refrigerator-freezer with the external ice machine, oh hell no! I like to craft words, to make sentences, to weave a story that helps someone understand a little bit of something something about the world and, hopefully, themselves. I think that’s why I write, to help people. I sure as hell hope so…I am an idealist who would like to help make the world a better place.

Foruth, and finally, this issue of global warming really sticks in my craw. My craw of craws! I mean, really! What do we have to do to convince people that this thing is real and that it is going to knock the crap out of us if we don’t take drastic action, like now. I swear, some days I feel like I am on a giant raft on the Niagra River and we are approaching the falls and I’m yelling, “hey, we should get to shore now” but everyone on board is having too much fun and they can’t hear me anyway because the roar of the waterfalls about which we are about to plunge is deafening! Jump! Now! Ooops! Splat!

Fifth (and my confessions come in fives so this is the last one), I tend to be a bit melodramatic at times. Some of it comes from learning how to play the cello at an early age (despite my very strict German cello teacher—was his name Hans?—I learned to love the cello and it became an instrument for emotional expression despite my outwardly disdain for emotrions). And some of it comes from loving to act. I’ve played Conrad, Father Mapple, Captain Nemo, and a giant Easter Rabbit. And some of it is just genetic wiring though I swear I’ve never been fond of Barbara Streisand or Judy Garland. Captain Kirk and Lucas Wolenczak, yes, and maybe Alexis from Dynasty, and damn, Jennifer Garner (OMG!), but few of the familiar icons were part of my youth and subsequent evolution.

So, you can expect this book to be a scientifically accurate (and couched in the language of scientists, when called for), deeply personal (recovering alcoholics love to tell their story), unabashedly idealistic (blame my eco-muses, Thoreau and Whitman), passionately passionate (my craw!), and somewhat gay (yes, even gay!) account of global warming. Crikey! It’s my begging-you-please-dear-reader to take a few hours from your excruciatingly busy life (though I prefer the word “full” to busy) and consider the impact you are having on the planet so that you can adjust the topsail, stem the main, and set a new course towards a dawn that is brighter (and cooler) than the one we’re looking at today. I thank you. The world thanks you. The future beings who visit our ignoble planet thank you.

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The Killing Greens

January 2nd, 2009

No doubt, many of us are not fond of green vegetables…spinach, collards, brussel sprouts. Good as these greens might be for us, we just can’t stomach their taste, texture, and smell.

While I am no expert on these green vegetables, I wonder if some of them might contain toxins that evolved to prevent them from being eaten. There are numerous examples of plant biodefenses in the form of chemicals that cause mutations or harm their predators. My favorite example is a seaweed called Desmarestia whose tissues contain sulfuric acid. When sea urchins dine on these seaweeds, their teeth dissolve. The urchin dies. Seaweed wins.

Perhaps all of us should be more wary of the greens…

Last month, a group of scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography reported that makers of thin-film solar panels (as well as flat-panel TVs, computer displays, and microcircuits), the least expensive panels to manufacture, are likely responsible for a fourfold increase in atmospheric NF3, nitrogen trifluoride, a potent greenhouse gas. The heat-trapping ability of this compound is 17,000 times more effective than carbon dioxide.

Though its concentrations are currently relatively low, increases in the rate of emission of NF3 as a result of green-power initiatives, are cause for concern.

Fortunately, there are alternative, less environmentally costly ways to make solar panels, albeit at greater economic cost to manufacturer and consumer. Unfortunately, the solar economic engine has left the station as billions of dollars are currently being invested in thin-film manufacturing.

Will our planet be destroyed by the very technologies meant to save it?

We have choices, but we need to make them intelligently. We need to be thoughtful, considerate, analytical, and unrelenting in our quest for the truth.

If we continue our behavior of fire, aim, ready, we will find the gun pointed back at us.

We would do well to heed the lesson of the sea urchin. Not everything that is green is good.

Learn more. Tell someone. Write your representatives.

See http://news.mongabay.com/bioenergy/2008/10/extremely-potent-greenhouse-gas-4-times.html

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