Tag: Earth Day

On Scientific Trash

Our world is filled with garbage. The scientific community shows videos of floating islands of trash in the Pacific Ocean that has an area larger than some nations. You can’t drive down the highway without seeing the mounds of aluminum, plastic, paper, and other assorted garbage that has been thrown from vehicles or fallen off of trucks. And no one seems to mind it, much. It’s only another of the prices we pay for life in the modern age. Oh, sure; some of those “earth lovers” decry the trashing of the planet, but, by and large, most people on the planet seem to not care about how much garbage is actually out there.

Then there’s the trash that the scientific community itself produces. Right now, there are hundreds of tons of garbage that endanger people every day, and this trash is a direct result of the so-called progress of the modern world that our best scientific minds have produced in the past 65 years. There are dozens of videos and websites devoted to showing the public this debris, if you know where to look. Yet, most of the public knows nothing about this potential danger to them that this garbage poses, hanging like an unseen or recognized Sword of Damocles over the heads of the population.

In fact, let’s get specific. There are over 130,000,000 pieces of trash that the world’s scientists have produced that have the potential to cause harm to us right this minute. Now, to be fair, the overwhelming number of these pieces are relatively small, but they can still do damage enough to harm us at least indirectly. More on that in a moment. But what’s even more unusual about this scientific trash is that the scientific community knows exactly where they are. In fact, there is an office set up to monitor the trash.

This accounting of the trash began the moment the first bit of junk was thrown away. Yet, the scientists are loathe to do anything to start cleaning up this large amount of trash; they say that they either lack the funding to clean up the trash or they lack the technology to do so. Some point to political reasons for not cleaning up the scientific trash. They invariably shrug and bemoan the fact that the trash exists. But that doesn’t stop them from continuing to add to the amount of garbage they produce every year as they watch the number and the tonnage of junk increase.

However, there is a new movement in some scientific corners calling for a halt to the pollution. One of the interesting things about this junk is that, these people say, if left alone for about 40 years, the junk will sort of “clean itself up” in a way. The theory goes that if no new garbage is produced, then, eventually, it will sort of simply go away. The reason for some of these scientists calling for a halt to the increase in this garbage is that the levels of trash has reached a critical point, they say. The likelihood of that trash causing a major catastrophe is increasing, they say.

And what exactly is this stuff?

Well, as you’d expect, there are garbage bags of trash, surely. Paint. Pliers. A camera. A blanket. Some toothbrushes. And that’s only some of the small stuff. The real threat is the bigger stuff. The fear is that some of that bigger stuff–some left over satellites, for example–will collide with existing objects orbiting earth, causing them to fall into the atmosphere and then crash onto populated areas of the planet.

Because there’s simply that much space junk orbiting earth right now.

On a New Pesticide

We’re familiar with the negative effects of such pesticides as DDT and 2,4-D, and the havoc such dangerous chemicals can have on people and the environment. In our efforts to increase crop yields, corporations employed chemists to create stronger and stronger pesticides to fight insects that literally ate people out of house and home. The need for stronger pesticides came as the pest themselves grew increasingly tolerant to the weaker chemical applications.

We still don’t know the long-term consequences of decades of the saturation of agricultural land with these pesticides. Besides the killing of other grasses and botanicals, pesticides can cause massive kill-offs of birds, rodents, and other wildlife. They can seep into the water table and the water cycle, dousing the human population with dangerous and harmful agents. Cancers, often lymphomas, and other illnesses result. Humans can inhale the molecules of these chemicals, and we are still learning of how they can affect the brain, our reproductive systems, and our natural resistances to other diseases.

The landlocked African nation of Lesotho has what they think may be a solution. Now, you’ve probably never heard of Lesotho, but it’s in extreme southern Africa, and it’s actually a kingdom. Most of the country is at high elevation. They farm grain crops in the valleys, and, in the past, they have suffered from infestations of various insects including beetles and grasshoppers as well as aphids, worms, and weevils. These swarms and some crop blights have caused famines and extreme hardship among the people over the centuries. The government tried using chemical pesticides and insecticides to fight these agricultural battles, but the nation decided that the negative effects of the chemicals outweighed the benefits.

So, turning to the scientists of the national university, the nation has turned to a new source of an effective insecticide. It’s one that came from a most unlikely source. And the efficacious rate is several times higher than any known chemical insecticide. When concentrated amounts of the substance was applied to plants as a spray, this natural repellent didn’t take long to have an impact on the insects that came in contact with it. In fact, the insects that had even the smallest interaction with this new application died within hours, not days or weeks. Studies show a 100% kill rate on such species as black aphids.

Most importantly, the naturally-occurring chemical is safe for humans. The crops are not affected negatively, and the surrounding environment remains healthy. What’s more, Lesotho feels strongly that using this new and natural insecticide could begin the long process of allowing nature to heal itself, to start a return to a safe and natural environment that can still produce high-yield crops to sustain a population.

Where does this natural chemical come from?

Why, it’s a yellow, sticky secretion that is highly toxic to most bugs and insects, and, ironically, it originates from the ducts of one of the most egregious and long-term offenders of agriculture.

The grasshopper.