Having Fun in a Changing World
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As this comic strip series was running, I was very glad to hear that the Keystone XL pipeline was denied a permit, but it looks like this is just a stalling measure to take the decision beyond the presidential election. I wish as much money and energy was being put into researching and installing alternative energy systems (wind, solar, wave) instead.
The readers of Arctic Circle online (see link on left to the daily comic) are pretty tough markers and I thought it was interesting that they liked this comic more than most. I’d like to think that the routine use of antibiotics in animal feed is of concern, but it’s more likely that comic readers just love bacon.
Living and working in a one bedroom flat, with a small courtyard, I dream of studios/workshops etc. On the way to Wilson’s Promontory National Park in Victoria, we discovered this talented artist in Fish Creek. Andrew McPherson works with old materials, including a lot of old metal. I’m kicking myself for not having bought one of his pieces due to a lack of cash at the time.
Wilson’s Prom is beautiful. The only drawback to this is that everyone knows it’s beautiful and it fills up with bogans at the weekend (why, when you have the sound of the bush and the sea would you play techno music???). Sunday night was waaaay quieter and more pleasant than Saturday.
One of the great things about WP is the amount of wildlife. You can get up close to wombats and wallabies and as I was in the surf a huge school of fish lept out in front of me.
This cartoon was inspired by the way an agrochemical company protects its patents (on its GM crops).
According to the Guardian:
more than 80% of the GM seeds sold each year are owned and sold by one company, Monsanto
As a lapsed biochemist, I don’t have a problem with genetically modified crops on principle – extensive testing shows the organisms to be safe and there is potential to create plants which would be useful in a warming world (resistant to salinity and pests).
But the patents and ruthless enforcement of them mean that only the rich parts of the world gain from the technology. It also threatens organic farming and the seed-savers who should be able to co-exist with GM seed users.
Monsanto’s behaviour in suing small farmers (who have GM plants from seed blown onto their land) for patent infringement hasn’t helped their cause, or the cause of smaller GM entities who may have been able to provide truly useful (not extremely profitable) plants.
Gwen is one of the newer characters in Arctic Circle (she made her debut as Oscar’s first and only real girlfriend in his trip back to Antarctica). She is based on a good friend of mine (who is actually a lot greener than I’ve depicted Gwen, but who LOVES buying new stuff), but she doesn’t know that (yet…).
We tried to grow soya beans last year, but didn’t have much success, leaving it late in the day to plant for starters.
We saved the seed from the beans that did grow and interestingly, it is those seeds that have germinated best (I planted them as well as the diggers seeds from last year).
Rainy Day Update: Testing the adhesive properties of sugru with a boot that sprang a leak
I can’t stand it when things get thrown away because it is too hard to repair them. I have a 60 year old toaster, which I’ve had repaired twice because of burnt out elements (apparently, cleaning the toaster tray out more often prevents this…). Each time, I’ve had to scour the city I lived in for someone who was prepared to do it as nearly everyone tells you to buy a new toaster. I don’t want a new toaster. I just want my old one to work. I’ve had to beg guys to do this repair, even though it ends up costing $25 to do (and I think they take pity on me and charge me less than they should).
Which is one of the reasons Sugru is great. Sugru can’t repair toasters (well, not internally anyway), but it can repair a lot of other stuff that might otherwise go to landfill. Sugru is a mouldable silicon putty like plasticine, but unlike plasticine when you leave it for 24 hours it sets and gives you a tough, but flexible rubbery thing. It’s like silly putty for grown ups (sensible putty?) because you can do so much stuff with it. I fixed my bokashi lid which I had accidentally melted (don’t leave glass containers in the sun on top of plastic, duh.) and then used some sugru to stop my light fixing on my bike from moving around the handlebars.
Lots of people get really creative with the stuff:
Sugru were looking for some people to test their new formulation (it does the same thing, but you don’t end up with sugru goo on your hands afterwards) and sent me some. The first thing I did was to fix a bathroom hook that had been driving me nuts for ages.
Love it.
From the National Oceanic and Atmostpheric Administration (NOAA):
Updated each decade, the U.S. Climate Normals are 30-year averages of many pieces of weather information collected from thousands of weather stations nationwide. Each time they are updated, an old decade is dropped, and a new one added. Starting in July, when you hear that a day was hotter, or colder, or rainier than normal, that ”normal” will be a little different from what it was in the past.
And what a difference:
July maximums, 1981-2010 compared with 1971-2000.Image: NOAA
January minimums, 1981-2010 compared with 1971-2000.Image: NOAA
The maps show the change in the July maximum temperatures and the January minimum temperatures for the continental US. Sobering stuff.
The drought that I came into when I arrived in Melbourne over 3 years ago seems to be at an end (the dams are over 60%, more than double what they were in 2008), but we are still in the habit of saving water. It makes sense because water has a cost to it – the energy needed to transport and purify it (unless you have a rainwater tank on the roof). We also save a lot of money on our bills by using about 50 litres a day (versus the 155 litres per person, which is the target for our state…. what are people using all that water for???) and I still enjoy my baths (I am English)!
We all need energy for our daily lives and the only way oil prices will go in the long run is up. Getting that oil is getting more difficult and more expensive. We’ve dug up the easy stuff and now we are exploring more difficult regions (the Arctic) and less refined sources (tar sands). This means more carbon emissions for the energy we use and more threat to the environment from spills.
The long term answer is to move away from oil/gas as our primary fuel sources and use renewable energy which reduces dependency on unstable parts of the world AND is better for the environment.
