Religion and The Enivornment

With all the different religions in the world there is one thing that I have come to notice that they all have in common, and that is faith.

Whatever religion you choose to practice ,there is a connection with that religion and its beliefs that allows you to have faith in that religion.

I enjoyed our last class because it was interesting to learn about the different religions and their connection to the enviornment. I also enjoyed observing other people's power point presentation skills. We have some natural speakers in the classroom, I have to say.

I also loved my little gift at the end of the Daoisim presentaion.Very clever.

Museum Visit

At the Museum of Natural History the dinosaurs are always my favorite part!

This trip brought back a lot of memories of the trips I used to take back when I was a skinny little tom boy fourth grader chitting and chatting my away around the museum with friends (dying for snack time of course).

But this time it wasnt just the dinosaurs that caught my attention. It was all the information. Wow! So much information and so properly organized, clear to read and to understand.

I was really impressed walking and reading from exhibit to exhibit writing notes on my cellphone ( which I thought was pretty cool,and I thought to myself, damn... too bad we didn't have these back in the fourth grade LOL).At the bottom after every reading was a little summary of what you read, what you can do about it and they different ways you can get involved, which I thought was pretty neat.

And I thought the quotes right before reading all the information was so brilliant.This is a good one from Albert Einstein that caught my eye(and my mind).




"We cannot solve the problems that we have created with the same thinking that created them".

I also read about the fish poisoning with cyanide in Asia which I thought was
really sad. I knew there was a huge demand for fish, but I never knew that they poisoned the coral reefs so they could catch the fish.It's really sad.

I also noticed that Madagascar is the worlds fourth largest island in the world, reminded me of the movie.Just thought I'd mention that. LOL

I also found some interesting facts about water like 97% of the earths water is salt
water and 3% of that is fresh water, and of that 3% , 1% is actually what we use.So wow, its not as much as we might have thought it was.I googled around and found this interesting chart on just how we use and depend that 1% in our daily lives.




Then as I keep walking I bump into that HUGE tree stump!
Standing in front of it I felt intimidated by nature.

As I kept walking following the cool little map on the floor we went to the last exhibit. I felt kind of weird because those apes really looked liked humans. It made me think about the never ending debate of evolution and creation.

I enjoyed stepping out of the classroom and into the museum to do some hands on learning.It was nice.

Research Paper

I decided to do my research paper on Environmental Justice for Bayview Hunters Point, San Francisco. I thought it was pretty interesting to find something like this going on in our own backyard.Just take a look at the serious toxins found in the air in this report.

Air Quality
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) estimates that of the 39 pollutants they measure in San Francisco neighborhoods, the highest concentration, 20pollutants, was found in Bayview Hunters Point10. Air quality is impacted by a variety of different sources including diesel and gasoline vehicles traveling on highways 280 and 101, noxious fumes from the Southeast Wastewater Treatment Facility, pollution from the PG&E Hunters Point Power Plant and the Mirant Power Plant which is less than a mile away, and air emissions fromhundreds of industrial activities, most notably those located in the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard.
PG&E’s Hunters Point Power Plant, by itself, discharges almost 600 tons of pollution into the air each year including PM10 particles, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and volatile organic compounds11.

This is a little but more about Green Action.These guys are tuff stuff. Just take a look at their mission statement:
http://www.greenaction.org/org/mission.shtml