Oil Spill Thoughts

It’s an old adage: oil & water don’t mix. And there have been a lot of examples in recent months that demonstrate the truth of those words. Off the top of my head, I can think of an oil spill into a creek in Utah, an oil pipeline spewing heavy crude into a bay in China, and, of course, the mega-spill in the Gulf of Mexico (link to a time-lapsed video from NASA).

From a technical standpoint, oil and water don’t mix for the simple reason that both oil and water molecules have a stronger affinity for their own kind than for the other. Also, oil is less dense than water, so it tends to float on the surface of the water. Unless it’s cold and heavy, like some of the oil that spewed into the Gulf of Mexico a mile below the surface. Then, the oil may find itself in a limbo somewhere between the sea surface and the seafloor. It still does not mix with the water, but it doesn’t rise to the surface, so it is hard to find and nearly impossible to clean up.

I’ve been trying to come up with a good local analogy to put the Gulf oil disaster into local terms. The website www.ifitwasmyhome.com shows the extent of the oil superimposed upon any geographic region on the planet. So, for scale, imagine placing Woodstock at the center. The oil slick would extend north to south from Milwaukee to Kankakee and east to west from central Iowa across Lake Michigan to the state of Michigan.

Another way to think about the Gulf spill: What if tar balls (globs of thick oil) started washing up on Main Beach in Crystal Lake? What if one of the Wonder Lake Water ski team members wiped out, and emerged from the water covered in thick oil? Or what if boating on the Chain of Lakes had to be cancelled because the Fire Department was burning the surface to reduce the amount of oil floating there? Local residents would be outraged, that’s what.

Sure, the ocean is very large, and by comparison, the amount of oil released may be small, but any amount is too much when it washes up on a community’s beach, fouls one’s oyster beds, or ruins a family’s livelihood or even someone’s summer vacation.

Fortunately for local residents, the chance of a disaster involving an oil well or pipeline leak is very small. But the risk isn’t zero, as there are oil pipelines that cross McHenry County. The concern in this area could be that an underground pipeline developed a leak and oil seeped into an underground aquifer, rather than oil spewing into a lake or wetland. In this scenario, the leak might go unnoticed for many months or even years until oil turned up in an unsuspecting neighbor’s well water.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not calling for a removal of the pipelines, nor do I think a local disaster of this nature is anything but a theoretical possibility. After all, I drive a car that is fueled by gasoline, which is in turn produced from oil like that which flows through the pipelines that pass through our area.

My point is simply that there are existing threats to our precious groundwater – the lifeblood of our community. The water that all residents need to live comes from the underground reservoirs of sand a gravel that were left by the glaciers over 12,000 years ago! Whether the threat is pollution or overuse, the security of local water supplies should matter to all residents. For what is a house worth if there is no water to flush the toilets, or if the well water is fouled?

The Heat of Summer

For the month of July, the average high temperature in Chicago is 83.5. So far this year (2010), the average high temp in July is closer to 87. The average last summer was about 80 degrees - one of the coolest July's on record, and certainly part of the reason this month has felt so darn hot!

Last year, I didn't put the air conditioner on once all summer. But last night I slept with the A/C on all night! The combination of heat and humidity was more than I could stand, but 76 degrees sure hit the spot! I think 2005 was the last summer that seemed this hot.

If there is anything to this Global Warming/Climate Change thing (and I believe there is), then these hot summers will become more frequent. That's the point of the two maps at the top of the page - the one on the right shows average temperatures for the eastern US today, and the one on the left shows what they could be in 2050. The take home message is that average temps are predicted to be much higher almost everywhere.

So, our area would be more like southern Missouri? And Northern Wisconsin would be like Central Illinois? And Florida would be mostly under water? Cripes! So in another 40 years, all those Midwestern snowbirds will just stay right here? Sounds like Sun City will need to expand!

Are the bats trying to tell us something?

I read an article about bats in the most recent University of Vermont alumnae magazine today. It made me want to cry.

Bats are dying due to a little-understood disorder called "White nose syndrome." The disorder causes the bats to wake frequently throughout their winter hibernation, and since they are hungry when they wake, they fly off in search of insects - their primary source of food. The problem is that in the winter, there are no insects, so the bats expend valuable energy in futile searches before returning to their winter slumbers. By the time they wake in the spring, the bats are so emaciated, that they are susceptible to other illnesses that healthy bats can easily fight off. So, the bats die from a variety of things, so it has been hard to pin-point the exact cause of the syndrome.

Researchers at the University of Vermont have been studying the bats in Vermont, trying to determine what is causing this disorder to decimate the bat populations across the country in a very short time period. Consider: the disorder was first identified in eastern New York state in 2006, and since that time has killed millions of bats in the Northeast US, rapidly spreading down the east coast, and towards the Midwest.

There have been articles in the local paper recently about the discovery of rabid bats in McHenry County, warning people to avoid coming into contact with bats in the event the bats are rabid. So, there may be those who think that bats are dangerous to people, so who cares if bats die?

Well, maybe we should care if all the bats die.

As one of the researchers comments in the article: the bats could be the canaries in the coal mine, perhaps giving us a warning about the general degredation of the environment that we all depend upon for life. Consider that frogs and toads are dying off at an alarming rate across the globe due to a fungus. And Colony Collapse Disorder is affecting bee populations across the US. With no known cause, the loss of bee populations has the potential to destroy the country's agriculture system, as bees are the primary pollinators for many crops!

Do we really want to take the chance that these dramatic die-offs of three unrelated groups of organisims are just a weird coincidence? Or are we prepared to heed the warnings and start making changes to clean up and improve the environment that we all depend upon for survival?

After all, the coal miners couldn't see or smell the invisible gas that killed the canary, but they knew enough to heed the warning that the dead bird gave them. Unlike the coal miners, we can't just move out of the mine into the clean air. We are living in the mine. Will we take the steps necessary to clean the air, water and soil around us before it's too late?

Where does the time go?

It's July 1st. How did half the year get by me already?

When in grade school, summers seemed long & luxurious. Lots of time to do all the things that I wanted, plus extra things that were not on my personal to do list (like paint the laundry room in the basement). I had what seemed an infinite time to read, visit friends, go to camp, ride bikes, climb trees, build forts, etc, etc.

Now everything seems to be a blur. Is it just that time moves more quickly, or do I move more slowly?

There is a theory that each year of one's life passes more quickly than the previous because it represents a smaller percentage of one's total life. [My initial reaction to that was "hunh?"]

The math experts explain it this way: When you are 10 years old, one year of your life is 10% of your lifespan. But, when you are 50 years old, one year is just 2% of your lifespan, so it seems to go by a lot faster. In other words, it's all relative.

Which brings me to Albert Einstein's Big Idea: Time is Relative. He hypothesized that time moved slower or faster depending upon the speed that one thing moves in relation to another. He was able to prove mathematically that as one approaches the speed of light time passes much more slowly than it does for those of us stuck at human speed.

This helps me understand why time moves so slowly for young kids -- they have a lot of energy, and move a lot more quickly than adults! So, seems to me the message is that if we want to slow things down, we need to speed ourselves up!