What is on my plate

Does it seem like a lot? Can't tell anymore.

Heat

New York is experiencing record temperatures this weekend. Not only that, but a fire at a sewage plant just up the Hudson River from Columbia resulted in sewage being dumped right into the river for four days. Excellent!

Not that anyone goes swimming in the Hudson. It's one of the largest Superfund (environmental cleanup) sites in the country, and before it was continually polluted by sewage, it was continually polluted by PCBs, courtesy of General Electric.

Also, I hardly have left my apartment since yesterday (just for a few hours today to go to school). My air conditioner works pretty well to cool the entire apartment, and I'm grateful for that.

My presentation analyzing the Solar Industry Development and Jobs Act is Wednesday. I'm waiting at this point for feedback from our advisor. It's pretty nervewracking. Plus, hydrology and toxicology classes started this week, labs are due Monday, and GIS (Geographic Information Systems-- data analysis using map software) class starts Monday. Because, oh yeah, environmental chemistry and climatology are over! I got a B+ in Climatology. I was hoping for an A...

If you would like to know what exact precise things made me happiest this week, they are my very own dear apartment, everything about this music video, and the exterminator who confirmed I do not have bedbugs which I was afraid caused my horrible terrible 2 day allergic itchy rash, which is now all better but of undetermined origin.

I miss you all.

So awesome

I'm researching energy policy. For one course, it's a series of papers in memo form and my topic is the efficiency standard for vehicles in the US. Did you know that until 2007, the standards hadn't increased since the 1980s, due to the fact that Congress placed annual fiscal restrictions on the Highway Traffic Safety Administration, preventing it from addressing the issue? Did you care? Well, efficiency is a good thing, and it decreases our dependence on foreign oil and makes American cars more competitive in a global market.

I'm also working on an analysis of solar photovoltaics- New York is trying to fill in where the market has failed to build demand for solar energy.

Anyway, there is just something so much better about working seven days a week when you feel like you might actually use all these skills and topic knowledge in the future. I haven't been grocery shopping in 10 days, but at least it's for a good reason.

I'm going to dress up and take myself on a date tonight. I am going to the symphony at Lincoln Center. It's Bruckner's Symphony no. 8, and I got prime level seating ticket on Groupon.

Quoting others

Makes blogging much faster.

On the scientific consensus about climate change:

"928 papers [in refereed journals between 1993 and 2003] were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position."
-Oreskes, N., 2004: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, Science, 306, 10.1126/science.1103618

"Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations."
-IPCC, SPM, 2007

(anthropogenic means human-made or human-caused)

"The scientific consensus is far stronger today than at any time in the past. Here is the truth: The Earth is round; Saddam Hussein did not attack us on 9/11; Elvis is dead; Obama was born in the United States; and the climate crisis is real. "
- Al Gore, Rolling Stone, June 22nd, 2011

In some ways I hate to use a quote from Al Gore, since I know he's a divisive figure, and much as I tend to immediately discard anything Ann Coulter says, I know some people feel the same about him. He's right though. Below is a slide from this morning's final Climatology lecture, showing the climate models that have the best current knowledge about how climate systems operate. Without accounting for anthropogenic factors, natural factor models (blue) can't even come close to observed temperatures in the last 50 years- you have to account for natural and anthropogenic factors together (orange) to do so.

My professor also published a paper about the "Snowpocalypse" events in recent Northeast winters, showing they were the worst winters in something like 500 years- it has to do with polar fronts and changing circulation strengths...or something...I have studying to do before next Monday's final...anyway I have freezing my butt off to look forward to this winter.

Because for now, it's insanely hot. I had my AC unit installed yesterday after being here for almost 2 months. After being in my room for an hour, walking into the kitchen was like walking into a sauna.

So yes, I think a lot about energy use implications, our living standards, our quality of life, and how temperatures on the planet will increase past 800,000 year records in this century. It's even more overwhelming than my schedule. In two weeks, I present on legislation in NY proposing to build a solar power market. Temperatures and pressures are increasing, in more ways than one.

Please note!

I gave out the wrong ZIP code (to those of you who have my address). It is 10027! Not 10025. I've received mail (thank you! <3) anyway, but figured I should set the record straight.

Survivalology

An organism is sometimes faced with a rapidly changing environment and must adapt to survive.

Recent observable behavior changes:

--Weather actually impacting decision making: pouring rain means no grocery shopping. In this way a person might be more in touch with nature in the city than in the suburbs.

--Crossing the street to get to the sunny side. This is a result of sunlight deprivation. Not just because I'm studying all the time, but because there's so little light in my apartment. It's always Cave-o'clock in here, and it's depressing. I'm compensating by ordering candles and strings of Christmas lights and other cheery items. In an interesting contrast to the above statement about being closer to nature, one of these cheery items was a wall decal of cherry branches. There's no light or life (other than me) within these walls. I have to order it online.

--I wondered if this program would force me to adapt to less than 7-8 hours of sleep a night. It hasn't. It won't. Nothing can.

Recent intellectual changes:

--The Coriolis force describes the apparent effect that the rotation of the planet has on the movement of the atmosphere. It is also the reason a hurricane can never form along the equator. And why storms rotate clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere.

--Thermohaline circulation (variations in temperature and saltiness makes oceans move the way they do) means the bottom of the Pacific is very old. Water there has been down there for 200-300 years.

--Imagine not knowing, for the first time in ten years, what a gallon of gas costs. I have been freed from that one kind of concern. At the same time, I have also been studying the environmental harm caused by extracting, transporting, refining, and combusting fossil fuels. And learning just how certain the best scientists in the world are that carbon dioxide must be causing global warming (or climate change, or global weirding, whatever you like). It’s Science.

I also find myself doing less yoga but being more present. I focus on each day and the things I must do, and the individual days fly by. My boyfriend comes to visit on Wednesday. Then we will see how good I am at balancing business and pleasure. Right now, though the midnight blogging may not give this impression, I am on track NOT to study or read or do lab assignments for the 4th of July weekend.

Because I won't change entirely. I won't evolve entirely away from direct language into corporate or scientific jargon, no matter how many workshops on science and management I attend. I will remain fabulous.

Tuesday was my only venture out of the Columbia area this week. My program organized a trip to the Staten Island Yankees (aka, not the "real" Yankees) game. It was my first time seeing the Manhattan skyline and the Statue of Liberty.

Sometimes, you don't care if your hair is frizzy. That's another behavioral/intellectual fabulous change. It's too humid here to care.

Surviving is important. thriving is elegant. ~Maya Angelou

Untitled

So, right now, I feel stressed out. But I know that I have barely seen the tip of this glacier. I have five courses this summer, three of which are over in six weeks and will be replaced by three more (for eight total). Class is three hours, split into two lectures, and the three accompanying labs are two and a half hours long.

I have two workshops- in one, myself and 11 classmates will be analyzing the New York Solar Industry Development and Jobs Act. For the summer and fall, this group will work with our advisor, who has been the director of the ESP MPA (get with the acronyms, people. You have no idea how many I'm facing...) program since its conception. He is also the Executive Director of The Earth Institute (the people who brought you the idea of plate tectonics. And the Millenium Development Goals). These are the big dogs.

Then there's me. Not to be the powerful and smart professional woman who deprecates herself, but on my first day, I dried off after my shower with a new pink towel from Target which left my completely enrobed in super-fine pink fuzz. Don't buy "color-safe" towels on sale from Target, because apparently the only way the color stays on is by coming off WITH the lint. ...I don't think anyone noticed. Some people were late to our first class, so I was far from the object of ridicule. (It kind of makes me feel affinity with one of my heroines, Elle Woods.)

I don't really have time to be writing this post. I don't have time to do anything. This is when it is most important to go to yoga. I went out into the (incredibly! wonderfully!) cooler air tonight, took the 1 to 66th Street, and went to my new yoga studio. And had a wonderful class that reminded me to breathe and have the courage to be gentle and the tenacity to let go. I came out and the city was dark and sparkling and I had a voicemail moving up a deadline .....breathe!!

My orientation on Tuesday was great- I teared up a few times because I was so struck by how this is so what I want to do...I DO want to become a problem-solving environmental professional who makes problems less bad (because you can never completely solve these problems) without creating worse ones, and I DO want to be able to explain science to non-scientists. I know I want to know this. It helps me to remember this when I am facing Avogadro's number again.

Also, what helps me would be your understanding. I at times am feeling so not-there for the people who I am used to being more-there for. I tell myself that this program demands an unprecedented level of effort from me...but does this excuse me from being present in the lives of the people I care most for?