Deadly Lake

Taken by: Billy Wilson

There has been an antitoxin problem at Anderson Lake. It was discovered in 2006 when two dogs died after drinking the lake water. They suffered seizures and died before their owners could get them to the nearest vet. However, there was a third dog that drank the lake water and didn't die. The dog shared the same symptoms as the others, but managed to get to the vet after having fallen into a coma. The dog made a full recovery and was okay, but how did this deadly antitoxin-a get into Anderson Lake?

The antitoxin-a is produced by Cyanobacteria or Blue green algae when they die. The reason they have made the lake so toxic could be because of nutrient pollution. This pollution is caused by fertilizers that make their way into water and cause algae to over populate. Some of these algae can produce toxins such as the ones in Anderson lake, but others cause oxygen depletion by over populating and using too much of the dissolved oxygen which can make fish and other inhabitants die.

This type of water pollution, sadly, doesn't have any easy fix's it could have been easily avoided had people in the area not used fertilizer there wouldn't be a problem. There are many alternate fertilizers that don't contain these nutrients such as Compost tea, organic fertilizer, or even just the old fashioned way! This Completely keeps the problems from happening. Though if you find this hard remember the seven R's!
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Replace, Refuse & reject, Recover, and Rethink. For this type of pollution though, I most recommend Refuse and reject. By refusing and rejecting fertilizers you can stop this type of pollution.

Sources

"How to Make Compost Tea." How to Make Compost Tea. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 May 2016. <https://youtu.be/JP5Aqsd_g3s>

Follow the Rs: Reduce, Replace, Reuse, Recycle, Recover, Refuse and Reject, Rethink (n.d.): n. pag. Web. 3 May 2016. <http://en.envirocitiesmag.com/articles/pdf/waste_management_eng_art2.pdf>

"Anderson Lake Closed after Two Dogs Die." Port Townsend Jefferson County Leader. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 May 2016. <http://www.ptleader.com/news/anderson-lake-closed-after-two-dogs-die/article_f29e9b6c-331e-519c-88fa-71cefb14b26f.html>.

by Caitlyn

Ocean Pollution Psa and a Bad Meme (and a slight psa on global warming)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/kevinkrejci/

There we go, a bad meme. Now, I'm going to tell you about ocean pollution, oil spills, global warming, and places like the Great Pacific Garbage Dump. Let's start off with global warming. As many of you know, the world is suffering from global warming, meaning that it's getting hotter, which isn't good. An example of what can happen from global warming is more storms, more disasters, and water rising. There is also quite a lot of people saying global warming is a hoax, but to be honest, the people claiming it's a hoax don't really provide very much evidence that or they bring up other topics that seem to be about global warming but isn't at all. So I can't really address that. If you wish to help this then try to figure out a way to use less CO2, like planting trees or using a car less often.

  Now let's start talking about ocean pollution. Unlike the last topic, ocean pollution isn't called a hoax, which is good however that means that people know it's real and bad but don't do anything about it. Ocean pollution is when the ocean is polluted, whether by plastic, trash, chemicals, or oil spills. If somehow you didn't hear of it before and want proof, look at the meme or simply google it. Obviously, ocean pollution is bad because it can do things like killing off sea creatures and the animals that eat those sea creatures, meaning less food for us. And if somehow this helps convince you it's bad, less clean and pretty beaches, I mean imagine swimming in water-filled with plastic, how about chemicals that are bad for you? Or maybe water that just had oil spilled into it. If that still doesn't convince you that it's bad, then maybe you should reconsider a few things. And if it does convince you, then try out cleaning up beaches.

  And now onto our next topic, oil spills. The last paragraph slightly talked about it, though not very much. Oil spills are when, well oil spills into the ocean. This is normally due to fossil fuel mining equipment breaking and the oil going everywhere. And also because of the small droplets of fuel falling from cars and into sewers that lead to the ocean, or other places. This is bad because this can kill animals living in the sea and in some cases, even make them bad to eat. It can also kill the animals eating sea creatures. If you would like to help out with this, try not to drive as often, use a bike or jog if it's nearby and you won't be late, plus it's better for you.

  Onto what's most likely the most famous topic, The Great Pacific Garbage Patch and Other Places Like It. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch and Other Places Like it is caused when people dump garbage out into the ocean either to save money, save space, or just because they're lazy. This can cause animals to suffocate either because something got stuck in their throat o because something wrapped around their neck. In rare cases, the animal will be able to eat it without dying. Still isn't good for them though. Just like global warming The Great Pacific Garbage Patch and Other Places Like it is called a hoax. Although it's not because there isn't proof, it's because it might actually just be a bunch of microscopic plastic. Can't even see it. Either way, it's still bad and therefore, if you wish to help out, use less plastic, clean beaches, recycle, and don't waste food, instead use it as compost. Also, get an aluminum/stainless steel water bottle, it'll be cheaper and better for the world in the long run.

 Sources:

Hanson, Joe. "What Does the 97% Consensus on Man-Made Climate Change Really Mean?" It's Okay To Be Smart. N.p., 25 Apr. 2016. Web. 26 Apr. 2016. <http://www.itsokaytobesmart.com/post/143402650297/97-percent-consensus-climate-change>.   

"Healthy Fish Guide." N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Apr. 2016. <http://www.doh.wa.gov/CommunityandEnvironment/Food/Fish/HealthyFishGuide>.

"NOAA's National Ocean Service Education: Estuaries." NOAA's National Ocean Service Education: Estuaries. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Apr. 2016. <http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/kits/estuaries/media/supp_estuar09b_eutro.html>.

"Water Pollution Guide." Water Pollution Guide. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Apr. 2016. <http://www.water-pollution.org.uk/>.

*All places with [REDACTED] will have information on a later date. Probably. Hopefully. Eh, don't count on it.

by Natalie

Social Media

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Today people rely on social media. They use it to plan things, to make friends, and to spread their opinions across the world. This is, in some cases, a good thing, but in others it's a bad thing. This blog for instance is where we are trying to make a difference and trying to show people how they can do the same. That is a good thing. Another instance is like when someone wants attention and they start to insult people. That is, quite obviously, a bad thing.

You know when you're warned about the internet how it can ruin your life, but it's really not the internet itself, it's the people. I’m not saying there aren’t good, honest people on the internet because there are some good people, but even the people who look and sound really nice can turn evil when they get on Instagram.

In my twelve years of life, I have seen people completely affected in negative ways by what people say to them over these social media. Even if people seem to be your friend as soon as they become anonymous they will say whatever comes to mind. Things like this happening over the internet is called cyberbullying. It has already become a huge problem. People commit suicide because of it and I can't stress enough how important it is to stand up for people when this happens.

The bullies normally won't just have one victim they will often come after multiple people. These people sometimes do this out of jealousy, or out of hatred for the other person(s). In my opinion, I find this stupid! If you are angry with someone go talk to them. I don’t mean go get in a fight with them, I mean don’t be a coward about it. If you can't say it to their face you probably shouldn’t say it over the internet. Another alternative is just ignore the person you're mad at. Like, seriously why go to such extremes if you don’t even have to be near this person?!
by Caitlyn

The Problem with Cows

When you think cows there are probably lots of different things you think. For example…. Cows are so cute. Green meadows. Milk. Yummm, hamburgers. But when you think cows do you think pollution??? 

Probably not because cows quite frankly are not that, well, not that scary. And we actually depend a lot on cows. We get meat from them, they give us leather, and most importantly milk!!! But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good for the environment. And this type of pollution has a name. It’s called Agricultural Pollution. And cows (but more importantly cow’s poop) play a major role in it. You see cows do this thing called excreting their waste products and when it rains the waste flows with it and drains into lakes, ponds and other bodies of water. 

From Wikipedia

Basically that’s a fancy way of saying when cows use the restroom, the waste flows and goes into a body of water. All that extra nutrients pollutes the water and causes algae blooms that are very toxic and harmful. And it happens a lot, overall the farming business across the world generates over 100 times more manure (cow poop) than human waste. So think about that there are 7 billion people on this planet and sewage and waste water is bad enough, so think about that times 100. That’s how much cows produce. And with more demand for milk, meat and leather it’s only going to get worse. 

Plus with global warming, there will be more and heavier rainfall. And when the cow’s waste pollutes lakes and ponds people won’t have a safe place to fish. About 1 in 7 people rely on the ocean and water to get food, that’s around 1 billion people who could be affected by this.

Not to mention that the waste when it breaks down releases greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere and heats up the planet. An average dairy farm with about 2,500 cows give or take, produces just as much waste as a city with 411,000 people. So next time you're swooning over cows think about this.

Watch this video: The Dangers of Livestock Waste

Womach, Jasper. "Agricultural Pollution." Agricultural Pollution. Wikipedia, n.d. Web. 22 May 2016. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_pollution#Animal_management>.
by Ava

Money

Image from Keith Cooper

Money. Money, unfortunately, kind of defines us. I mean think about it, it decides where we live, what school we go to, and at school the friends you make. So ultimately money defines our life. And you might be thinking it wouldn’t affect wealthy people, but I think it would impact them greatly. People might look at them differently, expect them to donate ALL of their money to charity. All of this is because of something so simple yet so complex, called money.

The reason global warming is happening is because of money. Coal is burned because it is cheaper than solar energy or windmills.If some of the multi-billionaires with all that money chipped in- maybe we could do more research on cheaper and easier ways to make solar affordable to everyone. And all those billionaires and millionaires are already doing a lot of charities. Take Bill Gates, for example, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is already is donating a boat load of money to clean drinking water. But the reason they are helping drinking water is because of global warming and water pollution making the water dirty.

Image by Hamed Saber

I’m not saying that it’s only the people with money that can make a change though. We all have the power to do that. If you live in a city, do you really need your own car? Here in Seattle there are buses, metros, light rail, BIKES and many other public or clean transportation. And guess what? They all cost less than driving your own car!!!  You may now also be thinking, how is this our fault? And really it’s not necessarily YOUR fault, it’s OUR fault. If one person didn’t drive or composted all of their compostable food, it really wouldn’t make a difference. But if all of us did that, it would. So how does this relate to money? If we stopped oil company and cars, it would take away jobs, leaving lots of people unemployed, and with no money. But new jobs would open up!!! It would be a problem, yes, and I completely understand that but isn’t it worth it? Isn’t our world worth it? So many people have had their houses and jobs destroyed by extreme weather such as flooding, hurricanes and forest fires. So technically global warming also causes unemployment.

So I’m going to ask a simple question.Would you rather be employed and have a steady flow of money now and watch the world be destroyed OR go without and save the world???
by Ava

Why Does This Happen?

We need to stop this, people are taking chickens and cutting off their beaks and pumping them full of an abiotics. Here is my evidence KEEP HORMONES AND ANTIBIOTICS OFF THE MENU

That article will make you think about how this could harm your diet! Think of what you should do to help chickens or this might go above and beyond and do the same to most of the animals. I know this is happening to chickens and cows the same things please help these poor animals! Here is something you should know: 
KFC faces pressure after McDonald's says no antibiotics in chicken

We keep putting videos here of the horrible process and they keep getting taken down. Maybe that means they are stopping?

by Kamari

Food Miles, How Far Did the Food In Between your Teeth Travel?

What did you have for lunch today?????

How far did the ingredients in your lunch travel?

Well, chances are what's now stuck in between your teeth traveled thousands of miles to get to your grocery store.  So in our class we did an activity to see how far food travels. There were several choices of food cards to pick, the catch was we had no idea where the food displayed on the card came from. So once we had picked the primitive food card we flipped it over to see where it was from and what company produces it. Some food was from local farms, but some were from places across the world. We had to determine how far the food traveled, and then added it all up. In the end, our healthy lunch had traveled 9,520.8 miles!!!! That's putting out 35,226.96 pounds of CO (Carbon Monoxide) into the earth.

Food Travelling to Your Store Add Miles to Your Meal!

Now how much is that you might ask??? Picture it in elephants. Yes I said elephants.  Elephants weigh about 10,000 pounds so our lunch put out approximately 3.5 elephants of CO!!!

Imagine How Much Carbon That Is!!

You see on each card lets take fruits and veggie cards for example, both cards looked identical on the front, one choice was an apple. So say there was you chose one of the apple cards. As I implied, there were two apples, so after we picked one apple card we turned it around, it was from New Zealand!!!!  The other identical apple card was locally grown in Redmond Washington!!! There's a big difference in miles from New Zealand to Seattle compared to Redmond to our local grocery store.  Buying locally might be more expensive but it's much better for our carbon footprint, it reduces the amount of CO we put into our atmosphere, and chances are if you have seen where your food is raised or grown you will know what's in between your teeth.
by Ava

Does Having a Growth Mindset Over a Fixed Mindset Really Matter?

Lots of kids grow up hearing “Don’t give up!” or “Try your best!”. Those things may just seem like things your parents say, a simple encouragement and not that sincere. Right? Well wrong! Because they are actually important life lessons, now that sounds kind of deep, but really it’s quite simple. For example if we all really took “Don’t give up” seriously there would be no High School dropouts or in extreme cases Suicide. That’s a very extreme level but it’s technically true. You see there are two ways of looking at the world, or in other words, two different mindsets. A growth mindset is when you're not afraid to look dumb or get something wrong, you try hard and don’t give up. Then there is a fixed mindset where if you are not completely sure of, say an answer on your test you will give up because you don’t want to look stupid. 

So you must be thinking, well ok but what does this have to do with world problems? 

Here's the answer. Right now there are so many homeless and unemployed people, and let's face it it’s probably because they didn’t get a good education. But if we all work hard in school and aren’t afraid to take risks or challenges we will get good educations!!! It’s not easy to have a growth mindset, but work on it, you will see that it is a very important skill.
by Ava

How to Save Our Waters

Hi this is Jayson here, let's have some ideas about how to solve world problems that could lead to our planet's death. I’ll start, here are some ideas:

First, we can not have trash in our ocean and we can change that by making it illegal to throw trash into water.

Second, we could have police officers on every corner near the water making sure that nobody throws trash in the water, if they throw trash into water they could be arrested and fined; like a $1,000,000. If they do it again then they will go to prison for 20 years.

We need to save our world and by the way we all need to come together. We need to save our world and we could pick up after ourselves.
by Jayson

Trash

Steven Guerrisi - Some Rights Reserved

You know that trash you probably just threw out your car window a few hours ago? Do you know what happened to it? No? Let me walk you through what probably happened. First, you're driving along that road that probably had all that trash there already and it's sunny so all your windows are open. You’re eating some fast food on the go because you didn’t have time to stop and eat breakfast and your fast food wrappers start to flap their way around your car and they fly out the window. After that, the wrapper, along with the other trash on that road, get blown down the street towards a bridge. Under that bridge is a river or creek so, when the trash falls into that creek the current takes it along to where its opens up to the ocean. Then, that garbage floats out to sea and joins the big island of trash in the ocean.

That is likely what happened to that trash you dropped. So, next time you decide to leave your trash on the side of a street or highway remember how much of the Earth the ocean takes up and where it's going to go beyond that street.

by Caitlyn

Estudiantes Quieren Ayuda

Este blog comenso porque Chimacum de los Estados unidos de Washington 6 grado les vino ideas para resolver los problemas del mundo, por ejemplo: esta idea y muchos mas para usar electricidad estática para en lugar de petroleo or carbon.

Niños usan blogs, como este blog, para hacer preguntas de las cosas que estan pasando en nuestra planeta. Nosotros queremos que ustedes sepan las preguntas paraque ustedes nos ayuden a resolver los problemas como el calentamiento global.

Que pasaría a la tierra si los niños supieran ideas para el futuro por si no  podemos parar la contaminación, guerras  y cambio climatico. Si, vamos a tener problemas, pero nosotros queremos que ustedes sepan y nos apollen.
Victor

What Do You Prefer?

How does water pollution happen, why does it happen, those are all questions people have. If we cannot stop water pollution the water animals will either die of toxins from the litter or die from eating the litter or getting the litter stuck on them. If we could just recycle our plastics and put things that can be in a compost bin instead of throwing everything in the trash because eventually that will end up in our waters killing our water animals.

What would you rather have a world with no trash in the water or a world with trash in the water?

Think about that next time you throw away something that can be recycled or that can go in a compost bin that it will end up in the waters killing animals every day. by Isaac

Racism

Racism, is a real problem. It has been going on for centuries. There should be NO difference in the way someone is treated due to skin color. Wars have been started, people have died, all because of their skin tone. Nowadays there are laws to stop and prevent racism, but not everybody follows them. 

Right now the presidential debate is going on, and there are some very racist things being said, stuff like, “We're going to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it!” I may just be a kid, and this may just be a blog, and Donald Trump will probably never read this, but you know what, that’s ok, because I have shared my message and if people still love and respect him that’s ok. But I know my point has been made and opinion proved. Your race, your nationality, your gender, your religion, your skin color it should have nothing to do with the way someone treats of you, it certainly should have NO effect on the way someone values you.
by Ava

The World Needs Change

I think this world needs change because in a few years this world is going to be ours, and we don’t want to inherit a world that is cruel and polluted. We don’t want to live in a world where elephants are illegally poached and Oil and Coal are polluting our world by selling their products for electricity and many other things instead of using healthy things that won’t pollute our world to make things like that. I think that if we work together we can stop all of this cruelty and pollution.
by Gianna

Clean Energy

Energy is a global thing that most everyone in America uses, but its production is not eco friendly. Nuclear power plants have, in the past, done serious harm to the world. Take the meltdown in Fukushima for instance, it caused a full city of people to move out of their homes because of the radiation expelled. If we weren't still creating electricity in harmful ways like this then, we could probably have a cleaner environment than we do now.

In my Science class our teacher showed us this video of these people creating a device that created electrical energy. This is called the Soccket ball. It is basically a soccer ball that when kicked it takes the mechanical energy from the kick and transfers it into electrical energy. So, you have to actually work for your energy instead of harmfully receiving it from someone else.
by Caitlyn

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