To become Environmental Scientists, I suggest students of nature study my archives one topic at a time, breaking into topic groups, and each group Team-Presents a lecture at a weekly Seminar of their investigations. When you have finished the list, you will be Scientists and you may also be a tad cynical.
As an Eco Sleuth, I can get pretty excited when I get onto the trail of a hot one. After discussions with Dr. David Monroe, USA Toxicologist, I analysed and discovered 350 ppm of carcinogenic 1,4-dioxane a few years back, in Vision herbicide, after the Feds and Monsanto said it was safe! I also found that the surfactant was polyoxyethyleneamine (POEA), a probable human carcinogen. These smoking pistols with Monsanto fingerprints all over them has resulted in a few changes in 'Inert' management and increased toxin contaminant disclosure in the US but not in Canada. The Feds subsequently and reluctantly admitted that they had corroboration on the dioxane contamination.
My third most important observation, 'Given Infinite Time and Space and Random Turns, the most Improbable Event Becomes Certitude'(JJ, 1974). Translated, this implies that quantum mechanics rules the universe and serendipity is our friend besides being the occassional pain in the butt.
What is the temperature and cloud cover over your part of the world? Click 'Hawk Eye' link!
For a great example of salmon habitat enhancement involving kids and fish and education click 'Salmon Habitat'.
One of my goals is to expand my conservation studies and to continue this work for many years for nature. These investigations could be used as material in a university course in environmental toxicology. There are certainly many opportunities for a digression into researching numerous topics suggested by my review materials themselves. PHd's lurk there. Another hobby of mine is making huge predictions, for example I predict that human caused global warming will cause post-glacial rebound and increased plate tectonic movements due to mass shifts over the plates with resulting increases in earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanism, possibly the first time an organism has ever done so on such a scale. If it leads to eruption of the Yellowstone volcano, it may also be our self induced undoing as a species.
I believe I have discovered why Black bears are black. For answer, contact me.
I have a gift from my 18 years in Northwestern BC and my years with the F&W Branch. I know where every good steelhead fishing hole in the country is and what gear to use to catch em. Same for chinook. I may write it up into a book one day.
I believe that I have also discovered the main causes of cancer through my studies. The P's that cause cancer. Pollution, Profit and Prevention-lack thereof. Look no further than smoking to see how true this is. I believe that cancers are for the most part preventable if the political will were to exist to eliminate carcinogens, mutagens, endocrine disruptors, immune system damaging chemicals and cancer promoters. The Stockholm Accord is a step in the right direction but it is far too narrow in scope. The CNA Nurses resolution is a strong step in the right direction but with a limited voice. The Earth Charter goes a long way towards environmental protection. But collectively, we can wield the biggest club with our pocketbook in the marketplace and in the stock exchange. For example, buy chlorine free food packaging.
The individual can take preventative steps by life-style choices like organic foods, anti-cancer diets, avoiding carcinogen exposure and living in healthy environments though these are getting hard to find. The Cancer Orgs completely misallocate the monies donated to them. They should give ten percent to molecular geneticists and the rest to organizations dedicated to prevention. We could eliminate probably 60% of all cancers in short order by this more realistic focus on the cause instead of the wasteful quest for the magic bullet which just feeds the cancer industry.
There are of course cancers that are contagious like those obtained via specific Herpes strains, Epstein-Barr virus, hepatitis virus, HIV, SV40, JC polyomaviruses, certain papillomas or other possible viruses like CMV which has been associated with colon and glioma cancers and these are possibly preventable by hygienic prophylaxis or possibly development of immunization anitsera or through understanding and controlling the mechanisms of contagion.
Good news November 18th, 2002..My prediction has come true. A vaccine has been developed for HPV 16 which is completely effective against cervical cancer in preliminary trials. This was confirmed again in a large study done in 2005. Immunization can prevent contagious cancers.
The common stomach ulcers bacteria has been implicated as a cause of gastric cancer and parasitic flukes, both and liver have been nailed as agents that cause cancer. Aspergillis mould fungi are also cancer causing. Breast cancer is mostly explainable by persistent organic pesticides and vinyl chloride and related pollutants that harm the genes through the endocrine system. Just like hormone therapy increases breast cancer incidence, so too do these chemicals that disrupt the endocrine systems. To prevent breast cancer, once again, fight pollution. For more info and prevention, check out my references in 'Archives'.
I believe that there are two major flaws in human civilization. In my personal opinion, which I express without malice, our philosophical underpinnings are irrational and the other is that our socio-economic policy founded on population growth and economic growth is ultimately unsustainable by the environment. We have had insufficient information to understand reality and insufficient distribution of intelligence to make sense of it regardless during the early course of our evolution and sadly this will continue for a long time. These imaginary solutions evolved quite naturally not only into the marvellous cultural diversity which we should celebrate, but also into the ethnic and religious arrogances we have seen warring amongst each other which now threaten global security and the environment. Security concerns arising from religion-based differences for example, have misappropriated vast vital financial and infrastructure resources which should go towards environmental repair and protection. Half of all wars are fought over religion which puts a huge burden of blame for global suffering on its practioners. It is valid to ask if a way of being which kills over 50 million people is a good thing. Science today is still fighting a rear-guard action for Darwin and modern cosmic and biological evolution theory against the primitive notion that the universe was created by magic because it has become commonly accepted that one can believe anything whether it is the truth or not, a perhaps highly dangerous and potentially suicidal notion. There can be only one truth in reality in one place and at one time. All the others must therefore be something else. Antagonistic groups have put themselves in boxes that differ from each other in only minute details in their thoughts yet they kill people in other boxes because of these minute differences.
These groups have yet to open Darwin's book and smell the aroma of scientific evolutionary coffee which would enable them to progress to a whole new reality unimaginable to our ignorant fore-bearers and unenlightened contemporaries. The AIDS pandemic, the drought and massive starvation in Africa and elsewhere, CJD, CWD, superbugs, pest epidemics, genocide, fisheries collapses, wars against Islamic ers, flood and fires, are reminders that Headmaster Darwin is ringing his bell on the steps of his school, calling the evolution non-believers to class to read his book and to understand our place. They are Nature, the driver of the horses of evolution, the mother of life, the creator of life, the sustainor of life, pulling the reins back, saying to humanity, 'whoa boy, slow down and pull your goats back from my overgrazed land and stop your rampant carbon combustion and stop breeding like rabbits and wake up to the undeniable truth of evolution'. They are a natural result of ignoring nature, the health of ecosystems, overpopulation and limiting factors and of human society hitting the wall of continued unmitigated growth. They are the result of globalization of probably the most dangerous notion that ever existed, that prosperity requires population growth and that unrestrained growth of humanity is the best goal and that it can be fudged into sustainability. How dare we pack more people in while we squander so much of the existing humanity we have already produced while destroying ecosystems. Sustainability is notwithstanding a wonderful aspiration and part of any harmonizing concept but it alone will not stop habitat destruction and alienation and extinction because selfishness and dire necessity will prevent its full implementation. The infidels on this planet are not Professor Hashem Aghajari or Rushdi or the Jews or Atheists or Pagans or myself, but all those who destroy nature and deny evolution. This leads me to my first and most important observation. It was we humans who created all the gods, not the other way round. Evolution, a physical and organic process, is the creator. Humanity does not have dominion over nature but is rather a part of it and totally dependent upon it. You see my friends, nature operating through evolution, is both our planets life Creator and the Creation and to see her working we need just turn around and listen to her progeny singing in the springtime or blowing in the wind or spinning webs in the shadows or laughing in the playground. The time has come to put our inherited religious ideas into a folder called traditional mythologies and undergo collective cultural evolution for we now know that they were incorrect and move on to the verifiable pure truths of scientific evolution and a cosmologically scientifically consistent philosophy.
Our socio-economic policy is rooted in the ancient primate hoarding instinct, our primal need for a peck-order and territorial tribalism, primitive hard-wired primate instincts we cannot escape but must try to control by rational over-sight. Clearly, our mischievous greedy, territorial, racist, promiscuous, warring little monkey genes still direct our cultural evolution and behaviour and may ultimately be our undoing. Don't believe me. Check the human genome project and chimp DNA hybridization research projects (ex. Wildman et al Genomics studied 73104 DNA bases and found 99.01% similarity between chimps and humans) and keep an eye on nightly news covering human behaviour! It appears from our behaviour and our genetic similarities that we are in fact still monkeys. More profoundly, genetic researchers studying phylogeny, have found that our genes still share 500 genes in common with the earliest forms of life on earth, the Archaea, 5000 genes in common with fish, and identical eye genes in common with ocean flatworms and mice, providing support for the idea that we are related to all living things.
My second best prediction back in the early 1970's was that humanity was poised for an epidemic by a delayed lethal disease pathogen and AIDS came along. My follow-up prediction is that there is a still worse epidemic of an even more aggressive pathogen brewing.
I also predict on this day, 7 May 2006, that MS is caused by Dioxin. It causes degenerative disease in every other species, why not human.
The collapse of so many fisheries worldwide are the planet's miners' canaries going silent? Will we heed their message? Clearly we need to move to that new paradigm and I suggest rather than 'Sustainable Development', we pursue 'Ecological Harmonization'. My first most important observation is that evolution is the creator, both noun and verb; physical inorganic evolution created the universe and organic biological evolution created life and we humans created the gods in our imagination. I am so convinced of my observations that they amount to a belief which is open to contrary evidence. It is this: My Creed: I believe that inorganic evolution creates and destroys universes; organic evolution creates life and all species. Energy is eternal and links everything everywhere. We are monkies made by evolution struggling in vain against our genetic inheritance to be something else. Evolution is the creator ergo God.