Climate Change – Page 2

UPDate – Sails from Sweden

This article is an update on modern wind-propelled ocean-going ships. This was previously discussed in the article, Cylindrical Sails, posted October 1, 2018.

Naval architects and marine engineers are continually working to make ocean transport of cargo more environmentally sustainable. The vast majority of the world’s cargo whether it is manufactured goods (farm machinery or transistors/semiconductors), raw material (food stuff or metal ore), or consumer products (small appliances or clothes) are transported from point of origin to buyer by ships.

The map above is a screen shot on a summer day in the Northern Hemisphere. The number of ships traveling between ports can be seen crowding the favored shipping lanes. Other areas of the ocean are nearly empty in comparison. These shipping lanes are crowded because they are the most direct routes between ports of call. The most famous route being the Great Circle Route.

I remember as a boy seeing the ship I was traveling on being marked on its daily passage with a magnetic ship on a wall size map of the oceans. When I asked why the ship was moving up towards the North rather than going straight across the ocean, I was told that we were on the shortest route, the Great Circle Route.

This route is the shortest distance across the globe of the Earth. By taking the shortest route the ship takes less time in its crossing, thereby saving expenses and fuel costs.

The graceful arc of a Pacific Great Circle Route is shown as a black arc between Asia and North America (California). The congestion of this route can be easily seen. These routes can be made between any two ports on an ocean. Although they become more flattened near the equator and form an upside-down arc in the Southern Hemisphere.

In the last half of the 20^th century people began to realize the damage to the atmosphere due to the amount of fossil fuel being burned. This included ocean shipping which at the time burned “bunker oil,” a fossil fuel whose use and emission added tons of pollution to the atmosphere and to the sea each year.

Modern vessels use diesel generators and more efficient power plants to generate electricity that is use to drive the propellers that push these ships. The trend has been from direct drive systems for propulsion (a boiler generates steam to turn a geared shaft on which is mounted the propeller), to an indirect-drive (a diesel generator produces electricity which runs an electric motor to turn the shaft on which is mounted the propeller).

All of these systems use fossil fuels for their main power. Over the years the fuel efficiency of the ships and their engines has greatly improved. This was brought about through improved design of the vessels and their power plants. The results have been reduced operating costs as well as reductions in environmental contamination. At the same time the number of ships transporting cargo has greatly increased. The cargo tonnage offloaded in the Port of Los Angeles, California has significantly increased in the recent years. From 2000 to 2019 the general cargo off-loaded in the Port of Los Angeles more than doubled. It rose from approximately 82 million metric tons to more than 190 million metric tons. All of these goods were transferred by ships burning fossil fuel.

In order to reduce the effect of fossil fuel on the world’s atmosphere and oceans, a consortium being led by Wallenius Marine and including the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden and SSPA, a marine consultancy, have designed and tested models of the hull design for a modern sailing ship. These tests have been on the open water and in a testing basin.

The modern sailing vessel they are designing is a wind Propelled Car Carrier (wPCC). Wallenius Marine is leading the design of the wPCC. This type of vessel is used to transport manufactured cars and trucks. It is often referred to as a roll-on roll-off (RORO) vessel.

While the sail mentioned in the previous article was a spinning cylinder, the wPCC sails resemble the rigid sails of modern racing yachts. They are expected the propel the Car Carrier across the oceans and achieve a reduction in emissions is 90%. However it is noted that the vessel is slower than a standard RORO.

The sails have yet to come to a final design. These rigid sails will rise up from within the ship. They can also be lowered when the ship is under the control of tugs while in port.

And although I might think that I cannot wait another moment for my new Volvo to arrive, knowing that its transportation had a significantly reduced carbon foot-print is worth the small delay before I have the keys in my hand.

The initial article I read on this was from TNW (The Next Web) and can be found at https://thenextweb.com/shift/2020/09/10/swedes-boat-powered-by-wind-sailboat-ship-cargo-transatlantic/ .

A fact sheet on the wPCC may be found at https://www.sspa.se/sites/www.sspa.se/files/field_page_files/wpcc_fact_sheet_may_2020_v_1.0.pdf .

The map at the top is a screen shot of a maritime information map found at https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-12.0/centery:24.8/zoom:2 . It is noted that there is an agreement associated with the use of material on this web site.

Tonnage statistics for the Port of Los Angeles may be found at https://www.portoflosangeles.org/business/statistics/tonnage-statistics .

Summer Flutter-By

(corrected version – originally published 18 July, 2020)

‘Tis summer, and June is passed.

But still, “What is so rare as a day in June?.”

This June, when each day was long, hot, humid, and rainless, there was magic all around you.

If are near a park or if there are gardens in your neighborhood, you are likely to see the white Rovers, along with black, and orange, and sulfur Rovers. These tiny Rovers chasing some unseen song on the wind, will settle for a brief moment on a plant that is bathed in sunshine, and then they are off with a wandering and seemingly unsteady pace. It is as if they follow the Sun. They will stop for a moment, on a flower or on the ground, and bask in the sun. It appears that they are just resting and enjoying the Sun and the flowers that happened to be there for their repose.

These are the butterflies of Spring and Summer. They come to flowers seeking their nectar. And they seem to love the Sun. They should be called Sun-Wings. Why “butter-fly”.

This question reminds me of an old children’s joke from the 1950’s. Why did the little boy throw the butter out the window? Because he wanted to see “butter fly”.

The internet has varying opinions on where the word came from in English. It does not seem the word was derived from another language, but rather from old English, given on many sites as “buterfleoge”.

The UK Wildcats in the Department of Horticulture have a good site about butterflies. It has a great deal of information about butterflies, but not why they are associated with a specific milk product.

This makes me think of the Internet, which I used to find these bits of information. It was supposedly conceived at the Pennsylvania State University (Nittany Lions), in their storied and excellent ice cream parlor which is associated with their dairy farm and livestock programs. So perhaps there is truth to the legend of butterflies are lost soles who like milk? Yes, I said it like the soles of a pair of shoes, which if butterflies wore they would need three pairs. I wonder if a Beau Brummel of the lepidopterist type wears three pairs of the same shoe or does he vary the pairs.

What the Kentucky Wildcats site tells me is that in Greek butterflies and moths are known as “Lepidoptera”, which is used as their scientific classification. Lepidoptera means “scaly wings” in Greek. So as long as this is my article, I will take a swing (or a flutter) at the derivation of the word, and say that perhaps the person who first said, “That is a Butterfly,” knew well that the Greek word meant “scaly wing” and was looking for an opposite, and what is more smooth to the touch than butter.

But enough of the words and derivations and wandering through forests of blue trees with polka-dot leaves wondering why a butterfly is not called a formenhangeeen. Because it’s not.

The Butterfly is a simple soul. It follows the bright light and settles where there are no disturbing winds. Perhaps this is why in Russian (бабочка) (pronounced as ba-booch-ka) it is known as a “little soul”.

But in our garden on a warm-but-not-hot day in mid-July, I see a female (two-spots on each wing) Cabbage White (Pieris rapae) wandering, with purpose, through our purple Hostas and yellow Stone Crop Sedum. Down and up and around and then left to right she goes. Not unhurried, but seemingly without a care. And then she lights and unrolling her tube-like tongue she tastes the flower’s nectar and then moves on to investigate another.

And so her Summer goes.

What is so rare as a day in June?

A Sun-Wing in the garden who with each flap of her tiny wings sets up wild hurricanes that blow polka dotted leaves over the garden wall.

And so the Summer goes.

Other Butterflies that frequent the Washington, DC area include; Cloudless Sulphur Butterfly, Baltimore Checkerspot, Black Swallowtail, Cabbage White Butterfly, Canadian Tiger Swallowtail, Clouded Sulphur, Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, and the Monarch Butterfly.

The University of Kentucky site may be found at; https://www.uky.edu/hort/butterflies/all-about-butterflies .

“What is so Rare as a Day in June”, a poem by James Russell Lowell may be found at, https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/what-is-so-rare-as-a-day-in-june/ .

The Lyrics (by Bob Lind) to The Elusive Butterfly of Love (as sung by Dolly Parton) may be found at; https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/dollyparton/elusivebutterfly.html .

Four-Points

WOW! I am still excited, even two weeks after my wonder-filled find.

I was out in the open fields and forest edges on a warm Saturday, hiking and enjoying being outside. As I crossed a field, I saw something sticking up out of the grass ahead of me. It was about 50 yards away. The sunlight highlighted it so it stood out from the surrounding grasses even though it was not much higher that the brown stalks.

The area where I do most of my local hiking has a rather large white-tailed deer population. There are several herds that populate the area with numerous males of all ages.

One of the aspects of the white-tail deer, which every school child knows, is the male’s antlers are shed each year in the late Spring. Each year, each male deer will grow a new set of antlers. The antlers grow through the Spring and Summer, reaching their full size at beginning of the deer’s mating season known as “the rut”. As the male deer grows older his antlers grow larger with each passing year. A young male may only grow antlers that come to a single point. These are also known as spikes.

An older male will grow more massive antlers with numerous points. The antlers remain on the male until after the mating season is over. At that time the male deer’s body chemistry begins to change which signals his body that the antlers are no longer needed. His antlers become less firmly attached to his skull, and they prepare to fall off. This physiological change takes place in the late Winter and early Spring.

The antlers may fall off as the buck is walking through the woods where the antlers may be brushed off by low branches. They may fall off due to a jolt, if the deer is involved in a late season battle with another male deer. They may fall off as the buck runs and jumps across a field.

In the part of Virginia where I hike this change and the shedding of antlers generally happens after mid-February. If you are out in the woods and fields where deer roam and browse, you may find a single antler, or in some cases a pair of antlers. Finding a pair is rather rare, as the antlers fall off at different times. The pair may be far apart across a field or patch of woods. Sometimes though they fall off on a used trail, so that even if they are shed on different days they may be found at locations on the same trail. It’s a random pattern depending on where the deer goes, his body chemistry, and whether there is an event that causes the antlers to be knocked or brushed off his head.

Then the forest or field takes over. These “sheds” are not just useless bone. Small forest creatures will gnaw on the antlers as they are a source of phosphorous and calcium and other minerals for these creatures. These may be mice emerging from their winter tunnels, or foxes and coyotes.

And of course, there are people who may pick them up. These people, like me, enjoy walking across the fields and up through the woods looking for whatever they might see and enjoying the peace of the natural surroundings.

I have found small sheds before, but this find was certainly different with its polished four points. When I picked it up, I was surprised by how heavy it was. It weighed about four pounds. I have been out to the area where I found it twice more to see if its mate will turn up. It has not. It might not have fallen off yet. Or it has fallen off and some forest creature, or another walker, has carried it off.

BRIDGE

During this “Winter-Without-Snow” I have taken advantage of the record-setting weather to wander fields and forest lanes which I would not usually go onto. Many of these places are not available to me Spring through Fall when the hay is growing and the ticks are more active. Right now, the hay has been cut and most insects are dormant due to their season .

Last week I went to what was for me an unexplored field surrounded by woods. I intended to walk the perimeter which was two miles around its full circuit. When I added in my excursions into the woods surrounding the field, my walk was a very pleasant three miles – and maybe a bit more. As I walked the edges of the field, I would walk down into the surrounding woods to look at some item that had caught my eye. Perhaps it was an old bottle reflecting the sun, or a particularly interesting shape of a tree, or a stand of bushes full of bright red winter-berries.

I was drawn further into the woods by a stream that flowed near the edge of the woods. The rains of the week before had mostly drained out of the hilly woods surrounding the field. The stream was flowing quietly. It carried a sparkling brightness in the filtered sunlight and was worth exploration. The woods were not dark like northern coniferous forests full of evergreens. This was a bright, southern mixed hardwood forest of bare branches and filtered sunlight. The branches, bare of leaves, allowed the sunlight to penetrate through what in summer is a darkening canopy and brighten the area below. It was bright and inviting so I directed my trek along the course of the stream.

It was easy to tell that the stream would sometimes run high and fast as the banks of the stream were steep and without much growth. Further up the hill into the forest I could see something that stretched across the stream. When I got to it, I found it was an abandoned foot-bridge. But it was not a bridge that could be used. It was missing boards. A few were in place, but other dangled above the narrow stream. Only one of the natural-timber cross-pieces was still in place, spanning the stream to the opposite bank. No animal other than a raccoon or a mouse would be able to cross it easily.

Once in times past, the bridge had spanned the stream. It went from one place to another. It had lain at some point further up the stream. Then a day of heavy rain and high water, perhaps in a hurricane, had lifted the bridge and pushed it to this current spot. On my side of the stream the bridge was open. On the opposite bank the timber span ended at the base of a large tree.

Even though the bridge could not now be crossed, it still caused me to wonder. What is on the other side? I could easily see the other side just across the small gully; the distance was less than 30 feet. But if I could have walked across the bridge, what would I actually see? I would see the same trees on that far bank that I could see from my current spot. But on that far side I would be able to reach out and touch those trees. I would experience that distant shore.

I have never seen a bridge that I did not want to cross in order to touch the other side.

And that has made all the difference. (1)

Borrowing the closing from Robert Frost’s, The Road Not Taken.

Beetles in the Fog

Happy Thanksgiving to all my readers.

I can only imagine that it is a curious sight. The first curious image is fog rolling onto and across a desert. A second, desert beetles facing into whatever breeze might be pushing the fog, with their beetle heads down and their beetle rears lifted upward so the fog, water laden, is pushed along its back.

These curious beetles are the Namib Desert Beetle (Stenocara gracilip) which face the breeze from the ocean and expose the wing-cases along their backs to the incoming fog and collect water from the fog that is condensed on its wing cases. Then due to the beetle’s curious posture the water droplets flow downward to the beetle’s mouth.

In the arid Namib desert on the south west coast of Africa, plants and animals must find a means to get water to survive. This is also true of many people around the world. Using methods similar to those of the beetle, devices have been constructed so some people in arid regions can harvest water from the moisture in fog. A project in Morocco has been under development since 2005. The project won a United Nations Climate Change award for the supplying villages with water from new water taps and supply line, and also for alleviating the burden on women who had to spend hours a day in drawing and hauling water from wells to supply their homes. Similar projects have been used in other arid locales that are close to an ocean.

More recently two papers were given at the 72nd Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics in Seattle Washington which took place earlier this month (November 2019). One was on the capability of gathering water characteristics of a single wire in a study related to the collection capabilities of designed projects. The other paper was based on a study conducted by Hunter King, of the University of Akron in Ohio, and colleagues which investigated how the Namib Desert Beetle collects water along its back. The abstracts of these two papers may be found at http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DFD19/Session/Q25.7 and http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DFD19/Session/Q30.1, respectively.

For the beetle the study shows how microscopic ridges, bumps and pits along the beetle’s hard wing case allow it to achieve an improved rate of water collection from the fog. The study included the development of 3D printed spheres with manufactured ridges, bumps, and pits of different configuration for testing in a wind tunnel. These test showed that the microscopic texture of the surface influences the behavior of the collected water droplets. In the case of the beetle these differences in the roughness and smoothness of the surface of the hard shell wing-case on the beetle’s back influenced the movement of the water droplets to the beetle’s mouth. The beetle is able to gather and consume water to enhance its survival in the arid desert. And it must be a wondrous sight to see.

It is through the investigation of different technologies that we, the people, will be able to find solutions to alleviate thirst, hunger, and illness around the world.

We, the fortunate few who have the most, should express or thanks always for what we have. We should also seek out ways to help our brothers and sisters who do not have the resources that we so often take for granted.

Art work above is a modification of picture borrowed from http://morawatersystems.com/biomimicry-the-namib-desert-beetle-a-source-of-inspiration/

Other articles include: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3949572/The-fog-catchers-Sahara-make-water-AIR-hundreds-people.html ; https://www.moroccoworldnews.com/2016/09/197525/moroccan-fog-water-harvesting-project-wins-united-nations-award/ ; https://www.wired.com/2012/11/namib-beetle-bottle/ ; https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-20465982

Earthworms on Parade

I could hardly believe my luck. On my morning science news from the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) list was not one – but two articles on earth worms. I am a fan! I can’t remember the first time I picked up an earthworm from the sidewalk after a rain. Which, by the way, I still do. But there is no way that I can get them all, yet I hate seeing their little desiccated carcasses lying on the sidewalk the next day. It seems that they are often caught between a rock (the sidewalk) and a hard place (the dirt). After a rain the layer of ground which they normally inhabit can become saturated and the tunnels the worms make as they move about become flooded. Just like you and me, the earth worms cannot breathe under water. They breathe, as in taking in oxygen, through their skin, not through their mouths. So they will often come to the surface of the ground and wander onto the sidewalk. If they stay in the grass they are pretty much ok.

I decided to check some of what I thought I knew and ended up at the University of Illinois Extension Service where Herman the Worm holds forth on all things worm-ish, https://web.extension.illinois.edu/worms/anatomy/index.html . The site states that worms like moist environments as their skin must stay moist in order to be able to absorb oxygen. So, wet ground is good for their skin, so they can breathe easier. But saturated ground is not good; it does not allow air to penetrate to the levels of the worms. They will drown. They will escape to the surface. Earthworms also come to the surface to mate. Both are important functions for these little creatures.

But back to the main line. The first time my grandfather took me fishing, I wanted to look for worms. He took me out under a old sycamore tree on his farm and told me to dig. I was fascinated by the worms I uncovered in the dark moist soil. My grandfather told me to leave them alone, that he had other bait to use for the fish. So I took a parting look at the worms, and off we went to his boat on the river bank.

All of us have probably found worms when we have dug into the soil. And because they like to be moist it would make sense that they prefer shaded places where the earth is soft and not dried out. But where in the world are they all? Both of the articles in my AAAS science news link mentioned a coordinated study of scientists which included 6693 sites in 57 nations across the globe. The study asked about their work with earthworms. Personally, I have found that worms always show up to work on time.

And what an amazing amount of work they do. We all most likely remember a science class in grammar school in which we learned that worms are an important constituent in soil health. They aerate the soil as they tunnel about. Their tunnels allow the flow of water into deeper levels of the soils. Their droppings (known as castings) fertilize the soil. All of these; fertilizer, water , and air are important aspects of plant root growth for healthy and robust crop production.

We salute you, little worms, and out of respect I will continue to help you off the sidewalk.

Two sites with information about worms and agriculture:

University of Illinois: https://web.extension.illinois.edu/worms/anatomy/index.html

Pennsylvania State University: https://extension.psu.edu/earthworms

Information about extension services:

https://nifa.usda.gov/extension

First Drive Out

Not in ever, but today was my first drive-out since my accident and recovery. Under the laws of my State if a driver has a medical emergency of a certain type while driving, they must relinquish their driving privileges for six months. The first two months were spent in the hospital and recovering at home. But whether it is six months or four months, for someone like myself who is used to the freedom that a car gives; it was a long time.

Although I could get rides to the store or the doctor, I could not drive myself to the park for a morning walk or to the woods for a hike.

But today, the six months were done, and I could get into my car and drive myself out to the woods and fields beyond my City for a walk.

You may have noticed that I have not characterize the length or the intensity of my walk or hike. Right now, that is not what matters. I am preparing myself once again for a long hike. So, I need to engage in re-conditioning. I am preparing for a mountainous hike; a hike with both length and intensity. But I have to start with a simple walk in fields and wooded hills. I will build up to the longer, more arduous hike. My preparation is physical, and it is mental – and perhaps also spiritual.

My walk today, through woods and open fields, was my first in six months. And the drive by myself out to these woods was also my first in six months. My first drive-out was for my first walk-out. A drive in my car should not be just for the drive itself. In these days of changing climate, my drive should have a higher purpose. Each of us must be aware of and reduce our impact on the atmosphere which is driving the changing climate of our Earth. Does my simple drive out to the woods tip the scales? I don’t think so. But I must be aware that my short drive, added to your short drive, plus his and her short drives, multiplied by several billion short drives, has a significant, multiple, negative impact on the atmosphere and on the climate of our world.

But I consider my drive worthwhile. For me it is part of my physical, mental, and spiritual recovery. My walk took me back into familiar patterns and into familiar places. I walked down to the foot bridge that crosses a stream that can swell in rainy weather, but is now a wandering rivulet. My return path took me past the small wetland that resides on the back side of the upward slope of a hill. On its upward slope the hill is covered in grasses and wild flowers. It is a browsing ground for the local white-tailed deer. At a point on the far side where the woods line the open field, a stream enters from the woods. This stream on the lower part of the hill has created a wetland. The wetland resides on both sides of the the course of the meandering stream. Horse Tails and Broom Sedge dot the wetland among the other wet grasses. It is is bordered with the last of the late summer flowers, Red Clover and Queen Anne’s Lace, along its margins.

My path takes me from hill top to stream to wetland to hilltop.

It was a grand, first walk-out.

The art work is from pictures I captured this morning. In it my shadow is superimposed on red clover (an introduced fodder plant) in the field.

There is also a picture of the Chinese Chestnut at the hill top.

Wetland plants identification using https://plants.usda.gov/core/wetlandSearch

Water Stress

Where I live, we have been without appreciable rain for nearly two months.

My garden wilted. My flowers wilted. The leaves on the trees started dropping early. But I have no real problem. I may be concerned for my garden, but I can take a hose and water it. I could do the same for my flowers, but I know they will survive and will return when the rain comes back. And I am sure the rain will come back.

Where I live, when compared to other places, we are water rich. We have clean water that flows from our taps whenever we want it. Where I lived before was along a wide meandering river that flowed down from up-state. My water came from a well. In my current location, I have water from the city. Both of these areas may be considered water rich. But where I had a well, I had to work at it a bit and have the well drilled deeper. Why? Because the water level of the native aquifer was slowly but continually falling.

Why was it falling? Was there less rain? No. There was plenty of rain throughout the state and the region. In many instances, it seemed there was too much rain. So why was the level of the ground water aquifer falling? Because there were more people. There were more people upstream and all along the river’s banks. There were more people taking surface water and ground water for their personal use and for industrial use, and in my state for agricultural use. So the aquifer level was falling – and it continues to fall.

About every five years I would notice my pump was struggling to lift water up the well. I would need to call a well-driller and have my personal well drilled deeper and deeper. This was not a solution. If anything, I was exacerbating the problem.

In that state, along the Atlantic coast, the total population of 24 coastal counties grew between 2000 and 2007. Several of the counties lost population or had a low growth rate, but half of the coastal counties had a growth rate greater than 15%. All these new people and their jobs were using more and more water. The counties up river were experiencing even more growth. The metropolitan areas drew in more and more people. And they took their share of the surface water and the ground water.

But compared to many places in our country and around the World, these 24 coastal counties were water rich. Some of the population increase was due to people moving into the state from other states. Part of it was the growth of the existing population. Both of these trends continue. It can be seen even on the state level that the more people there are, the more water is needed.

When you look at the World, our nation as I have mentioned is water rich. The September 14, 2019 issue of Science News, including an article , “One in four people live in a place of high risk of running out of water”. The article highlighted a growing, World-wide water crisis. It discussed a series of tools used by the World Resources Institute to calculate what is considered a high level of “water stress”. The article states that the World’s use of water increased 150% from 1961 to 2014. In that same time frame the World Bank indicates that the World’s population has more than doubled, from 3.1 billion to 7.2 billion. At a glance it might appear that the World’s population has learned to reduce their water requirement. But in actuality it indicates, that overall, the World’s people have less access to water.

In a water rich country like the United States, this is not evident, unless you have a well that you have to push deeper every few years. But for many people in the World safe and adequate water supplies is an issue.

As the World population grows toward 8 Billion, this issue will get worse. New methods of water use that conserve water will be needed, and new sources of water, such as the salt filled oceans, will have to be tapped. This will require improved – or new – technologies to prepare the water for consumption, including desalination of ocean water, and new distribution processes to get the water to the people, the animals, and the crops that need it.

The picture of the map is taken directly from World Resources Institute, https://www.wri.org/aqueduct/ .

The Science News article may be found at, https://www.sciencenews.org/article/one-4-people-lives-place-high-risk-running-out-water .

Yellow – Rain

I have always thought that yellow was a good color for rain wear. It shows up!

On the most gloomy and rainy days you can see a person in a yellow rain coat even when they are a good distance off. A a recent study reported this week by several science news organizations that provides information related to another benefit.

In the recently published journal article, the authors describe their study in which they polled participants in 55 different countries. They present their findings that the color yellow can give rise to feelings of joy, a yellow-joy association. However, the level of rise of joy was found to be dependent on the climate and physical environment of the country. Less than 6% of the participates in Egypt found joy in yellow. The countries in which there were more sunny days did not rate high on a yellow-joy association. But in Finland where the weather is not as sunny, and clouds and fogs and plenty of snow all abound, the color yellow leads to expressions of joy in 88% of the participants.

The study not only investigated emotions related to yellow, the 6,625 participants across the 55 countries were asked to rate their emotional feelings of 12 colors. The countries in which the study was conducted span the globe and include all continents except Antarctica. The study is representative of many cultures and climatic conditions.

Of the twelve colors, only yellow could be specifically linked to an increase of emotions and be related to environmental conditions the participants found within their home country.

Across the full set of participants, the study found a yellow-joy association in over 48% of the participants. But as presented earlier the countries in which sunshine was prevalent had a lower association. In the countries where sunshine was less prevalent, there was significantly higher yellow-joy association.

When I was a child I had a long skirted yellow rain “slicker”. I remember enjoying rainy days because when I was outside I could enjoy the world in a different way. There were puddles to jump in. I could feel the rain being blown into my face. I could hear the wind blowing through the canopy of the trees. I not only enjoyed the experience, but according to the study my enjoyment may well have been enhanced due to the yellow slicker that I was wearing. The picture below is based on a drawing I made when I was a child. It provides an expression of my feelings at that time, in the rain.

Today, I have a yellow rain suit. Now there are streams in the woods that I enjoy forwarding. The grey skies to me mean that I can enjoy the natural aspects of the woodlands and fields, and still experience what is not an every-day occurrence. And wearing my yellow rain suit becomes an amusing experience for me – and perhaps for the squirrels too. The color yellow can make you happier. When the sky is grey and there’s a chance for being moody, put on yellow and enjoy the day.

The study by D. Jonauskaite (et. al.), The sun is no fun without rain: Physical environments affect how we feel about yellow across 55 countries, is published on-line in The Journal of Environmental Psychology, as a pre-proof edition.

Sweeping the Sky

This morning was a wonderful Fall morning. It was clear. It was cool. As the sun came up it burnished the tops of the trees down in the woods. Some high, thin clouds were out to greet the sun. And as they passed overhead they were swept by the top most branches on the sun-lit trees.

At least it appeared that way.

But these trees did not touch the clouds. As the clouds drifted by they only appeared to be swept by the upper branches. However, this is not always the case. On mornings when the day is foggy, the clouds can engulf and move through the trees, and the trees clear out lines in the fog.

But today it appeared that the trees might be touching the clouds. Yet this was only my perspective. In reality, the trees did not touch the clouds. They touched the sky.

The real effect of the trees extends way beyond their height.

The leaves on the trees are the main component in clearing the atmosphere of carbon dioxide (CO2). The leaves absorb the CO2 and use it in the photosynthesis process. Photosynthesis, roughly translated, means, made from light. The light provides the energy of the sun to the trees. The trees use the energy from the sun to change CO2, absorbed from the air, into glucose (C6H12O6) for the tree’s metabolism. Through photosynthesis the tree manufactures C6H12O6 to enhance its own growth. This process uses water (H2O) drawn up from the soil in which the trees roots are bound. From the process glucose is produced, as well as oxygen (O2). But more O2 is produced than the tree requires of its own use. The excess O2 is released back into the atmosphere. There the oxygen is available for our use with every breath we take, and for all other creatures. It is not only the trees that carry out photosynthesis but all plants with chlorophyll use this process to enhance their growth. And thereby they all release the excess O2 into the atmosphere.

The basic chemical reaction that takes place using the energy from the sun is shown as follows;

This is the respiration of trees. Through this process we are supplied with the oxygen that we need for life, to run our own metabolism, and by which we grow and succeed. This is true for birds, for creatures in the trees and creatures on the ground, and for fish in the sea. The trees support us all.

The pumping of O2 into the atmosphere can be seen on the Keeling Curve (see article dated 02/15/2019, the Keeling Curve). The level of CO2 is measured and shown on the curve as a saw tooth edge. The rise and fall of this saw toothed edge come about as the leaves on the trees open in the Spring, and the CO2 falls. Then when the leaves fall from the trees in Autumn, the CO2 rises.

The trees sweep up CO2 from our atmosphere and replace it with oxygen, O2.

The trees hold our atmosphere in place. They are “sky anchors” which bind the chemical makeup of the atmosphere close to the earth where we can all use it. We must treasure our trees and protect them.

However, as the world population soars, more land for farming is required, for both subsistence farming and large scale farming. The land is also required for living space. As whole forests are cut down and burned, each of us needs to work to replace the trees. The Nature Conservancy is leading a campaign called “Plant a Billion Trees”, https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/plant-a-billion/. Its goal is to stimulate reforestation. Large scale efforts like this and even individuals planting trees in their garden can ensure clean air for all of us. The trees are “sky anchors” that can hold the sky in place.