September 29, 2009

Information Environment

Have you ever heard of the Quezon City Controlled Disposal Facility? You may not be familiar., but I'll tell you anyway. The Quezon City Controlled Disposal Facility was before called the Payatas Dumpsite, which has burried more than 200 lives on the year 2000. The new system that was implemented of the said place was having a better use of the biogas emmitted by garbage on the said site. They have made used of they're problem before. In which this biogas emissions will be converted into electricity that is enough to empower numbers of cloth irons.

One of the potential solutions in social and environmental sustainability in municipal solid waste management (MSW) in Metro Manila is to combine community-based recycling and sound landfill management strategies. The marriage of the two puts importance on recycling as a source of livelihood while proper landfill management aims to improve the aesthetic and environmental quality of disposal facilities in urban areas. To do this, a social mapping of wastepickers, junkshops and local recycling practices needs to be undertaken and at the same time assess strategies of the national and local governments vis-à-vis existing laws on municipal solid waste. The case of Payatas controlled disposal facility was taken as a pilot study because it represents the general condition of disposal sites in Metro Manila and the social landscape that it currently has. In addition, a waste-to-energy (WTE) project has been established in Payatas to produce electricity from methane gas. Preliminary interviews with wastepickers show that development interventions in disposal sites such as WTE pose no opposition from host communities for as long as alternative livelihood opportunities are provided. Regulating the flow of wastepickers into the landfill has advantages like improved income and security. Felt needs were also articulated like provision of financial support or capital for junkshop operation and skills training. Overall, a smooth relationship between the local government and community associations pays well in a transitioning landfill management scheme such as Payatas.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B8CX4-4W45TP3-C&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1028165164&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=2ab9fbae8bd428dc04602b2b86b2660a

The latest typhoon called Ondoy that hit Luzon, Metro Manila and nearby cities and places. According to PAG-ASA, the typhoon sustained winds 85 kph and almost reached up to 100 kph. It was just a day of surprised flooding and yet it has ended many lives without any hesitation, whether lives are young or not. The flood even reached as high as Meralco posts.

Ondoy was not the only disaster that hit Philippines, the landslides that have killed numbers of lives and we’re still counting for more disasters to come. It is normal that we have typhoons but the latest disaster the Philippines encountered was far from normal. It isn’t normal to sink the whole town with just a signal number one typhoon. It didn’t even choose whom to kill and even the Philippine celebrities, which are expected to be safer have not even, become safer than any other Filipino people.

The Philippines is a very crucial country Philippines is said to belong on the Pacific Ring of Fire. Pacific Ring of Fire is an area where large numbers of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur in the basin of the Pacific Ocean. In a 40,000 km curve shape, it is associated with a nearly continuous series of oceanic trenches, volcanic arcs, and volcanic belts or plate movements. The Ring of Fire has 45 volcanoes and is home to over 75% of the world's active and dormant volcanoes.

About 90% of the world's earthquakes and 80% of the world's largest earthquakes occur along the Ring of Fire. The next most seismic region (5–6% of earthquakes and 17% of the world's largest earthquakes) is the Alpide belt, which extends from Java to Sumatra through the Himalayas, the Mediterranean, and out into the Atlantic. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is the third most prominent earthquake belt.

The Ring of Fire is a direct result of plate tectonics and the movement and collisions of crustal plates. The eastern section of the ring is the result of the Nazca Plate and the Cocos Plate being subducted beneath the westward moving South American Plate. A portion of the Pacific Plate along with the small Juan de Fuca Plate are being subducted beneath the North American Plate. Along the northern portion the northwestward moving Pacific plate is being subducted beneath the Aleutian Islands arc. Further west the Pacific plate is being subducted along the Kamchatka Peninsula arcs on south past Japan. The southern portion is more complex with a number of smaller tectonic plates in collision with the Pacific plate from the Mariana Islands, the Philippines, Bougainville, Tonga, and New Zealand. Indonesia lies between the Ring of Fire along the northeastern islands adjacent to and including New Guinea and the Alpide belt along the south and west from Sumatra, Java, Bali, Flores, and Timor. The famous and very active San Andreas Fault zone of California is a transform fault which offsets a portion of the East Pacific Rise under southwestern United States and Mexico. The motion of the fault generates numerous small earthquakes, at multiple times a day, most of which are too small to be felt. The active Queen Charlotte Fault on the west coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands, British Columbia, Canada, has generated three large earthquakes during the 20th century: a magnitude 7 event in 1929, a magnitude 8.1 occurred in 1949 (Canada's largest recorded earthquake) and a magnitude 7.4 in 1970.
In the Philippines, the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo is the world's second largest terrestrial eruption of the 20th century. Successful predictions of the onset of the climactic eruption led to the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from the surrounding areas, saving many lives, but as the surrounding areas were severely damaged by pyroclastic flows, ash deposits, and later, lahars caused by rainwater remobilising earlier volcanic deposits, thousands of houses were destroyed.

Mayon Volcano is the Philippines' most active volcano. The volcano has steep upper slopes that average 35–40 degrees and is capped by a small summit crater. The historical eruptions of this basaltic-andesitic volcano dates back to 1616 and ranges from Strombolian to basaltic Plinian eruptions. Eruptions occur predominately from the central conduit and have also produced lava flows that travel far down the flanks. Pyroclastic flows and mudflows have commonly swept down many of the approximately 40 ravines that radiate from the summit and have often devastated populated lowland areas.

Taal Volcano has had 33 recorded eruptions since 1572. A devastating eruption occurred in 1911, which claimed more than a thousand lives. The deposits of that eruption consisted of a yellowish, fairly decomposed (non-juvenile) tephra with a high sulfur content. The most recent period of activity lasted from 1965 to 1977, and was characterized by the interaction of magma with the lake water, which produced violent phreatic explosions. Although the volcano has been dormant since 1977, it has shown signs of unrest since 1991, with strong seismic activity and ground fracturing events, as well as the formation of small mud geysers on parts of the island.

Kanlaon is the most active volcano in central Philippines and has erupted 25 times since 1866. Eruptions are typically phreatic explosions of small-to-moderate size that produce minor ashfalls near the volcano. On August 10, 1996, Kanlaon erupted without warning, killing British student Julian Green and Filipinos Noel Tragico and Neil Perez, who were among 24 mountainclimbers who were trapped near the summit.
And now, we are slowly drowning due to global warming, which melts the ice glaciers all over the world. It is even rumored that by the time that all of the ice glaciers melted, the highest peak, Mt. Apo, will become a small island. Doesn’t it fear? While we are enjoying the modern world discoveries, we have forgotten and became deaf of our mother earth’s voice. We have become deaf due to the noises that are emitted by large machines that also emit large smokes that suffocate the globe more than we are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Ring_of_Fire

So what can we young ones do? Simple, we can at least reduce smokes and stacked garbage. By small actions, like throwing garbage in its right place and segregating them will reduce even 0.00000001 garbage that aren’t on its right place. We can replace plastic bags with paper bags or even cloth bags. We should bear in mind that plastic bags takes more than a lifetime to decay.

With regards to the modernized machines and technology, since development of technology is the main reason why global warming has gone so far. Yes, it is true that we can’t take technology and gadgets away from the people of the world. The people have adopted them and have learned to live them. Another thing is, it would be difficult to go back to the old ways, where we get to walk at least a kilometer just to get to the middle of the town. We have been living the way we live today with great ease, in which we forget or oversee the negative results it will bring when the time comes.

Like our lives, earth is also one in the whole world. Everything is changing and change is nature itself. I am not saying that it is fine to change the world, I am rather emphasizing that we can’t change the past but we can we can always regret them, thus, giving us an overview of what will happen if don’t move today.


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