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Fri, 27 Aug 2010 21:05:00 GMT

I got some good questions from my last post that I'll try to answer.The first question was about the lag between the longest day of the year, and the hottest time of year.The reason we don't see the hottest temperatures on the longest day of the year, has to do with the Earth's energy balance. Over the whole planet, incoming radiation is in balance with the outgoing radiation. This is why the earth maintains a stable temperature, and doesn't heat up uncontrollably...
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Summertime part 2, a clash of the coasts

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 14:17:00 GMT

This is the summer I remember. I'm currently at the beach in New Jersey enjoying a bit of summer vacation, and I now remember what real summer is like. It's been hot and a little humid here, with temperatures in the 90s. The other thing I'm seeing that is typical of summer on the East Coast is the flat flat ocean. We've had some waves, mainly less than waist high, and only breaking around low tide. The water is warm though which pretty much makes up for it. N...
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Summertime!

Thu, 1 Jul 2010 23:33:00 GMT

The seasons have changed, and now that it is officially Summer, I better start updating this again. For most folks, summertime is time to think about going to the beach and therefore surfing. Up here in northern California, summer just brings us into a windy sloppy mess with little swell.BUT!This weekend, we should see a nice south swell swing through, this swell originated pretty far south, so it wont be a big as some of the swells California saw last year, but i...
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Biodegradable and Compostable Plastics

Thu, 20 May 2010 21:33:00 GMT

What is the difference between degradable, biodegradable and compostable when it comes to plastic?As it turns out, a whole lot. Biodegradable PlasticBiodegradable plastic generally falls under one of two categories. - Hydro-biodegradable plastics (HBP) - Oxo-biodegradable plastics (OBP)OBP is made by adding a catalyst into a normal plastic such as polyethylene, polypropylene, or polystyrene. The catalyst helps speed up the degradation of the plastic, breaking it...
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Field Trip

Mon, 10 May 2010 18:04:00 GMT

I feel a bit like a 5th grader today. Shaun and I took a field trip to a Waste Management transfer facility, and now I'm writing a report about it.Going to the facility was eye opening. Going into it I had a lot of misconceptions of what really happens and what happens to the waste we dispose of. There were three main points I came away with from the trip. The first was, garbage is garbage. Once you throw something in that bin or dumpster, it is going into a la...
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