PBS Newshour – Health4earth

Reduce Food Waste

Wasting food is an enormous waste of valuable resources!

Not only does wasting food, waste valuable resources and lots of water, but also food in our landfills decomposes creating and giving off methane gas which is a harmful air pollutant contributing to global warming.
From Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day, household waste increases by more than 25%. Added food waste, shopping bags, packaging, wrapping paper, bows and ribbons all adds up to an additional 1 million tons a week to our landfills. (Source: EPA)

Food waste from PBS:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/food-waste-is-contributing-to-climate-change-whats-being-done-about-it

The Problem With Plastic

How are you reducing your plastic footprint?

Plastic lasts more than a lifetime! Humans have created 9 billion tons of plastic since 1950 and most of this plastic still exists on earth. Only 9 percent has been recycled, and 11 percent incinerated. That leaves much of the plastic ever produced floating around in our waterways, poisoning fish, or releasing chemicals in landfills. As citizens of this planet we should be doing everything we can to reduce the amount of plastic we use.

The PBS NewsHour is doing an interesting series on plastic this week. I hope you will watch. See below:

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/plastic-lasts-more-than-a-lifetime-and-thats-the-problem

Who Do You Trust?

Why do we pick and choose what to believe?

The PBS News Hour did an interesting segment on what Americans believe about GMOs, vaccines and climate change. I hope you will watch. See below.

Because the world is complicated, it is impossible to be an experts on all topics. We need to accept the opinions and facts of someone, and we need sources that we can trust and sources that reliable. How do we determine who to believe?

Our brains try to make sense of a complicated world. Is the simplest explanation the one that we like? What role do our friends, family and religion play in our interpretations? Do Rush Limbaugh or Mike Huckabee know more about science than Bill Nye, the science guy?

I think we believe the explanation that best fits into the paradigm of our view of the world. We want ideas that are simple and easy to understand, We want ideas that don’t limit our freedom or cost us money.

Whose ideas do you trust? This is a fascinating discussion on what the public and scientists believe about climate change, vaccines and GMO products.

The PBS segment follows:

** http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/pick-choose-science-believe/

A new science check site: http://www.factcheck.org/scicheck/

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/bill-nye-on-maher-lets-be-honest-climate-skeptics-are-just-deniers/

Below link: Scientist paid by the fossil fuel industry to raise scientific doubt

http://ecowatch.com/2015/02/23/climate-deniers-funding-fossil-fuel-industry/?utm_source=EcoWatch+List&utm_campaign=81e2961c16-Top_News_2_23_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_49c7d43dc9-81e2961c16-85912169

http://www.factcheck.org/2015/01/distorting-climate-change-threats-solutions/

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/article/2015/feb/26/50-fox-news-lies-6-seconds-daily-show/