All Moved In - No More Excuses

My wife and I bought a new house recently and we are finally all moved in - the make work projects are endless, as with any home, but the main thing is we can now “settle” into a healthy lifestyle routine - with absolutely no excuses!  

The Song of the Wilderness Runner

We swing ungirded hips,
And lightened are our eyes,
The rain is on our lips,
We do not run for prize.
We know not whom we trust
Nor whitherward we fare,
But we run because we must
Through the great wide air.

The waters of the seas
Are troubled as by storm.
The tempest strips the trees
And does not leave them warm.
Does the tearing tempest pause?
Do the tree-tops ask it why?
So we run without a cause
‘Neath the big bare sky.

The rain is on our lips,
We do not run for prize.
But the storm the water whips
And the wave howls to the skies.
The winds arise and strike it
And scatter it like sand,
And we run because we like it
Throughout the broad, bright land…

After a Hard Run

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Back at it - sort of!!!

It is sooo easy to be lazy.  I had a great week-end hiking in the mountains with my faithful ol’ mutt, even managed to do sprints on the beach while playing ball (again, with the dog).  However, as far as a structured aerobic activity - such as running 5k or going to the gym - no way!  I keep on saying - ‘tomorrow, I’ll start tomorrow and be consistent from then on’.  It’s just actually getting to “tomorrow” and truly starting a consistent, aggressive routine that seems to me major problem.  I know what I need to do - so why is it so damn hard to Just Do It?

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Back at it…

Time to get “back at it” after the christmas holidays.  I plan to adhere to my own advice and stick to a regimented program for at least 21 consecutive days … this is generally believe to be the minimum amount of time it takes to turn an activity into a habit!

Goal Achievement - From the Australian Government!

Introduction

One of the central issues identified when looking at the difference between people who achieve their goals and people who do not, is the way they talk to themself throughout the process.

What stops us from achieving goals?

When we are thinking about starting something new, we start to consider the impact of the goal achievement process on us. That is, the energy and effort we will need to put in to achieve the goal. This leads to us feeling either positively or negatively about the goal achievement process, depending on our personality. This can then influence how successful we are in achieving the goal because it affects our commitment to undertaking the small steps that are necessary to achieve the larger goal.

For instance, if controlling calories is the goal, thinking “It’s only one piece of cake” may be less useful than thinking “Its another piece of cake” or “That cake means I will be one step further away from my goal” or even, “I’ll have a piece of fruit first and then see if I still want the cake”.

Tip: Think about the following questions:

• How do you make yourself start something you don’t want / like to do?
• How do you keep yourself doing something you don’t want / like to do?
• What do you tell yourself that lets you stop doing something you know you should do but don’t want to do?

Your answers to these questions can help you to determine the type of goal achievement strategies that have worked for you in the past, as well as things you tend to do that are likely to prevent you from achieving your goals.

Often, part of achieving a goal means that we need to gain new information or become proficient at a new skill. There are 3 common factors that relate to how we tend to feel when in a learning situation:

1. Familiarity

People tend to prefer familiar situations to unfamiliar ones. This is because when confronting unfamiliar situations we have to put in extra effort to think about the new situation, whereas with more familiar tasks we can operate on “auto-pilot”. The extra energy required in these situations may be seen in a negative way by some people.

2. Control

Feeling that something is impeding your progress (like a lack of skills or knowledge that you have yet to acquire), can result in frustration for some people. It is especially true for people who may not have thought of themselves as “learners” for some time. Frustration can block goal achievement by creating a negative feeling around the tasks that are a necessary part of the process. Feeling negatively about a task means it is less likely to get done!

3. Sensation-seeking

How much excitement you like in your life is determined by your personality and can influence the way you go about goal achievement. Sometimes goal achievement requires a steady progression through various stages to reach the ultimate aim. This “slow and steady” approach may feel boring and uninspired to some, resulting in them losing interest before the goal is achieved.

When deciding on a goal it is important to consider some of these factors and to plan strategies designed to help you deal with the negative feelings that might arise. When people don’t achieve their goals, chance are it is mainly because they have let the negative feelings determine their behaviour (e.g., not liking getting up at 6am to go to the gym may ultimately defeat you in your quest to become an Olympic athlete). There are many people who have written about different strategies for overcoming the negative thinking habits that can stop you from achieving your goals. Try your local library for some suggested titles.

TIP: Research (Burns, 2006) tells us that successful achievers are:

• Methodical and disciplined
• Logical and analytical
• Flexible
• Persistent and responsible
• Curious and motivated
• Reflective and self-aware
• Have developed effective strategies for finding out information they need to get the job done.

Strategies for overcoming negative thoughts

When you analyse the process that successful goal achievers use, there are two key strategies for initiating and sustaining unpleasant or difficult actions.

1. Just do not think about it or ask yourself if you feel like doing the task. Instead just do it; just start. This blocks the effect of the negative emotions.
2. Generate a positive emotion / feeling by thinking about the benefits of getting it done. Generate a negative feeling by thinking about the consequences of NOT getting it done. Either of these processes will help you redirect your thoughts in ways that are likely to enhance your goal achievement efforts rather than to sabotage them.

Hitting the wall

At around the four week mark goal achievers often “hit the wall”. At this point they:

• know more about what they don’t know and, therefore, the goal becomes more daunting;
• understand more about what is involved in achieving the goal, such as repetition, activities that might be required that they didn’t know they would have to do, people they don’t want to deal with, or they have a feeling of “is this all there is to it?”; or,
• they know now how far they have to go to achieve goal - and it seems a lot further than they initially thought!

It is a crucial time when you are most vulnerable to giving up. Now is the time to review the process and implement strategies to assist you to maintain your goal directed focus.

Strategies for overcoming goal paralysis

• Spend a little time on your weakest or least liked activity (not enough to get frustrated, but enough to practice the skill);
• Commit to time periods when you don’t judge your own performance (allow yourself to be a “learner”); and,
• Be smart about how you compare your performance to that of other people and choose wisely who you get feedback from.

Creating habits from behaviours

Creating habits of certain activities can be a useful way of helping you to achieve your goals. A habit is a behaviour that is done without thinking or feeling - perhaps similar to brushing your teeth in the morning - it’s something you just go and do without making too many conscious decisions about it.

The best activities to turn into habits are ones which need to happen frequently or over a long period of time. Turning them into habits can help you to remain motivated by reducing the amount of energy it takes to make sure the activity is done and done regularly.

Effective ways of turning a behaviour or activity into a habit involve:

• Repetition - doing something over and over can eventually make the activity automatic
• Outside motivators - using other things or people to help you get started (e.g., coaches; reminders; alarms; promises)
• “Just start” - one of the more successful strategies is to deny yourself the opportunity to think about whether or not you will start the activity and to just start. Sometimes it can be beneficial to say to yourself that you will do 10 minutes per day on a particular task, working towards achieving the goal gradually in small steps.

With all of these approaches the primary aim is to neutralise the emotion / feeling associated with the activity you don’t like.

Remember:

• Every big achievement started with one very small action.
• Every big achievement is nothing more than a whole stack of very small actions.

Managing long term goals

Sometimes it is useful to ask ourselves whether we are choosing the activities we do with the thought that they may lead to a long term goal, or are we only doing activities that are chosen for us by others?

Try this exercise:

If you had a dream and in that dream you were 50 years older than you are today, when you looked back at your life until today what events, people and things would you hope to find along that timeline?

• Begin to create a list on paper or in your mind of the people and events you want to one day look back on.
• Pick one of these events and ask: What small action can you take today to ensure that indeed you do find one of those events in your life?

It has been consistently shown that people are more likely to achieve their goals if they take the time to write them down and review them periodically.

To get the goal achievement process started, for each of your goals ask:

• When do I want it to be achieved?
• When do I need to begin to take action?
• When do I need to start thinking about it?

Now…. just start!!!!

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Obama: US will ‘roll back the specter of a warming planet’

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Global Impact Of Climate Change On Biodiversity

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Fog’s decline boosted Europe’s warming trend

PARIS — Fog, mist and haze in Europe have declined over the last three decades, a trend that may have stoked regional warming and ironically could be linked to better air quality, a study published on Sunday says.

From 1978-2006, temperatures in parts of Europe rose above the global land average, with prominent increases in the north, center and eastern parts of the continent.

As much as 20 percent of Europe’s warming during this time, according to the study, can be pinned on a reduction in fog, mist and haze, which — because they are white — reflect solar radiation and thus keep the ground cool.

In eastern Europe, the decline in fog, mist and haze could account for 50 percent, the paper believes. The authors, led by Robert Vautard of France’s Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), pored over data from 342 weather stations around Europe. They found that over nearly 30 years, the number of days categorized as having restricted visibility fell by half. These categories were determined by ranges of visibility at two kilometres (1.2 miles), five kms (three miles) and eight kms (five miles).

The phenomenon is closely linked to falling levels of atmospheric sulphur dioxide (S02), a byproduct of burning oil and coal that causes notorious “acid rain” that damages forests and lakes. The temperature rise has been especially perceptible in Eastern Europe, where the end of the Communist system closed down innumerable sources of coal pollution. However, the SO2 cleanup is now largely tapering off. This means the fog reduction will probably stop and “the warming trend in Europe will not be so large in the coming years,” Vautard told AFP.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the UN’s paramount authority on global warming — the global average temperature rose 0.74 degrees Celsius (1.33 degrees Fahrenheit) from 1906-2005, and the pace in the last 50 years was double that of the first half-century.

A blanket of fog can reduce local temperatures by some 2 C (3.6 F), according to figures quoted in the new study.

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Global warming could starve half the world by century-end

Global warming will severely damage crop output in tropical regions and deprive half the world of food by the century-end, according to a study.

The population of the equatorial belt will bear the brunt of unprecedented shortages, home to the poorest on earth.

Currently three billion people live in the tropics and subtropics, and their number is expected to nearly double by the end of the century. The area stretches from the southern US to northern Argentina and southern Brazil, from northern India and southern China to southern Australia and all of Africa.

In the tropics, the higher temperatures can be expected to cut yields of the primary food crops, maize and rice, by 20 to 40 percent, the researchers said. But rising temperatures also are likely to play havoc with soil moisture, cutting yields even further.

“The stresses on global food production from temperature alone are going to be huge, and that doesn’t take into account water supplies stressed by the higher temperatures,” said David Battisti, University of Washington atmospheric sciences professor, co-author of the study.

He collaborated with Rosamond Naylor, director of Stanford University’s Programme on Food Security and the Environment, to examine the impact of climate change on the world’s food security.

By combining direct observations with data from 23 global climate models that contributed to Nobel prize-winning research in 2007, Battisti and Naylor determined there is greater than a 90 percent probability that by 2100 the lowest growing-season temperatures in the tropics and subtropics will be higher than any temperatures recorded there to date.

They used the data as a filter to view historic instances of severe food insecurity, and concluded such instances are likely to become more commonplace.

Those include severe episodes in France in 2003 and Ukraine in 1972. In the case of Ukraine, a near-record heat wave reduced wheat yields and contributed to disruptions in the global cereal market that lasted two years.

The serious climate issues won’t be limited to the tropics, the scientists conclude. As an example, they cite record temperatures that struck Western Europe in June, July and August of 2003, killing an estimated 52,000 people.

The summer-long heat wave in France and Italy cut wheat yields and fodder production by one-third. In France alone, temperatures were nearly 6.5 degrees Fahrenheit above the long-term mean, and the scientists say such temperatures could be normal for France by 2100, said a Washington release.

“This is a compelling reason for us to invest in adaptation, because it is clear that this is the direction we are going in terms of temperature and it will take decades to develop new food crop varieties that can better withstand a warmer climate,” Naylor said.

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Climate Changing Life Globally

Warming Climate is Changing Life on Global Scale…
Wide-Scale Analysis Combines Decades of Data From All Continents

A vast array of physical and biological systems across the earth are being affected by warming temperatures caused by humans, says a new analysis of information not previously assembled all in one spot. The effects on living things include earlier leafing of trees and plants over many regions; movements of species to higher latitudes and altitudes in the northern hemisphere; changes in bird migrations in Europe, North America and Australia; and shifting of the oceans’ plankton and fish from cold- to warm-adapted communities. The study appears in the May 15 issue of the leading scientific journal Nature.

“Humans are influencing climate through increasing greenhouse gas emissions, and the warming world is causing impacts on physical and biological systems attributable at the global scale,” said lead author Cynthia Rosenzweig, a scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the Columbia Center for Climate Systems Research. Both are affiliates of The Earth Institute at Columbia University.

Rosenzweig and researchers from 10 other institutions across the world analyzed data from published papers on 829 physical systems and some 28,800 plant and animal systems, stretching back to 1970. Their analysis of revealed a picture of changes on continental scales; previous studies had looked mainly at single phenomena, or smaller areas. In physical systems, 95% of observed changes are consistent with warming trends. These include wastage of glaciers on all continents; melting permafrost; earlier spring river runoff; and warming of water bodies. Among living creatures inhabiting such systems, 90% of changes are consistent with warming. The researchers say it is unlikely that any force but human-influenced climate change could be driving all this; factors like deforestation or natural climate variations could not explain it. Their work builds upon the consensus of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which in 2007 declared manmade climate warming “likely” to have discernible effects on biological and physical systems.

“It was a real challenge to separate the influence of human-caused temperature increases from natural climate variations or other confounding factors, such as land-use changes or pollution,” said coauthor David Karoly, a climate scientist at the University of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia. “This was possible only through the combined efforts of our multi-disciplinary team, which examined observed changes in many different systems around the globe, as well as global climate model simulations of temperature changes.”

The data showing the patterns of change are strongest in North America, Asia and Europe–mainly because far more studies have been done there, said Rosenzweig. On the other continents, including South America, Australia and Africa, documentation of changes in physical and biological systems is sparse, even though there is good evidence there of human-influenced warming itself. The authors say that there is an urgent need to study these environmental systems, especially in tropical and subtropical areas.

KEY OBSERVED IMPACTS BY CONTINENT

North America

• Earlier spring plant flowering 89 species (examples: American holly, sassafras, box elder maple) in Washington, D.C. area; earlier flowering in Boston, Massachusetts.
• Cannibalism and declining populations among polar bears in southern Beaufort Sea.
• Rapid melting of Alaska glaciers.
• Earlier breeding and earlier arrival dates of birds (American robins are arriving 14 days earlier in Colorado).
• Shoreline retreat in southern Gulf of St. Lawrence.
• Advancing spring flight of butterflies in lowa and California.
• Change in mollusk poulations in Monterey, California.
• Earlier high river flows in New England.
• Earlier peak migration of Atlantic salmon in New England.
• Earlier breakup and later freezing dates in lake and rive ice over wide areas.
• Declining mountain snowpack in the West.
• Earlier streamflow timing across the West.
• Changes in diatoms in northern Canadian lakes.
• Genetic shift in pitcher plant mosquito to more warm-adapted type in Eastern U.S.
• Marmots are emerging 38 days earlier in the Rockies.
• Frogs (including the bullfrog and the American toad) are calling earlier in Ithaca, N.Y

Europe

• Changes in leaf-unfolding and flowering and animal growing phases in 19 European countries. Plant examples: hazel, lilac, apple, linden, birch.
• Earlier egg-laying by birds; earlier migration by birds (for example, flycatchers).
• Long-term changes within fish communities in Upper Rhone River.
• Glacier melting in the Alps.
• Rapid advance of spring arrival of long-distance migratory birds, continentwide.
• Mountain birches growing at increasing elevations in Sweden.
• Changes in lake diatoms to warmer-adapted species in Finnish Lapland.
• Earlier pollen release in the Netherlands.
• Apple trees are leafing out 35 days earlier in Spain.

Asia

• Greater growth of Siberian pines in Mongolia.
• Earlier breakup and thinning of river and lake ice in Mongolia.
• Change in freeze depth of permafrost in Russia.
• Earlier flowering of ginkgo in Japan.

South America

• Glacier wastage in Peru and Bolivia.
• Melting Patagonia icefields are contributing to sea-level rise.

Africa

• Decreasing aquatic ecosystem productivity of Lake Tanganyika.

Australia

• Early arrival of Australian migratory birds, including flycatchers and fantails.
• Declining water levels in Western Victoria.

Antarctica

• Emperor penguins have declined by 50% on Antarctic Peninsula.
• Retreating glacier fronts.

Ocean

• Long-term decline in krill stock in Southern Ocean.
• Increasing abundance of tropical/subtropical species and decreasing abundances of temperate/subpolar species in California current.
• Increasing plankton abundance in cooler regions and decreasing plankton in warmer regions in Northeast Atlantic.

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The world’s superdumps

The largest garbage dump in the world is roughly twice the size of the continental U.S.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a continent-sized constellation of discarded shoes, bottles, bags, pacifiers, plastic wrappers, toothbrushes and every other type of trash imaginable, floating in the Pacific Ocean about halfway between Hawaii and San Francisco. The ocean’s swirling currents have pushed the piles of debris, accumulated detritus of sea vessels and decades of under-the-radar ocean dumping, together in loose configurations just below the water’s surface.

While nobody knows for sure where it came from or how to clean it up, the sheer size of the Garbage Patch has attracted attention to the world’s seldom-discussed renegade waste problem. The remains of daily life are becoming a colossal problem with increasingly global implications. Some places are running out of space to put it, and others haven’t even figured out how to pick it up in the first place. From toxic trash on the streets of Guiya to the mountain-sized municipal landfills in Michigan, the world is awash in waste — but not always in the places you’d expect.

Take, for example, the “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico. Fertilizer and pesticide use by farmers in the Midwest and Great Plains states has gradually raised nutrient levels in the Mississippi’s muddy waters to levels so high that algal blooms have appeared in the river drainage delta. These algal blooms deplete oxygen levels in the water to the point where it can no longer sustain fish, plants and microscopic species. Ergo, the “dead zone,” an area that covers nearly 7,000 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico.

Chemicals

Everybody knows chemicals dumped in the wild can cause serious problems, and keeping them stored is not necessarily much safer. For decades, Africa was a major dumping grounds for toxic wastes. Since at least the early 1970s, there have been multiple cases of illicit toxic waste disposal deals between Western companies and African countries.

In 1987, for example, two Italian waste brokers, Gianfranco Raffaeli and Renato Pent, paid a Nigerian businessman, Sunday Nana, about $100 a month to store 18,000 drums of hazardous waste on his property in Nigeria. Nigerian officials discovered a cache of the illegal toxic waste, which contained high levels of PCB and dioxins, stored at the port of Koko.

Regardless of how they got there, mountains of obsolete pesticides like DDT, aldrin and chlordane remain stockpiled in poorly maintained storage facilities across much of Africa. Mali and Botswana have reported especially large stockpiles of industrial chemicals discarded as long as 40 years ago.

While some countries address legacy problems like abandoned pesticides, other countries are busy creating new ones for future generations. China and India are no exceptions.

Guiyu is a cluster of interconnected villages located about an hour’s drive away from the South China Sea in the northern province of Guangdong. In the past decade, Guiyu has grown from a rice farming community to an enormous hub for recycling and disposal of electronic waste, including everything from defunct hard drives to broken television sets. The amount of e-waste that flows through the “recycling” plants of Guiya in a single year could create an acre-wide pile taller than the Statue of Liberty, according to an investigative report by Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and the Basel Action Network.

Truckloads of printers, fax machines, hard drives and all kinds of defunct electronics arrive daily in Guiyu from warehouses in the port of Nanhai, where the imported waste comes ashore in sea-going containers. Roughly half these computers and electronic components are recycled; the rest are dumped. Nobody knows for sure, but evidence suggests most of the discarded components are dumped locally, despite the substantial risk that the waste, laden with toxic lead, mercury and cadmium, will contaminate local soil and water supplies. Although Chinese officials have recently stepped up efforts to enforce a longstanding ban on e-waste imports, there has likely been more than enough damage inflicted to last generations.

Scrap

The city of Alang, which sits on the western coast of Gulf of Cambay in western India, is the largest ship-scrapping yard in the world. A ship that would cost millions to demolish in North America is worth millions in a place like Alang.

The Alang shipyards dismantle hundreds of massive vessels from all over the world every year. Old ships are run ashore during high tide on a roughly six-mile-long stretch of beach; later, when the tide recedes, thousands of low-wage workers descend on them and use crude tools to strip them apart. The industry provides 30,000 jobs in Alang and produces millions of tons of recycled steel every year.

But that isn’t all it produces.

Old ships are, more often than not, chock full of toxic chemicals, like insulation with asbestos and polychlorinated biphenyls in hoses, foam insulation and paint. In addition, most ships contain huge quantities of heavy metals like lead, mercury and cadmium. If ships are not properly dismantled, they contaminate the area where they are broken down.

Although India has wrestled the shipbreaking business from yards in Europe and North America by effectively eliminating high-priced environmental safeguards, Bangladesh is now capturing more of India’s business by lowering environmental standards even more dramatically.

International problem

These kinds of competing regulatory systems have reinforced a race-to-the-bottom dynamic in the waste trade, which all too often champions disposal sites with poor environmental practices.

The global trade in trash rose from 2 million tons to more than 8.5 million tons between 1993 and 2001, according to data collected by the Basel Convention. And not all of those sites are outside U.S. borders.

For example, two mega-sized landfills in Michigan — Carleton Farms in New Boston and Pine Tree Acres, slightly north of Detroit — have cornered the the waste disposal market in the Canadian province of Ontario. Michigan requires operators to maintain landfills for 30 years after they close, while Canada requires operators to monitor landfills for at least a century, and in a few cases, forever. The result: In 2006, it cost roughly $100 US to dispose of a ton of trash in Ontario, but only $10 to dispose of the same ton of trash across the border in the U.S. Michigan landfills receive enough Canadian garbage annually to fill a football stadium.

“We love Canadian garbage,” Norm Folson, site manager at the Pine Tree Acres Landfill in northeast Detroit, told a reporter from Canadian Architect recently. “Tipping fees pay our salaries and pave our roads. To us, Canadian garbage is like gold.”

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Let it snow … just not here!

I was hyped up to really get my running routine going this week.  Seems Mother Nature is playing a game with me in that I woke up to a major snowstorm on Sunday!  What’s unusual is that where I reside on Vancouver Island, BC it rarely snows … it’s temperate climate is a big reason why we moved here. 

Now, I realize many of you run in the snow all the time … but with snow being somewhat of a novelty in this region, the drivers are absolutely horrifying on the highways and running is a VERY dangerous activity at these times.  As such, for the next few days it looks like I’ll be at the gym and using my indoor rower.

One thing I have been doing, more for fun than exercise, is late night sprints on our local beach.  At low tide we have a wonderful, flat and sandy beach which is several miles long.  It is terrific for doing sprints, and my dog absolutely loves it.  Unfortunately, low tides have been occurring around 10:00 pm.  So I’m out sprinting with a headlamp on and a lot of people stopping to have a look-see at what the weird guy is doing

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