An Oily Digression...
A co-worker told me that she was stung by a bee and presented a swollen red bump on her ankle to prove it. Being early January, I was naturally skeptical that an insect so dependent upon the blooming of plant life would be out searching for food in winter and end up stinging a woman it had mistaken for a Primrose Penumbra.
"How did it sting you through your pants?" I asked trying to uproot the truth.
"I was jogging along the prairie path in shorts when it happened," she replied further justifying her claim.
Her winter jogging in shorts didn't come as a surprise. Our typically frigid, subzero Chicago winter has been replaced with spring-like fifty degree weather more appropriate for the rural south than for the windy city. This past week we have enjoyed many days where the temperature has crept toward sixty. Indeed, last year at this same time we have several days in the lower sixties. It seems that the Chicago winter is risking to lose its infamous reputation. The people don't seem to mind much and many have taken advantage of these mild days by bicycling, rollerblading, and yes, jogging.
She went on to tell me that her friend had to pull out the stinger left in her ankle. She then saw the dead bee on the gravel path and promptly squished it under foot and they both fled the scene in fear of another bee offensive. Even after the conversation ended and each of us went back to work, this issue of the January bee sting was still throbbing in my mind. So to aleave my intrigued I went about trying to explain this unnatural phenomenon.
Now I knew that honey bees have barbed stingers that tend to be left behind in the sting victim, disemboweling the bee leaving it for dead. Probing the depths of the Internet I found that honey bees don't actually die during the winter, they pack themselves into the hive and circulating throughout to keep the temperature up so that come January the Queen could start laying eggs for the spring season. During this usually cold month, bees have to maintain a temperature of around sixty-eight degrees. They survive during the winter months on the honey reserves that they collect during the spring, summer and fall. The bees all compete to eat and the resulting hustle and bustle is what keeps them circulating around the hive and essentially heating it up.
Bees tend to leave the hive for one reason: find and return food (plant nectar). Chicago suffered from a drought over the summer and many plants failed to bloom. This was a major issue for bees, for their primary food source was limited and they resorted to scouring trash cans and picnics to gather sustenance. Bee stings, more common in early fall when flowering plants wilt, were popular throughout the summer.
Assuming that the honey reserves were low, I figured that the accused bee mistook the warm weather as a sign of spring and courageously left the hive to find nectar. When finding this jogging woman in its path, it took her as a threat and performed a kamikaze mission to defend the hive.
So it was the dry summer and warm winter that factored into this bee sting... but does it end there? Could this unseasonable weather be the result of some deeper cause? Many esteemed members of the scientific community have been warning the world about the dangers of global warming. The increasing temperature of the oceans have led to a record breaking hurricane season that seemed to span the entire year. Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma all devastated costal American cities costing billions of dollars and hundreds of lives. These catastrophes have all been attributed to the effects of global warming. It is quite possible that our sixty degree Chicago winters and summer droughts are the result of this global warming.
What then is the cause of global warming? Many say the cause is green house gases being pumped into the atmosphere. The primary culprit being carbon dioxide, a by product of carbon based (mainly petroleum) combustion. The widespread use of combustion engines increases the amount of green house gas in the atmosphere, traps in the heat from the sun, increases sea surface temperatures that churn out a record number of hurricanes, dries out the Midwest in summer and warms it up in winter causing bees to sting the ankles of joggers. There we go, problem solved... Wait, why are we so hooked on burning oil?
There are other fuel alternatives, such as hydrogen that burns to produce water. Why then does the human population of the planet choose to burn so costly a resource? The truth is that petroleum is an energy packed and easily accessible fuel. Petroleum comes from ancient organic life that has decomposed and under high temperatures and pressure has formed happy little hydrocarbons that readily release that stored energy with just the slightest effort on our end. This process took millions of years and a bunch of geological activity so that now our cars can feast on the remains of our ancient ancestors.
The abundance of oil is due to the flourishing of organisms so long ago, primarily during the Cambrian era. At the beginning of that era, about 550 million years ago, the Earth was basically a big snowball that thawed a bit during the summer seasons. Life was limited to the coast lines of the Pangean supercontinent, where the sun would be able to penetrate through the glaciers or water and the tidal effects would churn the organic stew to feed these lazy single celled organisms.
For some reason, either from an impact of another celestial body and/or from the break up of tectonic plates, the temperature increased. When the planet was a snow ball the sea level was higher (water expands when frozen) and coast lines were fewer. Then when the ice melted, the sea level lowered revealing a great deal of fertile coast providing room for those lazy organisms to stretch out and explore their potential. They flourished in their expanded real estate and soon there was competition over resources, and with more diversity and higher temperature it led to organizing and cooperation that evolved into the multiple celled organisms that eventually conquered the coast, sea, land and air.
But it was the global warming that led to the Cambrian explosion and it seems another warming is happening again. Will we one day have bees competing over nectar year round? Will perennials become continuals? Will we all be able to adorn shorts and go jogging in January no matter what latitude we call home?
Not likely. Even back during the big thaw of 250 million years ago, most of the northern and southern hemispheres were snow capped year round. Life seemed to collect and thrive around the equator. This is why major oil deposits are clustered around the Middle East, Gulf of Mexico, Southeast Asia, and the Northeastern coast of South America. Those locations were abundant with coast line and high temperatures conducive to organic life. There were other coasts that resided in the tropics, like western South America, but the mountain ranges that lined the ocean made it rough on the tiny seacreatures of yesteryear and in turn an unpopular destination for organisms to go, die, be crushed for millions of years and become oil.
Unfortunately much of the life that did become oil has been buried under mountains, The northern Indian subcontinent was a ideal location for life during the Cambrian explosion but has been buried under the Himalayas. Other prime Cambrian real estate was buried under the Sierra Madres and Nevada ranges.
The Cambrian explosion that spawned the grand diversity of life is the same cause of much of our conflict today. The struggles spawned from middle eastern and Venezuelan oil are due to life not being able to reproduce well in colder climates. Its ironic that the results of the world's most significant global warming is continuing to warm the planet allowing bees to buzz and girls to jog in January. And even though we may burn through the final remains of our Cambrian ancestors within the next twenty years, we are making the world 250 million years in the future rife with oil.
"How did it sting you through your pants?" I asked trying to uproot the truth.
"I was jogging along the prairie path in shorts when it happened," she replied further justifying her claim.
Her winter jogging in shorts didn't come as a surprise. Our typically frigid, subzero Chicago winter has been replaced with spring-like fifty degree weather more appropriate for the rural south than for the windy city. This past week we have enjoyed many days where the temperature has crept toward sixty. Indeed, last year at this same time we have several days in the lower sixties. It seems that the Chicago winter is risking to lose its infamous reputation. The people don't seem to mind much and many have taken advantage of these mild days by bicycling, rollerblading, and yes, jogging.
She went on to tell me that her friend had to pull out the stinger left in her ankle. She then saw the dead bee on the gravel path and promptly squished it under foot and they both fled the scene in fear of another bee offensive. Even after the conversation ended and each of us went back to work, this issue of the January bee sting was still throbbing in my mind. So to aleave my intrigued I went about trying to explain this unnatural phenomenon.
Now I knew that honey bees have barbed stingers that tend to be left behind in the sting victim, disemboweling the bee leaving it for dead. Probing the depths of the Internet I found that honey bees don't actually die during the winter, they pack themselves into the hive and circulating throughout to keep the temperature up so that come January the Queen could start laying eggs for the spring season. During this usually cold month, bees have to maintain a temperature of around sixty-eight degrees. They survive during the winter months on the honey reserves that they collect during the spring, summer and fall. The bees all compete to eat and the resulting hustle and bustle is what keeps them circulating around the hive and essentially heating it up.
Bees tend to leave the hive for one reason: find and return food (plant nectar). Chicago suffered from a drought over the summer and many plants failed to bloom. This was a major issue for bees, for their primary food source was limited and they resorted to scouring trash cans and picnics to gather sustenance. Bee stings, more common in early fall when flowering plants wilt, were popular throughout the summer.
Assuming that the honey reserves were low, I figured that the accused bee mistook the warm weather as a sign of spring and courageously left the hive to find nectar. When finding this jogging woman in its path, it took her as a threat and performed a kamikaze mission to defend the hive.
So it was the dry summer and warm winter that factored into this bee sting... but does it end there? Could this unseasonable weather be the result of some deeper cause? Many esteemed members of the scientific community have been warning the world about the dangers of global warming. The increasing temperature of the oceans have led to a record breaking hurricane season that seemed to span the entire year. Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma all devastated costal American cities costing billions of dollars and hundreds of lives. These catastrophes have all been attributed to the effects of global warming. It is quite possible that our sixty degree Chicago winters and summer droughts are the result of this global warming.
What then is the cause of global warming? Many say the cause is green house gases being pumped into the atmosphere. The primary culprit being carbon dioxide, a by product of carbon based (mainly petroleum) combustion. The widespread use of combustion engines increases the amount of green house gas in the atmosphere, traps in the heat from the sun, increases sea surface temperatures that churn out a record number of hurricanes, dries out the Midwest in summer and warms it up in winter causing bees to sting the ankles of joggers. There we go, problem solved... Wait, why are we so hooked on burning oil?
There are other fuel alternatives, such as hydrogen that burns to produce water. Why then does the human population of the planet choose to burn so costly a resource? The truth is that petroleum is an energy packed and easily accessible fuel. Petroleum comes from ancient organic life that has decomposed and under high temperatures and pressure has formed happy little hydrocarbons that readily release that stored energy with just the slightest effort on our end. This process took millions of years and a bunch of geological activity so that now our cars can feast on the remains of our ancient ancestors.
The abundance of oil is due to the flourishing of organisms so long ago, primarily during the Cambrian era. At the beginning of that era, about 550 million years ago, the Earth was basically a big snowball that thawed a bit during the summer seasons. Life was limited to the coast lines of the Pangean supercontinent, where the sun would be able to penetrate through the glaciers or water and the tidal effects would churn the organic stew to feed these lazy single celled organisms.
For some reason, either from an impact of another celestial body and/or from the break up of tectonic plates, the temperature increased. When the planet was a snow ball the sea level was higher (water expands when frozen) and coast lines were fewer. Then when the ice melted, the sea level lowered revealing a great deal of fertile coast providing room for those lazy organisms to stretch out and explore their potential. They flourished in their expanded real estate and soon there was competition over resources, and with more diversity and higher temperature it led to organizing and cooperation that evolved into the multiple celled organisms that eventually conquered the coast, sea, land and air.
But it was the global warming that led to the Cambrian explosion and it seems another warming is happening again. Will we one day have bees competing over nectar year round? Will perennials become continuals? Will we all be able to adorn shorts and go jogging in January no matter what latitude we call home?
Not likely. Even back during the big thaw of 250 million years ago, most of the northern and southern hemispheres were snow capped year round. Life seemed to collect and thrive around the equator. This is why major oil deposits are clustered around the Middle East, Gulf of Mexico, Southeast Asia, and the Northeastern coast of South America. Those locations were abundant with coast line and high temperatures conducive to organic life. There were other coasts that resided in the tropics, like western South America, but the mountain ranges that lined the ocean made it rough on the tiny seacreatures of yesteryear and in turn an unpopular destination for organisms to go, die, be crushed for millions of years and become oil.
Unfortunately much of the life that did become oil has been buried under mountains, The northern Indian subcontinent was a ideal location for life during the Cambrian explosion but has been buried under the Himalayas. Other prime Cambrian real estate was buried under the Sierra Madres and Nevada ranges.
The Cambrian explosion that spawned the grand diversity of life is the same cause of much of our conflict today. The struggles spawned from middle eastern and Venezuelan oil are due to life not being able to reproduce well in colder climates. Its ironic that the results of the world's most significant global warming is continuing to warm the planet allowing bees to buzz and girls to jog in January. And even though we may burn through the final remains of our Cambrian ancestors within the next twenty years, we are making the world 250 million years in the future rife with oil.
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