This Sunday, Sept. 27, PBS kicks off their six-part series by Ken Burns about America’s national parks. The series is magnificent, as befits the subject, and hopefully it will inspire a reinvigorated interest in our nation's most beautiful natural spaces. (Find out more about the series in The National Parks: America’s Best Idea – A New Series from Ken Burns and PBS, a write-up by the MOTHER EARTH NEWS editors covering all six episodes.)

Along the same lines, we asked you a couple of weeks ago which national parks you visited most recently. The exciting news is that of the 949 readers who took the poll, 711 have been to a national park recently. And of the specific parks listed, Great Smoky Mountains National Parks recorded the highest number of poll-taking attendees, with 210 votes. (You can see the full survey results below.)

And that’s not all. Some of our readers have been sharing remarkable photos from their national park visits at the MOTHER EARTH NEWS photo-sharing site, cu.MotherEarthNews.com — from the Great Smoky Mountains to Glacier National. If you have photos from a recent park visit, put ’em up! We love them, and, who knows, they may appear in the CU department of the magazine.

Now, though, we want to hear your stories. What’s your favorite memory of our national parks? We know that MOTHER’s readers have some good ones, so take a minute to share them below. Haven’t been yet? Where do you want to venture first?

Photo by iStockphoto

Which U.S. national park have you been to most recently?

1. Grand Canyon National Park 10% (92 votes)
2. Yellowstone National Park 11% (104 votes)
3. Yosemite National Park 6% (58 votes)
4. Great Smoky Mountains National Park 22% (210 votes)
5. Olympic National Park 3% (31 votes)
6. Other 23% (216 votes)
7. None 25% (238 votes)

Total Votes: 949

Check out this compelling roundtable discussion of four expert climate change scientists: The State of the Climate — and of Climate Science.

It originally appeared in the June 2009 issue of DISCOVER Magazine. (I just "discovered" it ...) The introduction does a great job of describing the crossroads we're at today as science and public opinion meet:

"In the list of world challenges, global warming might be at once the most alarming and the most controversial. According to some predictions, climate change caused by human activity could cause mass extinction in the oceans, redraw the planet’s coastlines, and ravage world food supplies. At the same time, a significant portion of the American public questions whether global warming will really cause any major harm; many still doubt that human-driven warming is happening at all."

Here are a few highlights of the discussion:

"I spend a lot of time studying the ice sheets at the bottom of the planet—how they form and how they collapse. The poles are like the planet’s air conditioner. When things are working well, the poles keep the planet nice and cool and we don’t think about it. When things stop working, the poles can start to melt and there’s a puddle on the floor. Today both poles are getting warmer; in Greenland and Antarctica you can see the surface of the ice dropping, and you can see there’s less mass when you measure the ice from space. The process has been ongoing, but it looks like it’s happening faster than it was. We know the ice sheets have come and gone in the past. Why is this any different? One of the most compelling reasons is that in the past the ice sheets from the two poles didn’t move together—one would lead and the other would follow. This time, both the north and south are spewing ice into the global ocean, accelerating at the same time." 

— Robin E. Bell, a senior research scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory

[... the Earth got warm in the past, too] "but it got warm over millions of years, and ecosystems had a chance to adapt. What we’re seeing are rates of increase in greenhouse gases and warming that exceed natural rates by a factor of 100. So what we’re doing is really unusual when seen from a geologic perspective.

[Humans are doing in centuries what natural processes do over millions of years?] "Yes, and the other timescale mismatch is that what we do over the next decades will affect life on this planet for hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions of years. We are at a critical juncture in earth history. If we don’t do the right thing and there are geologists around 50 million years from now, they’ll be able to look at cores and see the remnants of a civilization that developed advanced technology but didn’t develop the wisdom to use it wisely."

"To me the most compelling evidence [that human behavior is actually warming the planet] is the fact that the stratosphere — the upper atmosphere — is cooling while the lower atmosphere and the land surface are warming. That’s a sign that greenhouse gases are trapping energy and keeping that energy close to the surface of the earth. I mentioned that in ocean acidification, you actually see animals that should make shells unable to make shells anymore. You could demonstrate the same kind of effect in a bell jar in the lab. There is a level of certainty about it."

— Ken Caldeira, a professor at Stanford and staff member in the department of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution of Washington

"One of the most remarkable achievements of the 20th century was the way we were able to increase the global food supply in pace with unprecedented population growth. We will have to raise the food supply another two times to feed all of the people that we think will be alive by the latter third of the 21st century. We have reason to be somewhat sanguine about doing it if climate stays more or less the same, but how will we do it with the climate change? Based on our simulations and on 25 years of research, what bothers us most is that in the tropics, where the majority of poor people live today, crops are currently raised at temperatures pretty close to their photosynthetic optimums."

— Bill Easterling, Dean of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Pennsylvania State University

You can read the full discussion and learn more about the credentials of the panelists at The State of the Climate — and of Climate Science.

This week the Environmental Working Group released a report on the health of cell phones. Cell phones emit radiation, but scientists have not determined if the radiation is harmful or not. Some health concerns are that the radiation can increase risks of brain and mouth tumors.

The EWG provides a list of phones that release the least and most radiation. You can also look up your cell phone model to see how it rates on their list.

Rather than giving up your cell phone, the EWG has a guide with suggestions to reduce your risk of cell phone radiation exposure. Some suggestions are: buy a low-radiation cell phone, use a headset while talking on your cell phone, talk less on your cell phone, hold your cell phone away from your body and use speaker phone, text rather than talk on your cell phone and if your cell phone has a low signal, try not to use it because the cell phone emits more radiation while searching for a cell tower signal. 

We recently asked our readers (you) whether they would be getting a flu vaccine this year, either for H1N1 (swine flu) or seasonal flu. Given the large — 924 votes! — and interesting response, we wanted to know a bit more. For reference, let’s start with the poll and results:

Q. Are you going to get a flu shot this year?

1. No, I never do. 56% (516 votes)
2. No, I’m worried about the side effects of vaccines. 16% (152 votes)
3. Yes, I do every year. 18% (164 votes)
4. Yes, I’m specifically getting the shot for swine flu (H1N1). 6% (54 votes)
5. Yes, a seasonal flu shot, but not a swine flu shot. 4% (38 votes)

Total votes: 924

For starters, more than half of you won’t be getting a flu shot this year (which seems to match an informal poll taken around the MOTHER EARTH NEWS office). Of the 28 percent that are getting flu shots, only 6 percent plan to get the H1N1 vaccine. However, we first asked this poll two weeks ago, and in that time H1N1 has renewed it’s appearance in the media as cases are being reported around the United States, particularly, it seems, in university settings. It will be interesting to see, as flu season heats up, how these numbers shift — or don’t.

Personally, I'm not getting a flu shot (I never have), though that’s my personal decision, and not in any way a recommendation. I will be extra diligent about frequent hand washing and enjoying herbal teas (ginger, echinacea) and elderberry supplement drops. I’ll also be sure to up my veggie and fruit intake and keep the “junk” snacks to a minimum. And I will detour off the all-natural path to do a twice daily Listerine rinse. My dad swears by it. (Have you ever seen My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Remember the bride’s father and his faith in Windex? This will give you an idea of my dad’s feelings about Listerine. Though in all fairness, I have yet to see him actually spray it on anyone.)

Now that we’ve gotten the poll results in, I’d like to hear, in your words, whether you’re planning to get a flu shot (or have already) and why or why not. If you’re not getting a flu vaccine, what other tactics do you use to stay healthy and flu-free during the fall and winter?

Photo by iStockphoto