Hey everyone, welcome to figure fantasy and yet another prediction confirmed But just a little bit of a week. So we're here now in the figure fantasy Facebook page and really that prediction kind of near nearly accurate, but the right kind or the right figures that I predicted so figure fantasy a certain Scientific railgun or project railgun is going to do a collab a heavyweight collab brand-new edition coming soon master Yuki Master Yuki has some good news the miniature World will be welcoming to espers. They are two beautiful young ladies from Academy City so this is going to happen on July 1st guys and Be sure to be able to save up all your currencies for this one just in case you're interested in pulling for them Okay, so I mentioned a while I think a couple of days ago the two young ladies that will be joining us Please do check that video out in terms of what types they what type of figures they are and what Brand do they belong? So this is just a confirmation and this just out So just want to give you guys the first-hand news as it happens So again guys, this is happening on July 1st I'll see you during this day and hopefully we could enjoy this We could enjoy this new collab that will be dropping on July 1 so again guys This is just a short video. Thank you very much for staying here for this quick video and take care Stay safe. This is the warden and I'm out of here


Alchemists in the Middle Ages saw the creation of the Philosophus Stone, an object that was supposedly capable of converting base metals like lead into gold. We now know that the difference between lead and gold is simply the number of protons in the nucleus of each atom. Gold atoms have 79 protons in the nuclei, while lead atoms have 82. We also now know that the chemical procedures the alchemists were using back in the Middle Ages could only rearrange the electrons that form the bonds within molecules and therefore they could not have had any effect on the structure or composition of the nucleus at the center of an atom. Using the techniques of the Middle Ages, the alchemists could never have succeeded in their goal of transmutation of elements. However, we have already seen a hint of how we can transmute elements using nuclear techniques. In a nuclear alpha or beta decay, one time of a nucleus spontaneously changes into another. The question I will address in this video is whether or not we can artificially initiate nuclear transmutation and control these processes directly. As a reminder from the previous lectures, recall that nuclear decays are a type of reaction that occurs spontaneously when it is energetically feasible. That is when the masses of the products are lighter than the mass of the parent nucleus. It turns out that some spontaneous decay processes can be reversed. An example we have already looked at is the alpha decay of Polonium-212 turning into Helium-4 and lead-2O8. We can reverse this process by giving a Helium-4 nucleus some energy and directing it at a target made of lead-2O8 nuclei. When they collide, the injected energy can compensate for the mass difference and the Helium-4 and lead-2O8 can fuse together to make a new combined system. In this way we can convert a lead nucleus into a Polonium nucleus. Let us look at another example in more detail. The unstable nucleus Fluorine-18 undergoes beta-plus decay emitting positrons. These positrons can combine with electrons to produce gamma rays that can be used to image the location where the Fluorine-18 atom decayed. This is the basis of a PET scanner. PET stands for positron emission tomography and is a common medical imaging technique. However the nucleus Fluorine-18 doesn't exist in nature and has a half-life of only 109 minutes. It must be artificially created to be used in a PET scanner. The reaction that is most often used involves a proton which you will remember is just a hydrogen nucleus. This nucleus fuses with an 018 nucleus to create Fluorine-18 and a neutron. We can look up the masses of all of these species and their values are given here in atomic mass units. The masses of the proton and the oxygen-18 add up to 19.006985 mass units while the masses of the neutron and the Fluorine-18 add up to 19.0096029 mass units. Since the combined mass of the products is higher than the combined mass of the reactants this process cannot occur spontaneously and energy needs to be put into the system for this reaction to occur.


I am Roberta Feliki Pineski and I am a board member of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, plural, plural, plural, which I was reminded of when I joined the board. So, we work at the intersections of all of those things and one of my favorite stories came from a board member who was renowned in science and he said when I had a classroom full of science folks I said at the end of this course you will write me a poem about what you have learned. That's what the intersection means. They had to think very differently, use the other part of their brain and that's what the Wisconsin Academy for years and years has done. So, I would encourage you if you are again, this is the advertisement, if you are not a member of the Wisconsin Academy please consider being one and we do wonderful things. My next is, I am introducing our executive director who keeps us all going. Jane, it's yours. Thanks, Bert. So, I am Jane Elder and I am the executive director of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters and we are so excited to be here tonight with our members and friends in Sheboygan and so glad that Val is here with us tonight for our Academy talk, What's going on in the Great Lakes? As Bert mentioned, the Wisconsin Academy promotes the understanding of science and the appreciation of visual and literary arts in Wisconsin and the work that we do and the events that we host like tonight are all designed to bring people together at the intersection of the science and arts and letters to inspire discovery, illuminate creative work and foster civil dialogue on important issues. We don't do this work alone and I want to thank those who made this evening possible. Our Wisconsin Academy members and donors who support our work, our host, the Meade Public Library Academy board member, Roberta Felikipineski. And a special thank you to our partner, the Meade Public Library Foundation. I'm delighted that many of the foundation's board members are here and able to join us this evening and would you stand for a moment so we can acknowledge you. Tonight's talk marks this fall's first fall talk in our partnership with the library foundation and we appreciate their commitment to the library and to this community by helping to make this evening and others like it possible. Let's thank all of our sponsors please this evening. If you're interested in learning more about the Academy, our programs or ways to get involved please find me, Bethany or Amanda after the talk. And you're also invited to take home a complimentary copy of our quarterly magazine, Wisconsin People and Ideas which has been out at the registration table. Now this is my moment before I introduce our speaker to ask everyone to please take that moment to turn off your electronic devices. Thanks for doing so. Tonight I'm very happy to present Val Klump, professor and dean of research and senior director of the School of Freshwater Sciences at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Val's research focuses on how nutrients and carbon are cycled in the lakes and this work has taken him from the deepest soundings in Lake Superior in Michigan aboard a research submersible to the largest and oldest lake in the world, Lake Baikal in Siberia. His recent research highlights the presence and dynamics of dead zones such as the one in Green Bay including the impact climate change has on their extent and duration. I've had the opportunity to work with Val as a participant in the Academy's Waters of Wisconsin Network and also in my capacity as a member of the International Joint Commission's Great Lakes Water Quality Board. Yes, he's a distinguished scientist but he's also a committed public servant. Helping public decision makers and concerned citizens better understand the complex and remarkable Great Lakes ecosystem as we strive to keep it healthy and resilient. I think we're in for a great evening so please help me welcome our speaker, Dr. Val Klump. Thank you, Jane, and thank you for coming out this evening. I have a presentation that hopefully lasts about 30-40 minutes and then I'll open it up to questions. So if you have questions, hang on to them maybe towards the end. If it's really pressing, raise your hand and we'll interrupt and I'll answer it right away. So the topic this evening is about the Great Lakes. Probably most of you know that the Great Lakes represent 20% of the world's surface freshwater. This is without question the greatest single freshwater resource on the face of this planet. We are extremely lucky and privileged to live here. Oh, I need to talk to you. Is that better? How's this one? That's better. Okay. That one's better. Sometimes those wireless ones are a little weak. Okay. If you, well, click on the trigger here. Okay. If you took the Great Lakes and spread them out across the entire 48 states, it would cover the entire 48 states to a depth of 9.5 feet. It gives you an idea how much water is in the Great Lakes. It would cover both North and South America to a depth of one foot. It supports a $4 billion a year recreational sports fishery. It supplies drinking water for some almost 40 million people in the basin. And it's, as a region, it will be the third largest economy in the world. The system really cannot be put a price on it. This is a priceless environment. We call them lakes, but that's really a misoamer. These are not lakes. These are inland seas. Some of the biggest ships ever been built have been sunk in the Great Lakes, as you know. And a fully developed sea, for example, in Lake Michigan. That is when the wind blows the hardest of the longest distance over the greatest fetches that will produce waves up to 25 feet. So think about that.  You can ask my friend John Kennedy there who is a sea-going fellow in the Great Lakes and some of you else with 25 is just really hard to believe. Despite their size, these are surprisingly fragile systems. And there are a number of reasons for that. One is, evolutionarily speaking, these are relatively young systems. They're about 10,000 years old. The food chains in the Great Lakes are relatively simple, which means that they have niches which are open to invasive species. And that's been one of the things that has been a big issue in the Great Lakes. And I'll talk more about that later. They're also connected to the rest of the world. We're two ports of call away from essentially the entire rest of the world through international shipping. And this has been one of the major vectors by which invasive species have gotten into the system. University of Michigan did a study a couple of years ago looking at various stressors. They looked at 34 stresses on the Great Lakes and they developed this map where red, and they overlaid those stresses. And red is areas of high stress. Blue is areas of low stress. And you can see... You can see that near shore environments, near shore areas are more highly stressed, and if you go downstream in the lakes you'll see higher stress, which makes some sense. You can see these lines in Lake Superior. You might guess what that might be. Those are the shipping lanes in the Great Lakes. So I'm not going to talk about all 34, but I'm going to highlight a few. Yeah, all right, good. We're going to want to be here that long. Of course, I guess many of you in this room probably remember this event. 1969, the Cuyhoga River in Cleveland, Ohio caught on fire.  And it wasn't the only river in the Great Lakes that caught on fire for that matter, the River Rouge in Detroit also caught on fire. But this, of course, picture made to cover a time magazine. And this event was largely credited in part with the passage of the impetus for the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972. At that time, Lake Area was declared dead. The rivers were foul, you couldn't drink them, you couldn't fish them. And as a result of the passage of the Clean Water Act, we invested a tremendous amount in pollution abatement and sewage treatment in particular. Billions of dollars was invested. In Lake Area, the target was to reduce phosphorus loading to the system by about 60%. This is the passage of the Clean Water Act. In the mid-1980s, they basically hit the target load for phosphorus. And Lake Area recovered. Water quality improved dramatically.   I hear things that are just as bad up in Lake Erie. Well, the people in Lake Erie say, hey, Dr. Seuss, you know, Lake Erie has gotten better, you know, you should remove this. They wrote him a letter saying, hey, take that line out. And so, in fact, he did.  I hear things that are just as bad up in Lake Erie. But of course, things have changed. And Lake Erie is shimmery again. This is a satellite photograph of an algal bloom in Lake Erie in 2011, and this has recurred since then as well. Any time you can see an algal bloom from outer space, you probably know you have a problem. This is a result of deutrary runoff from the land, primarily. And it consists largely of a single organism called microcysis, a cyanobacteria, or what they call blue-green algae. It's not really an algae, it's a bacteria. And this particular species, microcystis, produces an algal toxin, microcystin, which is one of the most toxic substances known. And the World Health Organization limit for drinking water is about one part per billion. During this particular algal bloom, concentrations in Lake Erie were measured up to 1200. The standard is one. Contact for swimming is 20. And of course, you probably also remember, and you can see a boat here going through this algal bloom, I'm told that it actually slowed the engines down. It was so thick. You also probably remember three years ago in August, the Toledo water intake was shut down because of high concentrations of that algal toxin in their drinking water system. Folks were told, you cannot drink it. Don't wash your hands with it. Don't give it to your pets. You can't boil it. The hospital couldn't use it to sterilize their instruments. The zoo had to get alternative sources of drinking water for the animals. Of course, bottled water disappeared off the shelves just like that. It was truly a Cuyahoga moment. It shut down the water intake to some 400,000 or 500,000 people overnight, essentially. And that's one of the problems we face throughout the Great Lakes is nutrient runoff. That's true here in Wisconsin as well. If you look at Green Bay, you get these large algal blooms. And one of the consequences of those algal blooms is when that material dies, sinks to the bottom, and begins to decay, well, that decay process consumes oxygen. And that's the formation of low dissolved oxygen in the bottom water in the production of what they call dead zones. You've probably heard about the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, the dead zone in Lake Erie. There's a dead zone in Green Bay. There are probably some 400 or 500 dead zones around the world. They're all about pretty much the same issue as driving them, and that is excess nutrient runoff from the landscape. The lakes are simply a reflection of what we do on the land. However, as a result of the work has been done, and I have to give a shout out to John Kennedy here, who is an old friend of mine, who is one of the initial fathers, I guess, of the monitoring program in Green Bay by the Green Bay Metropolitan Suisse District. We've been tracking oxygen in the bottom water since, what, 1986, right, John? A remarkable set of data. And primarily because of that data and the research that that data has triggered, there's a much greater awareness now of this problem in Green Bay. And I'm glad to say that the community in this area is like understanding now this was an issue, and I think everybody has taken it to heart and understand that we need to do something about that. So I'm very encouraged by that activity. It's not going to be easy. The target we think in order to improve water quality to an acceptable level is to reduction in nutrient inputs on the order of 40 to 50%. That's not going to be easy. That's going to be difficult, and it's not going to happen overnight. It's going to take years, if not decades. But I think people now understand the nature of the problem and they're beginning to look at solutions to solve that. There are other sort of more nonconventional pollution threats. Of course, and I'll mention a couple here. The first is spills. I'm sure maybe you've seen this. There was a set of articles by Dan Egan recently in the Milwaukee Journal talking about the transportation of petroleum products throughout the Great Lakes, primarily in pipelines and there are a whole bunch of pipelines that crisscross the Great Lakes, but one in particular interest is the pipelines that crosses the Straits of Mackinac. There are two pipelines here called Line 5. They transport about 20 million gallons of crude oil, natural gas every day. They're over 60 years old. The company that operates them, Enbridge, wanted to increase the flow through those pipes. The only way you can increase the flow through a fixed diameter is to increase the pressure in that pipe. And if you had a 60-year-old pipe, people became concerned. There's an animation of what would happen if there were a spill in a lake. The different colors represent oil, which would be released at different depths into the lake. The Straits of Mackinac is without question the most dynamic region in the entire Great Lakes because the water flows in both directions back and forth. The winds really push it. And the currents through here can be pretty dramatic. So you can see a clock running down here. This is six or seven days now, and you can see how far the oil has actually spread during that time period. Of course, we've dealt with oil spills before. You're familiar with the New Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But of course, many of the dispersants they used in the Gulf of Mexico you could not use in the Great Lakes because we drink this water. This is also much colder environment and the nature of this petroleum is different as well. It's much heavier crude. My feeling is there would be no recovery from something like this. This is just another map produced by Des Schwab which shows the sort of probability where the oil might go after a spill in the straits. So it'd be very widespread. So what's the risk? Well, also several years ago, seven years ago now, there was a pipeline break on the Kalamazoo River, same company actually that operates the straits of Mackinac, also operates this particular pipeline. It broke and spilled about a million gallons of tar sand to oil. I think that happened on a Saturday, Sunday night. I got a call from Juan Cuyard, who was the operator at the time of the Milwaukee water intake. He said, Val, do I have to worry about this? Because obviously the Kalamazoo River runs into Lake Michigan and we draw our drinking water. Lake Michigan said, well, I don't think so because the EPA thinks they got contained. It's not going to actually get all the way to Lake Michigan and in fact didn't. They're still working on that cleanup. They spent about a billion dollars to clean it up. And so although the probability of a break may be low, the risk actually to the system, I think, is astronomical and I think unacceptable, frankly. What about other things that we sort of on the lookout for? I'm sure you've also heard about this, a whole class of contaminants and those emerging contaminants, things like pharmaceuticals, personal care products, plasticizers, nanomaterials, flame retardants, a whole group of things. One of our scientists, Rebecca Clapper, is one of the leading scientists in this area and is studying, in particular, pharmaceuticals in the lake. Here's a list of just a handful of the things that they have measured now. Caffeine, we obviously know acetaminophen, some of these naproxen, I use that. A lot of these antimicrobial things they use for soaps, for example, some antibiotics. This is, here is the calculation of the discharge from the South Shore sewage treatment plant in Milwaukee. It's just one of the two treatment plants in Milwaukee. Their estimate, one of the most common drugs they find is metformin, which is a type 2 diabetes drug, very heavily prescribed. And their estimate is, this would be about 12,000 pounds of metformin are discharged to Lake Michigan every year. Now that's a heck of a lot of pills, when you think about it. They, she had a student, Dan Blair, who gave his, presented his dissertation and included in that were some of the data and he was showing his data on metformin out in Lake Michigan.  Thinking that he would say, well, you know, when we got five miles offshore, we couldn't detect anything. But in fact you didn't say, so the lowest we ever found was about 10 parts per billion at the furthest offshore station. In other words, they could find, no place that they looked in the lake did they not find this drug, which means two things. One, there's a fly coming in and it appears to be building up and it doesn't, it doesn't go away. This drug does not decompose. And that's true of many of these pharmaceuticals. The same thing that makes them effective as medicines means they're not metabolized in the body. Also means they translate through conventional sewage treatment plants largely unchanged. And so they, now it's a testament to our analytical ability that we can actually measure these things because they're very trace concentrations. On the other hand, the entire medicine chest is out there. And there is evidence that they are affecting microorganisms. I have another colleague, my Jim Wapels is looking at another pharmaceutical what happens to be radioactive. It's Idyne-131. It's used in various treatments and diagnostic procedures. What's interesting about this pharmaceutical since it's radioactive, it has a half-life which is only eight days, which means every eight days, half of it goes away.  But the fact you can go out and near shore Lake Michigan and almost continuously measure the presence of this radioactive pharmaceutical means that it's constantly being supplied to the system. In fact, as you can use that number to calculate the flux into the system. Another thing of interest, I should mention too, for example with respect to the metformin, there's evidence that this has, even at low levels, levels that we can measure in the environment has estrogenic or endocrine disruptor impacts. You can find male fish that actually produce eggs in their gonads. And that's the first time that that had ever been detected or known for this particular drug. She got some pushback actually from the pharmaceutical industry on that. They didn't want to believe it, but it's true. Another area concerned is microplastics. A lot of the things we use, some of the soaps, some of things like suntan lotions, et cetera, have these very small particles in it. And so there's evidence that microplastics are showing up in the Great Lakes as well as the oceans. I put this number up here at 2050 to remind me to say that there was an estimate that by 2050 at the current rate that the biomass of plastics in the ocean will equal the biomass of fish in the ocean. Now, that's really hard to believe. Even if it's 10%, it's still an amazing number. And the reason for that is that it doesn't go away. In fact, just later this semester we have a world-renowned scientist from Hawaii who's been studying this. There's some presentation on that. One of the things that, if you look at sort of the toxological effects of these compounds in the old days, you used to take an organism, you put in a beaker, you'd squirt something in it until half of them died. It was known as an LC-50. And nobody really understood the mechanism of what impacted the organism. But today, because of DNA sequencing technology, we finally have the smoking gun, if you will, to understand how these compounds are interacting in the environment. Some of the work that Rebecca has done, for example, is looking at the impact of Prozac, which I'm sure you're familiar with, on fish.  They have a very elaborate breeding behavior. The female will lay her eggs underneath a rock, the male will fertilize those eggs, and then he will guard that nest until they hatch out. At very low concentrations of Prozac, concentrations that we can measure in the environment, the male sort of, the female doesn't seem to care. She just broadcasts her eggs in the bottom of the tank. The male goes, I don't care. He doesn't bother, and basically, reproduction fails. Actually, if you read the warning label, for humans, the same problem, if you take Prozac. But what's interesting is now, she can take those fish, a fish that has not been exposed, and a fish that has been exposed, and run their genome, their gene sequence, and look at which genes are what they call up-regulated or down-regulated.  And compare that with an organism that has not been exposed. And begin to understand the biological mechanism, which is really causing this change in behavior. So it's really going to be the rosetta stone for understanding how these things impact the environment. Eventually, we'll be able to go out in the environment, grab a fish, bring it back, laboratory-seeking their genome, and it'll tell us how it's being stressed. Now, we're a long way from there, but this technology has amazing potential for trying to understand what's going on in the environment in a number of ways. If you were to ask me what's the sort of biggest impact on the ecosystem today, I think without question it's been the invasion of non-native species. I'm sure some of you are very familiar with the sea lamprey, which essentially decimated or wiped out the lake trout population in Lake Michigan. The ale life, which came into the St. Lawrence Seaway, Spiney, Waterflea, Ron Gobi, and of course these dry-scented mussels. This video was taken actually quite a few years ago in Lake Michigan by a good friend of mine, John Jansen. These are all zebra mussels, it turns out, at this point. I'll point out about that. One is how clear the water is. It looks like the Bahamas, right? The other is those rocks, as you can see, are totally covered. These were not covered with zebra mussels before. This is an indication of a niche that was totally open in the Great Lakes. An invasive species came in and just took over. Well, as it turns out, that was in the early 1990s. In the early 2000s, another dry-scented mussel, a quagga mussel, which at arms length looks just like a zebra mussel, but it has some differences. One, it can live on soft bottoms and soft substrates, whereas zebra mussels need something hard to attach to. And it can live in colder and deeper water. And as a result, quagga mussels have spread starting in the early 2000 basically throughout Lake Michigan. In fact, as you can almost walk across the carpet of quagga mussels now in Lake Michigan, you are hard-pressed to find a zebra mussel. Quagga mussels have essentially taken over the system, and they did it very fast in about four years. One of the consequences was that one of the bases of the food chain in the system, a little crustacean, a shrimp-like fella called Diperia, which was a bottom-down here that basically disappeared from the lake. So the fish that fed on it, like the bloater chub, smoked fish you're all familiar with. Okay. All right. Okay. You don't ever want to cross the librarian, that's for sure. Okay. As a result, basically, there was nothing for fish to eat and largely collapsed in Lake Michigan. Now, there's been some indications that salmon are doing better again in Lake Michigan, but yellow perch, whitefish, other native fish have been essentially eliminated from the system. This is a trawl, a bottom trawl, taken by a friend of mine, Harvey Bootsma. This was taken several years ago, but things haven't changed.  They did catch one fish. There's a round gobie, which is also a non-native species. And I have a video. We'll see if it'll play. And this is, they put a camera on the bottom trawl, and that's what it looks like. And this is what it looks like, and it keeps looking like this for a long time, as long as they trawl this net. So basically, quagga mussels have taken over the Lake Michigan ecosystem. It's now estimated that there are four times more biomass in quagga mussels than there are in forage fish in the lake. Lake Superior, which is one of the most pristine lakes in the world, is now the third clearest lake in the Great Lakes. Both Lake here on the offshore waters of Lake Michigan and Lake here on the both clearer than Lake Superior. It's because of these mussels. They're voracious filter feeders. In particular, it's the food particles out of the water column. It was estimated when they invaded Lake here that they filtered an amount of water coolant to the entire volume of the lake every six days. Now Lake here is a big lake. It's caused that water clarity means there's nothing in it, which means there's no food. It means that there was about over an 80% decline in the phytoplankton as the algae that live in the water, in the pelagic primary production that feeds the fish in this system. So Lake in Michigan and Lake here have been totally re-engineered from a system which had a pelagic food river, a water column-based food web, to one is now totally based on the sediment organisms that live on the bottom. Well, there's also some other impacts as a result of these mussels. One of the things is they immediately, of course, as I said, they immediately cleared the water in the near shore. Prior to zebra mussels, and quagga mussels, this is what it looked like in the near shore. The near shore of Lake Michigan is fairly turbid and so light only penetrated a little distance. But then after these dry sanded mussels moved in shore, they cleared the water and so now light could penetrate much deeper. Because they were filter feeders, and supplied to the bottom, and they also provided something attached to it. This resulted in the blossoming of massive beds of clodophora, which is an attached algae which lives in the near shore. In fact, clodophora was the poster child for phosphorus removal back in the 70s and 80s. So now, if you go out in Lake Michigan and look at the bottom in the near shore, this is what it looks like. These are vast meadows of clodophora. Now, there are mussels there, you can't see them. They're underneath the clodophora, but they're there and they're alive. One of the sort of of course, when this material dies, senesce breaks off and wave energy will wash up on the beach. It begins to decay. Smells like, you know, all get out. Everybody in Milwaukee, of course, blamed the lake. Must be their fault. Smells like sewage. Gotta be sewage, not sewage. In fact, this problem was occurring throughout the Great Lakes in some of the most pristine areas. Door County, Sleeping Bear, National Seashore. One of the consequences of this, too, is that when this stuff begins to decompose, it goes anaerobic. There's no oxygen in it. It turns out it becomes the perfect media for the organism which causes avian botulism. And so there's many huge resurgence in avian botulism in the Great Lakes. There's when these waterfowl feed in these and pick out the little bugs and crustaceans that are in this and they take up that toxin. And so that's become a major problem. And one of our scientists, Harvey Boothma, is actually working in Sleeping Bear's Andean National Seashore studying the mechanisms behind this issue. As I said, most of these invasive species have come in in ballast water. It was a study done almost 10 years ago now. Maybe more than 10 years ago. By a couple of economists at Grand Valley State, funded by the Joyce Foundation, it looked at the value of the international shipping in the Great Lakes. Now, maritime shipping in the Great Lakes is a multi-billion-dollar year industry. I mean, it's extremely valuable. But the vast majority of that is interlake, intra-lake transfer. It's like iron ore from Duluth to Gary, it's salt from Detroit or Cleveland to Milwaukee or coal from Ashtabula to where it needs to go. They estimated that the international shipping, that is, it requires it comes out of the ocean through the St. Lawrence Seaway, it was about $55 million a year. That was a value that caught the attention of a lot of people. Because invasive species have been a billion-dollar, multi-billion-dollar impact on the system. $55 million they said, wow, that's not much at all. And so there is a big move, a foot to try to physically separate the Great Lakes and say, hey, wait a minute, maybe we should close the Seaway down. There are other ways to transport goods in and out. The St. Lawrence Seaway is too small now to carry these big container ships anyway. So that's an ongoing debate. What about climate change? This was a chart taken out from NASA of the New York Times. Hotest year on record 2015. I put this slide together to go last year. Last year 2016 was not the highest record. 2017 was also a very hot year. At midway through the year, it was going to be, 17 was racked up to be the second hottest year on record. I've been giving presentations about this issue for probably almost 20 years. I've said the same thing every year. The 10 hottest years have all been in the last 15 years. I've said that every year for 20 years. What's the impact? In Wisconsin, pretty dramatic. These are projections from the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts. Particularly the group in the Center for Climatic Research at UW-Madison. Good friends of mine, Dave Lorenz, Dan Weimann and others. One of the projections for the end of the century is 4 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit hotter. But nearly two weeks. This is for Madison now over 100 degrees. I've lived in Milwaukee for 37 years now and I can only remember a single day in Milwaukee where it was over 100. To think that we would get two weeks over 100 and nearly two months overnight. These are daytime high temperatures. It's also projected to be wetter. A 10 to 20 percent increase in precipitation. That precipitation comes in more intense and more frequent events. This is a run. This is an animation that's okay, it's not going to run. This is comparing 2012. This is for very blurry looks like August. These are the same date, 1992, which is a pretty normal year. Climatically at least in the old days. In 2012, which is time was one of the hottest years on the record, has been superseded by several years since then. You can see how much warmer temperature. It goes up. Purple is warm. Blue is cold. You can see how much warmer Lake Superior is and how much warmer Lake Michigan is in the summertime. We've started to see now Lake Michigan temperatures in the middle of the lake hitting 80 degrees. More than once. That's pretty unusual for Lake Michigan. That's very unusual. One of the consequences of that is that ice cover on the lakes is decreasing. This has to be data for Green Bay. One of the other consequences that's particularly in Lake Superior is that water temperatures are rising twice as fast as air temperatures. The reason for that is because ice axes are very good solar insulators. During when the lake is covered with ice, sunlight sort of bounces off and it does not heat the lake. The lake only starts to heat up really until the ice cover goes off. As that open water period gets longer and longer, the period during which the lake can absorb solar radiation gets longer and longer and so the temperature goes up faster and faster. Eventually you will reach a point at which you don't have any ice cover in that process. Reaches a new steady state. The consequence is that over the last 30 years water temperatures are rising faster than air temperatures. What about lake levels? Because climate is the primary controller of lake levels. Two things basically control lake levels. The amount of precipitation, I get rain and snowfall, the amount of evaporation that occurs. There are diversions in and out of the lakes and in fact there are more diversions into the lakes than out of the lakes. But their impact on the lakes is very small relative to the two major things. How much rainfall we get and how much evaporation occurs.  As the temperature gets warmer and particularly this time of year when you start to get cool air over warm water you see that steam coming off the lakes or fog. There's a lot of water going into the atmosphere as the lakes get warmer, evaporation increases. One of our scientists, Paul Rober looked at the hydrologic budget for Lake Michigan and here in which hydrologically are one lake. He looked at the terms in a water balance and pulled out the input term from the evaporation term and looked just at the evaporation. What he showed was that evaporation over the last 30 years or so has increased by about 25%. If rainfall had not increased if you just think of the water level in term alone it would have decreased lake levels by maybe as 8 or 10 feet. That's an enormous drop in lake levels. Because water level, because it's also been wetter much of that evaporative loss has been offset by increasing lake levels by increasing precipitation. This is a history of the Lake Michigan here on going back to the late 1990s starting here in about 1999 or so. This is the average rate. You can see lake levels uses annual cycle. It's usually lowest in February and peaks in mid-summer. You can see it go up and down every year. This was the longest period on record about 15 years which we had below average lake levels. This was also a very warm period. Now we all know that actually we hit an all-time low in 2013. This was a new record low in Lake Michigan. Everybody was worried about low lake levels. Then we had some very cold winters. Remember the polar vortex and the lake levels bounced back faster probably than they've ever bounced back. Today we're above the long-term average by 6 or 7 inches or so. This could easily go back down again. The all-time high was in 86-87 which is right over here someplace. We're nowhere near that. Normally the lakes fluctuate on the order of about 6 feet. One of the projections Paul has in terms of climate change because we're getting both more intense and we're getting higher precipitation and more evaporation. One of the things that the modelers are predicting is that in general lake level will probably drop somewhat. We'll get higher highs and lower lows. So we sort of have the worst of both worlds. We have to plan, if you're a coastal community like Sheboygan, you need to plan for higher highs, record highs and also record lows. That's a challenge for flooding and shoreline erosion. A lot of issues involved in that. These are some of the long-term projections going out toward the end of the century. You can see these projections are kind of all over the map. In general, most of them call for lower lake levels and you can see by not just a little amount. I mean, a one-foot change in lake levels is dramatic in this system. All right. I've got to finish up here. The other thing about lake is precipitation is it's predicted to come in fewer but more intense rain events. That's one of the driving forces of which washes off our land because it's probably 80% of which comes off the landscape comes in like 10 events. Ten times a year it rains hard and as those events increase potential for erosion and runoff increases as well. So, the major challenge is closing 15 minutes. Okay. He's right on time. So the major challenge of the 21st century is to reconcile the inherent conflict between human activity and environmental sustainability and frankly, nowhere I think is that challenge greater than when it comes to freshwater and freshwater resources. It's a major challenge and an opportunity for us. Oh, and one other big problem. This is a few years ago in Milwaukee they raised water rates and there were people who were outraged my rates went up by 20%, 30% in some cases and they were writing letters to the editor and complaining about this and finally I got upset and I said, well, time out. This is not a water bill. This is not a water rate because the water is coming to you absolutely free. You don't pay a thin dime for it. What you pay for is the withdrawal, the distribution, the treatment and putting it back in the lake. That's not really a thin dime for. Now the cost or the value of the water at the end of the pipe that you and I use or the farmer or the brewery or whoever it might be is that we could probably put a value to. It might be difficult but we could estimate I think fairly accurately what the economic value to us as individuals and businesses and communities what that value is. The value of the water at the other end of the pipe in Lake Michigan. The value to the system. Now that would be a lot harder to calculate to estimate but I can guarantee you one thing. It is not zero. The problem is we're not paying it. We're not paying. We're having the lake as subsidizing our activities and that cannot go on in my view. So of course I wrote a couple op-ed pieces about this. This happens to be my particular soapbox issue. If you ask people what should we do to improve water quality to make the lakes fishable and swenable? 97% of the people will say do whatever it takes. I say you were serious. Do whatever it takes. So I said okay here's one solution. I suggested we put a surcharge on water use. Two cents per 100 gallons. Now the average household use is about 100 gallons a day. So it's two cents a day. Most people can't tell you what their water bill is because it's so low. They don't pay that much attention to it. This would add about a dollar amongst the average household $12 a year. We pay more for that than we do with a cup of coffee during the week or certainly cell phone service or any other things we use. In Milwaukee that would generate between four and five million dollars a year. That's not a lot of money. But over time if we invest that in understanding what we're doing in the environment it can have an impact. That's about $12 a year. We'll go a long way towards understanding what we're doing because frankly the Great Lakes are a managed ecosystem. Whether we like it or not, whether we do it deliberately or inadvertently, we manage the system and you cannot manage something unless you understand how it works. That's truly important. We are not investing enough in understanding that lake. One of the things of course I'm a big proponent of is the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. I propose this particular program was taken out of the federal budget initially but has been put in back by Congress. It was originally proposed at around $400 million a year. A $2 billion program. It's currently funded at about $300 million a year. That's simply a down payment. Not even a down payment that's needed in this system. We need to take this program from an initiative to a program. I also think that we should establish a target date by which we say we are going to restore the Great Lakes by you name the date. We can argue what that date should be but we should say no, we are going to restore the lakes by 2040. That is two things in my mind. One, it gives us some urgency that we have to do it. That's on us. It also indicates the level of investment needed because it's not trivial but we are definitely capable of doing it. There's no question in my mind we have the economic potential and the benefit economically to the region is immense. Economists have estimated for a $20 billion investment in Great Lakes Restoration we return conservatively return $50 to $80 billion return of value to the system so it makes economic sense. We are at the School of Freshwater Sciences with the Great Lakes Water Institute and the Center for Early Studies that we celebrated our 50th year last year. However, the school is relatively new it was formed in 2009. We transitioned solely from a research institute to a graduate program in Freshwater Science we're the only one in the country we currently have about 65 graduate students in the program and we're very proud of that. We have a new building, a $53 million addition to our facility and we're very proud of that as well. Our number one priority in the school and the science we conduct is to understand the ecosystem. As I said, you can't manage something and take care of it unless you understand how it works. They also have a Center for Water Policy because policy is what drives everything that we do. We have the will of people to understand the programs and the mechanisms by which we will correct the ills and protect the lakes. Someone said, the future has no constituency. Which is true, I mean, my great great grandchild he said, wow, why didn't you take care of this? Why did you put this off on us? So it really is our responsibility to understand what's going on to protect these lakes for future generations because they're going to be around 100 years from now 200 years from now, 500 years from now. One of the things, here's a crass plug. We have a research vessel, the RV Niskay which the Native American word means clean pure water. Niskay is a great boat but she's 63 years old and has pretty much reached the end of her lifetime and so we're in the process of raising funds for a new state-of-the-art research vessel for the Great Lakes. We want to raise $20 million. If anybody's got an extra 10 million bucks don't leave the room without talking to me. Okay, final thought. The Great Lakes are essentially closed systems. A lot of residents time for Lake Michigan is about 100 years so that means for all intents and purposes anything you throw, toss, leak or otherwise get into the system. I always tell people, if you put it in today there's a good chance you will drink it tomorrow. And if not tomorrow, some time then they're not too distant future.  So if you're like me and you've lived in this area and you drink Milwaukee tap water or Sheboygan tap water you are more, think about that, you are more Lake Michigan than you are anything else. So what's it going to be? And those are two untouched photographs of the Great Lakes. So thank you.  Would you please you know that? So there you go. So I'd be happy to take any questions. We have I don't know maybe 10 minutes. Jane, I don't know. Yes, in the back. Hi. Is this on? Okay. I can't talk from here. So I have a comment slash I don't know. I'm going to say it anyway. So you had a slide that had said science to policy to law and I think that's really interesting but I think we also need to look at how the science also maybe inspires change in business. Whether it's from Polar Company which is the place where I work to even smaller businesses within our community I think there's a lot of opportunity there so rather than forcing companies to change because of the law how can we inspire them by this information and the economic opportunity that they have to make these changes. So we all use water whether it's directly like if you're making beer or processing food or whether you're in a manufacturing process I mean and there's a huge incentive for companies to conserve water. For example Miller Brewing. In order to make a can of beer they have to heat water, cool water reheat it, recool it and then they finally put it in a can. Heating and cooling that water takes a lot of energy so the less water they use the less heating and cooling they do the more money they save. The motor company for example has changed the way they paint their vehicles. They used to use a lacquer based solvent based paint, they now use a water based paint they recycle the water, they have now plants their newer plants have zero water use and it saves them money. So we all have I think the technology for conserving water even in an area like Wisconsin where you say wow we live 100% of the world's fresh water, what are we worried about? Well, talk to people in Waukesha or Madison or wherever else. I mean there are places not too far away where water conservation is a big issue. So that's a very good point. Yes, ma'am. So there's a lot, the question is what's the, for restoration what kinds of activities are being done? A lot of things restoration of coastal wetlands for example cleaning up formerly contaminated harvests like here in Sheboygan or in Green Bay for example there are some 43 areas of concern around the Great Lakes that were contaminated to the extent that they adversely impacted human or wildlife health we've managed to clean up a couple of those so there's a major cleanup and we have the ability I mean we're going to spend when the dust clears in Green Bay I think the last number I saw we're going to spend $1.2 billion to clean PCBs out of the Fox River I mean a more normal ecosystem at that excellent point. What is a more normal ecosystem? I think any ecologist who tells you what Lake Michigan or the Great Lakes are going to look like 15 years from now forget it. We don't know. I mean the system is not at steady state. Look at the impact of these dry-scented muscles that have had on the system and the sort of ripple effects that they've had on the system. Very difficult to tell. I mean my feeling is we've been sort of on the back of the train looking out the back and sort of seeing what has happened and what we really need to do is get out in front and understand how the ecosystem works because once you have the data to understand how the system works you can put together a model of how it's going to react in the future and that's the only way that we're going to sort of get out in front of these issues if we have a well calibrated well informed model no models are perfect obviously but once we have those models we can sort of come in a projection of what the future will look like and make some corrections in that at least you know be conservative. Yes. I've been working within the Great Lakes for as an engineer I had to go for over 40 years and now the two-minute warning. One of the biggest challenges I have is the departure from the norm when you display you know changes in Great Lakes water surface elevations over the last 15 or 20 years then you look at say for the past 50 years and looking forward we know that the departures are accelerating that these departures are getting bigger and bigger both positive and negative so I'm a big modeler I have always been a big modeler but I really have, I'm challenged having to look forward recognizing that we have a very small record of these departures that's one issue the second I guess is that maybe in terms of restoration we need to provide a lot more attention at the residential level the flush or the numbers of flushes that we have in our homes because a lot of the man-made pollutants that end up in the lake plastics beads, pharmaceuticals that's where they're coming from so if we're going to make changes there are community and cultural changes that we can make that are really easy we just have to present a mechanism that will change minds. That's a very good point thank you for that. One of the projects we have in Milwaukee is looking at some of these sort of emerging contaminants, pharmaceuticals in river water but we're also measuring some things that are, you know are benign, we're measuring things like cinnamon and vanilla other parts of the country they've shown that three days after Thanksgiving there will be a big spike in vanilla and cinnamon in the water people get that, they go oh I know where that's coming from we all have an impact on the system and so part of it is people becoming aware of it and I think once they are aware of it I'm going to ask you, I said no we got to do something about this this is unacceptable. So my question is the fishery before in the 1990s Lake Michigan was an unnatural fishery habitat it wasn't natural correct? When? I'm sorry. In the 1990s Lake Michigan itself was not unnatural fishery it was man-made so I agree that the data before that we have not really seen the data from like 1920 onward and that would be very interesting to see what that data looks like I guess too what I wanted to say was that in order to actually fulfill a restoration project you have to close off the St. Lawrence Seaway and only do intra water transportation and then you have to get rid of the invasive species is there a plan on how to get rid of the mussels? No. Do I say the mussels are here to stay? The system has changed for all time. So the only question is to stop the next invader could have some impact and we don't know I mean it looks as if the quagga mussels have expanded now to it sort of topped out it looks like the population has reached a peak anytime you have a monoculture of anything you are susceptible to a sudden crash and that could dramatically change so we don't really know there are very good fisheries records in the Great Lakes going back a long time the history of fisheries in the Great Lakes is the history of introduced species whether they got in inadvertently or whether they put in deliberately and when they opened the Seaway one of the first things that came in was the Yamper Eel and that basically wiped out Lake Trout for example in Lake Michigan in the late 50's the DNR said 6 million linear feet of gill net and they caught 6 fish basically wiped them out and we have spent millions of dollars restocking Lake Trout in the Great Lakes without any effect one of the other species that came in of course was the ale wife which back in the 50's and 60's some of you probably remember was susceptible to die off would pile up on the beaches it was horrible they'd use front end loaders to get rid of these stand fish and I got my name of Tanner who was the secretary of the DNR in Michigan hit upon the idea of stocking salmon in the Great Lakes Pacific salmon to feed on ale wives to reduce the ale wife population that was phenomenally successful the ale wife population went down is what you might expect the last salmon fishery in the Great Lakes many were catching huge fish people literally come from all over the world the fish lake Michigan and what you would expect happened is that the ale wife population went down but also then the salmon started to go down to to the point where believe it or not some fishing groups were advocating stocking ale wives but the DNRs of those states would get together every year and decide because the lakes at Kohol and Shunok they swim upstream and die when they reproduce we decide every year on how many fish to stock in this system well after the Clean Water Act and a water quality improved in our streams particularly in Michigan salmon started to naturally reproduce in some of those streams so there was natural reproduction it's now estimated in Lake Huron in Lake Michigan that much as 60 to 70% of the salmon in the lake naturally reproduced so the management tool has gone basically mother nature has taken over control the ale population has taken a huge nosedive and one interesting thing is lake trout have started to reproduce successfully again in the lakes and the theory is that because the ale wife population has dropped so much and that was the main forage base for lake trout they have switched to other species ale wife contain a very high concentration of an enzyme thymidase which apparently interferes with lake trout reproduction and when they shifted their diet off of alias and other species all of a sudden they were starting to reproduce and we're starting to see now natural reproduction of lake trout in the great lakes so A's and carp gets in the news a lot it's in for those of you who don't know it's in the Mississippi drainage the Illinois River the Chicago drainage canal the flow is reversed so that's a connection the local barrier put on the Chicago drainage canal where originally it was put in to keep round gobies from getting into the Mississippi drainage that door was originally decided to slam the other way keep gobies from getting out of the great lakes so they beefed that up in order to keep Asian carp out the problem is of course that the engineer has not yet been born it can design a system that never fails and with fish or with biology it only takes one grab it female and then you know you're off and running of course they're always described in the press as the voracious Asian carp that eats 40% of its body weight a day now with water clarity this high in Lake Michigan you would have to swim a long way to get 40% of your body weight because these are planktivorous fish they do not eat other fish mostly fishing ecologists that I know say that Asian carp have a very difficult time making a living in Lake Michigan that doesn't mean they couldn't make a living in other parts of the lake western end of Lake Erie which is a very utrophic system southern end of Green Bay they're used to living in they're riverine fish they need about 60 kilometers of flowing water in order to spawn and we just don't have rivers like that in the great lakes the Chicago drainage canal is not the only door the Wabash River in Indiana when it floods in the spring it will connect to the Mami River and there are Asian carp in that system so they could jump the divide there my daughter is an assistant U.S. attorney she was in the Cleveland office they had a case there they had a case there where people were taking Asian carp fishing out of the Mississippi drainage putting them in water tanks and taking them to the fish market in Toronto which has a very high Asian population they like live fish they don't want to buy a dead fish they want to live fish they put these fish on ice, take them across the border once they got across the border they fill a tank back with water they caught those guys so there's more than one way for this and my feeling is eventually they will if they haven't already and there's some evidence they will get into the system the question is how big a threat are they but if you want I mean the old being conservative is good because biology organisms are very adaptable although we say it was not a great system for them but it's not an easy cheap fix to close off the system


Butterfly also known as Kajadna. Death sí Kajadna has been而a investigate on a choice. Waterily an original farmer however in Erfugan was looking scary. This non logic has been就可以 it is changed F Waterily an original farmer however in Erfugan was looking scary. This non logic has been changed F Waterily an original farmer however in Erfugan was looked scary. Waterily a well-f newly decided E 꾀bye e fidh yaw But what is the idea? My dressing code was transferred from abroad. In some areas my culture is a promotion of things. for example my dress quo and in some other ways it works. And the new thing is as well as the clothes code आप किच्छी जणा मेस अंदस्टूड कोरुचन्ती बहुत अलगा जीन सब आप सम्ति किच्छी वी नहीं पतिक्युले ली से ता जंडर भायस्ट भी नुहा से ता जस्ट मेंशन करा है ची की आमरो ट्रदिशन आव आमो कल्चर जाहा भी सादी जादी आपनो को आमा भीट्रिट की बहुला गिला ते भी आमा चानल को लाएक, शेर, और सबस्क्रेप करीपा को जमा भी बुलों तो रहीं


Okay. Good morning and welcome everyone. We continue with the first Peter chapter 5 and then we will switch on to second Peter chapter 1 today. Let's pray and let's begin today's class. Heavenly Father, we thank You for the opportunity Lord to Lord dwell in Your Word. Thank You that Your Word, O God, Lord transforms us, strengthens us, and God, even the unfinished parts of us, O God, thank You, Lord, that as we engage in Your Word, that, God, You are forming something wonderful in each one of us, Father. You're making us, O God, into the image of Your Son, Jesus Christ. So, Lord, we thank You, Lord. We thank You for every opportunity to engage in Your Word. We bless You and honor You. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. So, let's get back to first Peter chapter 5. We read through the whole chapter and we did the first section there where we said that Peter is exorting the pastors or the elders of the church to take care of God's flock and he says that the Lord Jesus is the chief shepherd. So, we have someone who is our role model when it comes to taking care of God's people. We saw the kind of heart, the attitude that one needs to have in order to take care of God's people. That one shouldn't be like a Lord over God's people but be an example, have an eager spirit and not have personal agenda but genuinely want to care and see the growth and, you know, expansion of God's kingdom. Now, coming to the next section here, he's calling the believer to live a life submitted to God and the key to overcoming the enemy in our lives is firstly, submission to God. So, when we talk about spiritual warfare, we generally quote, right, the scripture where we say, you know, resist the devil. He will flee from you, resist him, steadfast in the faith. Over here verse 9, it says, resistance, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.  So, a very oft-repeated scripture, we find it here in 1 Peter chapter 5 and verse 5 where he says, likewise you younger people submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another and be clothed with humility. For God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. So, he is teaching us about submission, submission overall of course to God but then submission also to those in authority, elders refers to those in authority and one another, meaning the fellowship of believers, the brotherhood. So, being submitted to God, being submitted to elders, being submitted to the brothers and sisters in Christ, you know, that demonstrates our humility. We are walking in humility, clothed with humility or having an attitude of humility that he says that when we do have humility, what is it that we can receive from God? We receive grace from God and so humility is demonstrated in our attitude. Humility helps us receive more grace from God and verse 6, we see that when we humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, an exaltation is expected. So, God himself will exalt us in due time. So, there is a right time when we can see God bringing us, you know, in a place where there is honour on our lives. So, we just have to, it's not that we should go looking for that honour. No, there is a right time when God himself will do it for us when we are walking in humility and so that trust in God is essential, dependence on God is essential. So, he's teaching us about, you know, submission, he's teaching us about humility, he's teaching us about trusting God, he says in verse 7, cast your cares upon the Lord for he cares for you. So, trust in God wholeheartedly and when we do this, you know, we are in a better position to resist the devil and then, you know, he says be sober and vigilant because your adversary, the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. So, we understand that Satan uses, we've seen this, we've discussed it in the book of James, how there are external influences. He tries to attract us with what the world has to offer to us. He influences us from the outside, which can lead to an oppression if we're given to Satan. But also there are things of the flesh within us, that if we don't deal with, whatever you tolerate will dominate is what court says. So, if we tolerate the fleshly aspects in us, then what happens is they may begin to dominate us and so here Peter is telling us that we should be sober. What is sober? You know, sober is somebody who's in their right mind, who has a balanced way of thinking, who's not drunk, who's not under the influence of alcohol. So sober, generally we refer to sober as that. So sober is being in our right mind or being very balanced, being without any excesses, you know, avoiding excesses in our lives where we are moderate, we are in check, we are in self control. So a believer who's like that, who is living their lives, you know, committed to the word and very alert, sober, be vigilant. Vigilant is again alert, when we are balanced in our mind, when we are able to think correctly, that also actually shows alertness, but he adds and he says be alert. So when a believer is in self-control, a believer is alert, then it's very difficult for Satan to get us and he's calling Satan adversary. Adversary is an opponent. So obviously Satan, no suggestion of the enemy is going to benefit us because he's the enemy and he's our adversary.  And so as a believer, we maintain that posture of self-control, of alertness, so that we can resist him. And then, you know, he says resist him. So once we are in submission, once we are in humility, you know, once we are trusting in the Lord and we are walking correctly, you know, under self-control and alertness, then it's easy to take over the enemy and he says faith, faith is another characteristic, resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world. So to have confidence in God and know that whatever I'm going through is not unique, many people have been through it, but they have overcome by the power of God and so even I can overcome. And obviously, you know, he's speaking to persecuted believers, so sufferings, they understand what he's talking about and he's saying, don't worry, whatever's happening, trust in the Lord, even in the time of persecution, many of you are going through all these matters, but God is there, he will help and then he exhorts God in the next two verses. He says, but may the God of all grace, God of all grace, what does it mean? God will, God will pour out his grace on us. That's how we are going to get through anything in our lives. So the God of all grace who called us to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus after you have suffered a while, perfect, establish, strengthen and settle you. So very beautiful. God does not waste anything. Now, we don't say that God calls us to suffering and God wants to make people suffer so that they can become strong. You know, it's not like that, but we are living in this fallen world. Our God has this ability to use the sufferings, to use what we go through to, as he says, perfect, establish, strengthen. We've seen already how, you know, when we are waiting on the Lord, when we are suffering, it can build character in us. When we are patient, it can form a more mature individual of us. And so that's what he is referring to here. And he's saying, when we go through these matters, thank God, he has the ability to use even these sufferings to make us more mature. Perfect is nothing but mature. And with maturity comes establishing, strength, settle, meaning there is a certainty about it. There is a stability about it. There is a firmness about it. And with maturity, you will receive that. So your suffering will not be wasted. Just trust in God and, you know, you will resist the work of the opposer or the adversary who is Satan. And he says, to him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever, amen. So he's saying, look, we praise God because everything, you know, all things will work together for good to those who love the Lord and who are called according to his purpose. And that is our great God, glory be to him. You know, dominion is his forever and ever, amen.  God is able to take care of us. And the farewell message towards the end, where he says, by Silvenus our faithful brother, as I consider him, I have written to you briefly. So commentators say that maybe this last section was written by Peter himself. Till now, Silas helped him to write out a wonderful literary piece because Peter was a fisherman and he did not have the expertise to, you know, write an excellent letter. So Silvenus helped him. Now, a few lines possibly written by Peter, he says, I've written through the help of Silvenus, but, you know, I, I can't, I have written to you briefly, exhorting you and testifying that this is the true grace of God in which you stand.  And that's because of the grace of God. And he brings a greeting to the churches. Remember, we said that he speaks to the dispersion of the believers in Asia Minor, the various churches, and he brings a greeting. He says, she who is in Babylon. So what does it mean? She, so she commentators say is used for the bride and who is the bride, the church. So Peter is possibly talking about a local church. So he's talking about a church. She is a church, a church who is in Babylon, Babylon. Now, when we look at Babylon here, Babylon may not, you know, at the time when the apostles lived, it did not have the kind of significance of ancient Babylon, you know, all the wickedness and the power that Babylon carried in the ancient times. It wasn't that to the apostles, but it was probably just referring to the place. So he was probably writing from the physical city of Babylon. And he's just making a mention of it. And there is a church in Babylon. So, you know, he's just writing from that physical city. Or some commentators say that he was probably referring to Rome or Jerusalem. And the fact that a lot of ungodly things had taken over. So he is, he is sort of not literally, but in a figurative way. Babylon refers to wickedness and evil. So he was probably saying, you know, I'm writing to you from a, from a wicked time or a difficult time. And he was writing from Rome or Jerusalem. And yet he chose to call the church as a church in Babylon. So this is the understanding of that portion.  And so does Mark, my son. Who is this Mark? Mark is likely the writer of the book of Mark. John Mark, if you recall from the book of Acts, whom Paul was not very happy with, a cousin of Barnabas. But then Mark went on to be one of the co-workers and co-labourers in the, in the mission work of the apostles. And it seems like, you know, Mark was engaging in excellent teamwork.  He's useful for me. But Peter says, Mark, my son. So Mark was serving together and serving faithfully is what we can understand. So, you know, he mentions these Babylon and Mark. And then he says, greet one another with a kiss of love. So what does that mean? It simply means they had a cultural way in which they used to greet one another with a kiss of love. And so he's just promoting the same thing. Now I know times have changed.  But well, he just means that there needs to be the genuine love, right? So great people with love, gesture can be modernized today, I suppose. And peace to you all who are in Christ Jesus in man. So that's like a standard love and peace. That's what the apostles wanted for the people of God, wanted for the churches. So everywhere you see, let there be love, let there be peace. And today that's what we want for our churches as well, the love of God among the brethren, the peace of God ruling and reigning in our midst. And so with that greeting, Peter wraps up the, the first episode. So what we see broadly in the Book of First Peter, we saw words of encouragement to believers who were suffering, persecution. And we also saw instructions for living in difficult times where there is a greater focus on submission, submission to government, submission to masters, why submit to your husbands. And, you know, later on, we, we see how submit to your elders, submit to one another. And when they're living an orderly life. So Peter talks about conduct, behavior. And here and there, he says, look, if this, this being born again experience has not changed our life. If we are the same, the way people of the world are, then tell me like what, what big difference we have in the world. So conduct, behavior is so very important. And when a believer is living like this, a transformed life, the believer is impactful, the believer God will, you know, raise up that believer, you humble yourself under the mighty hand of God and God will raise you up and live with the grace of God, God's grace will enable you from every side. So that is broadly what this, this book is all about. And we know this was written a little in the early 60s AD. And then a little later on comes the second episode of Peter to the believers. So now we can move on to the second episode. So this second episode, again, we, we noticed that he probably wrote this about four to five years later to the churches and the theme of this, this particular letter. Initially it is about, you know, living a life of faith with great stability, how to have that life of stability, right? Faith and stability. So he'll, he'll talk about that. And then he'll go on to warning the believers about ungodly people, just the way Jude, we saw in the book of Jude, where he talks about those false teachers and false prophets and, you know, people who are coming to deceive the body of Christ. So it begins with talking about stability as a believer. And then it goes on to addressing the people of God to be warned about these ungodly men and women who can distract the believers. So chapter two and three will mostly be about that. So today we'll look at chapter one and we'll see what we can learn from here. So first we'll have to read through it. It's kind of long. There are 21 verses. If it is possible for three of us to read seven, seven verses that would be fantastic. Second Peter chapter one verse one, Simon Peter a bond servant and apostle of Jesus Christ to those who have obtained like precious faith with us by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord as his divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us by glory and virtue by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises that through these you may be particles of the divine nature having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust but also for this very reason giving all diligence add to your faith virtue to virtue knowledge to knowledge self control to self control perseverance to perseverance godliness to godliness brotherly kindness and to brotherly kindness love. Thank you Rosalind. Another person could kindly read the next seven verses. To godliness brotherly kindness and to brotherly kindness love for if these things are yours and abound you will be neither barren for nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ for he who likes these things is short-sighted even to blindness and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins therefore brethren be even more diligent to make your call and election sure for if you do these things you will never stumble for so so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for this reason I will not be need to remain to remind you always of these things true although you know and are established in the present truth yes I think it is right as long as I am in this tent to stir you up by reminding you knowing that shortly I must put off my tent just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me thank you Sally another person please moreover I will be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my disease for we did not follow cunningly devised fables when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ but where I witnesses of his majesty for he received from god the father honor and glory when such a voice came to him from the excellent glory this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased and we heard this voice which came from heaven when we were with him on the holy mountain and so we have the prophetic word confirm which you do which you do well to heed as a light that signs in a dark place until the dead arms and the morning star rises in your hearts knowing this first that no prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation for prophecy never came by the will of men and but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit amen thank you thank you Subashish so let's now get in to this chapter second Peter chapter 1 we as I told us this was written a little later in the 60s 60 AD so somewhere around 65 to 68 AD is the date that this book this chapter this episode was written and it is said that it was written during the rule and reign of Nero so Nero ruled in 68 AD that's when you know actually Peter wrote this now in verse 14 if you noticed he says something like knowing that shortly I must put off my tent tent referring to his body so he's while writing this letter he knew that this was the last letter that he's writing so he's saying I'll put off my tent the persecution was so intense that Peter knew that very soon he would be martyred and that's exactly what happened Peter was martyred at AD 69 so you know look at the journey of Peter if you remember in the book of Acts he was put in jail and after James it was his turn but God protected him so many times why why didn't he get protected now you know we really don't have answers to those questions but it's likely that Peter fulfilled the purpose that God had for him and he himself knew that the time is coming up and this time around I will put off my tent meaning he would you know he he would die or be martyred so this is a little bit of the timeline of when this was written so he begins with the greeting he says Simon Peter born servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ so some commentators say the order in which he you know puts these words both are descriptions of who he is and in those days you know do loss or the Greek word born servant it's it's a term that is used to describe a slave for life somebody who does not have anything else and no agenda nothing you have a master and your life is all about that master and it's it's amazing how even Jude right like James we see these these ministers of God even Paul like some he uses this term born servant where Peter you know he realizes that's that's the goal of his life I'm living for my master the Lord Jesus and before he says apostle you know somewhere we may draw identity from our calling or the the office of an apostle that sounds more glamorous right compared to born servant but the mindset that the apostles had they were very committed to to serving God no matter what and so you know the order he first says born servant then he says apostle of Jesus Christ and remember this Peter is somebody who walked with Jesus now Paul yeah Paul did not have those natural experiences with Jesus but Peter has seen it all Peter was there with Jesus when the miracles took place you know Peter was there when when Jesus was was being beaten uh and so he he even experientially who Jesus was right like his knowing of Jesus had that additional aspect to it and knowing Jesus uh he's he's saying look I'm the born servant of of the Son of God or this man of God and I'm the apostle and that kind of an of a commitment he displayed to the Lord Jesus Christ and then he says to those who have obtained like precious faith with us by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ obtained like precious faith what is that see we know that faith you know that initial initial uh uh unction of faith that we receive is from the Lord so he says we've all received we've received faith from our Lord Jesus Christ and it is so precious because everything in the kingdom works by faith and one must remember that as a believer and we've all obtained like precious faith right because of the work that Jesus has done on the cross and he says grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord so it's a common greeting when people say this even today many people write like this when they write emails letters they'll say grace and peace be multiplied to you um and it's beautiful that we can have grace which is the ability to serve the ability to do things for God and peace you know experience shalom of God but how can we have more of this more of grace more of peace through the knowledge of God in our lives so as we get to know God more align our lives more and more to God we'll have you know more of his grace we'll have more of his peace and he goes on to say uh the next section there versus three and four he teaches us how we can live a godly life and how we can escape the corruption in the world because it's a wicked world that we live in but we are called to live holy lives for Jesus Christ so he says his divine power has given us given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness so how can I live a holy life God has given us his divine power right and what does that power have that power uh which pertain to life and godliness so whatever we need for life whatever we need for godly living through the power of God it can be our portion and he also says uh through the knowledge of him who called us by glory and virtue so the knowledge of God right that is what is connected with the power of God working in our lives and he also makes a reference to the great and precious promises exceedingly great and precious promises of God so we have all this we have the power of God you know we have the knowledge of God and we also have his great promises in our lives now by all these things he says we can become partakers of the divine nature of God so we can partake of the divine nature of God it's not like God is calling us to be holy and not providing us with what we need to be holy isn't it if that was the case then we have every every excuse is valid but then he says no look God has given you his divine power you have what you need through the knowledge of God and the precious promises now through these things I can partake of the divine nature what is the divine nature like you know righteous holy just loving kind everything we can be partakers of the divine nature right and when we are walking in the spirit as you know Paul said we overcome the flesh so when we are walking in holiness and righteousness we are already escaping right the corruption the evil the wickedness of the world so God has empowered us in other words he says in a tough time like this God has empowered us to live for him and we can live as overcome us and now he teaches the believer how to you know how to be mature and how to have a fruitful life in God so he lists out in some places like we had done a sermon series here in apc called the seven spices so there are these seven spices no time to talk about each spice individually so we'll put it together and make one curry today okay quickly and we'll just talk about all the seven spices that God wants for us as believers in our character and you know main thing is we need to incorporate them right so what are these these spices that we need so he says giving all diligence diligence is we we are keenly putting in hard work we are we are committedly on that work right so that is diligence so giving all diligence meaning be serious about this work on this add to your faith virtue so first is faith first of all what should a believer have our life must be marked by faith where does faith come from faith comes from the word of God so as a believer to abound in faith right have faith in God keep strong faith in God day to day and that is very necessary so Peter emphasizes faith he says add to that virtue so I can't just keep saying that you know I have faith and that's about it and I don't have anything else but he says virtue what is virtue virtue is character okay having the right character and we can speak so many things about character isn't it to have the right heart the right motivation so virtue is that the right character good character so he says along with faith imagine a believer who who who is developing in character you know becoming more like Christ how beautiful it is you have a lovely combination there and he says when virtue is there let's add another thing right what is that he says knowledge don't be lacking in knowledge we may grow in our faith we grow in our virtue but then if we become weak in our knowledge of God meaning we we are not you know developing our it's not when he says knowledge it's not just got to do with intellectual knowledge but the knowing of God you know in terms of the the word in experientially in knowledge right and experiencing God so he says have faith have virtue have knowledge and then he says have self-control how beautiful it'll be for a believer who's growing like this right having these elements and also having self-control self-control we see this in the fruit of the spirit it's a demonstration of that kind of maturity so self-control for a believer self-control in what areas you know self-control can be in our thought life it can be in our you know in our appetites it can be in the way we speak when we saw James you know James talked about the tongue and how one should speak edifying words and you know the tongue needs to be tamed and so there is there is exercise of self-control in the way we speak so in all these aspects when one is demonstrating self-control that is a sign of maturity it's like a well-rounded all-round believer so self-control is a part of that believer's life he says perseverance so that's again you know it makes for such a mature believer so self-control and then perseverance is to have patience to endure you know the way the book of Hebrews talks about it that we we endure we overcome suffering keeping our eyes fixed on the Lord knowing that when we go through whatever it is right now God will bring us out he will bring us out with a reward so believer who's able to persevere right and to that he says godliness godliness is holy living okay so holiness worship unto the Lord so living our lives as worship unto the Lord with holiness okay and righteousness and all of that then godliness he says add brotherly kindness brotherly kindness has to do with extending grace and extending you know genuine love for the people of God who are in our lives so brotherly kindless it's more the relational aspect of it so far we talked about a personal you know personal things that we need to have but here something relational brotherly kindness and he says finally to that you know you add love now I know I've put it all in a very small nutshell but as I stated earlier we've done a seven-part series over seven Sundays so or maybe you know slightly lesser Sundays but there's so much more that we can gain out of each of these elements that as a believer we must grow in and have all these facets in our lives because it's important we can't just say okay I'm a believer I have faith and that's it don't ask me right about holy living don't ask me about relating rightly with other believers don't ask me we can't say that we need to be well rounded so what is the advantage of being well rounded and mature like this he adds a few more benefits so from verse 8 he says for if these things are yours and abound you will neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ so we are saying that we are growing in God we are learning more about God but how can that be done well okay how can we avoid you know some lacunae there or some blur in our knowledge of God so for us not to be barren or unfruitful in getting to know God we need all these elements right so a believer is sincerely trying to conform to the image of the Son of God and then you know our growing in his knowledge also becomes very effective and he says for he who lacks these things is short-sighted even to blindness and has forgotten that he he was cleansed from his old sins so it simply says that imagine you know as believers we think that it's not important for us to be mature we can just you know do the christian activities and not really have any evidence in our lives and it's okay if we think like that then he's saying we don't we don't really understand the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and you know the way we have received forgiveness from God and the way our lives have changed now we don't have a proper understanding of that it's very light you know yeah okay I go I'm redeemed but we we've not it's not become a deep reality for us because we are so careless to to live our lives however we wish right so that's what he's saying he's saying that is short-sightedness we've even forgotten you know how we've cleansed from our sins and how what a privilege it is that we are on the other side now and it's not because of our good works it's it's the grace of God right so he's saying we we we are not taking it we're not honoring the work of Jesus we're not honoring the transformation that we've been through when we lack this kind of maturity so again on the way the writer to the Hebrews was saying be mature by now I wish all of you had grown up right that you may be able to teach teach others even Peter is saying let's become mature you know believers friends church let's rise up let's grow up in the Lord be mature then verse 10 he says therefore brethren be even more diligent to make your call and election sure for if if you do these things you will never stumble for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ so it's similar to what Hebrews says see we need to get to the finish line okay and again this is not a promotion for salvation by works that's not what it is but what we are being warned of is if a believer is not going to yield to the conviction of the Holy Spirit then you know like Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10 we run the risk when we are willfully sinning willfully going away from God then he says you know make your call and election sure it's as if we we can even move away from the salvation there is that danger and remember that don't ever get into it and when we do finish the race well then he talks about the reward that we have look at this it's so beautiful so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ you know many times painting the picture of the end is what energizes us to run the race isn't it like so an athlete will think of the time when they when they run past that ribbon which is the finish line for us as believers the thought of you know entering heaven with applause so you can imagine yourself where Jesus is his happy smiling face and you know the host of heaven and loud applause because you finished you walked in an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ so when we've lived this this well rounded mature life and we make it to the finish line you know just imagine imagine you know how it'll be to enter heaven having finished the race so he's he's helping the believer have hope you know towards that and then he mentions about the fact that he will soon be gone so from verses 12 to 14 12 to 15 he says I will I must put off this put off my tent just as our Lord Jesus Christ showed me so he had a revelation that he's going to die soon he'll be martyred soon but knowing that he's going to be martyred what does he do he says I won't be negligent to remind you always so he doesn't feel bad to keep reminding hey believer you know become mature be strong in God and that's important that's important so he says while I have little bit of time left here full reminders you know I'm sending you reminders so that you will never forget you will never forget even in verse 15 he says I will be careful to ensure that you always have a reminder of these things after my disease because this is so important believer you have to be strong you have to be well rounded you have to be mature I'll keep reminding you even my writings are going to keep reminding you after I am God and he also makes a mention of something special there at the end of verse 12 he says though you know and are established in the present truth present truth what does that mean see present truth means that yeah we already have scripture we cannot have any new revelation outside of scripture isn't it it has to be within scripture however in every given time and season there is something known as the present truth that means God is manifesting something or he is he's bringing that revelation to the body of Christ in a deeper way in that time and season and the focus is on that subject that is the present truth okay so it's not outside of scripture but it's more like a highlight okay or the spotlight is on that for example acts 19 you know when Paul he's talking to the efficiency says have you received the Holy Spirit and then they say what is the Holy Spirit we never even heard about the Holy Spirit so they didn't know whereas God was actually pouring out his spirit and people were being filled with it but this set of believers did not know the present truth and so he had to teach them about the baptism in the Holy Spirit so that is what he's saying that may God establish you what he is doing right now you know in this time and season that is called as the present truth so we'll stop here you stopped at verse 15 and we'll pick up from here tomorrow and you know be able to go over chapters 2 and 3 and we can complete so there are any questions we can address them if not we can play and close okay I think that was you know quite self-explanatory whatever Peter has written here so let's pray then and we can wrap up I want to request one of us on the call to lead us in prayer let's pray Heavenly Father I come here under the name of Jesus I thank you for this name thank you for the class that we had and I thank you for your precious word like it guides us which fills us with your wisdom which helps us to walk in victory in this life Jesus from God I pray that everything that we learn Lord we will hold on in our life through the sufferings and through the joy and through all the situations that we go through on this life Jesus help us to be man and woman of your word who walk as the children of the light love for your kingdom we thank you for good wife and connection throughout the class we thank you for Buster Nancy and I thank you for all my classmates over here we just give you all the glory and all the honor because you deserve it Lord in Jesus name I pray thank you thank you jeffina thank you everyone um god bless you and all the best for your assignments yours will be posted today so you'll have sufficient time it'll be more of a quiz which you will be able to answer so all the best and god bless bye for now