I can tell what your mind is on today because that's one hell of a stretch. Wildfires are more of an ******* thing anyway.

This thread, after an early focus on Global Warming, hasn't seen much action lately, but just in case you don't have enough to worry about, there's this:-

https://www.musicbanter.com/lounge/7...tion-zone.html

and this:-



and currently in the news, this:-



^ The situation in Hawaii is not good, but at least the scare story that the newly-opening rifts are going to join up and cause a massive slump like La Palma seem to be unjustified, according to this article:-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilina_Slump

So I guess the volcano might Kilauea too much-a people?

^ That's quick work! You' re inB4 Trollheart. :clap:

One risk of ignoring opposition criticism or the voice of the common people is What if they turn out to've been right all along? That may be behind the tragic story of the disappearing Aral Sea, when Russia chose cotton over fish and ignored local feedback.

Now "an area of water the size of Ireland" has been lost, and that's not the last of their problems...

Planting a forest on the Aral's dried-out seabed - BBC News

Pascal's Wager.. yuck.

Sad, but I like the pictures. It has a cool aesthetic.

^ Yes the pictures are very good, especially the old boats.

When I saw the word "forest" in the title I had visions of some lush Amazonian jungle: the real solution is rather less exciting unfortunately. Never heard of Saxaul trees before, so I looked 'em up. They can support bird life and...
^ Not particularly inspiring, but plenty better than having toxic dust killing your children.
__________________________________________________ ____________________________

I opened this thread in hopes of putting all our environmental observations in one place. Well, what an unruly bunch we are! :rolleyes: The hottest environmental debate atm is over in another thread, but here's the link to it to keep things tidy:

https://www.musicbanter.com/current-...read-1213.html

Where's Swamp Thing when you need him?

Here's a new warning sign that all is not well with the environment:-

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-44418849

Bottom line: over the last twelve years, trees that have been healthy for thousands of years have begun dying or deteriorating.

I saw this story this morning

It’s such a tiny numbers of trees it occurred to me that this could be intentional murder. Some of the oldest trees in the world are in California but they keep the locations secret because there are actually people who want to be the jerkoff that kills (or maims) an important tree.

https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wi...ees/methuselah

Also, the impact of global warming on vector born diseases is a horrifying concern

http://www.who.int/bulletin/archives/78(9)1136.pdf

Most of the studies are on diseases that directly impact humans especially malaria but any disease that kills anything carried in a living vector is a concern. The range of inhabitability increases, the opportunity to reproduce increases, the vectors and the diseases have more time and opportunity to evolve into something even more insidious. And before anyone orgasms with the opportunity to correct me I understand this is just a potential outcome for any disease and vector. None-the-less, some outcomes are certain to be unpleasant for some people (and that’s at a minimum)

It could be pollution in the soil, the ground water, the rain, heat, disease

And yes, it could be just another biological entity winning an evolutionary battle without any influence by mankind at all (but I doubt it)

Those are incredibly beautiful trees. Sad story.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/13/gmos...e-reality.html

Yep

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-44461150

One in five British mammals at risk of extinction

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-44492994

India facing the 'worst water crisis in its history'

The populace REALLY needs to look into using sea water.

Let them drink cake

It's the only thing I drink anymore.

You never fermented sea water?

^ Yes, it's odd that the number of trees is so small, also odd to me that those Californian Redwoods have individual names and are kept concealed, like celebrities from the paparazzi. I don't know of any trees in England that are famous enough to be given individual names, but I guess there are some.

^ Thanks for posting this worrying report. It's only a matter of time imo before drinking water, like oil before it, becomes the most sought after/ fought over resource on the planet.

I was once on the Med island of Malta, which has no surface fresh-water at all: it all soaks into the rock. They can pump it back up again, but for decades they have got most of their drinking water from de-salinated seawater. Problems are that it costs 4 times as much as the pumped-up fresh water, and also, if you're not used to it, it still tastes salty - I remember the salty coffee and salty beer I drank during my stay there.

Without fossil fuels to power the effort desalination as a global solution isn’t likely.

http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net.../618868577.jpg

So now they seem quite sure, it’s heat and drought

As the trees’ water reserves are transferred to the leaves the trunks become too dry and brittle hold together. Pretty simple. We’d be wise to take heed.

There are tons of other methods of creating electricity that don't involve fossil fuels.

As fresh water sources get scarce, the sea is the only place to look that makes sense.

I wonder if Vegas will take bets on Vegas surviving on desalinated water pumped in from the Pacific.

As [MERIT] says, there are other ways to generate power, but trying to improve one aspect of the environment so often has a detrimental effect on another.

On the topic of Las Vegas - yes, that's a long way to pump water, so the best solution would be to go local. This I'm sure is just a fantasy: put solar panels in the desert around Vegas. As the night air cools, water condenses on the underside of the panels, dripping off to form a gushing river of fresh water.

^ Thanks for that follow-up, and for the perfect lead-in for some water conservation advice:



That flow rate of ten gallons a minute for a garden hose is pretty alarming! On the subject of car washes, I am enrolled in a system called R.A.I.N. by which God comes round and washes my car for free.

Making them and upkeeping them requires petroleum though. If there are workarounds it's like making pie without sugar.

But yeah, the most important thing is coming up with the clean alternatives before we run out.

My first thoughts were the desert air is too dry and the underside of the solar panel would be too warm but googling around it does look like solar panels are being used to harvest water out of the dry desert air.

If this turned into a massive project in Nevada and Arizona actually creating rivers would that cause droughts elsewhere?

Signed,

Negative Nelly

^ :laughing:

Dear Negative Nelly,

Unfortunately trying to improve the environment is all to often like trying to cover yourself up with a swimsuit that's too small: you can pull it across to remedy the situation in one place, but then you're exposed again somewhere else.

Not exactly in the area of stopping droughts, there is some cause for hope about water management. There are a couple of developments in the science of irrigation in which it seems that for once, we might be able to get something for nothing, or to be more accurate, the same crop yields for less water:

i) AWD or Alternate Wetting and Drying: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altern...ing_and_drying

ii) CAPRI or Controlled Alternate Partial Root-Zone Irrigation: https://academic.oup.com/jxb/article/55/407/2437/496050

I hope this information will help to restore some degree of optimism at least,

Best wishes,
Harry Hopeful

New NPR headline

Global temperatures reach extreme highs, breaking records

Then maybe they should stop with the goddamn chemtrails 24/7.

Seriously. 12 hours a day should do the trick.

They missed a spot over my house though.

More Than 100 People Have Died In Japan's Record-Breaking Rainfall

^ Yeah, that seems a surprisingly high death toll, but then Japan is a very densely populated country and there've been landslides too which are really devastating.

Turning away from extreme weather to find something to be cheerful about:-

Starbucks is eliminating plastic straws from all stores

and:-

I lived there for a decade teaching English. 3 locations. I learned a bit about their infrastructure and how it’s designed to meet various natural disasters including flooding and landslides. For a country with so many safeguards that’s a very high number. The same storm would’ve had a much higher casualty in a less developed densely populated Asian country, like say Bangladesh.

^ That's interesting to learn! We have an occasional poster who lives in Tokyo, I think, doing the same thing.
From what I've heard the money is good but everything else about life in Japan seems to score a negative, including the attitude of students in an ESL class: too deferential. But perhaps with your experience in US schools you were just lapping that up!!

and yes, Bangladeshi civilians are much more vulnerable. No real defenses, afaik, and not even effective warning systems in place :(

I did all kind of work in Japan. Taught elementary, junior high, kindergarten- some in public school, some in private, then tutoring, helping professional people prepare speeches in English for business trips abroad. I taught at an airport - weather monitors - meteorologists I guess, who had to communicate in English. I worked for Toyota- business English. I taught one class with just nurses.

Then I came to America and worked at schools where teachers get cussed out by students everyday, teachers periodically assaulted by students, parents use profanity and cuss out teachers in the car line. One guy was cussing and got out of his car and was posturing like he was going to hit another teacher. I walked up and said “get the **** back in your car” and he did. But yeah I got written up for being unprofessional. I was like fine he was flexing up like he was going to hit a woman. I was just flying on instinct. Another teacher at that school was assualted multiple time by a violent student. Beautiful Latina woman only like 40. It left her with partial facial paralysis.

So seriously

Japan was a relative utopia

Teaching in America is **** work - the worst

Teachers are expected to be the punching bag for frustrated blacks. It’s bull****.

Wow! That kind of teaching in the US sounds terrible. I couldn't handle that at all. I did just six months in a Mexican secondary school and hated every day of it: I was too much of a softie to maintain discipline and my Spanish wasn't good enough to catch what students were up to. I knew I had a problem the day some kids in the class handed out a few ballons and started a conga line between the chairs, singing, "fiesta fiesta." A teacher from another class had to come in to tell them to stop - something of a low-point for my professional self-esteem tbh.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...lains-of-texas

*fracking is a single-handed environmental disaster
*sand is undervalued where nature put it - it plays an important role in the ecosystems
*the process of mining itself both for the sand and shale and oil and natural gas are all burdensome unhealthy processes leaving behind huge amounts of pollutants
*removing 25% of the sand in the US in 1 year will destroy aquifers, upset water supplies- disrupt the movement of water underground increasing the likelihood of droughts and flooding and simply unpredictable weather patterns

From the Atlantic

If anyone wants to learn more about the Bhopal disaster and myriad of other horrific consequences of late stage capitalism I recommend this book

https://images.booksense.com/images/...1931498579.jpg

The Culture of Make Believe
by Derrick Jensen

https://www.trilliontrees.org/sites/...on_final_1.pdf

https://www.trilliontrees.org/

That’s a bad ass project!

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...faster-n892996

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/featu...urce=applenews

Miami Will Be Underwater Soon. Its Drinking Water Could Go First

I guess nothing is all bad.