The Green Room

[Mulezen]

If responsible people in THIS country (Koch bros)had not pushed aside any mitigation efforts in 1990 such drastic measures wouldn’t be necessary OR if Reagan had continued with Carter’s energy conservation efforts instead of ripping down the WH’s solar panels we would once again lead the world in renewable tech...I’ve followed this issue from my first Geology class in 1970...we’re cooked...but better late than nothing

 

[Mulezen]

Not Plague...Dust Bowl
View attachment 85286

Most of the wandering migrants of the 30’s were tractored out. See Egan’s The Worst Hard Times or Studs Terkel‘s Hard Times

 

[Art Deco]

Grapes of Wrath ... Steinbeck

 

[Art Deco]

From a blog I follow by a professor who generally seems to know what he's writing about

Peak Water: Are we Running out of a Critical Resource?

Exploring the future of our civilization in light of Seneca's stoic philosophy. Ruin may be a consequence of too much growth (The Seneca Effect).

thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com

 

[ChezCheese:)]

Save trees and plant trees. Leave the world a better place for centuries after humans die off.

 

[Art Deco]

I am not expecting humans to die off ... but I am expecting our numbers to drop pretty dramatically over another few generations.

 

[J.R.]

One of the most enjoyable experiences I've had was volunteering to plant trees in my county. You meet a variety of people, see people from 8 to 80 joining in to better the little corner of the world where we live. The coolest thing is to see those trees grow and know that's a legacy that will be here long after I'm long gone.

 

[Art Deco]

One of the most enjoyable experiences I've had was volunteering to plant trees in my county. You meet a variety of people, see people from 8 to 80 joining in to better the little corner of the world where we live. The coolest thing is to see those trees grow and know that's a legacy that will be here long after I'm long gone.

Anyone can plant a tree. My girls classrooms planted trees in elementary school. When I was touring in China, there were literally hundreds of people (many elderly) employed planting trees alongside the major roads every day.
No equipment needed beyond a shovel and a cart full of seedlings, and a truck with a tank and hose that watered the new plantings at the end of the day.
Sounds like a good CCC type of project for people who are out of work, along with other infrastructure repairs.

 

[Handlebars]

My earliest memory of environmental education was when our progressive school principal instructed us to make posters to fight pollution. So I drew a picture of his car.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/1964_Buick_Electra_225_four-door_six-window_sedan%2C_rear_right.jpg/1199px-1964_Buick_Electra_225_four-door_six-window_sedan%2C_rear_right.jpg

It did not go ever that well.

 

[Dallant]

My earliest memory of environmental education was when our progressive school principal instructed us to make posters to fight pollution. So I drew a picture of his car.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d9/1964_Buick_Electra_225_four-door_six-window_sedan%2C_rear_right.jpg/1199px-1964_Buick_Electra_225_four-door_six-window_sedan%2C_rear_right.jpg

It did not go ever that well.

My earliest is this...

 

[Westlafadeaway]

From a blog I follow by a professor who generally seems to know what he's writing about

Peak Water: Are we Running out of a Critical Resource?

Exploring the future of our civilization in light of Seneca's stoic philosophy. Ruin may be a consequence of too much growth (The Seneca Effect).

thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com

I enjoyed that blog post. It really explores what we don't know, which is a lot.

80% of California's water goes to farmers, and if you look at the laws going back more than a hundred years, the land owners were granted water rights back then to water that never even existed, and they estimate it to be worth about $4 billion worth of water they get every year, largely for free. Mexico also has a treaty right to water (feeds Tijuana) off the Colorado, and anti-Mexican figures get all bent out of shape when they are told a certain amount MUST flow past our border. And the people (and the river fish needing fresh water) then are going to be fighting over that 20% remaining water (again, 20% of an amount that doesn't exist).

In a class on governance, we studied collaborative efforts in Seattle's fresh water problems, it involved farmers, government agencies, non-profits, and they all worked together to make some drastic improvements. We also studied the collaborative work involving the Colorado river- it included every state it runs through and their stakeholders. That is a much more complicated process, has a number of stakeholders who have a "take it or leave it" attitude, and while there's been some wins, there's a lot more work to do because places in the deserts of Arizona are still exploding in population. Part of the class was a 3 minute video presentation where I mentioned efforts in San Diego to desalinate and someone in my class had a fit in the comments that I'd even consider that as an option. That blew my mind- if we can solve that problem (it takes a ton of energy), it would be a huge gamechanger.... if. Everything should be on the table, but we need to take other steps, like stop using water in our toilets, farmers need to be forced to use modern farming techniques. Like I said, everything needs to be on the table. Thanks.

 

[Westlafadeaway]

Could be, but doesn't need to be. As long as the surrounding plants and animals are alive and healthy, that's enough to keep the cycles and webs of life and evolution going. But there are limits to what life can adapt to, and how quickly .

I had a presentation at school by a biologist. She said that it takes about 10,000 generations for an evolutionary adaptation to occur. So for humans, because we live for so long and because of multiple organs and functions, we barely see those changes outside of million year changes. But for bacteria that live for short periods, it is easy to track. She spent the 40 years doing the same thing: she put the stuff an organism needs into a petri dish and then adds a few organisms into the dish and observes the trajectory. She said it's always the same: once it gets situated, life just explodes exponentially and then all at once all the life dies at once, across the board. Kind of scary if we see the planet as one big petri-dish.

 

[Art Deco]

I had a presentation at school by a biologist. She said that it takes about 10,000 generations for an evolutionary adaptation to occur. So for humans, because we live for so long and because of multiple organs and functions, we barely see those changes outside of million year changes. But for bacteria that live for short periods, it is easy to track. She spent the 40 years doing the same thing: she put the stuff an organism needs into a petri dish and then adds a few organisms into the dish and observes the trajectory. She said it's always the same: once it gets situated, life just explodes exponentially and then all at once all the life dies at once, across the board. Kind of scary if we see the planet as one big petri-dish.

And a good planet is hard to find. One with 'all the stuff an organism needs '...

 

[Handlebars]

I had a presentation at school by a biologist. She said that it takes about 10,000 generations for an evolutionary adaptation to occur.

She was talking nonsense, though.

 

[Handlebars]

I had a presentation at school by a biologist. She said that it takes about 10,000 generations for an evolutionary adaptation to occur. So for humans, because we live for so long and because of multiple organs and functions, we barely see those changes outside of million year changes.

The estimated time going back to the earliest homo sapiens is only about 1/4 million. Since agriculture is only what, 10,000 or so. Since adult lactose tolerance...

 

[Handlebars]

The estimated time going back to the earliest homo sapiens is only about 1/4 million. Since agriculture is only what, 10,000 or so. Since adult lactose tolerance...

and those are years, not generations.

 

[Art Deco]

CNN - Breaking News, Latest News and Videos

View the latest news and breaking news today for U.S., world, weather, entertainment, politics and health at CNN.com.

lite.cnn.com

CNN drought link. We in the East have too much rain, and the West drought.

 

[Handlebars]

I am not expecting humans to die off ... but I am expecting our numbers to drop pretty dramatically over another few generations.

Due to?

 

[Art Deco]

From Forbes. More of the same.

Drought Continues To Ravage Western U.S.

Extreme drought now encompasses almost 10% of the country.

www.forbes.com

 

[Art Deco]

I've mentioned weather control a few times. I haven't seen much that looks promising yet, but I suspect that workable weather control is going be be needed (and is partially developed already) as a part of mitigating climate change.

But the politics of having China able to shut off water to India or the USA able to shut off water to Mexico, as well as a general distrust of the advocates of Geoengineering ( Chemtrails ? ) will make it a tough sell even if it's "completely safe when used as directed" as the admen used to say. And the economics of near real time weather control sound like a rerun of the Enron story . Just thinking out loud here.