Originally published at http://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/01/01/top-positive-environmental-stories-2020
1 Like
Yeah, some good news to start the year! Only fitting to learn that women so often take the lead in preserving Pacha Mama and Her Inhabitants.
2 Likes
Another Feel Good StoryâŚI Bet Pacha Mama is pissed!
Here are my top Environmental StoriesâŚ
- POTUS Biden vows not to ban Fracking.
- The nightmare of Japanâs Fukushima planetary disaster continues on without remedy or coverage by our journalists of MSM.
- We continue to engineer our weather & climate through climate engineeringâŚkudos to Dane Wigington of geoengineeringwatch orgâŚa true patriot⌠be safe my friendâŚ
- Another $750 Billion to be spent on the weapons of war by the US Empire.
- The Cryosphere continues to be destroyed promising to release more Methane and melt both polar ice capsâŚ
- the Ozone Layer globally continues to be destroyed with no news coverage, guess what you cannot see cannot hurt you⌠UV A B & C radiation striking the planetâs surfaceâŚ
- Biden admin ready to get going to continue status quoâŚ
- Genetic Engineering labs ramping up their work on viral genetic engineering projects with Gain of Function work on goingâŚmore Covid strains to be delivered as scheduled.
3 Likes
This Story should be Renamed: âThe Faces of Deathâ, for all of these creations will not withstand what is coming.
We can perhaps imagine the coyotes, for instance, saying to themselves: There were a few humans found in an island cave; they were thought to be extinct, but due to a breeding program we have brought them back from the brink (because they are tasty).
Wiggington is a right-wing asshole, making serious tinfoil-hat nastiness, lethal redhat trumpism, in his part of the world. Are you signed up for the whole neonazi ecofascist agenda with your idol, RA? I was just riffing on your handle a bit ago, but apparently youâre a sincere foe of human solidarity, aiming to raze awareness to rubble. A fascist troll â albeit a talented one.
Explain your definition of this phrase âtrue patriotâ â since you so love to explain things, and since you have some 'spainin to do about what the hell you think youâre up to, around here. For a venue like the Commons, your brand of patriotism reeks awfully of heteropatriarchy. To high heaven, truth be told.
Do others share these views?
Just do your homework on who the hell youâre endorsing. Look it up. Dig deep, beyond your ecofascist assumptions. My assumption is that you have no sense at all, if nonsense like Wiggingtonâs appeals to you, and if you style yourself âa true patriot.â
Yes, there are others besides Aleph who are profoundly wary of patriotism.
There arenât any that I know of.
Both parties are captured. Their global oligarchies goal is literally âextractingâ (stealing) everything that can be stolen from all the earthâs people.
One good environmental story, if youâre at all comforted by better resolution on when Earthly doom is assured. A recent study finds we might have only six years left. Thatâs progress â For several decades weâve had only twelve years left.
Experimenting with projections from a novel observational approach to data, theyâve narrowed the timeframe to 2027-42 for when weâll reach +1.5C of warming.
~https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201221160425.htm
How long do you think the end takes?
2 ? - 20 years ?
What do you think the end will look like?
Global famine?
Water wars?
Covid-21-22-23?
Do you think pockets of the lucky few start it all over again ?
You sparked a multi hour research binge into the web-yss of clickable tangents regarding theorectical commentary. Ultimately, I have concluded that the world did end 21 December 2012 as predicted.
https://www.onthisday.com/date/2012/december/21
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0
[ PSY - GANGNAM STYLE(ę°ë¨ě¤íěź) M/V ]
1 Like
Good morning, Elcil. Iâm not totally sure I can wrap up all those questions. Weâll start the wad of words rolling downhill and see where it wanders (flattered and humbled as I am by your research diligence).
âThe Endâ (roll credits) is something you used to see in movies. Back when they had endings. InsideClimate ran a summary with the half dozen most important stories of 2020 â one of which is âthe endâ of continental forest ecosystems. More and more studies keep finding that after the forests around here burn down or get weakened by beetles, theyâre not growing back. The warmer weather is already inhospitable to seedlings. Thatâs the end, alright.
The skin of Earth, where beauty is only skin deep, over here and over there changes color â The blue-green marble loses some green (as well as white), as seen from space, Here in the SF Bay Area, I inhabit one of the largest continental forest ecosystems transitioning (as they euphemize these days) to something else. For us 2017 was âthe endâ already â whole-town consuming fires turning the sky orange all over for weeks. For those paying attention: the realization the rest of your life is going to be like this (only more so).
This year, on Admission Day (9/9) the conflagration finally took my brotherâs home. His whole town of Berry Creek, CA. Iâve studied climate all my life, seen it coming: specifically my brotherâs house burning. The wildland urban interface is exactly the wrong place to be anymore. (My brotherâs family moved there decades ago.) After the Sword of Damocles finally falls, it can be so terribly clumsy for people like me.
With my brother, Iâve always had to pursue the subject with maximum tact, of course. But no matter how you frame a prognostication like this, you can wind up looking like someone about to say âI told you so.â You find out thatâs the least satisfying phrase in the English Language.
Thanks for your interesting questions, which I havenât handled very well.
1 Like
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800914000615
Human and nature dynamics (HANDY) : Modeling inequality and use of resources in the collapse or sustainability of societies
(Click to expand)
Highlights:
⢠HANDY is a 4-variable thought - experiment model for interaction of humans and nature.
⢠The focus is on predicting long-term behavior rather than short-term forecasting.
⢠Carrying Capacity is developed as a practical measure for forecasting collapses.
⢠A sustainable steady state is shown to be possible in different types of societies.
⢠But over-exploitation of either Labor or Nature results in a societal collapse.
Abstract:
[âŚ] In this paper, we build a human population dynamics model by adding accumulated wealth and economic inequality to a predatorâprey model of humans and nature. The model structure, and simulated scenarios that offer significant implications, are explained. Four equations describe the evolution of Elites, Commoners, Nature, and Wealth. The model shows Economic Stratification or Ecological Strain can independently lead to collapse, in agreement with the historical record.[âŚ]
The research data is expressed as images. I have isolated them for ease.
Unequal Society:
https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0921800914000615-gr6.jpg
Equitable Society:
https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0921800914000615-gr4.jpg
Egalitarian Society:
https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0921800914000615-gr3.jpg
This information is provided for entertainment purposes only.
Elcil- LLC. Limited Liability Commentary
(enjoy)
1 Like
Thanks. I havenât seen much like the paper you reference. All our problems grow ever more interdisciplinary at the exact time all the disciplines take especially exlusive pride in not understanding each other. To see âwealthâ and ânatureâ shook up in the same Yahtzee cup, to me thatâs exactly where science needs to boldly venture, if it can be managedâŚ
My main science guru Karl Popper has a big problem with soft sciences like economics and psychology â where you have a hell of a time locating any disprovable hypothesis to test, and wonder if you wandered into a church, by mistake. (Climate researcher Kevin Anderson always calls economists âastrologersâ â thatâs about where I put them, scientifically.)
Iâm of two minds: On the one hand I like to see scientific reports which color over the disciplinary lines, on the other hand, Iâll be scrutinizing words like âwealthâ to find much less ambiguity than the vernacular usage, because Iâm not sure how much itâs possible to objectively quantify abstract nouns like that.
Thanks for the references. Youâve lent me a nice Sunday activity. Thatâs good, for some reason itâs getting so the funnies arenât so funny anymore.
1 Like
The paper explains later, which I decided not to add, as I thought it superfluous text for the casual observer, and did not progress my intention with the comment.
- HANDY
As indicated above, Human And Nature DYnamics (HANDY) was originally built based on the predatorâprey model. We can think of the human population as the âpredatorâ, while nature (the natural resources of the surrounding environment) can be taken as the âpreyâ, depleted by humans. In animal models, carrying capacity is an upper ceiling on long-term population. When the population surpasses the carrying capacity, mechanisms such as starvation or migration bring the population back down. However, in the context of human societies, the population does not necessarily begin to decline upon passing the threshold of carrying capacity, because, unlike animals, humans can accumulate large surpluses (i.e., wealth) and then draw down those resources when production can no longer meet the needs of consumption. This introduces a different kind of delay that allows for much more complex dynamics, fundamentally altering the behavior and output of the model. Thus, our model adds the element of accumulated surplus not required in animal models, but which we feel is necessary for human models. We call this accumulated surplus âwealthâ.
(my emphasis)
1 Like
Thanks again. Your top link to the paper lands me at Elsevier, where Iâm accustomed to seeing everything but the abstract behind a motherfucking paywall, so I was pleasantly surprised at being able to download the whole thing from those bastards for free. Science in the public interest. Wow, what a concept.
1 Like