Le colpe dell'uomo sul Creato: effetto serra e pesticidi
24-2-19 (13-12-19)
Avrete sentito dell'eccezionale alluvione che ha colpito la zona di Petra, in Giordania, nel novembre del 2018.
Inondazioni in Giordania, almeno 11 morti - Repubblica.it
Oppure vi ricorderete dell'immensa devastazione della zona di Atene, con decine di vittime causate dai soliti piromani 'misteriosi' (il tipo di crimine stragista meno punito, a parte le guerre vere e proprie!) appena l'estate scorsa, quando gli incendi arrivarono fino alla Svezia (ma risparmiarono noi, che del resto, nel 2017 vedemmo andare in fumo il parco del Vesuvio e quello degli Astroni, con incendi dappertutto nella nostra penisola).
ATENE (GRECIA) - L'ultimo bilancio ufficiale - mentre finisce la prima notte dopo il dramma - è di 79 vittime accertate e almeno 550 feriti, tra cui 16 bimbi in gravi condizioni. Finora non ci sono italiani irreperibili. Ma le autorità locali temono che le vittime possano essere anche cento tra le migliaia di persone in fuga dal nelle 24 ore di fiamme in due grandi foreste che lambiscono Atene e che centinaia di vigili del fuoco non riescono a domare, anche a causa del forte vento. Il premier Tsipras ha dichiarato tre giorni di lutto nazionale, lo stato di emergenza e chiesto l'aiuto dell'Unione Europea.
Incendi ad Atene, almeno 79 morti. Giallo sulle cause, il governo sospetta azione dolosa - Repubblica.it 25 luglio 2018
Oppure avrete in mente la peggiore stagione di incendi mai avvenuta in California: quella del 2018, con l'incendio di circa 8.000 kmq di territorio (circa il 2% dello stato e circa pari all'intera Umbria).
The 2018 wildfire season was the deadliest and most destructive wildfire season on record in California, with a total of 8,527 fires burning an area of 1,893,913 acres (766,439 ha), the largest amount of burned acreage recorded in a fire season, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) and the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), as of December 21.[1][2][3] The fires have caused more than $3.5 billion (2018 USD) in damages, including $1.792 billion in fire suppression costs.[4][5][6][7] Through the end of August 2018, Cal Fire alone spent $432 million on operations.[17] The Mendocino Complex Fire burned more than 459,000 acres (186,000 ha), becoming the largest complex fire in the state's history, with the complex's Ranch Fire surpassing the Thomas Fire and the Santiago Canyon Fire of 1889 to become California's single-largest recorded wildfire.[18][19]
In mid-July to August 2018, a series of large wildfires erupted across California, mostly in the northern part of the state, including the destructive Carr Fire and the Mendocino Complex Fire. On August 4, 2018, a national disaster was declared in Northern California, due to the extensive wildfires burning there.[20]
In November 2018, strong winds aggravated conditions in another round of large, destructive fires that occurred across the state. This new batch of wildfires includes the Woolsey Fire and the Camp Fire, the latter of which killed at least 86 people[16] with 3[16] still unaccounted for as of 4 December 2018. It destroyed more than 18,000 structures, becoming both California's deadliest and most destructive wildfire on record.
2018 California wildfires - Wikipedia
Meno noto sarà forse che persino in Arabia Saudita ci siano state alluvioni.
Ma sempre e comunque, EVENTI CATASTROFICI.
Anche adesso, che sembra tutto OK da noi, con temperature in linea o anche più basse del periodo.
Ma basta andare in Australia e Tasmania, e tutto cambia. Anche adesso.
E ora capirete come mai in questi giorni non ho avuto voglia di scrivere articoli sui wargames....
COME FORSE SAPRETE, nel Queensland c'é stata una terribile alluvione che ha ucciso forse 500.000 mucche (e un numero innumerabile di altri animali). E' caduto un metro d'acqua e ha letteralmente fatto morire di freddo gli animali all'aperto. Oppure li ha affogati direttamente. Oppure li ha sfiancati a forza di muoversi nel fango.
QUEL CHE NON SAPETE, però, è che è lo stesso stato-canaglia che ha disboscato così tanto da finire quasi pari all'Amazzonia, a causa delle leggi CRIMINALI che sono state passate negli anni scorsi e solo recentemente un pò regolate. Leggi che hanno fatto disboscare da parte dei bovari (che alle volte hanno anche AMMAZZATO gli ufficiali governativi venuti a controllare quel che facevano), qualcosa come 10.000 kmq di territori fregandosene di qualsiasi animale e pianta che trovassero sul loro percorso.
Mi dispiace molto per quelle povere bestie, le mucche, vittime innocenti di questa strage. MA NON HO NESSUNA PIETA' di gente che ha distrutto l'ecosistema salvo poi trovarsi con l'acqua alla gola nel senso più letterale del termine. Questi STRONZI non hanno capito che il cambiamento climatico è una realtà e dopo 7 anni di siccità si trovano 1.400 mm di acqua in una settimana. Ecco cosa sta succedendo. O SI CAMBIA REGISTRO oppure è la fine!
Il mondo come è davvero, parte-1: bovari contro ambiente e l'Australia diventa uno dei Paesi più disboscati del mondo.
One of the owners of the property told the Guardian he had all the approvals from both state and federal governments for the clearing. He also said the clearing was simply removing trees from along a fenceline, which he believed did not need any approvals.
“As a producer we’re sick of people like [the Wilderness Society] trying to stop productivity in this bloody nation and that’s why we’ve got a deficit going up at $20,000 a second,” he said.
“Everything I have done is above board. I don’t have time to sit down and talk about negative things and parasites who are putting bloody hurdles in front of people who are trying to be productive. Now I’m busy. Thank you,” he said before hanging up.
Questo è uno di quei 4 bovari australiani che stanno distruggendo 4.000 kmq di foresta del Queensland all'anno, pari ai 2/3 della deforestazione amazonica. Per i pascoli in terreni 'improduttivi'.
Australia's east coast named as 'deforestation front' in WWF Living Planet report | Environment | The Guardian
Australia’s east coast has been compared to the Amazon as a “deforestation front” in a new global report by the World Wide Fund for Nature that underscores the threat to populations of koalas and other native species.
The Living Planet report, produced by WWF every second year for the past 20 years, says global populations of vertebrate species have declined 60% since 1970. But koala numbers have disappeared at a much faster rate – more than 20% a decade – to the extent they could disappear from the wild in New South Wales by 2050.
The report assessed 11 deforestation hotspots, where broadscale clearing had occurred at problematic levels since 2010, and where deforestation was expected to continue in the next decade. Eastern Australia was the only location in the developed world to make the list.
In sostanza: grazie alla liberalizzazione sull'abbattimento degli alberi, fatta appena qualche anno fa, 10.000 kmq di foreste sono andati sotto i bulldozer dei bovari e degli speculatori vari. Adesso il Queensland ha tentato di correre ai ripari ma troppo tardi, mentre il Nuovo Galles del Sud ha seguito la stessa strada appena l'anno scorso (nella 'liberalizzazione' delle 'bonifiche' ambientali).
Queensland farmers suspected to have defied tree clearing controls in 'deforestation frenzy' | Environment | The Guardian
ESATTO: hanno anche fatto più del dichiarato e gli effetti non tardano ad acclararsi.
Il mondo come è davvero parte-2: la dieta carnea e gli amici politici. Distruzione ambiente? Chissenefrega.
Queensland released its annual satellite monitoring report, showing that clearing in 2015-16 jumped 33% compared with the previous year.
At the time, the environment minister, Steven Miles, said the report was “nothing short of devastating” because of the effects on wildlife, reef waters and coral, and Australia’s carbon emissions.
WWF Australia found that clearing would have killed nearly 45m animals. According to a study published in the journal Nature in October, Australia is the second-worst country for species loss.
Plesman said: “Deforestation in Queensland is a national disgrace. Queensland now ranks alongside the Amazon, Borneo and the Congo as a world top 10 deforestation hotspot, and will likely move further up that unwanted ladder if this proposed clearing takes place.”
Since July last year, 1,608 properties in Queensland have notified an intention to clear a total of almost 945,755 hectares of land. Almost all of it is “remnant” forest or bushland – a term used to describe forest that hasn’t previously been cleared. There was also an additional 80,200ha of “high-value agriculture” land approved for clearing, making a total of 1.02m hectares of clearing in the pipeline.
The federal government has been using the $2.55bn Emissions Reduction Fund to pay polluters – mostly potential land clearers – not to clear. In the most recent auction, the government paid $11.82 for each tonne of CO2-equivalent of greenhouse gasses that were abated.
“There’s a tsunami of deforestation hitting Queensland right now,” said Wilderness Society Queensland campaign manager Gemma Plesman. “It’s insane that nearly 1m hectares has been targeted for clearing from July 2016 to September 2017 or already has been cleared. That’s an annual rate of 830,000ha – that’s twice as much as the record 395,000ha cleared in 2015-16.”
“We know that the current rates of land clearing in Queensland are unsustainable. Australia has become one of the deforestation hotspots in the world – the only advanced economy to be named in the 12 deforestation hotspots in the world.
“[It’s] because Queensland has returned to the bad old days of bulldozing hundreds of thousands of hectares of woody and remnant vegetations in order to make way particularly for pasture for cows,” she said.
Farmer Ian Turnbull sentenced to 35 years for murder of NSW environment officer | Australia news | The Guardian
questo simpatico 81enne ha sparato ripetutamente e ha ucciso un agente che era venuto a controllare il suo modo di 'bonificare' il territorio. Lui si riteneva 'perseguitato'.
Ora, si è preso 35 anni di galera. L'età non è una scusa per commettere crimini, ha sentenziato la corte.
COMMENTO DAL GUARDIAN:
Thundercat84
30 Oct 2018 6:40
10 11
Living in South East Queensland I have seen this happening. Where I grew up, about 40kms North of Brisbane, what used to be bio-diverse native habitat has all been bulldozed for housing and roads. The koalas one used to see regularly in the surrounding bushland are no more, victims of land clearing, car strikes and predation by domestic animals. It is beyond sad and our world is all the poorer for it. The blatant greed and shortsightedness of our State Government and local councils is all too evident, especially in the cozy relationship between councils and developers. Offsetting is a nonsense that has actually made things worse in so many ways, as there is now a convenient "green solution" - don't worry about destroying this patch of bush that is home to countless animals, we can just "save" that patch over there! Never mind that basic mathematics tells us that when you have cleared almost all original bushland, saving certain areas is still a net loss of habitat. Not to mention the fact that habitats vary in terms of the type of environment and the species it can support - so destroying certain types of habitat can never, ever be offset, as that particular type of environment, and the animals that depend on it for survival, can't just be re-created anywhere else. Having campaigned to save patches of bush here and there, only to see gigantic swaths of koala habitat be destroyed without a thought of the animals living there breaks my heart, as does watching the tireless and emotionally exhausting work of wildlife rescue and carer friends, who pick these animals up off the roads, rehabilitate them, only to too often find them dead on the road a few months later. The arrogance of humanity is unforgivable.
E IO SONO PIENAMENTE D'ACCORDO CON LUI. A proposito... ma gli aborigeni che fine hanno fatto?
CARI BOVARI AUSTRALIANI... non siete migliori dei FAZENDEROS che comandano in Brasile.... piangete pure le vostre mucche, le uniche davvero innocenti.... ma dove erano le vostre fottute lacrime... quando distruggevate negli anni scorsi oltre 10.000 kmq di territorio (fatto citato come dato di 'sfuggita' com se fosse normale... nel documentario la vita segreta dei koala... come se fosse Antani!).... dopo avere ARRAFFATTO oltre 2 mld di dollari proprio per NON farlo, tranne cambiare idea quando la legge ve l'ha consentito per 'sviluppare l'economia'?
Dove erano le vostre lacrime quando il WWF stimava che fino a 900.000 animali selvatici sarebbero morti per colpa della vostra distruttiva attività?
E adesso, dopo SEI ANNI DI SICCITA'...dopo avere pregato perché piovesse.... vi trovate questo uragano.... come dicevate prima.... l'effetto serra sono tutte stronzate... noi dobbiamo essere 'produttivi'? After six years of drought, Mount Isa residents prayed for rain. Then it flooded | Australia news | The Guardian
ECCOVI SERVITI, cari BOVARI AUSTRALIANI, nonché LADRI DEL TERRITORIO DEGLI ABORIGENI che per tutto l'XIX SECOLO avete STERMINATO come nella strage di Liverpool Plains, l'unica tra l'altro punita delle tante di quel tempo... mentre in TASMANIA, nelle cosidette 'dirty wars', gli abitanti locali venivano COMPLETAMENTE STERMINATI (esatto, non esiste più un tasmaniano purosangue al mondo, colpevoli come erano di stare da 40.000 anni in quell'isola a Sud della Tasmania e di non essere riusciti ad estinguere una fila di animali che poi i bianchi hanno sistemato, come l'Emu Tasmaniano e il Tilacino).
ADESSO PIANGERANNO DISGRAZIA e rivendicheranno aiuti di stato... quelli li pigliano sempre.
Ma io mi chiedo: una nazione con 3 ABITANTI PER KMQ come l'Australia... che bisogno HA di fare una simile strage dell'ambiente?
Per servire chi? Quali economie? La Cina, che ha comprato mezza Nuova Zelanda, per esempio? O l'India con le sue mega-miniere in Australia?
Ma se noi in Italia fossimo come l'Australia... saremmo 1 mln. Siccome siamo 60 volte tanto, dovremmo avere cosa? Il cannibalismo?
E poi c'é la Tasmania, ovviamente.
Sta bruciando.
Tasmania is burning. The climate disaster future has arrived while those in power laugh at us | Richard Flanagan | Opinion | The Guardian
As I write this, fire is 500 metres from the largest King Billy pine forest in the world on Mt Bobs, an ancient forest that dates back to the last Ice Age and has trees over 1,000 years old. Fire has broached the boundaries of Mt Field national park with its glorious alpine vegetation, unlike anything on the planet. Fire laps at the edges of Federation Peak, Australia’s grandest mountain, and around the base of Mt Anne with its exquisite rainforest and alpine gardens. Fire laps at the border of the Walls of Jerusalem national park with its labyrinthine landscapes of tarns and iconic stands of ancient pencil pine and its beautiful alpine landscape, ecosystems described by their most eminent scholar, the ecologist Prof Jamie Kirkpatrick, as “like the vision of a Japanese garden made more complex, and developed in paradise, in amongst this gothic scenery”.
“You have plants that look like rocks – green rocks – and these plants have different colours in complicated mosaics: red-green, blue-green, yellow-green, all together. It’s an overwhelming sensual experience really.”
Così inizia l'articolo. E dice anche che: l'acqua attorno alla Tasmania si sta scaldando 2-3 volte di più rispetto al livello globale già in rialzo, come se non fosse evidente in Australia dove in generale le estati diventano sempre più calde (anche con oltre 40° per diversi giorni consecutivi) e secche, i fenomeni estremi sempre più frequenti, la Barriera corallina (afflitta anche dal disboscamento) sempre più morente e sbiancata.
I laghi della Tasmania, già tra i più inquinati del mondo a causa delle estrazioni minerarie durate un secolo senza alcuna restrizione, avranno nei prossimi decenni un calo nelle piogge e un aumento dell'evaporazione, entrambi fenomeni a 2 cifre. Presto le zone umide tasmaniane potrebbero essere solo un ricordo.
E poi ci sono le tempeste di fulmini, come quelle che devastano la California, e quasi sconosciute in Tasmania fino a tempi recenti (dal 2000 in poi). La vegetazione tasmaniana non è adatta agli incendi, non li conosce praticamente, per cui ne è distrutta senza riscatto alcuno. Alcuni pericolo sono nella stessa nazione, come la commissione Idroelettrica, ma:
But the new danger was not here. It was in the sky, it was carbon, and every year there was more of it. The name of the crime was climate change.
Six weeks ago, the future that Davies and others had been predicting arrived in Tasmania. Lightning strikes ignited what would become known as the Gell River fire in the island’s south-west. In later weeks more lightning strikes led to more fires, every major one of which is still burning.
Tasmania subsequently recorded its driest January on record, with maximum temperatures an astonishing 3.22C above the long-term average for the month. Fuel loads were, according to the Tasmanian Fire Service, 20% to 30% drier than average. In such an unprecedented environment the fires were unstoppable.
La scia di fumo dalla Tasmania ferita, che ha perso già il 3% del suo territorio agli incendi, si è allungata di 2.500 km, fino ad arrivare in Nuova Zelanda, mentre il fronte degli incendi boschivi è di oltre 1.600 km e ha distrutto 190.000 ettari e per le prossime settimane, ancora fuochi senza pietà.
E far volare un C-130 antincendio comporta 75.000 dollari per lancio.
And so, without a far greater investment of money in the coming years, scientists believe these global treasures are doomed to destruction. This week or next year or the next, the certainty is that without extraordinary effort, they will burn and be gone forever.
At the same time Tasmanians find themselves living in a frightening new world where summer is no longer a time of joy, but a period of smog-drenched dread that goes on week after week, and it seems inevitable, month after month. Whole communities have been evacuated and are living in evacuation centres or bunking down with friends and families.
E i politici, eh, i politici, che dicono?
Two years ago the then treasurer Scott Morrison picked up a large lump of coal. Perhaps he thought it was a great joke for Australia at the expense of a few weird outliers like the Greens and the global scientific community. Or perhaps Morrison wasn’t really thinking anything. Perhaps the greatest error of journalists is thinking people at the centre are more than they seem. The problem with people like Morrison, the true terror, is that they may be so much less.
Scott Morrison hands Barnaby Joyce a lump of coal during Question Time in parliament
“This is coal,” Morrison began babbling. “Don’t be afraid don’t be scared won’t hurt you won’t hurt you.”
He waved the piece of coal around like it was the sacred Host itself, he swung it high and he brought it so low that for a moment it was as if a wildly guffawing Barnaby Joyce seated next to him might lick it. How they laughed! The ranks of the Liberal party assembled around and behind, how they all laughed and laughed that day.
Those faces contorted in weird mirth are the grotesque masks of a great and historic crime, deriding not just their political opponents but mocking the future with that pure contempt of power, daring us to remember beyond the next news cycle, to care beyond the next confected outrage, to see past the next lie. It is the image of our age: power laughing at us.
Scott Morrison’s proudest boast is that when the barbarians were at the gate, he stopped them. But now the truth is clear: the barbarians were never at the gate. They were always here, in the palace, in power, and they were blinding us with their lie that the enemies who would destroy our world were the wretched and powerless who sought asylum here. And all along our real enemy was them: those who held up lumps of coal in front of their throne, and laughed and laughed and gloated won’t hurt you won’t hurt you.
Climate change isn’t just happening. It’s happening far quicker than has been predicted. Each careful scientific prediction is rapidly overtaken by the horror of profound natural changes that seem to be accelerating, with old predictions routinely outdone by the worsening reality – hotter, colder, wetter, drier, windier, wilder, and ever more destructive.
When Scott Morrison visited Tasmania yesterday he wasn’t photographed holding a lump of coal up in Geeveston. In the evacuation centre at Huonville. In the sacred King Billy pine groves of Mt Bobs or the exquisite cushion plant gardens of the Walls of Jerusalem. I doubt he had the folly to tell people don’t be scared. I am sure that he looked concerned and perhaps occasionally he smiled, the smile of the weak man, the smile of all the empty men.
And tomorrow there will be another welcome photo opportunity at another unprecedented “natural” disaster, another fire, another flood. And when he retires back into his prime ministerial limo I wonder if he laughs. He should. Laugh at us all, Scott Morrison, you and the others who sit with you, grinning fools at the entrance to hell. Laugh and laugh as the ash falls soft as silent despair.
APPLAUSI (TRISTI): BRAVISSIMI VOI DEL GUARDIAN, BELLISSIMO ARTICOLO (la versione completa è nel sito linkato).
Il mondo come è davvero parte-3: Scienza, altro che cazzate
Biodiversity is below safe levels across more than half of world's land – study | Environment | The Guardian
Analysing 1.8m records from 39,123 sites across Earth, the international study found that a measure of the intactness of biodiversity at sites has fallen below a safety limit across 58.1% of the world’s land.
Under a proposal put forward by experts last year, a site losing more than 10% of its biodiversity is considered to have passed a precautionary threshold, beyond which the ecosystem’s ability to function could be compromised.
Sign up to the Green Light email to get the planet's most important stories
“It’s worrying that land use has already pushed biodiversity below the level proposed as a safe limit,” said Prof Andy Purvis, of the Natural History Museum, and one of the authors. “Until and unless we can bring biodiversity back up, we’re playing ecological roulette.”
Humans just 0.01% of all life but have destroyed 83% of wild mammals – study | Environment | The Guardian
Humankind is revealed as simultaneously insignificant and utterly dominant in the grand scheme of life on Earth by a groundbreaking new assessment of all life on the planet.
The world’s 7.6 billion people represent just 0.01% of all living things, according to the study. Yet since the dawn of civilisation, humanity has caused the loss of 83% of all wild mammals and half of plants, while livestock kept by humans abounds.
The new work is the first comprehensive estimate of the weight of every class of living creature and overturns some long-held assumptions. Bacteria are indeed a major life form – 13% of everything – but plants overshadow everything, representing 82% of all living matter. All other creatures, from insects to fungi, to fish and animals, make up just 5% of the world’s biomass.
Humans have destroyed a tenth of Earth's wilderness in 25 years – study | Environment | The Guardian
The largest chunk of wilderness in the Amazon basin shrank from 1.8m sq km to 1.3m sq km, while the Ucayali moist forests in the west of the Amazon, home to more than 600 bird species and primates including emperor tamarins, was badly affected. The trajectory of loss in the world’s biggest rainforest was “particularly concerning”, the authors warned, given it happened despite deforestation rates slowing.
In Africa, none of the lowland forest in the western Congo basin is now considered globally significant wilderness, the study found. WWF believes the area is possibly home to more gorillas and chimpanzees than other area in the world.
The study said that wilderness was being loss faster than pristine places were being designated as protected areas, at 3.3m sq km versus 2.5m sq km.
Professor William Laurance of James Cook University said: “Environmental policies are failing the world’s vanishing wildernesses. Despite being strongholds for imperilled biodiversity, regulating local climates, and sustaining many indigenous communities, wilderness areas are vanishing before our eye.”
The study said the reason was that such areas are “assumed to be relatively free from threatening processes and therefore are not a priority for conservation efforts”.
The ramifications of remaining wilderness being corrupted were wide-ranging and irreversible for both people and wildlife, Watson said.
E PURE GLI INSETTI....
''The astonishing report highlighted in the Guardian, that the biomass of flying insects in Germany has dropped by three quarters since 1989, threatening an “ecological Armageddon”, is the starkest warning yet; but it is only the latest in a series of studies which in the last five years have finally brought to public attention the real scale of the problem.
Does it matter? Even if bugs make you shudder? Oh yes. Insects are vital plant-pollinators and although most of our grain crops are pollinated by the wind, most of our fruit crops are insect-pollinated, as are the vast majority of our wild plants, from daisies to our most splendid wild flower, the rare and beautiful lady’s slipper orchid
Furthermore, insects form the base of thousands upon thousands of food chains, and their disappearance is a principal reason why Britain’s farmland birds have more than halved in number since 1970. Some declines have been catastrophic: the grey partridge, whose chicks fed on the insects once abundant in cornfields, and the charming spotted flycatcher, a specialist predator of aerial insects, have both declined by more than 95%, while the red-backed shrike, which feeds on big beetles, became extinct in Britain in the 1990s.
Ecologically, catastrophe is the word for it.
It has taken us a lot of time to understand this for two reasons: one cultural, one scientific. Firstly, we generally do not care for insects (bees and butterflies excepted). Even wildlife lovers are fixed on vertebrates, on creatures of fur and feather and especially the “charismatic megafauna”, and in the population as a whole there is even less sympathy for the fate of the chitin-skeletoned little things that creep and crawl; our default reaction is a shudder. Fewer bugs in the world? Many would cheer.
The new data was gathered in nature reserves across Germany but has implications for all landscapes dominated by agriculture, the researchers said.
The cause of the huge decline is as yet unclear, although the destruction of wild areas and widespread use of pesticides are the most likely factors and climate change may play a role. The scientists were able to rule out weather and changes to landscape in the reserves as causes, but data on pesticide levels has not been collected.
“The fact that the number of flying insects is decreasing at such a high rate in such a large area is an alarming discovery,” said Hans de Kroon, at Radboud University in the Netherlands and who led the new research.
“Insects make up about two-thirds of all life on Earth [but] there has been some kind of horrific decline,” said Prof Dave Goulson of Sussex University, UK, and part of the team behind the new study. “We appear to be making vast tracts of land inhospitable to most forms of life, and are currently on course for ecological Armageddon. If we lose the insects then everything is going to collapse.”
The research, published in the journal Plos One, is based on the work of dozens of amateur entomologists across Germany who began using strictly standardised ways of collecting insects in 1989. Special tents called malaise traps were used to capture more than 1,500 samples of all flying insects at 63 different nature reserves.
Malaise traps were set in protected areas in Germany as part of the study
Facebook Twitter Pinterest
The malaise traps set in protected areas and reserves, which scientists say makes the declines even more worrying. Photograph: Courtesy of Courtesy of Entomologisher Verein Krefeld
Advertisement
When the total weight of the insects in each sample was measured a startling decline was revealed. The annual average fell by 76% over the 27 year period, but the fall was even higher – 82% – in summer, when insect numbers reach their peak.''
A giant insect ecosystem is collapsing due to humans. It's a catastrophe | Environment | The Guardian
UK butterflies worst hit in 2016 with % of species in decline, study finds | Environment | The GuardianUK butterflies worst hit in 2016 with 70% of species in decline, study finds | Environment | The Guardian
Una soluzione? Almeno una? GO VEGAN. Io non lo sono, confesso, ma voi non guardate a me, guardate questo:
''Avoiding meat and dairy products is the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the planet, according to the scientists behind the most comprehensive analysis to date of the damage farming does to the planet.
The new research shows that without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75% – an area equivalent to the US, China, European Union and Australia combined – and still feed the world. Loss of wild areas to agriculture is the leading cause of the current mass extinction of wildlife.
The new analysis shows that while meat and dairy provide just 18% of calories and 37% of protein, it uses the vast majority – 83% – of farmland and produces 60% of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions. Other recent research shows 86% of all land mammals are now livestock or humans. The scientists also found that even the very lowest impact meat and dairy products still cause much more environmental harm than the least sustainable vegetable and cereal growing.
The study, published in the journal Science, created a huge dataset based on almost 40,000 farms in 119 countries and covering 40 food products that represent 90% of all that is eaten. It assessed the full impact of these foods, from farm to fork, on land use, climate change emissions, freshwater use and water pollution (eutrophication) and air pollution (acidification).
“A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use,” said Joseph Poore, at the University of Oxford, UK, who led the research. “It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car,” he said, as these only cut greenhouse gas emissions.
“Agriculture is a sector that spans all the multitude of environmental problems,” he said. “Really it is animal products that are responsible for so much of this. Avoiding consumption of animal products delivers far better environmental benefits than trying to purchase sustainable meat and dairy.”
The analysis also revealed a huge variability between different ways of producing the same food. For example, beef cattle raised on deforested land result in 12 times more greenhouse gases and use 50 times more land than those grazing rich natural pasture. But the comparison of beef with plant protein such as peas is stark, with even the lowest impact beef responsible for six times more greenhouse gases and 36 times more land.''
Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth | Environment | The Guardian
Today, and probably into the future, dietary change can deliver environmental benefits on a scale
not achievable by producers. Moving from current diets to a diet that excludes animal products
(table S13) (35) has transformative potential, reducing food’s land use by 3.1 (2.8-3.3) billion
19 hectares (a 76% reduction), including a 19% reduction in arable land; food’s GHG emissions by
6.6 (5.5-7.4) billion metric tons of CO2eq (a 49% reduction);
-acidification by 50% (45-54%);
-eutrophication by 49% (37-56%);
-and scarcity-weighted freshwater withdrawals by 19% (−5 to 32%) for a 2010 reference year.
The ranges are based on producing new vegetable proteins with
impacts between the 10th- and 90th-percentile impacts of existing production. For the United
States, where per capita meat consumption is three times the global average, dietary change has
the potential for a far greater effect on food’s different emissions, reducing them by 61-73%. See
supplementary text (17) for diet compositions and sensitivity analyses and fig. S14 for alternative
scenarios.
https://josephpoore.com/Science%20360%206392%20987%20-%20Accepted%20Manuscript.pdf
Documento firmato da diverse centinaia di cialtroni che non credono all'ineluttabilità del disboscamento e della dieta carnivora. Chi si credono di essere, 'sti mangiabietole?
E poi questi:
vegetables had a footprint of about 322 litres per kg, and fruits drank up 962, meat was far more thirsty: chicken came in at 4,325l/kg, pork at 5,988l/kg, sheep/goat meat at 8,763l/kg, and beef at a stupendous 15,415l/kg. Some non-meat products were also pretty eye-watering: nuts came in at 9,063l/kg.
https://waterfootprint.org/en/water-footprint/product-water-footprint/water-footprint-crop-and-animal-products/
E pure la FAO:
http://www.fao.org/3/a-i7754e.pdf
DEDICA
Questo articolo lo dedico ad un pagliaccio che si spaccia per scienziato, che in 1 anno di discussioni sui vaccini non ha portato nessuna prova e nessuna fonte che ne certifichino la necessità (legge Lorenzin) tranne che 'mio zio è morto di difterite' (già, e magari tuo bisnonno di vaiolo); che non sa che il lago d'Aral non è in territorio russo; e che quanto alle coltivazioni, non solo giustifica la distruzione dell'Indonesia, ma anche la continuazione della dieta carnea.
Uno che nel rispondermi con la sua spocchia proverbiale, è stato capace di arrivare a dire questo:
''Sei tu che non li hai i calcoli dei costi, non sai di cosa parli e da ignorante e presuntuoso pensi di spiegarmi cose che studio da trenta anni. Hai scelto di credere alle vulgate di una sottocultura tanto arrogante quanto ignorante. Hai contributi seri? Informami. Mi porti i soliti calcoli stantii del cazzo fatti da gente in malafede e all'oscuro di ogni cosa in agricoltura e zootecnia, non parliamo poi di scienza in generale, e vorresti magzri stupirmi come se non li conoscessi e non li avessi già analizzati anni fa. Ma non hai altre e più imlortanti cose da fare che informarmi di cose vecchie di trenta anni. La sostenibilità va fatta sul serio, non col culo degli altri, come fanno i fenomeni all'amatriciana che vanno per la maggiore in Italia. Studia, che il Mencarelli del 91 mi pareva decisamente più sveglio. Siamo sette miliardi, di cui diversi che vogliono tutti gli agi che noi occidentali diamo per scontati. Soia e fagioli per tutti non sono un'opzione, così come una bistecca. Le soluzioni semplici a problemi complessi sono tipiche degli idioti.
E visto che siamo tanto preoccupati per le foreste pensa che catastrofe si dovessero recuperare terreni coltivabili per produrre cibo per sette miliardi di persone. Perché molto del terreno utilizzato per foraggi è del tutto inadatto a coltivazioni per il consumo umano. Ma i fenomeni ambientalisti che non distinguono una zappa da una vanga se ne rendono conto?''
Le risposte le trova sopra, caro pagliaccio Ma non c'é peggior sordo di chi no vuol sentire.
24-2-19 (13-12-19)
Avrete sentito dell'eccezionale alluvione che ha colpito la zona di Petra, in Giordania, nel novembre del 2018.
Inondazioni in Giordania, almeno 11 morti - Repubblica.it
Oppure vi ricorderete dell'immensa devastazione della zona di Atene, con decine di vittime causate dai soliti piromani 'misteriosi' (il tipo di crimine stragista meno punito, a parte le guerre vere e proprie!) appena l'estate scorsa, quando gli incendi arrivarono fino alla Svezia (ma risparmiarono noi, che del resto, nel 2017 vedemmo andare in fumo il parco del Vesuvio e quello degli Astroni, con incendi dappertutto nella nostra penisola).
ATENE (GRECIA) - L'ultimo bilancio ufficiale - mentre finisce la prima notte dopo il dramma - è di 79 vittime accertate e almeno 550 feriti, tra cui 16 bimbi in gravi condizioni. Finora non ci sono italiani irreperibili. Ma le autorità locali temono che le vittime possano essere anche cento tra le migliaia di persone in fuga dal nelle 24 ore di fiamme in due grandi foreste che lambiscono Atene e che centinaia di vigili del fuoco non riescono a domare, anche a causa del forte vento. Il premier Tsipras ha dichiarato tre giorni di lutto nazionale, lo stato di emergenza e chiesto l'aiuto dell'Unione Europea.
Incendi ad Atene, almeno 79 morti. Giallo sulle cause, il governo sospetta azione dolosa - Repubblica.it 25 luglio 2018
Oppure avrete in mente la peggiore stagione di incendi mai avvenuta in California: quella del 2018, con l'incendio di circa 8.000 kmq di territorio (circa il 2% dello stato e circa pari all'intera Umbria).
The 2018 wildfire season was the deadliest and most destructive wildfire season on record in California, with a total of 8,527 fires burning an area of 1,893,913 acres (766,439 ha), the largest amount of burned acreage recorded in a fire season, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) and the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), as of December 21.[1][2][3] The fires have caused more than $3.5 billion (2018 USD) in damages, including $1.792 billion in fire suppression costs.[4][5][6][7] Through the end of August 2018, Cal Fire alone spent $432 million on operations.[17] The Mendocino Complex Fire burned more than 459,000 acres (186,000 ha), becoming the largest complex fire in the state's history, with the complex's Ranch Fire surpassing the Thomas Fire and the Santiago Canyon Fire of 1889 to become California's single-largest recorded wildfire.[18][19]
In mid-July to August 2018, a series of large wildfires erupted across California, mostly in the northern part of the state, including the destructive Carr Fire and the Mendocino Complex Fire. On August 4, 2018, a national disaster was declared in Northern California, due to the extensive wildfires burning there.[20]
In November 2018, strong winds aggravated conditions in another round of large, destructive fires that occurred across the state. This new batch of wildfires includes the Woolsey Fire and the Camp Fire, the latter of which killed at least 86 people[16] with 3[16] still unaccounted for as of 4 December 2018. It destroyed more than 18,000 structures, becoming both California's deadliest and most destructive wildfire on record.
2018 California wildfires - Wikipedia
Meno noto sarà forse che persino in Arabia Saudita ci siano state alluvioni.
Ma sempre e comunque, EVENTI CATASTROFICI.
Anche adesso, che sembra tutto OK da noi, con temperature in linea o anche più basse del periodo.
Ma basta andare in Australia e Tasmania, e tutto cambia. Anche adesso.
E ora capirete come mai in questi giorni non ho avuto voglia di scrivere articoli sui wargames....
COME FORSE SAPRETE, nel Queensland c'é stata una terribile alluvione che ha ucciso forse 500.000 mucche (e un numero innumerabile di altri animali). E' caduto un metro d'acqua e ha letteralmente fatto morire di freddo gli animali all'aperto. Oppure li ha affogati direttamente. Oppure li ha sfiancati a forza di muoversi nel fango.
QUEL CHE NON SAPETE, però, è che è lo stesso stato-canaglia che ha disboscato così tanto da finire quasi pari all'Amazzonia, a causa delle leggi CRIMINALI che sono state passate negli anni scorsi e solo recentemente un pò regolate. Leggi che hanno fatto disboscare da parte dei bovari (che alle volte hanno anche AMMAZZATO gli ufficiali governativi venuti a controllare quel che facevano), qualcosa come 10.000 kmq di territori fregandosene di qualsiasi animale e pianta che trovassero sul loro percorso.
Mi dispiace molto per quelle povere bestie, le mucche, vittime innocenti di questa strage. MA NON HO NESSUNA PIETA' di gente che ha distrutto l'ecosistema salvo poi trovarsi con l'acqua alla gola nel senso più letterale del termine. Questi STRONZI non hanno capito che il cambiamento climatico è una realtà e dopo 7 anni di siccità si trovano 1.400 mm di acqua in una settimana. Ecco cosa sta succedendo. O SI CAMBIA REGISTRO oppure è la fine!
Il mondo come è davvero, parte-1: bovari contro ambiente e l'Australia diventa uno dei Paesi più disboscati del mondo.
One of the owners of the property told the Guardian he had all the approvals from both state and federal governments for the clearing. He also said the clearing was simply removing trees from along a fenceline, which he believed did not need any approvals.
“As a producer we’re sick of people like [the Wilderness Society] trying to stop productivity in this bloody nation and that’s why we’ve got a deficit going up at $20,000 a second,” he said.
“Everything I have done is above board. I don’t have time to sit down and talk about negative things and parasites who are putting bloody hurdles in front of people who are trying to be productive. Now I’m busy. Thank you,” he said before hanging up.
Questo è uno di quei 4 bovari australiani che stanno distruggendo 4.000 kmq di foresta del Queensland all'anno, pari ai 2/3 della deforestazione amazonica. Per i pascoli in terreni 'improduttivi'.
Australia's east coast named as 'deforestation front' in WWF Living Planet report | Environment | The Guardian
Australia’s east coast has been compared to the Amazon as a “deforestation front” in a new global report by the World Wide Fund for Nature that underscores the threat to populations of koalas and other native species.
The Living Planet report, produced by WWF every second year for the past 20 years, says global populations of vertebrate species have declined 60% since 1970. But koala numbers have disappeared at a much faster rate – more than 20% a decade – to the extent they could disappear from the wild in New South Wales by 2050.
The report assessed 11 deforestation hotspots, where broadscale clearing had occurred at problematic levels since 2010, and where deforestation was expected to continue in the next decade. Eastern Australia was the only location in the developed world to make the list.
In sostanza: grazie alla liberalizzazione sull'abbattimento degli alberi, fatta appena qualche anno fa, 10.000 kmq di foreste sono andati sotto i bulldozer dei bovari e degli speculatori vari. Adesso il Queensland ha tentato di correre ai ripari ma troppo tardi, mentre il Nuovo Galles del Sud ha seguito la stessa strada appena l'anno scorso (nella 'liberalizzazione' delle 'bonifiche' ambientali).
Queensland farmers suspected to have defied tree clearing controls in 'deforestation frenzy' | Environment | The Guardian
ESATTO: hanno anche fatto più del dichiarato e gli effetti non tardano ad acclararsi.
Il mondo come è davvero parte-2: la dieta carnea e gli amici politici. Distruzione ambiente? Chissenefrega.
Queensland released its annual satellite monitoring report, showing that clearing in 2015-16 jumped 33% compared with the previous year.
At the time, the environment minister, Steven Miles, said the report was “nothing short of devastating” because of the effects on wildlife, reef waters and coral, and Australia’s carbon emissions.
WWF Australia found that clearing would have killed nearly 45m animals. According to a study published in the journal Nature in October, Australia is the second-worst country for species loss.
Plesman said: “Deforestation in Queensland is a national disgrace. Queensland now ranks alongside the Amazon, Borneo and the Congo as a world top 10 deforestation hotspot, and will likely move further up that unwanted ladder if this proposed clearing takes place.”
Since July last year, 1,608 properties in Queensland have notified an intention to clear a total of almost 945,755 hectares of land. Almost all of it is “remnant” forest or bushland – a term used to describe forest that hasn’t previously been cleared. There was also an additional 80,200ha of “high-value agriculture” land approved for clearing, making a total of 1.02m hectares of clearing in the pipeline.
The federal government has been using the $2.55bn Emissions Reduction Fund to pay polluters – mostly potential land clearers – not to clear. In the most recent auction, the government paid $11.82 for each tonne of CO2-equivalent of greenhouse gasses that were abated.
“There’s a tsunami of deforestation hitting Queensland right now,” said Wilderness Society Queensland campaign manager Gemma Plesman. “It’s insane that nearly 1m hectares has been targeted for clearing from July 2016 to September 2017 or already has been cleared. That’s an annual rate of 830,000ha – that’s twice as much as the record 395,000ha cleared in 2015-16.”
“We know that the current rates of land clearing in Queensland are unsustainable. Australia has become one of the deforestation hotspots in the world – the only advanced economy to be named in the 12 deforestation hotspots in the world.
“[It’s] because Queensland has returned to the bad old days of bulldozing hundreds of thousands of hectares of woody and remnant vegetations in order to make way particularly for pasture for cows,” she said.
Farmer Ian Turnbull sentenced to 35 years for murder of NSW environment officer | Australia news | The Guardian
questo simpatico 81enne ha sparato ripetutamente e ha ucciso un agente che era venuto a controllare il suo modo di 'bonificare' il territorio. Lui si riteneva 'perseguitato'.
Ora, si è preso 35 anni di galera. L'età non è una scusa per commettere crimini, ha sentenziato la corte.
COMMENTO DAL GUARDIAN:
Thundercat84
30 Oct 2018 6:40
10 11
Living in South East Queensland I have seen this happening. Where I grew up, about 40kms North of Brisbane, what used to be bio-diverse native habitat has all been bulldozed for housing and roads. The koalas one used to see regularly in the surrounding bushland are no more, victims of land clearing, car strikes and predation by domestic animals. It is beyond sad and our world is all the poorer for it. The blatant greed and shortsightedness of our State Government and local councils is all too evident, especially in the cozy relationship between councils and developers. Offsetting is a nonsense that has actually made things worse in so many ways, as there is now a convenient "green solution" - don't worry about destroying this patch of bush that is home to countless animals, we can just "save" that patch over there! Never mind that basic mathematics tells us that when you have cleared almost all original bushland, saving certain areas is still a net loss of habitat. Not to mention the fact that habitats vary in terms of the type of environment and the species it can support - so destroying certain types of habitat can never, ever be offset, as that particular type of environment, and the animals that depend on it for survival, can't just be re-created anywhere else. Having campaigned to save patches of bush here and there, only to see gigantic swaths of koala habitat be destroyed without a thought of the animals living there breaks my heart, as does watching the tireless and emotionally exhausting work of wildlife rescue and carer friends, who pick these animals up off the roads, rehabilitate them, only to too often find them dead on the road a few months later. The arrogance of humanity is unforgivable.
E IO SONO PIENAMENTE D'ACCORDO CON LUI. A proposito... ma gli aborigeni che fine hanno fatto?
CARI BOVARI AUSTRALIANI... non siete migliori dei FAZENDEROS che comandano in Brasile.... piangete pure le vostre mucche, le uniche davvero innocenti.... ma dove erano le vostre fottute lacrime... quando distruggevate negli anni scorsi oltre 10.000 kmq di territorio (fatto citato come dato di 'sfuggita' com se fosse normale... nel documentario la vita segreta dei koala... come se fosse Antani!).... dopo avere ARRAFFATTO oltre 2 mld di dollari proprio per NON farlo, tranne cambiare idea quando la legge ve l'ha consentito per 'sviluppare l'economia'?
Dove erano le vostre lacrime quando il WWF stimava che fino a 900.000 animali selvatici sarebbero morti per colpa della vostra distruttiva attività?
E adesso, dopo SEI ANNI DI SICCITA'...dopo avere pregato perché piovesse.... vi trovate questo uragano.... come dicevate prima.... l'effetto serra sono tutte stronzate... noi dobbiamo essere 'produttivi'? After six years of drought, Mount Isa residents prayed for rain. Then it flooded | Australia news | The Guardian
ECCOVI SERVITI, cari BOVARI AUSTRALIANI, nonché LADRI DEL TERRITORIO DEGLI ABORIGENI che per tutto l'XIX SECOLO avete STERMINATO come nella strage di Liverpool Plains, l'unica tra l'altro punita delle tante di quel tempo... mentre in TASMANIA, nelle cosidette 'dirty wars', gli abitanti locali venivano COMPLETAMENTE STERMINATI (esatto, non esiste più un tasmaniano purosangue al mondo, colpevoli come erano di stare da 40.000 anni in quell'isola a Sud della Tasmania e di non essere riusciti ad estinguere una fila di animali che poi i bianchi hanno sistemato, come l'Emu Tasmaniano e il Tilacino).
ADESSO PIANGERANNO DISGRAZIA e rivendicheranno aiuti di stato... quelli li pigliano sempre.
Ma io mi chiedo: una nazione con 3 ABITANTI PER KMQ come l'Australia... che bisogno HA di fare una simile strage dell'ambiente?
Per servire chi? Quali economie? La Cina, che ha comprato mezza Nuova Zelanda, per esempio? O l'India con le sue mega-miniere in Australia?
Ma se noi in Italia fossimo come l'Australia... saremmo 1 mln. Siccome siamo 60 volte tanto, dovremmo avere cosa? Il cannibalismo?
E poi c'é la Tasmania, ovviamente.
Sta bruciando.
Tasmania is burning. The climate disaster future has arrived while those in power laugh at us | Richard Flanagan | Opinion | The Guardian
As I write this, fire is 500 metres from the largest King Billy pine forest in the world on Mt Bobs, an ancient forest that dates back to the last Ice Age and has trees over 1,000 years old. Fire has broached the boundaries of Mt Field national park with its glorious alpine vegetation, unlike anything on the planet. Fire laps at the edges of Federation Peak, Australia’s grandest mountain, and around the base of Mt Anne with its exquisite rainforest and alpine gardens. Fire laps at the border of the Walls of Jerusalem national park with its labyrinthine landscapes of tarns and iconic stands of ancient pencil pine and its beautiful alpine landscape, ecosystems described by their most eminent scholar, the ecologist Prof Jamie Kirkpatrick, as “like the vision of a Japanese garden made more complex, and developed in paradise, in amongst this gothic scenery”.
“You have plants that look like rocks – green rocks – and these plants have different colours in complicated mosaics: red-green, blue-green, yellow-green, all together. It’s an overwhelming sensual experience really.”
Così inizia l'articolo. E dice anche che: l'acqua attorno alla Tasmania si sta scaldando 2-3 volte di più rispetto al livello globale già in rialzo, come se non fosse evidente in Australia dove in generale le estati diventano sempre più calde (anche con oltre 40° per diversi giorni consecutivi) e secche, i fenomeni estremi sempre più frequenti, la Barriera corallina (afflitta anche dal disboscamento) sempre più morente e sbiancata.
I laghi della Tasmania, già tra i più inquinati del mondo a causa delle estrazioni minerarie durate un secolo senza alcuna restrizione, avranno nei prossimi decenni un calo nelle piogge e un aumento dell'evaporazione, entrambi fenomeni a 2 cifre. Presto le zone umide tasmaniane potrebbero essere solo un ricordo.
E poi ci sono le tempeste di fulmini, come quelle che devastano la California, e quasi sconosciute in Tasmania fino a tempi recenti (dal 2000 in poi). La vegetazione tasmaniana non è adatta agli incendi, non li conosce praticamente, per cui ne è distrutta senza riscatto alcuno. Alcuni pericolo sono nella stessa nazione, come la commissione Idroelettrica, ma:
But the new danger was not here. It was in the sky, it was carbon, and every year there was more of it. The name of the crime was climate change.
Six weeks ago, the future that Davies and others had been predicting arrived in Tasmania. Lightning strikes ignited what would become known as the Gell River fire in the island’s south-west. In later weeks more lightning strikes led to more fires, every major one of which is still burning.
Tasmania subsequently recorded its driest January on record, with maximum temperatures an astonishing 3.22C above the long-term average for the month. Fuel loads were, according to the Tasmanian Fire Service, 20% to 30% drier than average. In such an unprecedented environment the fires were unstoppable.
La scia di fumo dalla Tasmania ferita, che ha perso già il 3% del suo territorio agli incendi, si è allungata di 2.500 km, fino ad arrivare in Nuova Zelanda, mentre il fronte degli incendi boschivi è di oltre 1.600 km e ha distrutto 190.000 ettari e per le prossime settimane, ancora fuochi senza pietà.
E far volare un C-130 antincendio comporta 75.000 dollari per lancio.
And so, without a far greater investment of money in the coming years, scientists believe these global treasures are doomed to destruction. This week or next year or the next, the certainty is that without extraordinary effort, they will burn and be gone forever.
At the same time Tasmanians find themselves living in a frightening new world where summer is no longer a time of joy, but a period of smog-drenched dread that goes on week after week, and it seems inevitable, month after month. Whole communities have been evacuated and are living in evacuation centres or bunking down with friends and families.
E i politici, eh, i politici, che dicono?
Two years ago the then treasurer Scott Morrison picked up a large lump of coal. Perhaps he thought it was a great joke for Australia at the expense of a few weird outliers like the Greens and the global scientific community. Or perhaps Morrison wasn’t really thinking anything. Perhaps the greatest error of journalists is thinking people at the centre are more than they seem. The problem with people like Morrison, the true terror, is that they may be so much less.
Scott Morrison hands Barnaby Joyce a lump of coal during Question Time in parliament
“This is coal,” Morrison began babbling. “Don’t be afraid don’t be scared won’t hurt you won’t hurt you.”
He waved the piece of coal around like it was the sacred Host itself, he swung it high and he brought it so low that for a moment it was as if a wildly guffawing Barnaby Joyce seated next to him might lick it. How they laughed! The ranks of the Liberal party assembled around and behind, how they all laughed and laughed that day.
Those faces contorted in weird mirth are the grotesque masks of a great and historic crime, deriding not just their political opponents but mocking the future with that pure contempt of power, daring us to remember beyond the next news cycle, to care beyond the next confected outrage, to see past the next lie. It is the image of our age: power laughing at us.
Scott Morrison’s proudest boast is that when the barbarians were at the gate, he stopped them. But now the truth is clear: the barbarians were never at the gate. They were always here, in the palace, in power, and they were blinding us with their lie that the enemies who would destroy our world were the wretched and powerless who sought asylum here. And all along our real enemy was them: those who held up lumps of coal in front of their throne, and laughed and laughed and gloated won’t hurt you won’t hurt you.
Climate change isn’t just happening. It’s happening far quicker than has been predicted. Each careful scientific prediction is rapidly overtaken by the horror of profound natural changes that seem to be accelerating, with old predictions routinely outdone by the worsening reality – hotter, colder, wetter, drier, windier, wilder, and ever more destructive.
When Scott Morrison visited Tasmania yesterday he wasn’t photographed holding a lump of coal up in Geeveston. In the evacuation centre at Huonville. In the sacred King Billy pine groves of Mt Bobs or the exquisite cushion plant gardens of the Walls of Jerusalem. I doubt he had the folly to tell people don’t be scared. I am sure that he looked concerned and perhaps occasionally he smiled, the smile of the weak man, the smile of all the empty men.
And tomorrow there will be another welcome photo opportunity at another unprecedented “natural” disaster, another fire, another flood. And when he retires back into his prime ministerial limo I wonder if he laughs. He should. Laugh at us all, Scott Morrison, you and the others who sit with you, grinning fools at the entrance to hell. Laugh and laugh as the ash falls soft as silent despair.
APPLAUSI (TRISTI): BRAVISSIMI VOI DEL GUARDIAN, BELLISSIMO ARTICOLO (la versione completa è nel sito linkato).
Il mondo come è davvero parte-3: Scienza, altro che cazzate
Biodiversity is below safe levels across more than half of world's land – study | Environment | The Guardian
Analysing 1.8m records from 39,123 sites across Earth, the international study found that a measure of the intactness of biodiversity at sites has fallen below a safety limit across 58.1% of the world’s land.
Under a proposal put forward by experts last year, a site losing more than 10% of its biodiversity is considered to have passed a precautionary threshold, beyond which the ecosystem’s ability to function could be compromised.
Sign up to the Green Light email to get the planet's most important stories
“It’s worrying that land use has already pushed biodiversity below the level proposed as a safe limit,” said Prof Andy Purvis, of the Natural History Museum, and one of the authors. “Until and unless we can bring biodiversity back up, we’re playing ecological roulette.”
Humans just 0.01% of all life but have destroyed 83% of wild mammals – study | Environment | The Guardian
Humankind is revealed as simultaneously insignificant and utterly dominant in the grand scheme of life on Earth by a groundbreaking new assessment of all life on the planet.
The world’s 7.6 billion people represent just 0.01% of all living things, according to the study. Yet since the dawn of civilisation, humanity has caused the loss of 83% of all wild mammals and half of plants, while livestock kept by humans abounds.
The new work is the first comprehensive estimate of the weight of every class of living creature and overturns some long-held assumptions. Bacteria are indeed a major life form – 13% of everything – but plants overshadow everything, representing 82% of all living matter. All other creatures, from insects to fungi, to fish and animals, make up just 5% of the world’s biomass.
Humans have destroyed a tenth of Earth's wilderness in 25 years – study | Environment | The Guardian
The largest chunk of wilderness in the Amazon basin shrank from 1.8m sq km to 1.3m sq km, while the Ucayali moist forests in the west of the Amazon, home to more than 600 bird species and primates including emperor tamarins, was badly affected. The trajectory of loss in the world’s biggest rainforest was “particularly concerning”, the authors warned, given it happened despite deforestation rates slowing.
In Africa, none of the lowland forest in the western Congo basin is now considered globally significant wilderness, the study found. WWF believes the area is possibly home to more gorillas and chimpanzees than other area in the world.
The study said that wilderness was being loss faster than pristine places were being designated as protected areas, at 3.3m sq km versus 2.5m sq km.
Professor William Laurance of James Cook University said: “Environmental policies are failing the world’s vanishing wildernesses. Despite being strongholds for imperilled biodiversity, regulating local climates, and sustaining many indigenous communities, wilderness areas are vanishing before our eye.”
The study said the reason was that such areas are “assumed to be relatively free from threatening processes and therefore are not a priority for conservation efforts”.
The ramifications of remaining wilderness being corrupted were wide-ranging and irreversible for both people and wildlife, Watson said.
E PURE GLI INSETTI....
''The astonishing report highlighted in the Guardian, that the biomass of flying insects in Germany has dropped by three quarters since 1989, threatening an “ecological Armageddon”, is the starkest warning yet; but it is only the latest in a series of studies which in the last five years have finally brought to public attention the real scale of the problem.
Does it matter? Even if bugs make you shudder? Oh yes. Insects are vital plant-pollinators and although most of our grain crops are pollinated by the wind, most of our fruit crops are insect-pollinated, as are the vast majority of our wild plants, from daisies to our most splendid wild flower, the rare and beautiful lady’s slipper orchid
Furthermore, insects form the base of thousands upon thousands of food chains, and their disappearance is a principal reason why Britain’s farmland birds have more than halved in number since 1970. Some declines have been catastrophic: the grey partridge, whose chicks fed on the insects once abundant in cornfields, and the charming spotted flycatcher, a specialist predator of aerial insects, have both declined by more than 95%, while the red-backed shrike, which feeds on big beetles, became extinct in Britain in the 1990s.
Ecologically, catastrophe is the word for it.
It has taken us a lot of time to understand this for two reasons: one cultural, one scientific. Firstly, we generally do not care for insects (bees and butterflies excepted). Even wildlife lovers are fixed on vertebrates, on creatures of fur and feather and especially the “charismatic megafauna”, and in the population as a whole there is even less sympathy for the fate of the chitin-skeletoned little things that creep and crawl; our default reaction is a shudder. Fewer bugs in the world? Many would cheer.
The new data was gathered in nature reserves across Germany but has implications for all landscapes dominated by agriculture, the researchers said.
The cause of the huge decline is as yet unclear, although the destruction of wild areas and widespread use of pesticides are the most likely factors and climate change may play a role. The scientists were able to rule out weather and changes to landscape in the reserves as causes, but data on pesticide levels has not been collected.
“The fact that the number of flying insects is decreasing at such a high rate in such a large area is an alarming discovery,” said Hans de Kroon, at Radboud University in the Netherlands and who led the new research.
“Insects make up about two-thirds of all life on Earth [but] there has been some kind of horrific decline,” said Prof Dave Goulson of Sussex University, UK, and part of the team behind the new study. “We appear to be making vast tracts of land inhospitable to most forms of life, and are currently on course for ecological Armageddon. If we lose the insects then everything is going to collapse.”
The research, published in the journal Plos One, is based on the work of dozens of amateur entomologists across Germany who began using strictly standardised ways of collecting insects in 1989. Special tents called malaise traps were used to capture more than 1,500 samples of all flying insects at 63 different nature reserves.
Malaise traps were set in protected areas in Germany as part of the study
Facebook Twitter Pinterest
The malaise traps set in protected areas and reserves, which scientists say makes the declines even more worrying. Photograph: Courtesy of Courtesy of Entomologisher Verein Krefeld
Advertisement
When the total weight of the insects in each sample was measured a startling decline was revealed. The annual average fell by 76% over the 27 year period, but the fall was even higher – 82% – in summer, when insect numbers reach their peak.''
A giant insect ecosystem is collapsing due to humans. It's a catastrophe | Environment | The Guardian
UK butterflies worst hit in 2016 with % of species in decline, study finds | Environment | The GuardianUK butterflies worst hit in 2016 with 70% of species in decline, study finds | Environment | The Guardian
Una soluzione? Almeno una? GO VEGAN. Io non lo sono, confesso, ma voi non guardate a me, guardate questo:
''Avoiding meat and dairy products is the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the planet, according to the scientists behind the most comprehensive analysis to date of the damage farming does to the planet.
The new research shows that without meat and dairy consumption, global farmland use could be reduced by more than 75% – an area equivalent to the US, China, European Union and Australia combined – and still feed the world. Loss of wild areas to agriculture is the leading cause of the current mass extinction of wildlife.
The new analysis shows that while meat and dairy provide just 18% of calories and 37% of protein, it uses the vast majority – 83% – of farmland and produces 60% of agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions. Other recent research shows 86% of all land mammals are now livestock or humans. The scientists also found that even the very lowest impact meat and dairy products still cause much more environmental harm than the least sustainable vegetable and cereal growing.
The study, published in the journal Science, created a huge dataset based on almost 40,000 farms in 119 countries and covering 40 food products that represent 90% of all that is eaten. It assessed the full impact of these foods, from farm to fork, on land use, climate change emissions, freshwater use and water pollution (eutrophication) and air pollution (acidification).
“A vegan diet is probably the single biggest way to reduce your impact on planet Earth, not just greenhouse gases, but global acidification, eutrophication, land use and water use,” said Joseph Poore, at the University of Oxford, UK, who led the research. “It is far bigger than cutting down on your flights or buying an electric car,” he said, as these only cut greenhouse gas emissions.
“Agriculture is a sector that spans all the multitude of environmental problems,” he said. “Really it is animal products that are responsible for so much of this. Avoiding consumption of animal products delivers far better environmental benefits than trying to purchase sustainable meat and dairy.”
The analysis also revealed a huge variability between different ways of producing the same food. For example, beef cattle raised on deforested land result in 12 times more greenhouse gases and use 50 times more land than those grazing rich natural pasture. But the comparison of beef with plant protein such as peas is stark, with even the lowest impact beef responsible for six times more greenhouse gases and 36 times more land.''
Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth | Environment | The Guardian
Today, and probably into the future, dietary change can deliver environmental benefits on a scale
not achievable by producers. Moving from current diets to a diet that excludes animal products
(table S13) (35) has transformative potential, reducing food’s land use by 3.1 (2.8-3.3) billion
19 hectares (a 76% reduction), including a 19% reduction in arable land; food’s GHG emissions by
6.6 (5.5-7.4) billion metric tons of CO2eq (a 49% reduction);
-acidification by 50% (45-54%);
-eutrophication by 49% (37-56%);
-and scarcity-weighted freshwater withdrawals by 19% (−5 to 32%) for a 2010 reference year.
The ranges are based on producing new vegetable proteins with
impacts between the 10th- and 90th-percentile impacts of existing production. For the United
States, where per capita meat consumption is three times the global average, dietary change has
the potential for a far greater effect on food’s different emissions, reducing them by 61-73%. See
supplementary text (17) for diet compositions and sensitivity analyses and fig. S14 for alternative
scenarios.
https://josephpoore.com/Science%20360%206392%20987%20-%20Accepted%20Manuscript.pdf
Documento firmato da diverse centinaia di cialtroni che non credono all'ineluttabilità del disboscamento e della dieta carnivora. Chi si credono di essere, 'sti mangiabietole?
E poi questi:
vegetables had a footprint of about 322 litres per kg, and fruits drank up 962, meat was far more thirsty: chicken came in at 4,325l/kg, pork at 5,988l/kg, sheep/goat meat at 8,763l/kg, and beef at a stupendous 15,415l/kg. Some non-meat products were also pretty eye-watering: nuts came in at 9,063l/kg.
https://waterfootprint.org/en/water-footprint/product-water-footprint/water-footprint-crop-and-animal-products/
E pure la FAO:
http://www.fao.org/3/a-i7754e.pdf
DEDICA
Questo articolo lo dedico ad un pagliaccio che si spaccia per scienziato, che in 1 anno di discussioni sui vaccini non ha portato nessuna prova e nessuna fonte che ne certifichino la necessità (legge Lorenzin) tranne che 'mio zio è morto di difterite' (già, e magari tuo bisnonno di vaiolo); che non sa che il lago d'Aral non è in territorio russo; e che quanto alle coltivazioni, non solo giustifica la distruzione dell'Indonesia, ma anche la continuazione della dieta carnea.
Uno che nel rispondermi con la sua spocchia proverbiale, è stato capace di arrivare a dire questo:
''Sei tu che non li hai i calcoli dei costi, non sai di cosa parli e da ignorante e presuntuoso pensi di spiegarmi cose che studio da trenta anni. Hai scelto di credere alle vulgate di una sottocultura tanto arrogante quanto ignorante. Hai contributi seri? Informami. Mi porti i soliti calcoli stantii del cazzo fatti da gente in malafede e all'oscuro di ogni cosa in agricoltura e zootecnia, non parliamo poi di scienza in generale, e vorresti magzri stupirmi come se non li conoscessi e non li avessi già analizzati anni fa. Ma non hai altre e più imlortanti cose da fare che informarmi di cose vecchie di trenta anni. La sostenibilità va fatta sul serio, non col culo degli altri, come fanno i fenomeni all'amatriciana che vanno per la maggiore in Italia. Studia, che il Mencarelli del 91 mi pareva decisamente più sveglio. Siamo sette miliardi, di cui diversi che vogliono tutti gli agi che noi occidentali diamo per scontati. Soia e fagioli per tutti non sono un'opzione, così come una bistecca. Le soluzioni semplici a problemi complessi sono tipiche degli idioti.
E visto che siamo tanto preoccupati per le foreste pensa che catastrofe si dovessero recuperare terreni coltivabili per produrre cibo per sette miliardi di persone. Perché molto del terreno utilizzato per foraggi è del tutto inadatto a coltivazioni per il consumo umano. Ma i fenomeni ambientalisti che non distinguono una zappa da una vanga se ne rendono conto?''
Le risposte le trova sopra, caro pagliaccio Ma non c'é peggior sordo di chi no vuol sentire.