#and its only going to get worse because of the groundwater system the wells in these rural areas use

[aemiron-main]

watching the coal development moratorium get lifted in alberta & knowing that all of the water from the rockies to all of southern alberta is going to be completely fucked & toxic/filled with selenium (and we’ve already got issues with that & how it’s affecting the fish and bighorn populations) from coal-mining runoff & it’s going to cause absolute ecological disaster in this area and disaster for people re: safe water access & there’s ZERO new coal mining safety regulations in place (the only regulations are from 45 years ago and theyre barely anything/might as well not exist at all) and it’s just. A nightmare situation. The conservatives really are hellbent on fucking everything and everyone in this province over

[weirdnaturalscience]

Well-Known and Obscure Toxins: How They Work

Well this is a morbid subject but HEY it’s almost Halloween baby!! I was super curious about what toxins actually do on a molecular level after reading about cone snails. Obviously toxins can kill you, but how?? I wanted to know the grisly details. This is not an exhaustive list, just some types of poison, venom, and other toxic substances I was curious about, so let’s get to it.

Deadly Nightshade

Where is it found? Atropa belladonna grows in Europe, North Africa and Western Asia.

How it works: speeds up your heart and generally fucks with your nervous system. Deadly nightshade contains tropane alkaloids atropine, hyoscine (scopolamine), and hyoscyamine which disrupt the nervous system’s ability to regulate activities such as heart rate, breathing and sweating. It can cause narcosis, paralysis and heart failure as a result. Yikes. But an antidote exists that can reverse these affects if administered in time.

Toxicity: the entire plant is toxic, with roots having the highest toxicity but berries posing the greatest threat to humans because of their appearance. 10-20 berries can kill an adult, and 2-4 can kill a child. Symptoms of mild poisoning include dilated pupils, sensitivity to light, loss of balance, confusion, hallucinations (wild) and convulsions. Doesn’t sound like a good time.

Do not eat the shiny attractive berries!!! (Cows and rabbits and other animals can eat it but humans, dogs and cats...NOT SO MUCH) You can also get toxins on your skin just by touching the plant but this will not kill you.

Totally fun and not morbid fact: during the Renaissance, belladonna was used by women in small quantities to dilate pupils and give a seductive appearance, and this is how it gets its name belladonna, or beautiful woman. Atropa comes from the Greek Fate Atropos who cuts the threads of mortal lives with her shears. Snip snip!

Hemlock

Where is it found? Conium maculatum grows naturally in Europe and North Africa, and has spread to North and South America, Australia and Western Asia.

How it works: stops your breathing. The flowers contain an alkaloid called coniine, which directly affects the nervous system and causes paralysis of respiratory muscles, leading to death from oxygen deprivation. Hemlock poisoning is treated by artificial ventilation for 48-72 hours until the effects wear off.

Toxicity: about 100 milligrams of coniine is fatal to an adult. That’s about 6-8 hemlock leaves, or a smaller dose of the seeds or root. Animals can also be poisoned and killed by hemlock, but luckily dangerous substances cannot be passed into the human food chain from milk or fowl. Similar to nightshade, you can get a non-lethal amount of the toxin on your skin simply from touching this plant.

Basically you’re only gonna get poisoned by this if someone puts it in your tea, because I assume you’re not gonna just go around just like...chomping on pretty flowers. Right? Right?? ok good.

Arsenic

Where is it found? arsenic is a metalloid that occurs often with sulfurs and metals. It can be present in volcanic ash and groundwater, and as a result can be found in low (acceptable) levels in plants and seafood. Good news: it is rare to find arsenic occurring at dangerous levels in nature.

How it works: in high levels, arsenic disrupts ATP production and causes organ failure due to necrotic cell death. This process can last between 2 hours to multiple days. It can also be fatal in lower doses administered over a period of time, and as such, was a popular murder weapon when it was readily available during the 1800s in England. Symptoms such as vomiting and diarrhea don’t immediately alert someone that there has been an attempted murder unless maybe you’re Sherlock Holmes.

Toxicity: google probably thinks I’m a murderer and won’t tell me just how much arsenic will kill a person. COME ON, google!!! it’s for SCIENCE!

Arsenic is no longer readily available for people to just get in large quantities, so that’s a RELIEF.

Cyanide

Where is it found? cyanide is a chemical compound produced by certain algae, bacteria and fungi. It is also found in plants such as peaches, apples, apricots and bitter almonds. A type of bamboo that grows in Madagascar is so rich in cyanide that it would kill humans, but not the golden bamboo lemur for whom this bamboo is a primary source of food!!! You go girl, eat that cyanide bamboo.

How it works: for everyone who’s not a golden bamboo lemur, cyanide disrupts ATP production, affects the central nervous system and heart, and causes histotoxic hypoxia: the inability of cells to take up oxygen from the bloodstream. Antidotes can work if administered in time for lower doses of cyanide.

Toxicity: 200 milligrams of solid cyanide or a cyanide solution, or exposure to airborne cyanide of 270 parts per million is sufficient to cause death within minutes. Um, YIKES. Really, cyanide was already scary enough as a solid before nature went and made it into a gas that kills upon inhalation. DEEPLY uncool.

Murder mystery writers: slip belladona or arsenic into your literary victim’s tea. Belladonna is sweet, arsenic is tasteless, but cyanide has an acrid and bitter taste.

Fun (well, not fun) fact: if you eat 200 apple seeds (about 40 apple cores) you will receive a fatal dose of cyanide. So like, don’t do that. An apple a day keeps the doctor away and is completely safe, but 40 apples apple cores a day WILL KILL YOU

Vampire Bat Saliva

Where is it found? Vampire bats are found in the Americas.

How it works: a toxic substance called Draculin (I’m serious) in the saliva of vampire bats acts as an anticoagulant by inhibiting an enzyme involved in the coagulation pathway.

Toxicity: vampire bats are indeed venomous and toxic, but they are not at all lethal. It just sorta sucks if you’re being bitten by a vampire bat, but you’ll live. Unless that bat has rabies. Vampire bat saliva also contains an analgesic, meaning the bites are almost completely painless. SO THAT’S SOMETHING

Cobra Venom

“hello do you have a moment to hear about cell death?”

Where is it found? Many species of cobra are found throughout Africa, Southwest and Southeast Asia.

How it works: most cobra venom includes neurotoxins that cause paralysis as well as cytotoxins that cause necrosis and blood coagulation. blood coagulation can happen in minutes.

Toxicity: many types of cobra venom are treatable, but may leave disfigurement from necrosis. If this isn’t scary enough for you, just know that spitting cobras can reach 2.7 m (8.9 ft) in length and like to aim for the eyes.

But you’d still rather be bitten by a cobra than THIS deadly mofo:

Venom of the Inland Taipan

Where is it found? the inland taipan is the most venomous snake in the world and lives, YOU GUESSED IT, in Australia, ie the place where everything is designed to kill you. Evolution decided it can reach 1.8 meters (5.9 feet) with a maximum length of 2.5 meters (8.2 feet), which I think everyone can agree is a dick move on evolution’s part. Take it back, TAKE IT BACK!!!!!

How it works: the venom contains neurotoxins, hemotoxins, and myotoxins AND an enzyme to increase absorption of the venom. Basically it causes paralysis, blood coagulation and muscle damage, because one of these things wasn’t enough apparently. Antivenoms against Australian venomous snakes exist but are least effective against the venom of the inland taipan.

Toxicity: the inland taipan’s venom has a murine LD50 value of 0.025m/kg. This means there is a 50% chance that .025 milligrams per kilogram of weight will cause death. It’s bite contains enough venom to kill at least 100 adult humans. But GOOD NEWS! the inland taipan lives in such remote places that it rarely comes in contact with people. Other slightly less venomous snakes are therefore responsible for more deaths. ....So that’s...still terrifying. just don’t go into the woods in Australia FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

What’s deadlier than the deadliest snake in the world, you ask?

Tetrodotoxin

Where is it found? tetrodotoxin is found in several animals such as pufferfish, moon snails and the small but deadly Australian blue ringed octopus (DAMMIT Australia)

How it works: blocks sodium channels. This prevents normal transmission of signals between the body and brain, causing loss of sensation, paralysis and inability to breathe. Fun!!! Don’t pick up the frickin evil little octopus

Toxicity: more powerful than cyanide, that’s for sure, about a thousand times more powerful in fact. the oral median lethal dose (LD50) for mice as 334 micrograms per kilogram. Fatal pufferfish poisoning result in death in about 17 minutes. The blue-ringed octopus, however, carries enough venom to kill 26 adult humans within just a few minutes. There is no anti-venom.

What’s worse than that, you ask? Ah, you shouldn't have asked.

Conotoxin

Where is it found? Cone snails are found in the Indo-Pacific, the Cape of South Africa, the Mediterranean, and even southern California. Smaller species are not that dangerous. Larger species, however...

How it works: paralysis within minutes. cone snails have multiple harpoons to administer venom to prey (or unsuspecting humans). the harpoons deliver a venom that has HUNDREDS of different types of toxins, each targeting different nerve channels or receptors. Some cone snail venom even includes pain-reducing toxins. These pain reducing toxins can be 100 to 1,000 times more powerful than morphine. How THOUGHTFUL.

Toxicity: vastly more potent than tetrodotoxin. the oral median lethal dose (LD50) for mice is is 10 to 100 micrograms/kilogram. So like, GOOD LUCK WITH THAT LOL

Ricin

Where is it found? Ricin is obtained from the beans of the castor oil plant.

How it works: inhibits protein production and results in organ failure, respiratory failure and circulatory shock.

Toxicity: The median lethal dose (LD50) of ricin is around 22 micrograms per kilogram of body weight. If that sounds bad just wait till you hear about poison dart frogs 😭

VX

Where is it found? Nowhere in nature. VX is synthetic. It is an oily amber colored liquid in its natural form, was first developed as a pesticide and later for chemical warfare. It is considered a weapon of mass destruction and is banned under the Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993.

How it works: causes stimulation and fatigue of muscarinic and nicotinic ACh receptors, resulting in violent contractions followed by paralysis and death by asphyxiation.

Toxicity: 7 micrograms/kilogram. this is one of the most toxic synthetic substances on earth. Humans have got nothing on mother nature though...

Batrachotoxin

(This guy is called phyllobates TERRIBILIS. but is his cute little face terrible? noooo.)

Where is it found? in certain types of beetles, birds and poison dart frogs found in Central and South America.

How it works: similar to conotoxin, batrachotoxin interrupts sodium channels. The resulting migration of Na+ ions causes heart failure and paralysis.

Toxicity: The LD50 is around 2 micrograms per kilogram, meaning that an amount the size of two grains of table salt will kill you, and that this is even worse than a cone snail, Ricin, or VX. Batrachotoxin is one of the deadliest alkaloids known. No antidote exists.

Fun frog fact: this was the poison commonly used by the Embera-Wounaan for poison darts, and that’s where poison dart frogs get their name! How...cute.

Botulinum, most toxic substance in the world

Where is it found? made by the bacteria Clostridium botulinum and related species.

How it works: causes Botulism, which if untreated can result in paralysis and respiratory failure by preventing the release of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. Botulinum is used in very very very VEEEEEEERY small amounts in Botox, in case you ever needed reasons NOT to do Botox lol.

Toxicity: the lethal dose of 1.3–2.1 nanograms per kilogram in humans. of any toxin natural or synthetic, this is the deadliest known. However!! Actual good news this time: treatments involving antitoxin therapy and intubation are very successful and mortality from Botulism is extremely low. Yay! 

More good news: toxins have been instrumental in medicinal breakthroughs throughout history and continue to be vital to modern medicine. A drug for diabetes was recently synthesized from Gila monster venom: it increases the production of insulin when blood sugar levels are high. A painkiller has been developed for chronic pain patients that is derived from a component of the venom of our friend, you guessed it, the cone snail! These are just two examples of toxins being used in medicine, and a lot of research is still being done because face it: we still don’t know a lot about how our bodies work. Paralyzing agents are extremely important to our understanding of the body and the development of non-opiate non-addictive painkillers because of how they disrupt signals between nerves and the brain.

Long story short: don’t eat nightshade and stay OFF AUSTRALIAN BEACHES and you should be just fine. 

Oh and your tea is getting cold ;)

[wigmund]

From NASA Earth Observatory Image of the Day; January 30, 2018:

Cape Town’s Water is Running Out

Cape Town—a cosmopolitan city of 3.7 million people on South Africa’s western coast—is on the verge of running out of water. According to the city’s mayor, if current consumption patterns continue then drinking water taps will be turned off in April and people will have to start procuring water from one of 200 collection points throughout the city.

With key reservoirs standing at precariously low levels, the city forecasts that this so-called Day Zero will happen on April 12, 2018, though the exact date will depend on the weather and on consumption patterns in the coming months. The rainy season normally runs from May to September.

Cape Town’s six major reservoirs can collectively store 898,000 megaliters (230 billion gallons) of water, but they held just 26 percent of that amount as of January 29, 2018. Theewaterskloof Dam—the largest reservoir and the source of roughly half of the city’s water—is in the worst condition, with the water level at just 13 percent of capacity.

In practical terms, the amount of available water is even less than this number suggests because the last 10 percent of water in a reservoir is difficult to use. According to Cape Town’s disaster plan, Day Zero will happen when the system’s stored water drops to 13.5 percent of capacity. At that point, the water that remains will go to hospitals and certain settlements that rely on communal taps. Most people in the city will be left without tap water for drinking, bathing, or other uses.

The animated image at the top of the page shows how dramatically Theewaterskloof has been depleted between January 2014 and January 2018. The extent of the reservoir is shown with blue; non-water areas have been masked with gray in order to make it easier to distinguish how the reservoir has changed. Theewaterskloof was near full capacity in 2014. During the preceding year, the weather station at Cape Town airport tallied 682 millimeters (27 inches) of rain (515 mm is normal), making it one of the wettest years in decades. However, rains faltered in 2015, with just 325 mm falling. The next year, with 221 mm, was even worse. In 2017, the station recorded just 157 mm of rain.

This trio of images shows how the three successive dry years took a toll on Cape Town’s water system. Voëlvlei, the second largest reservoir, has dropped to 18 percent of capacity. Some of the smaller reservoirs like the Berg River and Wemmershoek are still relatively full, but they store only a small fraction of the city’s water. One of the largest reservoirs in the area—Brandvlei—does not supply water to Cape Town; its water is used by farmers for irrigation.

The line chart below details how water levels in the six key reservoirs have changed since 2013. Though the reservoirs are replenished each winter as the rains arrive, the trend at almost all of them has been downward. The one exception is Upper Steenbras, which holds about 4 percent of the city’s water and has been kept full because it is also used to generate electricity during peak demand. Also, the city is likely drawing down the largest reservoirs first to minimize how much water is lost to evaporation.

Piotr Wolski, a hydrologist at the Climate Systems Analysis Group at the University of Cape Town, has analyzed rainfall records dating back to 1923 to get a sense of the severity of the current drought compared to historical norms. His conclusion is that back-to-back years of such weak rainfall (like 2016-17) typically happens about once just every 1,000 years.

Population growth and a lack of new infrastructure has exacerbated the current water shortage. Between 1995 and 2018, the Cape Town’s population swelled by roughly 80 percent. During the same period, dam storage increased by just 15 percent.

The city did recently accelerate development of a plan to increase capacity at Voëlvlei Dam by diverting winter rainfall from the Berg River. The project had been scheduled for completion in 2024, but planners are now targeting 2019. The city is also working to build a series of desalination plants and to drill new groundwater wells that could produce additional water.

In the meantime, Cape Town authorities have put tight restrictions on residential water usage. New guidelines ban all use of drinking water for non-essential purposes, while urging people to use less than 50 liters (13 gallons) of water per person per day.

While many people are preparing for the water turn off in April, some observers see signs that Day Zero could still be averted. Kevin Winter, a hydrologist at the University the Cape Town, notes that by the end of January farmers will no longer be drawing from the system, meaning the water that remains may last a little longer. Overall, the agricultural sector uses about half of the water in the system.

References

City of Cape Town (2018) Dam Levels. Accessed January 29, 2018.

City of Cape Town (2018) Day Zero. Accessed January 29, 2018.

Daily Maverick (2018, January 22) From the Inside: The Countdown to Day Zero. Accessed January 29, 2018.

Ground Up (2017) Cape Town’s water crisis. Accessed January 29, 2018.

Muller, M. (2017) Understanding Cape Town's Water Crisis. Civil Engineering. Accessed January 29, 2018.

National Integrated Water Information System (2018) Surface Water Storage. Accessed January 29, 2018.

South African Weather Service (2017, January 26) Seasonal forecasts under the current drought conditions in the Western Cape. Accessed January 29, 2018.

University of Cape Town (2018) The Big Six Monitor. Accessed January 29, 2018.

University of Cape Town (2018, January 23) Five signs that Day Zero may be averted. Accessed January 29, 2018.

Water Shedding Western Cape Why is everyone so worked up if Steenbras dam is full? Accessed January 29, 2018.

Weather Underground (2018, January 19) It’s True: Cape Town’s Water Supply Is Three Months Away from a Shutdown. Accessed January 29, 2018.

Western Cape Government (2017, October 30) The Cape Water Crisis — FAQs and honest answers. Accessed January 29, 2018.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey and water level data from South Africa's Department of Water and Sanitation. Story by Adam Voiland. Instrument(s): Landsat 8 - OLI; In situ Measurement

[sciencespies]

Behold the Largest Congregation of Bald Eagles in the United States

https://sciencespies.com/nature/behold-the-largest-congregation-of-bald-eagles-in-the-united-states/

Behold the Largest Congregation of Bald Eagles in the United States

Despite pandemic-caused shutdowns and travel restrictions across Alaska, a small valley in the Southeast still expects its habitual visitors: bald eagles. In early November, thousands of the birds of prey gather in Haines, Alaska, forming one of the largest congregations in the world.

Alaskans often depict their location in the state by using their right hand as a map. With just a pointer finger and thumb extended, thumb pointing down, the Chilkat Valley—also known as the Valley of the Eagles—is where thumb meets hand on Alaska’s panhandle.

The Chilkat Valley, a peninsula saddled between glaciated mountain chains and the Chilkat and Chilkoot river systems, is nearly 75 miles north of Juneau. The valley extends from the Canadian border south, past the indigenous village of Klukwan, to the small town of Haines, originally called Deishú by Alaska Natives, or “end of the trail.” Sitting on the deepest fjord in North America, Haines (population: 2,500) can be reached by small plane or ferry from Juneau or by car from Canada. The town draws tourists seeking world-renowned heli-skiing, hiking, local brews, a thriving arts scene and, of course, bald eagle sightings.

The peak of congregation typically happens in the second week of November.

(Cindy Kassab/Getty Images)

The area is home to about 500 residential eagles that attract visitors year-round, most especially in the fall when migrating birds up the count to historic highs of 3,000. Eagles flock to the Chilkat River flats along the Haines Highway in early November for its unique hydrology. Percolating groundwater keeps late fall runs of chum and coho salmon spawning well into winter months, providing food for the birds.

“The eagles still have access to the chum (salmon) well into November and December because there is upwelling in this area that prevents the river from freezing,” says Nicole Zeiser, the Haines’ area management biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

In 1982, the State of Alaska established the Alaska Chilkat Bald Eagle Preserve, setting aside 48,000 acres of river-bottom to protect the eagle habitat and all five species of pacific salmon found there. That same year, a Haines local formed The American Bald Eagle Foundation (ABEF) to educate visitors on the region’s unique asset. The foundation serves as both a museum and live raptor center, home to several rehabilitated bird species called “avian ambassadors.” For the last 25 years, the nonprofit has hosted an annual four-day festival around the congregation of the eagles, consisting of a speaker series on local ecology, an artist bazaar and a film screening. For the grand finale, visitors are driven up the highway to witness a rehabilitated eagle release, followed by a banquet dinner.

Due to Covid-19 risks and stringent state travel restrictions, the festival, which typically draws around 300 visiting birders, photographers and tourists from all over the world, has been canceled. But the bald eagles, of course, haven’t gotten the message—and local residents never tire of the natural phenomenon.

One of those locals is Pam Randles, a now-retired high school science teacher and naturalist guide in Haines. Randles began counting the fall eagle migration 20 years ago as part of her teaching curriculum, and can’t quit.

“I watched them for so many years, I just have to go out to look,” she admits. On an overcast afternoon in mid-October, Randles drives her rig roughly 12 miles out to the Chilkoot River on the other of the peninsula, one of three rivers spawning salmon swim up before ending in the Chilkat River. Her binoculars bounce over potholes on the passenger seat.

“The eagles were everywhere, sitting in the trees waiting for the tides to go down so they could get some fish,” Randles recounts later that day. She laughs, describing an opportunist eagle who once snatched a fisherman’s pole with pink on the line. “It’s so cool to see them.”

When they spot salmon, the birds launch from their perch in the trees beside the river and land on their prey, dragging it to the adjacent shore to feed.

(Mark Newman/Getty Images)

The best viewing area for the eagles is the pullout off the Haines Highway at Mile Post 21 (marked by signs). The peak of congregation typically coincides, not incidentally, with the festival in the second week of November. Photographers line the river bed with tripods and all-weather gear to capture eagles in flight. When they spot salmon, the birds launch from their perch in the trees beside the river and land on their prey, dragging it to the adjacent shore to feed. Often, spectators catch a confluence of ravens and magpies that swoop in to squabble for the same fish. Late-denning grizzly bears sometimes join in on the fish feast.

The average high count of eagles is about 1,000 birds a year, counted from the ground, Randles says. That number is higher when aerial surveying is used, but plane data over the last 20 years is less consistent. The all-time high was in 2000, when Randles documented just shy of 3,000 birds. From 2009 to 2015, Randles’ counts averaged between 700 and 900 eagles.

The number of eagles in an area correlates with the abundance of fish, Randles says. In recent years, poor salmon returns in some stocks, or groups of salmon specific to certain areas, have meant a decline in eagles. This year, the Chilkat stock of chum failed to meet the healthy population estimate, or “escapement goal,” set by state biologists. State biologists measure the health of chum by counting those that come through a fish wheel on the Chilkat River, eight miles outside of Haines along the highway, then extrapolating from that number a goal population size.

Chum salmon missed their escapement goal range for 2020 significantly, by more than 50,000 fish, Zeiser says. She added that chum numbers across the state were a bust this year. State and federal agencies aren’t sure why this happened, though evidence points to environmental factors, such as poor ocean survival from fluctuating ocean temperatures or a lack of prey.

With less chum around, Zeiser says the eagles will have a harder time catching fish. Still, she’s confident the birds will survive one way or another. Missing the escapement goal one year is not a huge concern; falling short of it year after year is when it becomes an issue, according to the biologist. In 2017, the Board of Fisheries labeled the Chilkat king salmon a “stock of concern” after five years of diminishing returns. Since, more rigorous management has been put in place, contributing to a slight rebound in the stock.

“There are some coho salmon that also hang out and spawn in this area,” Zeiser says. “There should be something around for the eagles to eat, and if not, I’m sure they would adapt and eat a different food source to survive.”

Percolating groundwater keeps late fall runs of chum and coho salmon spawning well into winter months, providing food for the birds.

(Hegi1968/Getty Images)

When Tony Strong sips his coffee each morning from his home facing downriver on the Chilkat in Klukwan, he sees a host of animals who, like him, are indigenous to the land. Strong is Alaska Native Tlingit, a member of the Eagle-Wolf clan.

“When I see a large group of eagles, I’m seeing— emotionally—part of my family,” Strong says.

In the ancient village of Klukwan, salmon has provided sustenance as a primary source of protein for indigenous people for thousands of years. “This year has been worse than others,” Strong says of the fishing season. “Last year, you’d catch up to 100 [salmon] in one day.”

Typically, the Alaska Bald Eagle Festival’s eagle release takes place within the village, while a local group performs traditional Tlingit dances on the bank of the Chilkat River. Admission to the festival not only helps fund the foundation, but the influx of visitors helps support Klukwan’s museum, the Jilkaat Kwaan Heritage Center, which in turn helps preserve traditional knowledge and important clan regalia.

Klukwan sealed itself off from outside entry in March to protect village elders from Covid-19 infection. While the American Bald Eagle Foundation will remain open to visitors who follow state protocols and arrive in Haines, director Cheryl McRoberts urges would-be festivalgoers to hang on until next year.

Until then, locals in the Chilkat Valley are enjoying the eagles all to themselves.

“They’re starting to accumulate on the trees next to my house,” says Strong, who goes on to talk about the natural world around him. “We share this home with the eagles and with the ravens. They’re our neighbors. I am happy that people recognize our home as the home of the eagles, as well.”

#Nature

[jureeya]

I've been a fan of yours because of SSSS. Most of my family comes from Poland, so that's the only country I can give any real insight too. The current climate there is bad, to say the least. You know how there is a conservative push in the current United States? Well that's been happening for the last several years in Poland, with dangerous results. To make it worse, they passed environmental de-regulations that could cause the loss of UNESCO sights. I just wanted someone to know, thanks.

Thank you for this message!

It seems like in recent years there has been a political movement across the entire Western world to push conservatism in politics, though I don’t know enough about the inner workings of each country to really get into the reasons for that now. The problem with conservatism is that, while it isn’t necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, it is by definition a reaction to progress. In my opnion,  it is important to have a balance of progressivism and conservatism in any political system, but when conservatives are given too much power it becomes impossible for a coutry to move forward, and citizens grow discontent. I can’t say when this wave of right-wind politics will pass, but it will, because at the end of the day no one wants to see their country stagnate while others succeed. To speak very broadly, the rewards of progressivism are new ideas and innovations that make life better and more fair for all people; the reward of conservatism is staying in the same place.*

The thing about environmental deregulation is that it is never possible for polluting companies to go back to the “good old days” when the regulations weren’t there. In the same way that the US will never be able to completely free itself of the ACA (Obamacare) because so many people have already come to rely on it, once people have certain rights and protections it is very difficult to take those away without turning them against you. I bring up the ACA because in a lot of ways, environmental regulations are similar―they guarantee access to clean air, water, and protected sites, and protect citizens from pollution from industrial processes. These are protections that people will miss when they are gone.

When you deregulate, it’s rarely a gradual process. You’re basically allowing point pollution sources (usually factories) to return immediately to whatever they were doing before. If they were polluting rivers, then the people living downstream will see sudden fish kills and a rise in cancer and other pollution-related diseases. If they were polluting the air, the people living downwind will see a sudden rise in particulate matter, smog, and again, cancer. If they were polluting groundwater, tap water will begin to smell or turn unpleasant colors, and yes, if you drink enough it will give you cancer. Some of the consequences of dereglation are noticeable immediately and others cause life-long suffering. These are things that people notice. 

The problem with conservatives within the United States is that their most dedicated supporters come from the blue-collar communities built around mines, factories, agricultural operations, and other major pollution sources. These are the people that are downstream. They may not notice or appreciate the regulations, but when they lose them, they’ll be the first to know. And they’ll miss them when they are gone.

I can’t speak to what’s going on in Poland right now, but here’s my general thought on deregulation: When talking about pollution, humans are often compared to the metaphor of a frog in slowly heating water. As long as the problem builds slowly, we won’t notice until it’s too late. When you deregulate, it’s the oppsite: you basically take the frog and throw it into a pot of already-boiling water. That frog is going to notice, and when it does, it’s going to start voting bitches out of office.

All in all, I think that this will pass. The overall trend of history has been in our favor. Even if this is a major bump in the road, it is just a bump, and things will be better once we’re on the other side. Do what you can, donate to activist groups if you’re able, and educate yourself about the planet so that you can pass the knowledge on to others. The most important thing you can do is use what you know to change someone else’s mind.

*I know that I make progressivism seem like the right answer here, but I really do believe there needs to be a balance between the two. Progressivism taken too far has its own problems.

[earthstory]

The waste and the ecosystem

This image from 2011 sums up the results of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant meltdown on the surrounding territory; a single, unoccupied, damaged and crumbling house, with a radiation detector in the ground.

I previously discussed how the Fukushima plant operated and how the disaster proceeded. You can find those 2 pieces here: (http://tinyurl.com/lzm4yy5 and http://tinyurl.com/l8uoa47)

Restoring the flow of water to the plant by whatever means necessary was the emergency priority, but that did not end the problems, it just stopped things from getting worse. The Fukushima plant moved from a state where things could get rapidly worse to a state of a long-term ecological disaster, and that is where it is today.

It is now a story of contaminants moving in the environment and sometimes-desperate efforts to contain those contaminants; a common story in earth and environmental sciences these days, with the notable exception that these contaminants are radioactive.

The events the days and weeks after the earthquake left their impact on the local territory. The meltdowns scattered nuclear waste in several ways, mostly involving water. As I noted last time, the nuclear material itself may have flowed out of its containment shells, but once it enters a large enough mass of water and breaks up, the hazard from continued nuclear reaction decreases. The remaining uranium and plutonium will decay, but not in a catastrophic way.

But the water is the real mess here. Prior to the disaster, water flowed through the reactor to cool and moderate it; that water would pick up the products of the nuclear reaction and become nuclear waste. When the pumps were destroyed, that waste was no longer contained. Some of it likely leaked out into the plant, and a portion of it evaporated into steam.

Every time there was a steam pulse from the plant after the meltdowns, the radiation increased because the steam carried radioactive elements with it, spreading it throughout the area and contaminating anything it touched. It was dilute enough to not cause serious harm when it crossed the ocean, but it entered the atmosphere and traveled worldwide.

The explosions of the buildings saw large increases in radiation for the same reason; blasting out the radioactive water.

This is fundamentally different from what happened at Chernobyl and there’s a major reason why Chernobyl was worse; fire. At Chernobyl, the reactor contained carbon rods. When the reactor exploded and melted, those rods burned; just like burning charcoal on the grill. That fire poured the pollution from the plant out into the atmosphere and across Europe. Here, some water did escape, but most of the waste remained as water; that water is the problem.

Restoring water to the buildings slowed the crisis but did not stop it. The newly injected water is keeping some of the radioactive material cool, but it isn’t contained. Here is the scenario; the materials must be sprayed with water to control the reaction, but the piping has been destroyed, and the area is too radioactive to enter to rebuild the entire piping system. So what happens? The water is sprayed into the plant and it goes wherever it is going to go.

This is a bad thing but it’s unavoidable. Some of the water sprayed into the plant is going to leak out and enter the environment. The spent fuel needs to be covered with water, probably for decades. Better cooling systems have been slowly built, but it is really difficult since the plant itself is so hazardous.

Water leaking out of the plant was acknowledged by the company which operates the facility. The radiation from the plant has been detected in the groundwater and out in the Pacific Ocean, where it is slowly forming a plume that will migrate away from the plant.

Contaminant flow in groundwater and in the ocean is an incredibly common problem these days and it is very difficult to deal with. Industrial and government operations often spent years dumping waste into areas that would contaminate groundwater. Where this has happened, there is often no good way to clean it up. Groundwater flows slowly through cracks and voids in the rocks, often taking decades or centuries to move significant distances. The slow movement helps keep it somewhat contained, but it also contaminates every surface of every grain. Cleaning up the results often becomes impossible; you can’t clean every single grain of sand.

Mitigation strategies vary from simply monitoring where the plume is going if it isn’t hazardous to literally trying to capture every drop of contaminated water in an aquifer and sending it through a cleaning facility at enormous cost.

In this case, some of the water can be contained. One idea that was floated was to literally freeze the ground. That technique has been attempted as an oil recovery method; freezing the ground around an area while you process the material inside, using the frozen ground to keep the oil you’re extracting from escaping. It may well be attempted here and might be the right solution, but it has never been attempted on such a large scale and who knows what problems might occur keeping the ground frozen for the time it will take for the radioactivity to subside. Other materials, such as silt and clay, which are less permeable to water flow can also be injected into the ground to slow migration of the water; this is being done, but it’s not a perfect solution.

That of course doesn’t help the ocean; you can’t just freeze the ocean. There are apparently efforts underway to strengthen the seawall surrounding the plant as a barrier to additional flow, and a fence line of silt has been constructed to help hold the water in. These efforts will help, but groundwater flow is always difficult to manage; there are just so many different places it can go. In the ocean, hopefully “dilution” will help since the ocean is rather large, but that only goes so far.

That is going to be the situation long term. The major problem now is containing an enormous amount of contaminated water. This water is literally nuclear waste, there’s no way to stop generating it, much of it has already escaped, and controlling it will be a challenge for years and decades. The long-term answer probably will involve simply abandoning areas as they are contaminated, including areas of the ocean where the plumes flow. This is a mess that the inhabitants of the area will be dealing with for the rest of their lives, and probably longer, and there is little that can be done to change that.

-JBB

Image credit: http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2011/s3363735.htm

Press report: http://www.voanews.com/content/japan-fukushima-operator-acknoledges-contaminated-water-flowing-into-sea/1707043.html

Press report: http://rt.com/news/tepco-admits-leak-fukushima-433/

Press report: http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/07/world/asia/japan-fukushima

[sejinpk]

So for that top 5 ask meme thing... How about top 5 live action films?

Thanks for the ask! I don’t often talk about live-action movies, so I’m glad you asked this! ^_^ There are only four entries because there are really only four live-action movies that I feel like I can confidently say are truly favorites.

1. American Psycho

American Psycho is the first (maybe the only?) satire where I feel like I’m actually able to see/get the satire for myself, though, admittedly, this was only after the commentary initially told me as much. >.

This clip highlights what I’m talking about regarding multiple levels, specifically the part starting right around the 1:15 mark (note: the clip is VERY NSFW!!!!).

On the one hand, it’s a horrifying scene in which a crazed Christian Bale is chasing a prostitute through his apartment building with a chainsaw. She bangs on other residents’ doors and screams loudly, but nobody comes to help her, or even to see what’s going on. And eventually Bale kills her with the chainsaw, just as you think she might have been able to get away. It’s heartbreaking.

But on the other hand, right at that 1:15 mark, you see Christian Bale sort of *giggle* trot into view covered in blood and wearing nothing but *snort* socks and tennis shoes, carrying a *kheheheeheaahhhaahahahahaaa* chainsaw in front of him like a *full-blown laughter and cackling* demented phallic symbol, running buck naked through his apartment complex, and he somehow has perfect aim to be able to drop the chainsaw down the middle of what looks like three or four stories of spiral stairs so that it actually hits the woman he’s chasing. The absurdity of the scene is absolutely hilarious.

I love Christian Bale’s acting as Patrick Bateman. I also really like Willem Dafoe’s performance. In fact, I like most of the performances in the movie. Regarding Bale in particular–and this is something said by the movie’s director in interviews–he really understood the dorkiness and the pathetic nature of Bateman. I think thefirst video clip above highlights some of this (random interesting fact: apparently Christian Bale can sweat on cue, as he broke out in a sweat at the exact same time in every take of that scene), as does this clip of Bateman’s music monologues, which are hilarious (I wanted to include the video in this post, but Tumblr apparently has a 5-video-per-post limit, so this is the one that got cut).

The movie is legitimately funny, both because of Bale’s portrayal of Bateman, and because of the satire. I think it does a really good job of getting you to laugh at him, rather than with him (in this case, that’s the intended effect). The movie also handles its tone very well, which was super-important for creating the effect the filmmakers wanted.

I also think the movie’s themes and social commentary are interesting and still relevant today, even though the story is set in the 80′s, the movie was released in 2000, and the book the movie is adapted from was published in 1991. It’s only been on the last one or two re-watches (I’ve watched the movie several times) that I’ve started to understand how the movie uses physical violence and the horror elements as a metaphor for class- and economic-based systemic violence.

2. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

I also really like Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which this movie is a sequel to, but I like Dawn of the Planet of the Apes a little more. The key thing I love about these movies (and especially Dawn) is the humanity they give both the human and ape characters, which is what makes the drama and action so compelling. Both sides of the conflict, humans and apes, are given so much depth and nuance. Their conflict isn’t black and white, and you’re able to understand, and empathize and sympathize with, both sides equally strongly.

I think the character work in the movie is incredible. Practically all the characters we get any kind of time with are developed–we can see how they think, what motivates them, what their priorities are, even if they’re given very little screentime. One of my absolute favorite emotional scenes in the movie is when Dreyfus, Gary Oldman’s character, turns on his phone after the humans get power back, and as he’s looking through old pictures of his family, who have died, he just completely breaks down. It’s such a moving, heartbreaking scene.

Also, Andy Serkis + motion capture = Dawn is a poster child for this.

3. Tai Chi Master

So far, there have only been two works of fiction that have had a significant influence/impact on my life in some way. One is the Monogatari Series. Tai Chi Master (called Twin Warriors in the U.S.; original Chinese title 太極張三豐(Tàijí Zhāng Sānfēngin Mandarin)) is the other. This movie is what got me interested in learning tai chi, which eventually led to my broader interest in health, which in turn led me to where I am today, in school studying to become a Registered Dietitian.

It’s the story of the supposed legendary founder of tai chi, Zhang Sanfeng (played by Jet Li), though I don’t know how closely it adheres to the actual legend. I find the movie generally enjoyable, but the main reason it’s on this list is because of the impact it had on my life.

This sequence in particular, in which Jet Li’s character is figuring things out, testing ideas, and going through the initial process of creating tai chi, is what enamored me so much and got me interested in learning it (of course, the tai chi in the movie is stylized and exaggerated to varying degrees):

On a somewhat related note, I’ve heard of a movie called Pushing Hands (the name of an essential practice for developing sensitivity in internal martial arts), which has at least a tangential connection to tai chi (but sounds interesting even if the connection is really weak), but I have yet to get around to seeing if I can find it to watch.

4. How the Earth Changed History

(I wasn’t overly fond of any of the video clips I found, so that’s why there’s not one here.)

How the Earth Changed History, originally called How Earth Made Us in Britain (it’s a BBC production), narrated/presented by geologist Iain Stewart, is easily my favorite documentary. It’s about how planetary forces have shaped human history. It’s broken up into five parts. The first four parts each focus on a planetary force: water, the deep earth, wind, and fire. The fifth part focuses on how humans have influenced/affected the planet.

One thing I really like about this documentary is that it’s entertaining. In addition to just making the narration interesting, Stewart goes the extra mile to take the viewer into some really neat places, such as inside holes and tunnels dug to get at groundwater; a crystal cavern (a giant chamber that was initially sealed and filled with water, in which enormous crystals grew); on a catamaran in the ocean; the middle of the Sahara desert; various archaeological and historical sites; through a literal fire; etc.

I also found the information itself really interesting. Here are a few of what I thought were the highlights:

In the wind/air segment, he talks about how the Sahara desert (which is formed and maintained by large-scale wind patterns) acts as a natural barrier, which, in the past, inhibited trade between civilizations on different sides of it. As a result, a town/city (I don’t remember the name) in a key mid-desert location became an important trade hub. Centuries later, Christopher Columbus discovered the trade winds (more large-scale wind patterns), which ultimately led to a new trade route/cycle that bypassed the mid-desert city. Thus, the wind was influential in both the city’s rise and fall.

In the deep earth segment, he talks about the relationship humans have with fault lines: they enable us to more easily get at the various minerals that arise from within the earth, such as copper, but they’re inherently dangerous (earthquakes). Humans now have the ability to shield our buildings from the impact of earthquakes; it’s all a matter of choosing to do so.

The “Human Planet” segment is where I learned about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. He also talks about an Indonesian mud volcano, which is still erupting. In the documentary, Stewart says it was caused by human activities (drilling), but it sounds like there’s still debate about that, with some scientists supporting drilling as the cause, and others saying it was caused by an earthquake. Either way, the documentary shows that the incessant mud bubbling up from inside the earth literally buried the nearby town, and that was six to seven years ago (the documentary was released in 2010, and the mud volcano began erupting near the end of May, 2006). I can’t imagine how much worse it’s gotten.

In addition to what I’ve said about the documentary, I came across a very well-written review on Amazon that does an excellent job of describing the content and discussing why I find it so interesting.

I don’t normally like to do this, but I really want more people to watch this documentary (honestly, though, it’s only like $10 - $15 new on Amazon), so here are links to each segment on YouTube:

Water

Deep Earth

Wind

Fire

Human Planet

Again, thanks for sending me this ask! I really enjoyed making this post! ^_^ If there’s anything you want to respond to, please feel free to do so! :D

[paulisweeabootrash]

Book Review: How A Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom (vol. 1)

“In history, there are some scenes which are easily dramatized by later generations.  There are some conditions for this: First, it must be the turning point of an era. Second, it must have a certain flair when dramatized.”

In Elfrieden history, I assume the most dramatizable scene is going to be the point at which King Souma causes some kind of disaster that could’ve been prevented by listening to the kingdom’s existing experts.

Today we’re looking at a book again, and it’s... bad.

How A Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom, vol. 1 (2016)

Souma Kazuya is an economist by training who dreams of working in the civil service.  But one day, he, like any number of unremarkable Japanese men before him, gets isekai’d into a fantasy world, specifically into the Kingdom of Elfrieden, which is (of course) at war with a Demon King.  The incumbent king decides Souma is The Prophesied Hero and abdicates the throne to him, along with arranging a political marriage between Souma and the king’s daughter Liscia to give him a veneer of legitimacy.  A mixture of societal reform and silliness is supposed to ensue, and if you’ve already read this and the series eventually delivers on either, let me know, because this first book in the series is bad enough on both counts that I am not interested in continuing.

After a shaky and rushed start, it felt like the book would pick up.  But instead, we got the talent contest, which poisoned the rest of the book for me.  See, in the third chapter, Souma decides to recruit fresh talent for his new administration by seeking people with extraordinary skills in any number of areas, no matter how unusual or seemingly-useless they are.  Many of them compete in contests in their respective skills (including martial arts, beauty, and... uh... an apparently performing arts category vaguely called “talent”), and the winners of some of those contests go to Souma for him to evaluate what jobs they’d be suited for, while others are sent directly to him due to unique abilities.  Those who Souma evaluates in person include a child who can talk to animals (apparently a nearly unheard-of talent even in this world of magic), a prolific memorizer of books who claims to be the greatest genius in Elfrieden and in search of a king worthy of his service, and the country’s most... skilled... eater(???), all of whom he finds a place for in his master plan.  It’s kind of stupid, but at this point, the book still seemed like it could become the story of an eccentric leader laterally-thinking his way to unusual solutions... if it weren’t for Aisha.

Aisha is a wood elf and the winner of “best martial artist”, and Souma's questions about her and her people’s way of life portend the terrible direction this will go.  Aisha’s people are subsistence hunter-gatherers, and when Souma provides just the most cursory explanation of forest management to her, she obsequiously pledges to defend him with her life.  Nobody finds this strange, nobody doubts the king.  It’s not even so much that I think Aisha’s people must have their own indigenous forestry practices (although that is certainly possible) as it is that this is one of many half-baked and overconfident schemes to rebuild this world in Earth’s image, and no matter how hamfistedly Souma does it, Aisha’s starry-eyed enthusiasm for anything he says or does comes off as the correct response.  Her introduction sets a different and awful tone, in two ways.

The first problem is that, over and over, Souma is... an incompetent person’s idea of a competent person.  He does not act in a way that ought to convince either the audience or the other main characters that he understands what the kingdom’s problems are or actually knows how to fix them.  Any effort on Souma’s part happens unseen in the background through magical multitasking, and it is rare that he is shown actually trying to understand or work on something instead of just pontificate about it at other people.  In one particularly frustrating move, near the end of the book, there is a landslide which was made worse than it would’ve otherwise been because of someone refusing Souma’s forestry policies.  If the landslide had happened before Aisha swooned over the concept of forest management, this could have easily instead been an example of Souma learning about a problem he is equipped to solve, an opportunity for him to prove himself.  But instead it’s just an “I told you so” moment.  On top of it, if Souma had misunderstood, misremembered, or miscommunicated his vague promises of forest management by culling too many trees or trees of the wrong age, he might have made the situation worse, something which I was able to learn in about two minutes of Googling but I guess the author didn’t bother to.  Introducing this real-world information could have created drama, or even just a near miss that once again would have created a better opportunity for Souma to come off as actually heroic and actually knowledgeable.

Even his introduction of a public sewer and water system, probably the best-thought-out reform plan in the book, doesn’t stand up to more than slight scrutiny.  The capital of Elfrieden has open sewers, a real-life problem (although it also incorporates the common trope of the medieval English dumping sewage directly into the street, which is a massive exaggeration) and that an enclosed sewer system was the solution.  Okay, so far so good.  He has a former elaborate system of escape tunnels renovated into a multi-tiered system of aqueducts for both fresh and waste water.  He thinks just enough about this scheme to include the completely reasonable step of at least some basic cleaning of the outgoing wastewater... but he gives no thought to the quality of the incoming water.  He also replaced the existing, apparently sufficient, well system with the same inflow of untreated river water that is then flowing downward into the sewer.  Even upstream of the sewer, replacing groundwater with untreated river water seems like a great way to produce an outbreak of fecal- and animal-borne diseases like cholera or giardiasis or whatever their fantasy world equivalents are.  Did he stop to consider that there might be a reason people weren’t already drinking the river?  Nobody knows, nobody cares, the whole thing is presented as an exposition dump in a conversation months after construction started, and it moves on to another tangential topic about a page later anyway!  Okay, so how is this safe?  Is there magic and/or some locally-made existing technology that might be suitable for decontaminating the water?  No, in another exposition dump, this time of Souma explaining background information directly to the audience as narrator, we learn that magic doesn’t work on infectious diseases.  Then why the hell would you have people replace their well water with an untreated river, you absolute moron?

Some outcomes of the changes he makes -- the wolf people starting a soy sauce company, for example -- are clearly meant to be punchlines.  I understand that, and I’m not condemning this for its genre or even its optimism, really.  But I am demanding that a story that sets it self up as being about “a realist hero” fixing a stuggling country actually show some sign of thinking about what that entails at a more than surface level.  The author could at least have set up Souma to be a playful and sanitized version of the Meiji Emperor, and have to face some kind of meaningful resistance by supporters of the old ways as he imposes sweeping top-down changes to eventually improve things, or of Catherine the Great, imposing his idea of modernization on a less-than-enthusiastic people, but without the tyrannical parts (I mean, we still want our main character to be sympathetic, right?).  And hey, that latter inspiration would even offer harem shenanigans, which tend to go over well in this sort of story.

As Souma comes in and orders changes, there is also little resistance or failure to be found.  He’s just another boringly-unbeatable isekai protagonist, with his only distinction being that he’s unbeatable in policy instead of combat.  I’m not saying I don’t want a story of someone succeeding at something.  There don’t need to be outright tragic consequences to Souma’s decisions (although some decisions really should have them).  But it blows chance after chance to show us the process of improving a country.

And that idea of improving a country brings me to the second giant glaring problem.  Even as Souma introduces the people of Elfrieden to many things that I would argue are improvements -- a greater diversity of foods, broadcast media, deliberative democracy, sewers, paved roads -- he does it in a way that people for the most part accept.  Over and over, he just sort of shows up and does things, succeeds, and someone praises him for telling them how stupid and backwards they’ve been.  And that gives the book an unfortunate colonialist implication.  Yes, he has been summoned by magic for the purpose of being declared a hero, but he still acts like he’s there to “civilize��� people, which is absolutely jarring to see in a book published in the past century. It’s just scene after scene of Souma taking a top-line glance at the current state of Elfrieden and then succeeding telling people he explicitly describes as primitive how to fix themselves by spouting a solution about as specific and useful as you’d get from a cable news political commentator or high-school-level textbook.  (Interestingly, his definition of “primitive” is such that he objects to an apparently equal-footing and non-coercive form of polygamy, but not to the legal power to punish an entire family for the crimes of an individual.  So that’s... lovely.)

We just see Souma effortlessly and correctly “fix” these hapless primitives, with very little attempt to flesh out the world before he arrived, very little attempt to show the audience that the problems exist in the way they are briefly mentioned, and just the praise of almost-comically-overenthusiastic supporting characters to show that his alleged solutions actually fix anything.  Souma is eventually depicted learning from locals and acknowledging the existence of experts who know things he doesn’t, but it takes until about 3/4 of the way through the book before that happens, and infuriatingly this is a shift that is not addressed.  There is no learning process, no setback that causes him to seek to understand how and why things might be different in this fantasy world than they are in our own.  And it’s not until the epilogue that we see any meaningful formation of a reactionary plot against Souma’s moves against formerly-autonomous (and highly-self-dealing) nobles, a backlash I expected from the beginning.  I wonder if the author realized these problems and/or received harsh feedback on the first few chapters.

As much as I’ve complained about That Time I got Reincarnated as a Slime, at least that had Rimuru using his OP helpfulness to play around with the absurdity of a world that runs like an RPG.  In that series, the hapless primitives Rimuru patronizes are, at first, NPCs incapable of doing anything consequential autonomously.  No such in-universe justification, no matter how weak, exists here.  It’s just a world of people who Souma can somehow enlighten with little effort because he is better than them. 

I am willing to accept that some of my complaints are really just distaste at the genre or storytelling style, and that of course a story focusing on the actions of a king isn’t going to look much at what’s going on outside the court.  But it is so grandiose and so disinterested in showing us the results of Souma’s policies that even the most charitably I can approach this story, it’s like watching him brag without backing it up.  And that, combined with the colonialist implications and uneventful stream of dumb and unbelievable successes mentioned above are why I can’t stand this book.  At best, this book is like reading someone else try to describe the rambling deconstruction/author tract Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality but fail by leaving out all of the parts where dramatic things happen and how magic works is explained.  At worst, it’s The White Man’s Burden: Medieval Fantasy Edition.  And I hate it.

-----

W/A/S: 7/3/8

Weeb: Offhand references to chuunibyou.  Internet memes.  This damn quote: “Tomoe’s going to be my sister-in-law.  A wolf-eared loli sister-in-law... that’s too many character attributes.”  This book, unsurprisingly, presumes not just a Japanese audience, but an otaku audience.  But make no mistake, broader Japanese cultural background info is also casually woven in, whether it’s mentions of this guy or this (NSFW) art genre or just the main character’s assumptions about the right way to do things.

Ass: The author sure does seem to like to describe how form-fitting the female characters’ clothes are, but it never gets explicit.  Just the low end of a certain kind of cringey bad writing.

Shit: There are, somewhere in here, the seeds of a few interesting ideas.  And there are certainly still ways the writing could be even worse (at least it’s no Battlefield Earth!).  But so much of the plot is handled so poorly that I can’t stop being angry at it.  I am not surprised to learn that this was originally self-published online; it feels like a story that was made up on the fly with minimal planning.  This book may well be a couple points better on this scale if the author had revised the first, oh, half to three quarters before the print publication so that there is more showing rather than telling and some sort of character arc for Souma.  But just having him suddenly act differently?  For me, it’s too little too late.

[bountyofbeads]

You CAN'T EXPECT CBP and ICE officials who have to carry out Trump's and Miller's INHUMANE POLICIES and NOT be AFFECTED PERSONALLY (Many are parents who are just trying to put food on their tables like the rest of us😭🙏). Trump is FORCING His UGLY, RACIST, XENOPHOBIC INHUMANE views on an entire agency and its TRAGIC with real life CONSEQUENCES. 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬

“Bodies and minds are breaking down”: Inside US border agency’s suicide crisis

By Justin Rohrlich & Zoë Schlanger | Published July 2, 2019 | Quartz | Posted July 12, 2019 |

Mental health issues are plaguing the ranks of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), as officers deal with increasing job stress related to the crisis at the southern border and lingering financial problems caused by the partial government shutdown.

In May, CBP asked for an additional $2.1 million for the agency’s Employee Assistance Program (EAP), which provides counseling and other help to workers facing personal or job-related issues. The additional money was needed, CBP wrote in a funding request obtained by Quartz, to respond to the “health and safety of its workforce.”

“EAP use…increased in response to unanticipated critical incidents and other emerging crises, such as the unexpected response required for migrant caravans, employee suicides, and the need for a financial wellness program after the extended partial federal government shutdown,” CBP wrote in the filing. “The unanticipated and unprecedented situation at the southern border over the past 12 months resulted in a significant increase in EAP activity and it is expected to continue while the migrant crisis is ongoing.”

Current and former CBP officers, union leaders, and internal CBP documents all describe an agency that is overburdened and understaffed, struggling to keep up with the growing crisis sparked by the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration. To handle the rush of detentions, the agency now requires mandatory overtime and forced job relocation to bolster its ranks. This added pressure, coupled with the usual strain of working border security and dealing with often desperate families seeking asylum—many of whom face indefinite detention as they await overloaded court systems—is wearing down the force.

According to its own records, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), CBP’s parent agency, has known about this issue for years. But its efforts to address the problem have been intermittent and neglected. And according to at least one expert, agency supervisors have in fact actively discouraged officers from seeking the help they need.

While the emotional stress affecting CBP officers can’t compare to the suffering of the tens of thousands of migrants they detain, the same government policies are at the heart of both problems.

“My continuing thought has been that this level of activity combined with the disastrous policy of wholesale separating children from parents has a very negative impact on CBP personnel. They did not join to take a 2-year-old from his mother,” former CBP commissioner Gil Kerlikowske told Quartz.

For three straight years, law enforcement suicides in the United States have surpassed line of duty deaths. At CBP, one of the largest law enforcement agencies in the country, more than 100 employees died by suicide between 2007 and 2018, according to the agency itself. Morale among CBP officers ranks among the lowest of all federal agencies.

Tony Reardon, the president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents CBP officers, confirmed that stress at the agency is higher than it has been in the past. The force is overworked, he said, and the migrant crisis has changed the nature of the job.

“You have human beings, their bodies and their minds, breaking down,” Reardon said.

Vincent Salgado, a CBP officer at the Calexico border crossing in California, said the excessive overtime is exhausting. “The morale is down,” he told Quartz. While he doesn’t personally know anyone at CBP who has died by suicide, Salgado said he’s aware that it’s a problem. “Suicides have been ongoing.”

When a CBP officer takes their own life, word typically reaches Reardon through the union’s local chapter staff, who sometimes helps grieving families navigate the life insurance process. “I’ve gotten the phone calls. It’s heartbreaking when you hear about someone who is not able to cope, and who ends up leaving their family,” Reardon said.

He doesn’t have access to data about how many officers have died by suicide recently, but he said he noticed an unsettling uptick in those phone calls, beginning about two years ago. “It started to look like, whoa, there’s a problem here.”

He’s spoken with CBP officials about the need to more urgently address the issue. “I know they’re trying to deal with it. I’m continuing to talk to them about trying to get even more done.”

The union also represents employees of 32 other US federal agencies. “I’m sure that there are people who commit suicide in other agencies,” Reardon said, but “the only suicides I’ve been made aware of are those at CBP.”

Overworked

A nationwide and ongoing CBP officer shortage means that virtually everyone at the agency is working mandatory double shifts that add up to 16-hour days. Salgado said he works double shifts two to three times a week.

“It means less time at home. You don’t have the opportunity to see family members, or attend special outings,” he said.

What’s worse, managers often tell officers they have to work a double shift with very little notice, often on the same day. And refusing is not an option. “It’s a requirement of the job,” Salgado said.

Understaffed ports also means more work per person every shift.

“If it’s not the overtime, it’s the workload,” Salgado said. “Everything works hand in hand. The overtime pushes them to exhaustion, especially if they’re having to do it two or three days in a row. And it’s not just exhaustion, it’s their family life.”

At the same time, some officers are still struggling to regain their footing after the 35-day partial government shutdown that straddled 2018 and 2019. Many officers were required to work without pay for two pay periods in a row. This is no small thing when roughly 78% of US workers live paycheck to paycheck.

“They had to deal with all the stressors that come from those situations. Can’t pay your mortgage, can’t pay your rent, cause you don’t have any money,” Reardon said. “Many of them are still trying to catch up.”

Understaffed

CBP has long struggled to both find and retain officers. The time-to-hire for a CBP officer, from the recruitment to job offer, takes an average of 300 days. Its staffing shortfall now, according to the union that represents its employees, is 3,700 officers.

And due to the crisis at the southern border, the workload is rising, requiring the agency to accomplish more with fewer people. At locations along the southern border, the conditions are a particularly hard sell. Many officers live in remote, lonely towns, and work in 120-degree heat.

As CBP official Benjamine “Carry” Huffman and Border Patrol sector chief Rodolfo Karisch put it in testimony to Congress in March:

“One example of a hard-to-fill location is Lukeville, Arizona. Although many of our Arizona border locations are remote and hard-to-fill, Lukeville is particularly challenging. It is an isolated outpost along the Mexican border, in a community of fewer than 50 people. It has one small grocery store and gas station. The closest school and medical clinic is 39 miles away in Ajo, Arizona. The nearest metropolitan area—Phoenix—is 150 miles away. The climate is especially harsh; in the summer, many of the local roads are impassable because of monsoons. Furthermore, the groundwater in Lukeville requires significant treatment to make it potable, due to traces of arsenic.”

At the same hearing, the two said the harsh conditions make officers “reluctant to encourage their family members or friends to seek employment with CBP.”

But the agency desperately needs bodies. Between 2015 and 2016, CBP “nearly tripled” its recruiting events across the country, according to a USA Today investigation, showing up at  “country music concerts, NASCAR races and Professional Bull Riders events to find applicants.”

In 2017, US president Donald Trump signed an executive order demanding CBP hire 15,000 more personnel, 10,000 more CBP officers and 5,000 more Border Patrol agents. In 2018, CBP only managed to hire 368 CBP officers and 118 Border Patrol agents. An extensive application, involving a polygraph test that more than 40% of applicants fail, makes the hiring process extremely slow.

To hire those 5,000 Border Patrol agents alone, the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General estimated that the agency would have to screen 750,000 applicants.

To help relieve these staff shortages on the southern border, CBP has begun reassigning officers from other ports of entry. There are 328 locations in the United States where migrants can legally cross and that are staffed by CBP officers, and most of them are nothing like the southern border. Many are relatively sleepy, like some of the smaller ports on the Great Lakes along the border with Canada.

These temporary new assignments used to be voluntary, but because there are so few willing to go, the agency has begun “drafting” people, requiring them to make the move.

These drafted officers are given three or four days notice to get on a plane and head south, Reardon said. “Most people have families. You can’t give them a month’s notice?” Reardon asked when he testified to Congress in March. The involuntary overtime and involuntary reassignments, he said, “disrupts” families and “destroys morale.”

The draft policy, which began in 2015but has intensified under Trump, means that an officer from, say, a quiet port on the border with Canada could suddenly find themselves in the crushing heat of southern Texas, working double shifts in packed migrant detention centers. Known as “Operation Southern Support,” the policy also leaves ports of entry in other parts of the county understaffed, increasing the workload on the coworkers left behind.

“You can’t just say, ‘My child is in a school play today,’” Reardon said. “It doesn’t matter. You’re working.”

Strains of the job

Reardon recently visited the Fort Brown CBP facility in Brownsville, Texas, where he said he found officers preparing ham sandwiches for migrant detainees.

“These are highly trained people slapping sandwiches together,” he said.

While Reardon said it’s not unusual for CBP officers to deal with detained migrants, the current circumstances are extreme.

Reardon also recently went to the Ursula Central Processing Center in McAllen, Texas, where he said 2,700 migrants were being held. “In these detention centers you’ve got a lot of influenza, chicken pox, mumps, scabies,” he said. The officers tried to keep the facility clean, he said, but detaining large numbers of ill people in one space made that difficult. The conditions were bleak. “Candidly I would give you my perspective: It was heartbreaking to see sick children in there.”

CBP officers who work all day in these enclosed environments, or transport sick people in vans, are always on edge about getting sick themselves. “They’re very concerned about contracting these illnesses. That’s a big deal. That’s stressful in and of itself,” Reardon said.

Even without the added pressures created by Trump’s crackdown, the job has long been emotionally draining. CBP agriculture specialists, for example, are responsible for making sure any package entering the United States is contaminant-free—an error in judgement could result in a public health crisis or a new invasive species taking hold in the country. Officers who patrol vehicle crossings, in another example, never know who is behind the wheel. Last month an American citizen sped his truck through a border crossing at San Ysidro, San Diego—the busiest official land border crossing in the world. Another vehicle blocked the truck, and when CBP officers approached, the driver opened fire. The officers shot back, killing him. Two Chinese nationals were found in the back of the truck. The incident rattled officers staffing vehicle crossings across the region.

“The officers are out there with this at the back of their mind,” Salgado said.

Help is hard to come by

The US government is aware of the increased pressure on CBP officers, and the resulting rise in demand for mental health support. But by its own admission, it has failed to do much about it.

In 2009, long before the current crisis at the border, DHS created a program called “DHSTogether.” Its mission was to build “resiliency and wellness capacity” at the department. But the committee responsible for the effort only held its first meeting years later. “Although the program had been in existence for almost 4 years…it did not yet have a formal vision or set of goals,” according to an internal reportpublished in 2013.

While DHSTogether “initially focused on suicide prevention,” the report continues, the agency “quickly recognized” that suicidal behavior is the “end result” of a “complex trajectory of events and circumstances.” The authors of the report determined that there was a need to “intervene” long before employees reach the point that they are considering suicide.

In 2012, the agency hired the government-run Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences to create a peer support program for DHSTogether, and train leaders on the relationship between stress and work performance. The 2013 internal report noted, however, that a year after the contract had been signed, “little has been accomplished.”

DHS earmarked about $1.5 million for DHSTogether, before reducing that funding to about $1 million for the 2014 fiscal year. “Because of the modest funding, few or no resources are tied to the policies that are promulgated by the program,” the internal report said.

The most recent mention of DHSTogether on the DHS website is a list of agency-specific resources, last updated in 2015. The CBP resource listlinks to a website that does not load, and lists a phone number for a peer support program that is no longer in operation, and an email Quartz sent to the email address listed for the program was never returned.

In response to Quartz’s inquires, a CBP spokesperson wrote in an email that the agency had “expanded” its resources to prevent suicide, and has held events both during Suicide Awareness Month and at other times that can be live streamed and viewed throughout the year. The spokesperson also said the agency has a peer support program, a “robust” Employee Assistance Program, and “an agency-wide” internal website dedicated to suicide prevention, which includes suicide prevention videos.

The first stop for a distressed CBP officer might be to log into the EAP website. But given the high rate of suicide and mental health problems at the agency, and its apparent years-long effort to address those problems, the website’s options for help are surprisingly thin.

On the login page, the portal first directs employees to call a 24-hour hotline, which is industry standard. Using the login password on the Department of Homeland Security’s own website, Quartz logged into the portal in June, and found a website administered by Espry, a private contractor.

The portal homepage includes several links to issue-specific pages. The “suicide prevention” page link features a stock image of several people in silhouette helping a person up from a cliff. The “videos” tab on the suicide prevention page links to a single video. It is titled, “Teen suicide: Too young to die.” The video is under copyright from NBC Universal and features a psychologist discussing suicide among teenagers. The psychologist in the video, Dr. Peter Jensen, told Quartz it was taped in early 2001.

Other features of the suicide prevention portal include a link to a questionnaire to screen for depression, and various links to articles about suicide prevention from other groups, including the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline website.

In another failed effort, last fiscal year CBP hired Federal Occupational Health(FOH), a private company that operates Employee Assistance Programs. As part of a pilot program, the company worked with a special CBP task force, which decided to try staffing ports of entry with liaisons who could point employees to the various mental health benefits available.

The pilot was intended to take place in San Diego, home to one of the busiest ports of entry along the southern border, according to an FOH employee who hung up the phone before giving their name. But the one-year pilot ended before the company managed to recruit someone to fill that position, and funding for it wasn’t renewed.

James Phelps, a professor of criminal justice who studies border enforcement and is in regular contact with CBP officers, told Quartz that officers have confided in him that they’ve been victims of outright intimidation—used to prevent employees from seeking help.

On June 13, CBP announced it had hired a certified trauma specialist to work with air and marine officers following several upsetting incidents. However, Phelps said the vast majority of them won’t ask for help.

“And the reason is because they’ve been directed by their bosses not to,” Phelps said. “The human resources guy or gal will walk in and say, ‘We want to remind you, we’ve expanded this, we’ve expanded that. These things are available to you.’ And then after they leave, the supervisor of the shift walks in and says, ‘Anybody who takes advantage of that is a wimp, a pussy, and I don’t want you working in my station.’ It’s not a joke, they really are doing that.”

[anitagitta-blog]

Introduction to Environmental Studies Blog 12: Water resources and water pollution

Water is the major reason as to why humans can survive on this earth. Yet, those of us living in wealthy countries  are allowed to think that water is indispensable and will alway exist. There are people in the world that know that this is not true,and they suffer the consequences of it. For girls living in poor countries, lack of access to clean water can mean that they must stay home to collect water rather than get an education. Thus, this leads to a host of other problems such as gender discrimination.

Chapter 13: Water Resources and Chapter 20: Water Pollution

Freshwater is becoming a luxury for many in certain parts of the world.This resource plays a huge part in every aspect of life. It has implications in global health, economics and security.  This notion that water is indispensable and will always be available to us what will make the issue of water scarcity worse. Only a small fraction of the earth’s freshwater is available to us. Though there is a lot salt water on the earth, the process to make it drinkable is very expensive.

Rather than rush to try to use salt water, we must use preserve the resources  that already have available. Ground water is one of those resources that is not being utilised efficiently. After it rains, there is water that does into little cracks in the soil. This water can travel into aquifers. A major problem with urbanization is that when the ground is paved over with cement, water is not able to penetrate into the soil and become groundwater. Ground water consists of about ⅓ of the United State’s source of freshwater. Evidently, it is an important, However, our reliance on ground water is coming to a point where we are taking too much out before it can replenish itself. Anytime humans do this, we know that there will be adverse effects. Over extraction of groundwater can lead to the depletion of aquifers which has negative effects on the environment and people living that environment.

Even though we rely on groundwater, there is still a significant amount of pollution that makes its way into it. Pesticides and fertilizers are two kinds of pollutants that can contaminate groundwater. This is an issue because groundwater is not able to cleanse itself. The pollutants that can seep into groundwater has adverse effects on human health. Some pollutants such as arsenic are toxic to the human body and can cause illnesses.

As a result of not using our water resources well, water shortages will unfortunately continue to grow in the future. An increase in water scarcity can be caused by several factors. As climate change persists, droughts will become more and more likely. Droughts have and will destroy agricultural communities that need rain to water vegetation To make matters worse,  a growing population will make water resources even more scare unless  people learn to use water efficiently.The thing about water scarcity is that it is not an insular problem. In California, droughts have become a regular issue that affect people for prolonged periods of times.

Dams are an innovation that have been used to solve the issue of water scarcity. The issue with dams is that their construction often leads to families being displaced and the destroying of  ecosystems that existed prior to the construction. Additionally they are not a sustainable innovation because after the reservoirs ( about 50 years after construction) fill up they become useless.

To solve the issue of water scarcity, people have also thought of transferring water from other places or converting salt water to drinkable water. Both of these are only short term solutions. There needs to be focus on creating sustainable solutions to water scarcity. One of those is to create more efficient ways of watering crops.

Solving water pollution can go hand in hand with preventing water pollution.  While   using efforts that efficiently water their plants, farmers can reduce the amount of soil erosion that take place. Of course, farmers can not do this work alone. Policy makers must implement laws that create a society that uses water resources responsibly and prevent water pollution.  Sewage systems can serve as a great tool to prevent pollution. Yet, people have to make sure that smaller pieces of plastic do not make their way into the sewer

Documentary: Blue Gold: World Water Wars

Main topic: This film touches on ways in which people are fighting to end corruption in

Main points:

Saving water is about saving ourselves

When human beings search universe for life, we look for water

Earth is the only planet that has water and thus the only one that supports human life

Urban cities and towns grew around water

97% of Earth water is salt water

3% is fresh water, yet most of it is polluted beyond human life

New River is the most most polluted river in the world.

River on Mexican border is so polluted that it even contains human remains

This condition of the river creates diseases because people who try to swim across despite the immense health risks

Some of the earth’s  rivers are dying because of such severe pollution

Our growing dependence on ground water is dangerous because there is a finite amt

Human technology  has allowed us to get water from surface of earth, thus we have not had to confront the problem that we created

There are ways to use groundwater sustainably ( recharging) yet we do not  do that

The world is desertifying

Deforestation contributes to desertification

Urbanization, we replaced permeable ground  with ground that does not absorb water

We are not using our resources efficiently

Dams disrupt natural flow,

They creates water for narrow purposes

When you  trap water, nutrients does not flow and thus it does not get enough oxygen,

Unfortunately Dams kills rivers. Thus they are not a sustainable solution to solving water issue

Privatization of water creates this problem. Once water becomes a commodity, effect on the environment is no considered.

World bank tried to end poverty but they ended up privatizing water which poor nations have to buy

International trade organizations, strip poor countries of their resources, put poor countries in debt and  then gain  control these poor countries, making them dependent.  

Privatization of water is not only a problem in Global south. It happens in American cities

In Africa, you can not  drink tap water. People are forced to either drink to drink bottled water (DASANI) or soda from glass bottles. Even though glass is cheaper, Dasani uses plastic

Blog Question: How can cities ensure that businesses are using water responsibly?

Word count: 1105

[pinksandwichfest-blog1]

‘Aggressive’ Dendrobium mine causing ‘grave, severe’ impacts on Sydney water catchments

After six months of being kept under wraps, reports on the impacts of a mine west of Wollongong have been released, revealing "disturbing" fracturing and bulging, putting Sydney's drinking water catchment at risk.

The Dendrobium coal mine is located underneath the metropolitan special area, which provides a buffer zone of bushland around catchment areas to protect drinking water. As well as seam-to-surface fracturing across parts of the mine, there has been an unexpected finding of valley bulging alongside Sydney's major dams. This can result in a loss of valuable drinking water from the catchment. National Parks Association of NSW mining projects officer Peter Turner described the affects to the catchment as "grave, extensive and much more severe than warned of". "It's now clear why [NSW Department of Planning] withheld these reports from WaterNSW, OEH [Office of Environment and Heritage] and the community for as long as they could," he said. Mr Turner said the "greatly disturbing" findings speak volumes about the department's values, and financial returns from the mine seem to be more important than the integrity of Sydney's primary health asset — drinking water. "The mining underway in [one area] of Dendrobium mine is the most aggressive mining to have been approved in the special areas. "And amongst the most aggressive anywhere in NSW." Mr Turner said confirmation of seam-to-surface fracturing in what was supposed to be a protected part of the catchment was most worrying, and the side effects from bulging would only become worse. "The valley bulging, which then causes deformation to the rock underneath and around the reservoirs, generates leakage pathways from the reservoir into the groundwater system, so it is meant to be causing water loss around Cordeaux," he said. "It's not known whether that is yet happening at Avon. "For Cordeaux it is uncertain how much water loss is occurring but it is certain with more mining, whatever loss is occurring is only going to get worse."

Mr Turner said confirmation of seam-to-surface fracturing in what was supposed to be a protected part of the catchment was most worrying, and the side effects from bulging would only become worse. "The valley bulging, which then causes deformation to the rock underneath and around the reservoirs, generates leakage pathways from the reservoir into the groundwater system, so it is meant to be causing water loss around Cordeaux," he said. "It's not known whether that is yet happening at Avon. "For Cordeaux it is uncertain how much water loss is occurring but it is certain with more mining, whatever loss is occurring is only going to get worse." Premier must halt any extension: Lock the Gate The report has prompted calls from environmental groups for a moratorium on any further mining in the area until stricter controls are introduced on existing mines. Lock the Gate Alliance spokesperson Georgina Woods said it was unacceptable that management actions for the Dendrobium mine had failed to protect Sydney's drinking water. "This report reveals that precious rainfall that should be feeding Sydney's dams and drinking water supply is being drawn into the polluting mining voids beneath the surface," she said.

Ms Woods also called for plans for further expansions at the mine and for two new longwalls to be halted. Dendrobium mine is distinguished from other mines by its two-kilometre longwall mining which allows for extractions 400 metres below the surface at a width of 300 metres. "The Premier must commit that the planned longwall coal panels will not proceed," she said. "We need a moratorium on any further mining operations in the catchment and a full inquiry into the impacts of the Southern Coalfields on our water resources." NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said she was "absolutely" concerned by the reports and the Government would investigate. "We need to take a serious look at this because I don't want anything compromising now and into the future, any of our water security or any of our prime agricultural land," she said. Department stood with BHP Billiton In approving mining at Dendrobium in 2013, the department embraced BHP Billiton's rejection of a 2012 impact assessment that predicted seam-to-surface fracturing. "[The department] did so without advising and consulting WaterNSW or advising OEH or the community," Mr Turner said. The ABC has sought comment from the Department of Planning. In 2015, the National Parks Association wrote a letter to the Department of Planning warning of fracturing. In 2016, it advised in a report that the groundwater in reservoirs had been severely disrupted by mining. The mine's owner, South32, provided a statement to the ABC and said the details within the report were being examined. "We will continue to engage with government agencies and other key stakeholders to ensure continued compliance with consent conditions." A WaterNSW spokesperson told the ABC the report "accurately represents the state of current understanding of this critical issue". The report's key recommendations should be incorporated into an assessment of mining applications, the spokesperson said. Read more: Original Article

[sherristockman]

Gulf of Mexico Now Largest Dead Zone in the World, and Factory Farming Is to Blame Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola As reported by CBS Miami (above), nitrogen fertilizers and sewage sludge runoff from factory farms are responsible for creating an enormous dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. As fertilizer runs off farms in agricultural states like Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri and others, it enters the Mississippi River, leading to an overabundance of nutrients, including nitrogen and phosphorus, in the water. This, in turn, leads to the development of algal blooms, which alter the food chain and deplete oxygen, resulting in dead zones. The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is the largest recorded dead zone in the world,1 beginning at the Mississippi River delta and spanning more than 8,700 square miles — about the size of New Jersey. Needless to say, the fishing industry is taking a big hit, each year getting worse than the last. The featured news report includes underwater footage that shows you just how bad the water quality has gotten. Gulf of Mexico — Largest Dead Zone in the World Nancy Rabalais, professor of oceanography at Louisiana State University, is an expert on dead zones. She has measured oxygen levels in the Gulf since 1985, and blames agricultural runoff entering the Mississippi River for this growing environmental disaster. Recent measurements reveal the area has only half the oxygen levels required to sustain basic life forms. “The solution lies upstream in the watershed,” she says, “with agricultural management practices; a switch to crops that have deeper roots and don’t need so much fertilizer and are still just as profitable as corn.” According to CBS, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has created a task force to assess dead zones, and hope to reduce nutrient-rich agricultural runoff by 20 percent by 2025. Common sense will tell you that’s nowhere near enough. A study2 published last year revealed nitrogen builds up far below the soil surface, where it can continue to leach into groundwater for 35 years. This means environmental concerns would persist for decades even if farmers were to stop using nitrogen fertilizers altogether. The researchers analyzed more than 2,000 soil samples from the Mississippi River Basin, finding nitrogen buildup at depths of 10 inches to 3.2 feet. According to the authors: “[W]e show that the observed accumulation of soil organic [nitrogen] … in the [Mississippi River Basin] over a 30-year period … would lead to a biogeochemical lag time of 35 years for 99 percent of legacy [soil organic nitrogen], even with complete cessation of fertilizer application. By demonstrating that agricultural soils can act as a net [nitrogen] sink, the present work makes a critical contribution towards the closing of watershed [nitrogen] budgets.” Lake Erie Suffers From Chemical Pollution The problem is hardly restricted to the Gulf of Mexico. Many other waterways are being choked by agricultural chemicals as well. Lake Erie, for example, is currently reporting a 700-square-mile algal bloom, the toxins from which may also contaminate drinking water. Algal blooms also fill the largest tributary to the Great Lakes, the Maumee River. At present, officials claim microcystin levels (toxins produced by the algae) in intake pipes from Lake Erie are low, but that can change at any time. In 2014, Toledo, Ohio, was forced to shut off the supply of drinking water to half a million residents for three days due to elevated microcystin levels in the water. The algae also hurt the regional economy each year, as recreational fishing and beach visits must be restricted. Lake Erie began experiencing significant problems in the early 2000s. Over the years, it’s only gotten more extensive, the bloom covering an increasingly larger area. The University of Michigan is now using a new robotic lake-bottom laboratory to track microcystin levels in the lake (see video above), thereby allowing them to detect and report water safety issues to water management officials more quickly. Toledo Mayor Appeals to President Trump — ‘Declare Lake Erie Impaired’ According to a study by the Carnegie Institute for Science and Stanford University, the expansion of algal bloom in Lake Erie is primarily attributable to a rise in the amount of dissolved phosphorus from farm land entering the lake. Part of the problem is that agricultural runoff is typically exempt from clean water laws. On September 26, 2017, Toledo mayor Paula Hicks-Hudson urged the federal government to declare Lake Erie impaired due to excessive algae.3 Doing so would allow the lake’s nutrient load to be regulated under the Clean Water Act. Many activists believe Hicks-Hudson has been too slow to act, and still isn’t taking it far enough. The Blade reports:4 “Activist Mike Ferner dumped a pitcher of algae-infested water and two dead fish into One Government Center's public fountain … to highlight the condition of the river and lake. Mr. Ferner, joined by more than a dozen other members of the Advocates for a Clean Lake Erie group he founded in response to the 2014 Toledo water crisis, said the protest was in response to foot-dragging by local, state and federal officials. He said the administrations of Mayor Hicks-Hudson and Ohio Gov. John Kasich are complicit in allowing manure and other farm fertilizers to pollute the water because they won't call for the open water of Lake Erie to be designated as impaired.” Drinking Water Threatened by Agricultural Pollution Agricultural runoff threatens drinking water across the U.S. as well. As reported by Fern’s AG Insider:5 “Seven million Americans who live in small cities and towns have worrisome levels of nitrates in their drinking water — below the federal limit of 10 milligrams per liter, but high enough to be associated with cancer in some studies, said an Environmental Working Group official. Craig Cox, head of EWG’s Midwest office, said 1,683 communities had nitrate levels above 5 milligrams per liter and, when plotted on a map, they ‘crazily lined up with intensive agriculture.’ Farm use of nitrogen fertilizer is regarded as a frequent source of nitrates in groundwater. Soils also shed nitrates naturally. Urban runoff and septic systems also are sources.” Meat Industry Implicated in Creation of Gulf Dead Zone According to Mighty Earth,6 an environmental group chaired by former Congressman Henry Waxman, a “highly industrialized and centralized factory farm system” — consisting of a fairly small number of individual corporations — are responsible for a majority of the water contamination and environmental destruction we’re currently facing. Tyson Foods, which produces chicken, beef and pork, was identified as one of the worst offenders. As reported by The Guardian:7 “Tyson, which supplies the likes of McDonald’s and Walmart, slaughters 35 [million] chickens and 125,000 head of cattle every week, requiring five million acres of corn a year for feed, according to the report. This consumption resulted in Tyson generating 55 [million] tons of manure last year … with 104 [million] tons of pollutants dumped into waterways over the past decade. The Mighty research found that the highest levels of nitrate contamination correlate with clusters of facilities operated by Tyson and Smithfield, another meat supplier … The report urges Tyson and other firms to use their clout in the supply chain to ensure that grain producers such as Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland employ practices that reduce pollution flowing into waterways. These practices include not leaving soil uncovered by crops and being more efficient with fertilizers so plants are not doused in too many chemicals.” October 2, the group launched its national #CleanItUpTyson campaign,8 calling for Tyson, the largest meat company in the U.S., to “clean up pollution from its supply chain that’s contaminating local drinking water and causing a massive dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico.” According to Mighty Earth: “The local campaigns are part of Mighty Earth’s national effort to hold the meat industry accountable for reducing its vast environmental impact, which is driving widespread water pollution, clearance of natural landscapes, high rates of soil erosion, and greenhouse gas emissions. Local communities from the Heartland to the Gulf are among those most affected by the meat industry’s impacts, and pay billions each year in clean-up costs.” Factory Farming — The Ultimate Threat to Life on Earth According to Philip Lymbery, chief executive of Compassion in World Farming and author of “Farmageddon” and “Deadzone” — two books detailing the destructive impact of industrial agriculture — factory farming is a threat to all life on Earth. Speaking at a recent Livestock and Extinction Conference in London, Lymbery said: “Every day there is a new confirmation of how destructive, inefficient, wasteful, cruel and unhealthy the industrial agriculture machine is. We need a total rethink of our food and farming systems before it’s too late.”9 As noted by The Guardian,10 a number of “alarming exposés” have been featured as of late, including “chicken factory staff in the U.K. changing crucial food safety information on chickens,” and an admission by the European commission last month that “eggs containing a harmful pesticide may have been on sale in as many as 16 countries.” And, of course, the Gulf of Mexico being earning the recent designation of having the largest dead zone ever recorded. According to Lymbery: “We need to go beyond an isolated approach. Not just looking at the technical problems around welfare, not just looking at the technical issues around the environment, not just looking at food security in isolation, but putting all of these issues together, then we can see the real problem that lies at the heart of our food system — industrial agriculture. Factory farming is shrouded in mythology. One of the myths is that it’s an efficient way of producing food when actually it is highly inefficient and wasteful. Another is that the protagonists will say that it can be good for the welfare of the animals. After all, if hens weren’t happy they wouldn’t lay eggs. The third myth is that factory farming saves space. On the surface it looks plausible, because, by taking farm animals off the land and cramming them into cages and confinement you are putting an awful lot of animals into a small space. But what is overlooked in that equation is you are then having to dedicate vast acreages of relatively scarce arable land to growing the feed … The UN has warned that if we continue as we are, the world’s soils will have effectively gone within 60 years. And then what? We shouldn’t look to the sea to bail us out because commercial fisheries are expected to be finished by 2048.” No-Tillage Alone Cannot Make a Dent in Nitrate Pollution Problem Lymbery, as many others, myself included, point out that the answer is readily available and implementable. Regenerative farming can solve this and many other environmental and human health problems, if done in a thorough and holistic manner. No-till agriculture, which has become increasingly embraced as a solution to water pollution and other environmental problems associated with modern farming, is nowhere near enough. While it’s certainly useful, and a method employed in regenerative agriculture, it alone cannot address the growing problems of chemical pollution. This was also the conclusion of a recent U.S. Department of Agriculture study. As reported by Indiana University:11 “Researchers in the Department of Earth Sciences in the School of Science at IUPUI conducted a meta-analysis to compare runoff and leaching of nitrate from no-till and conventional tillage agricultural fields. Surface runoff and leaching are two major transportation pathways for nitrate to reach and pollute water. Due to its mobility and water solubility, nitrate has long been recognized as a widespread water pollutant. ‘What we found is that no-till is not sufficient to improve water quality,’ said Lixin Wang, an assistant professor and corresponding author of the paper. ‘In fact, we found that no-till increased nitrogen leaching.’ The study suggests that no-till needs to be complemented with other techniques, such as cover cropping and intercropping or rotation with perennial crops, to improve nitrate retention and water-quality benefits.” Other recent research12 confirms that adding native prairie strips to the rural landscape can help reduce water pollution from farm fields. Prairie strips refers to small patches of land around the edges of crop fields where native, perennial grasses and flowers are allowed to grow wild. The results show that converting as little as 10 percent of crop areas into prairie strips:13,14 Reduces soil loss by 95 percent Reduces phosphorous runoff by 77 percent and lowers nitrogen loss through runoff by 70 percent Lowers nitrate concentrations in groundwater by 72 percent Improves water retention More than doubles the abundance of pollinators and birds Regenerative and Biodynamic Farming to the Rescue The only viable long-term answer is regenerative agriculture (which goes beyond mere sustainability), for which biodynamic farming stands as a shining ideal. In addition to no-till, regenerative farming focuses on such practices and concepts as rotational grazing, improvement and building of topsoil (which includes cover cropping), the use of all-natural soil amendments and increasing biodiversity. Aside from putting an end to water and soil pollution, regenerative agriculture is also needed to protect future generations from the devastating harm caused by pesticides. The amount of pesticides used both commercially and in residential areas has grown immensely since 1945. More than 1 billion pounds are used each year in the U.S. alone. Worldwide, an estimated 7.7 billion pounds of pesticides are applied to crops each year, and that number is steadily increasing.15 According to a 2012 analysis,16 each 1 percent increase in crop yield is associated with a 1.8 percent increase in pesticide use. Logic tells us this is an unsustainable trajectory. As just one example, studies done by the Chinese government show that 20 percent of arable land in China is now unusable due to pesticide contamination.17 Earlier this year, two United Nations experts called for a comprehensive global treaty to phase out pesticides in farming altogether, noting that pesticides are in no way essential for the growing of food.18 The report highlighted developments in regenerative farming, where biology can completely replace chemicals, delivering high yields of nutritious food without detriment to the environment. “It is time to overturn the myth that pesticides are necessary to feed the world and create a global process to transition toward safer and healthier food and agricultural production,” they said. Each Day’s Meal Can Help Bring Us Closer to the Tipping Point You can help steer the agricultural industry toward safer, more sustainable systems by supporting local farmers dedicated to regenerative farming practices. The Demeter mark, indicative of Biodynamic certification, is the new platinum standard for high-quality foods raised and grown in accordance to the strictest environmental parameters possible. Biodynamic is essentially organic on steroids, far surpassing it in terms of its environmental impact. Unfortunately, Biodynamic certified foods are still scarce in the U.S., unless you happen to live near a certified farm. Most Biodynamic farms only sell locally or regionally. You can find a directory of certified farms on biodynamicfood.org. We hope to change that as we move forward, and building consumer demand is what will drive that change. Other U.S.-based organizations that can help you locate wholesome farm-fresh foods include the following: American Grassfed Association The goal of the American Grassfed Association is to promote the grass fed industry through government relations, research, concept marketing and public education. Their website also allows you to search for AGA approved producers certified according to strict standards that include being raised on a diet of 100 percent forage; raised on pasture and never confined to a feedlot; never treated with antibiotics or hormones; born and raised on American family farms. EatWild.com EatWild.com provides lists of farmers known to produce raw dairy products as well as grass fed beef and other farm-fresh produce (although not all are certified organic). Here you can also find information about local farmers markets, as well as local stores and restaurants that sell grass fed products. Weston A. Price Foundation Weston A. Price has local chapters in most states, and many of them are connected with buying clubs in which you can easily purchase organic foods, including grass fed raw dairy products like milk and butter. Grassfed Exchange The Grassfed Exchange has a listing of producers selling organic and grass fed meats across the U.S. Local Harvest This website will help you find farmers markets, family farms and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area where you can buy produce, grass fed meats and many other goodies. Farmers Markets A national listing of farmers markets. Eat Well Guide: Wholesome Food from Healthy Animals The Eat Well Guide is a free online directory of sustainably raised meat, poultry, dairy and eggs from farms, stores, restaurants, inns, hotels and online outlets in the United States and Canada. Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA) CISA is dedicated to sustaining agriculture and promoting the products of small farms. FoodRoutes The FoodRoutes "Find Good Food" map can help you connect with local farmers to find the freshest, tastiest food possible. On their interactive map, you can find a listing for local farmers, CSAs and markets near you. The Cornucopia Institute The Cornucopia Institute maintains web-based tools rating all certified organic brands of eggs, dairy products and other commodities, based on their ethical sourcing and authentic farming practices separating CAFO "organic" production from authentic organic practices. RealMilk.com If you're still unsure of where to find raw milk, check out Raw-Milk-Facts.com and RealMilk.com. They can tell you what the status is for legality in your state, and provide a listing of raw dairy farms in your area. The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund19 also provides a state-by-state review of raw milk laws.20 California residents can also find raw milk retailers using the store locator available at http://ift.tt/UJjPq1.