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Means of Extinction: Earth is Too Salty

June 9, 2024

Means of Extinction: Earth is Too Salty

I have not produced a video titled Means of Extinction since 30 July 2021. At that point, I had identified six means by which we were rapidly driving ourselves to extinction. Due to the rate of environmental change in our wake, and also the uncontrolled meltdown of nuclear power plants, any one of these means of extinction will lead to the extinction of all life on Earth. Nearly three years after I reported six phenomena by which we are driving ourselves to extinction in the near term, two additional means have appeared. I’ll report on one of them with this short video.

According to an article at SciTechDaily, humans are disrupting the planetary salt cycle, thus causing an existential threat. The article was published 2 November 2023. It is titled An “Existential Threat” – Humans Are Disrupting the Natural Salt Cycle on a Global Scale. The subhead is “A research group headed by a geologist from the University of Maryland warns that the influx of salt in streams and rivers is an ‘existential threat.’”

Here’s the opening paragraph: “The planet’s demand for salt is not without its toll on both ecological systems and human well-being, according to a new scientific review led by University of Maryland Geology Professor Sujay Kaushal. Published in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, the paper revealed that human activities are making Earth’s air, soil, and freshwater saltier, which could pose an ‘existential threat’ if current trends continue.”

Here’s the buried lede, in the following paragraph: “Geologic and hydrologic processes bring salts to Earth’s surface over time, but human activities such as mining and land development are rapidly accelerating the natural ‘salt cycle.’…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Can We Escape Control of The Wire?

November 18, 2018 / 1 Comment on Can We Escape Control of The Wire?

Can We Escape Control of The Wire?

“He’ll See Everything!  He’ll See the Big Board!“
— Dr. Strangelove

What is The Wire?  

Why is it so important?

Who controls it?

Answer those three questions and you can answer a number of problems plaguing our world today.

The Wire is simply a metaphor for the transmission of information.  The Wire takes many forms.  And if you aren’t sure whether something is The Wire just ask if you have control over it or not.

The Internet?  The Wire.

Electricity?  The Wire

Roads?  The Wire.

Media?  The Wire.

Money?  The Wire.

In short, The Wire is the main conduit through which we communicate with each other.  Money?  Really?  Yes, really.  What are prices if not information about what we are willing to part with our money in exchange for?

Without The Wire modern society fails.  So, government can’t shut it down but neither can it allow unconstrained access to it.

Electricity, commerce, communications, everything, goes over The Wire.  

This isn’t a radical concept but like all important ideas, once it is presented to you you can’t unsee it.

But, identifying The Wire isn’t the important thing.  What’s important is knowing who controls The Wire and what they are willing to do to maintain that control.

If you look at all of the things listed above you will see massive government intervention into these markets.  They need control of them to maintain the illusion they have control over you.

They sell you on the idea that speech, speed, education, commerce, defense, information, etc.  all need to have sensible limits placed on them.  But do they really or is this just yet another example of some jackass talking his book?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Unpave low traffic roads to save energy and money

April 13, 2016

Unpave low traffic roads to save energy and money

The U.S. has 4.1 million miles of roads (1.9 million paved, 2.2 million gravel). About 3 million miles of roads have less than 2,000 vehicles a day, less than 15% of all traffic. The paved portion of these low-volume roads ought to be evaluated for their potential to be unpaved.

Many of these roads should have never been paved to begin with, but the costs of construction, asphalt, and energy were so cheap it was done anyway.  Now many rural roads are past their design life and rapidly deteriorating.  It is both difficult and expensive to maintain them, and dangerous to let these roads fall apart and degrade into gravel on their own.

Examples of road safety effects caused by failing asphalt roads. The failures force traffic to travel outside of the lane and disrupt traffic movement.

Examples of road safety effects caused by failing asphalt roads. The failures force traffic to travel outside of the lane and disrupt traffic movement.

Unpaving low-volume roads saves energy and money. According to Karim Ahmed Abdel-Warith at Purdue University, preserving low-volume roads costs several hundred million dollars a year, more than half of the annual investment in roads.

Unpaving would also slow vehicle speeds down, further increasing miles per gallon from less aerodynamic drag.

Since roads harm biodiversity, getting rid of a road entirely should be done when possible.

The NRC paper I’ve taken excerpts from below requested feedback from the 27 states that have already depaved roads. This report provides many helpful guidance documents on depaving roads for communities interested in pursuing this.

NOTE: I’ve also added notes from another document below: The Promise of Rural Roads. Review of the Role of Low-Volume Roads in Rural Connectivity, Poverty Reduction, Crisis Management, and Livability

NRC. 2015. Converting paved roads to unpaved roads. National Research Council, National Academies Press. 97 pages

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The world’s forests will collapse if we don’t learn to say ‘no’

February 5, 2016

The world’s forests will collapse if we don’t learn to say ‘no’

An alarming new study has shown that the world’s forests are not only disappearing rapidly, but that areas of “core forest” — remote interior areas critical for disturbance-sensitive wildlife and ecological processes — are vanishing even faster.

Core forests are disappearing because a tsunami of new roads, dams, power lines, pipelines and other infrastructure is rapidly slicing into the world’s last wild places, opening them up like a flayed fish to deforestation, fragmentation, poaching and other destructive activities.

Most vulnerable of all are forests in the tropics. These forests sustain the planet’s most biologically rich and environmentally important habitats.

The collapse of the world’s forests isn’t going to stop until we start to say “no” to environmentally destructive projects.

Damn the dams

Those who criticise new infrastructure projects are often accused of opposing direly needed economic development, or — if they hail from industrial nations — of being hypocrites.

But when one begins to look in detail at the proposed projects, an intriguing pattern appears: Many are either poorly justified or will have far greater costs than benefits.

For example, in a recent essay in the journal Science, Amazon expert Philip Fearnside argues that many of the 330-odd hydroelectric dams planned or under construction in the Amazon will be more trouble than they’re worth.

Construction of the São Manoel Dam in the Brazilian Amazon. International Rivers/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

Many of these dams will have huge environmental impacts, argues Fearnside, and will dramatically increase forest loss in remote regions.

This happens both because the Amazon is quite flat, requiring large areas of forest to be flooded, and because dams and their power lines require road networks that open up the forest to other human impacts. For instance, the 12 dams planned for Brazil’s Tapajós River are expected to increase Amazon deforestation by almost 1 million hectares.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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