Our Oceans are Under Attack

What the debacle of climate change can teach us about the dangers of artificial intelligence | Washington Post

 

Hit by drought and seawater, Bangkok tap water may run out in a month

http://news.yahoo.com/hit-drought-seawater-bangkok-tap-water-may-run-000717650.html

"Right now, there is only enough water in the dams to distribute for about 30 more days – if it doesn't rain," Thanasak told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview.

Normally, the flow of water from the rains and dams keeps saltwater from the Gulf of Thailand at bay. But during droughts, the saltwater creeps upstream, turning the Chao Phraya brackish.

The seawater can kill crops and threatens the pumping station that siphons off water from the river, about 100 km (60 miles) from the gulf. The waterworks authority produces 5.2 million cubic meters of tap water per day for 2.2 million residential, business and industrial customers, but is not equipped to treat saltwater.

"Some days the saltwater increases, we don't intake the water from the Chao Phraya River. We stop and use the water from the Metropolitan Waterworks Authority stocks of water in canals. We can stop intake for 3 hours," Thanasak said.

The waterworks authority has asked Bangkok residents to store a reserve of 60 liters of drinking water in the event of a shortage. It has also urged people to use less water, but has had little success on this front in part, said Thanasak, because water customers pay only 8.50 baht ($0.25) per 1,000 liters.

"It's too cheap, so people don't feel the need to conserve. It has been this price since July 1999. It's probably the big city with the cheapest water in the world," he said.

The Metropolitan Waterworks Authority plans to invest 45 billion baht ($1.3 billion) over the next seven years to increase production and storage. It has also started discussions on a 30-year plan to forecast water demand, identify sources of water and protect against saltwater intrusion, Thanasak said.

Large-scale rainwater collection should be part of that solution, he said, adding that currently when it rains in Bangkok, all the water drains into the sea, wasted.

 

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11477745

The US military and the CIA are actively preparing for a world in which civil and political unrest is caused by catastrophic weather events which are caused by climate change.

Those in charge are conducting a review of all US military bases around the world - assessing how they'd cope with weather-related disasters, and converting them into water and green-energy dependent installations.

More crucially, top brass is treating climate change like terrorism - as a major threat to national security. Mainly, for the US, this revolves around the issue of migration. Conservative estimates put the number of climate change refugees upwards of 100 million by mid-century; 15 million of those will be Bangladeshis, fleeing rising sea levels.

As the Progressive reports, a recent symposium of military and industrial top brass heard a speech that outlined how climate change is driving people from Africa, Asia and South America, and displacing millions within continents and countries. Desertification on the border between Chad and Nigeria, for example, caused mass migration - helping Boko Haram thrive.

Similarly, a record drought in Syria in the mid-2000s caused mass internal migration out of rural areas - leading to a surfeit of young, unemployed men in cities and helping foment a deadly war the entire world now finds itself embroiled in.

But war is just one dystopian outcome of a world undergoing climate change, according to the highest levels of the US Government. And while at the lower level of politics, Republican politicians deny it, there is no controversy from those higher up the chain that human activity is causing greenhouse gas levels to rise, which is having a direct effect on extreme weather patterns: warming the sea, melting ice shelves, drying out soils, and so forth.

 

It’s too late to stop the seas rising at least 5 metres and only fast, drastic action will avert a 20-metre rise, New Scientist calculates based on recent studies

http://www.newscientist.com/article...level-rise-locked-in.html?page=1#.VaA_3zZxnmL

WHATEVER we do now, the seas will rise at least 5 metres. Most of Florida and many other low-lying areas and cities around the world are doomed to go under. If that weren't bad enough, without drastic cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions – more drastic than any being discussed ahead of the critical climate meeting in Paris later this year – a rise of over 20 metres will soon be unavoidable.

After speaking to the researchers behind a series of recent studies, New Scientist has made the first calculations of what their findings mean for how much sea level rise is already unavoidable, or soon will be.

Unfortunately, the report, published in 2013, is not the whole story. Last year, two teams reported that two massive glaciers in West Antarctica have already passed the point of no return.

 

This is what it’s going to look like when 20 feet of sea level rise swallows America

http://www.salon.com/2015/07/10/thi...n_20_feet_of_sea_level_rise_swallows_america/

We may be locked in for catastrophic sea level rise.



It’ll take awhile, but according to a new paper published in the journal Science, the planet’s on track to see sea levels rise by at least 20 feet — and that’s only if we manage to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius, a target many believe we’re already doomed to surpass.

Once the ice sheets start melting, as apocalyptic headlines have already made clear, there’s no real way to stop them. And during periods in Earth’s past when temperatures were 1 to 3 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, sea levels surged.

 

So is the mini ice age predicted in 15 years time canceled then,I won`t be around then anyway.

 

No, the Earth Is Not Heading for a “Mini Ice Age” | Slate

 

Faith-based arguments that deal with climate change are a smokescreen that mask the real problem” | Solon

“Every great scientific truth goes through three phases. First, people deny it. Second, they say it conflicts with the Bible. Third, they say they’ve known it all along.” —Neil Degrasse Tyson

 

As always the most important things we should have unbiased information about, but it turns out it is the blind leading the blind again.
But it is your our own fault for not making your own decisions.

 

Britain's first 'energy positive' house opens in Wales

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...ns-first-energy-positive-house-opens-in-wales

Britain’s first low cost ‘energy positive’ house, which can generate more electricity than its occupants will use, opens on Thursday despite George Osborne axing plans to make housebuilders meet tough low carbon housing targets from next year.


The modest three-bedroom house built in just 16 weeks on an industrial estate outside Bridgend in Wales cost just £125,000 to build and, said its Cardiff University designers, will let occupants use the sun to pay the rent.

Using batteries to store the electricity which it generates from the solar panels that function as the roof, and having massive amounts of insulation to reduce energy use in winter months, it should be able to export electricity to the national grid for eight months of the year.

For every £100 spent on electricity used, it should be able to generate £175 in electricity exports, said Professor Phil Jones, whose team from the Welsh School of Architecture designed the house specifically to meet the low carbon housing targets set by the Labour government in 2006.

 

I dont know whether to be glad a mini ice age is coming or not, but if it does will it change the minds of the raucous bunch of global warming nuts? Sadly even our politicians have caught this fever and are burnt up with it.

California has implemented a hidden carbon tax on fuel, which is exacerbating the price they are forced to pay.
http://cafuelfacts.com/cap-and-trade-for-fuels/


The lower cost of oil, the politicians view as an opportunity to raise the fuel taxes.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/environm...imate-change-is-unstoppable-say-us-scientists

The warming of the oceans due to climate change is now unstoppable after record temperatures last year, bringing additional sea-level rise, and raising the risks of severe storms, US government climate scientists said on Thursday.

 

My view is, if it is too late to do anything, then don't do anything. Because it is too late to do anything that will make any difference. And if politicians mandate things, likely they will just add to the misery index people will have to bear. Things are just going to play out how they will. We got billions more people who will be born in developing nations who will all be using more resources. People will just have to adapt to whatever the climate is, as it is what it is, while they live.

Another worry is some crazy plan of geo engineering to try to cool the planet, which well they could just make things logarithmically worse, and that is the history of people, they just make things worse even with seemingly good intentions, frequently.

 

Can this wood-burning stove save the world?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQUNH_GGMk0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpfMHQ3FDzI

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/environment/news/article.cfm?c_id=39&objectid=11482704

About 3 billion people depend on traditional stoves for cooking and heating, but exposure to their smoke is responsible for an estimated 4.3 million deaths a year. This could be the answer.

A new stove, by a Brooklyn startup with grand ambitions, is powered by wood or cow dung or whatever other combustible material you happen to have lying around. It generates an almost smokeless, gas-like flame - and also enough electricity to light a room or charge your phone.

BioLite is a company that began as a side project of two men at the design-consulting firm Smart Design. Seeking to build a camping stove that didn't require fuel, Alec Drummond and Jonathan Cedar came up with a design that uses a fan powered by the heat of burning wood to blow air onto that wood and get it to burn much more efficiently.

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/enviro...-dont-believe-in-climate-change-10398870.html

One in five Australians don't believe in climate change


Nearly one in five Australians do not believe in climate change, making the country the most sceptical about environmental issues in the world, according to a recent study.



17 per cent of Australians disbelieved in climate change, followed by 15 per cent of people in Norway, 13 per cent in New Zealand and 12 per cent of Americans, found research conducted by the University of Tasmania.