Thursday, June 30, 2022

                          BEYOND THE BLUE HORIZON

The blue lights seem to work: millions of tourists and not a single drowning 
While covid, sea level rise and climate refugees feature in the news daily, a tragedy with a decadal death toll reckoned in the millions gets scant coverage:
 236,000 people drown every year.

The UN  declared 25  World Drowning Prevention Day last year, but not content with such Rotarian measures as installing fencing and teaching swimming, rescue and resuscitation,WHO, has called for a social media campaign recalling Trick Or Treat For UNICEF-

.“Going Blue for World Drowning Prevention Day”. 

The idea is simple. Local organizations work with relevant authorities to have one or several notable landmarks illuminated in blue light during the evening of 25 July.

Drowning is a leading causes of youthful death, but although oceans cover most of the Earth, less than 10% of the fatalities involve salt water.

Over 90% of drownings occur in rivers, lakes, wells and domestic settings like rain barrels and bathtubs, with children and adolescents in poor and rural areas disproportionately affected.

Few cliche's have longer legs than  "Teach A Man To Fish…" but " Teach a child to swim …" has little traction.  Covering the seismic Tsunami that drowned hundreds of thousands in 2004, I was dismayed to learn that three times more girls and women perished near its Indonesian epicenter than men and boys. While fathers along that heavily populated and much fished coast had taught their sons to swim since time immemorial, Malay mothers still admonished  daughters to remain modestly clothed when they ventured to the shore. It doesn't take a body surfer to ride out water flooding inland, but a tsunami is a terrible place to learn how to tread water in a burqa. 

 


Tuesday, June 28, 2022

                  CO2 COALITION BEAR EXPERT EXPLAINS
  WHY TREE CLIMBING IS THE WISEST CLIMATE POLICY

 Media Claims CO2 “Traps Heat”!
by Jim Steele
San Francisco State University Sierra Nevada Field Campus Director emeritus & Proud member of
The CO2 Coalition





"I agree with Dilbert...
The only thing getting trapped is the public’s misunderstanding of how the greenhouse effect works and their fear of the future."

Trigger warning from Smokey the Bear

Only  you  can prevent bears of small brain
 from taking Steve seriously:

Monday, June 27, 2022

                                            Elsewhere in the News:
                           AFGHANISTAN COAL EXPORTS RISE

PESHAWAR
PM approves Afghan coal import in Pak rupee

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Monday taken a bold decision and approved the import of super-critical quality coal from Afghanistan... to generate electricity in Pakistan... He directed the railway ministry to take all-out measures for swift transportation of coal from Afghanistan to the power plants.

Prime Minister on Monday directed the authorities concerned to complete the under-construction model prison in the capital, which has been facing delay for the last 10 years.

Taking notice of the delay, the prime minister formed a six-member committee... The prime minister sought the report from the committee within a week.

Due to non-construction of the building, the Islamabad prisoners have been accommodated in Adiala Jail for the last six decades. 

He also lauded the inspirational journey of Ahmad Nawaz, the survivor of the Army Public School (APS) massacre, who has become the president of Oxford University’s Union.

Ahmad Nawaz, in response to the tweet thanked him:

“Thank you Prime Minister. An immensely huge honour to have your encouragement and to be able to inspire young people. I’m eternally grateful for the support and look forward to working on empowering many more people through this platform! A surreal experience,”

Saturday, June 18, 2022

PATAGONIAN CLIMATE REFUGEE INVADES BIRD SANCTUARY

"For Pride Month, Audubon partnered with drag queen and intersectional environmentalist Pattie Gonia, to bring you Birds Tell Us: The Song of the Meadowlark, a message of hope for the future of our planet.
For years, Audubon has reminded the world that... Birds tell us every day that the world is changing both through their songs and the songs they no longer sing due to habitat loss and global temperature rise. Will you choose to listen?"

Sunday, June 12, 2022

   HOW MANY TENTACLED COMPUTER GODS DOES IT TAKE
                      TO PLUG IN A CLIMATE ESCHATON?

 
CURRENT AFFAIRS
POLITICS AND CULTURE  MAY 2022

Elizabeth Sandifer
A software engineer sets out to design a new political ideology, and ends up concluding that the Stewart Dynasty should be reinstated. 

A cult receives disturbing messages from the future, where the artificial intelligence they worship is displeased with them...


Are these omens of the end times?

Neoreaction a Basilisk is a savage journey into the black heart of our present eschaton. We're all going to die, and probably horribly. But at least we can laugh at how completely ridiculous it is to be killed by a bunch of frog-worshiping manchildren.

Featuring essays on:

* Tentacled computer gods at the end of the universe

* Deranged internet trolls who believe women playing video games will end western civilization

* The black mass in which the President of the United States sacrificed his name

* Fringe economists who believe it's immoral for the government to prevent an asteroid from hitting the Earth

* The cabal of lizard people who run the world

* How to become a monster that haunts the future

* Why infusing the blood of teenagers for eternal youth is bad and stupid.

SANDIFER

My dear friend, Jack Graham, who co-wrote one of the chapters says that Yarvin is a failed Marxist in the same way that Jupiter is a failed star. Yarvin starts down this analysis... a fairly accurate and useful diagnosis of everything that is wrong with the world. And then somewhere on the way, before he gets to any of those actual good points, he makes just an apocalyptic wrong turn, and concludes that Steve Jobs should become king of California.






Sunday, June 5, 2022

                       THE MAN WHO SAW THE SOLAR WIND

 

Eugene Parker, a physicist who theorized the existence of solar wind and became the first person to witness the launch of a spacecraft bearing his name died peacefully at a retirement community in Chicago in March. He was 94. 

NASA administrators and university colleagues hailed Parker as a visionary in his field of heliophysics, focused on the study of the sun and other stars. He is best known for his 1958 theory of the existence of solar wind — a supersonic flow of particles off the sun's surface. 

“Dr. Eugene Parker’s contributions to science and to understanding how our universe works touches so much of what we do here at NASA,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. “Dr. Parker’s legacy will live on through the many active and future NASA missions that build upon his work.”

Parker recalled in 2018 that his solar wind theory was widely criticized and even mocked at publication. He was vindicated in 1962 when a NASA spacecraft mission to Venus confirmed his theory and solar wind's effect on the solar system, including occasional disruptions of communications systems on Earth. 

The experience became part of Parker's identity as an educator and mentor.

“If you do something new or innovative, expect trouble,” he said in 2018 when asked to give advice to early career scientists. "But think critically about it because if you’re wrong, you want to be the first one to know that.”

Thursday, June 2, 2022

    THE FUTURE PAST TENSE OF COVERING CLIMATE NOW?

REBRANDING CLIMATE NOW IS NOW A  PRIORITY FOR AUSTRALIAN COAL COAST POLITICIANS & P-R FLACKS