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vox_mundi

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1050 on: December 12, 2019, 12:48:39 AM »
Congress to Halt Military Use of Toxic Foam Contaminating Drinking Water
https://phys.org/news/2019-12-congress-halt-military-toxic-foam.html

Congress has reached a deal on a spending bill that would require the military to stop using firefighting foam containing toxic chemicals linked to cancer, but would abandon efforts to place stronger regulations on the chemicals.

The bill, called the National Defense Authorization Act, has been the focus of intense negotiations for months. House Democrats saw it as their best chance to force President Trump's Environmental Protection Agency to increase its oversight of a class of chemicals, called perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances—commonly known as PFAS—that have contaminated drinking water sources across the country.

Senate Republicans resisted these measures, wary of forcing chemical companies and the Defense Department to undertake extensive cleanups.

But when hopes of a compromise faded last week, Democrats were left with little choice but to agree to significantly weaker provisions or kill the entire defense spending bill.

The bill that emerged out of a joint House-Senate committee this week had been stripped of measures that would require the EPA to designate the chemicals as "hazardous" and set a nationwide safety standard for PFAS in drinking water.

A proposal requiring contaminated sites across the country to be cleaned up under the Superfund program had also been removed, as had one that would limit how much PFAS chemical manufacturers could dump into water supplies.


... The military would also be barred by 2021 from giving service members ready-to-eat meals packaged in containers treated with PFAS.



------------------------------

Background:

https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,428.msg189529.html#msg189529

https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,428.msg189625.html#msg189625

-------------------------------

... Each Republican Senator & Congressman should be forced to drink a quart of this shit as a token of appreciation on behalf of a grateful nation.
« Last Edit: December 12, 2019, 03:16:56 AM by vox_mundi »
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

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nanning

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1051 on: December 13, 2019, 08:37:10 AM »
Queensland school runs out of water as commercial bottlers harvest local supplies

Parents have been told to consider keeping Tamborine Mountain state school students at home, while trucks take local water to bottling plants for companies including Coca-Cola


https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/12/queensland-school-water-commercial-bottlers-tamborine-mountain
  by Ben Smee


Water miners in the Mount Tamborine area supply roughly 130m litres of water each year to commercial bottling operations. Now the local bores are running dry.

“I was staggered,” one local resident, Craig Peters, told Guardian Australia. “It was more or less the final straw for me. The school’s bore is 50 metres deep and has never ever had these issues before.”

“At the conclusion of that ceremony they said give serious consideration to not sending kids to school for the rest of the week because of the lack of water.

“Now the government is buying water back from Coca-Cola to bring here, which is where it came from in the first place.”

The situation seems to fall into a regulatory void, with no mechanism to halt commercial operations in times of severe drought or ensure that local water is allocated to locals.
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wdmn

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1052 on: December 13, 2019, 05:45:00 PM »
NSW (Australia) considering evacuating up to 90 towns if they run out of water


https://www.thefifthestate.com.au/articles/day-zero-might-mean-tough-choices-for-90-towns-looking-at-new-locations/?fbclid=IwAR25QQJBmeKnL08TrWC-H_OzLZgWwi5x9zhuznP8YRkWr01zhDC3AvQMB3w

"The NSW state government is considering evacuating the residents of as many as 90 towns that are seriously affected by drought if they completely run out of water.

For months, many towns in rural NSW have been relying on water being trucked in but that is only a short-term solution, and bore water is only available to some towns.

Prime7 News Central West late last month reported that the government would make the drastic move of relocating populations from towns without any water supply.

.......

Asked by Prime TV how many towns were facing the prospect of completely running out of water, the state’s regional town water supply co-ordinator, James McTavish, said: “We have about 90 towns and communities that we have substantial concerns about now”."

Juan C. García

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1053 on: December 20, 2019, 02:13:36 PM »
“Sea Level Rise and the cost of carbon” or “Places becoming less livable”?

Well, could be both, but I prefer “Places becoming less livable”. In fact, this place is not livable at all, at least for humans and other aerobic animals. By putting this article here, I send a clear message. We can say that funny, but at the end very disturbing. This will be happening on all coastal cities, no matter what. The question is how much and how fast, not if it will happen.

Quote
This village fought sea-level rise 7,000 years ago. The sea won.

Seven thousand years ago, long before modern industry began to heat the planet, rising seas threatened a community on the coast of Israel. The villagers needed to defend their home, so they built a wall.

It failed. People abandoned the village. The Mediterranean sea swept inland and drowned the buildings.

But the sea may protect what it ruins. Cool water and a meter-thick layer of sand preserved the paraphernalia of Neolithic life, such as olive pits, bowls, animal bones and graves. The wall stands out: It is a 100-meter row of boulders that runs parallel to the ancient shoreline.

“It’s the world’s oldest sea wall,” said Jonathan Benjamin, a marine archaeologist at Flinders University in Australia. “It’s the first evidence of that very real problem that we’re dealing with today” — though he was quick to stress the difference between the source of sea-level rise then (the natural aftermath of an ice age) and now (human-made global warming).
...
The settlement, named Tel Hreiz, was uncovered in 1960 by accident, when divers looking for shipwrecks found flint tools and human bones. Most of the site is submerged three to four meters below sea level. It drew little attention until 2012, when strong winter storms shifted the sand cover to reveal a line of boulders. Another storm in 2015 exposed additional stones.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/12/18/this-village-fought-sea-level-rise-years-ago-sea-won/
« Last Edit: December 20, 2019, 03:02:47 PM by Juan C. García »
Which is the best answer to Sep-2012 ASI lost (compared to 1979-2000)?
50% [NSIDC Extent] or
73% [PIOMAS Volume]

Volume is harder to measure than extent, but 3-dimensional space is real, 2D's hide ~50% thickness gone.
-> IPCC/NSIDC trends [based on extent] underestimate the real speed of ASI lost.

nanning

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1054 on: December 20, 2019, 06:11:46 PM »
Exclusive: Canada police prepared to shoot Indigenous activists, documents show

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/20/canada-indigenous-land-defenders-police-documents
  by Jaskiran Dhillon in Wet’suwet’en territory and Will Parrish


Canadian police were prepared to shoot Indigenous land defenders blockading construction of a natural gas pipeline in northern British Columbia, according to documents seen by the Guardian.

Notes from a strategy session for a militarized raid on ancestral lands of the Wet’suwet’en nation show that commanders of Canada’s national police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), argued that “lethal overwatch is req’d” – a term for deploying snipers.

The RCMP commanders also instructed officers to “use as much violence toward the gate as you want” ahead of the operation to remove a roadblock which had been erected by Wet’suwet’en people to control access to their territories and stop construction of the proposed 670km (416-mile) Coastal GasLink pipeline (CGL).
"It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly" - Bertrand Russell
"It is preoccupation with what other people from your groups think of you, that prevents you from living freely and nobly" - Nanning
Why do you keep accumulating stuff?

TerryM

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1055 on: December 21, 2019, 04:07:48 PM »

^^

Jeezus H. Christ - this is being done under the leadership of the Liberal Party.
The party I was so proud of having supported.


Terry

vox_mundi

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1056 on: December 23, 2019, 11:43:09 PM »
Mysterious greenish-yellow liquid gushing from walls on I-696 identified
https://amp.freep.com/amp/2721790001



The mysterious, greenish-yellow liquid that ran onto I-696 in Madison Heights on Friday came from a closed electroplating business whose owner is serving a year in federal prison for operating an unlicensed hazardous waste storage facility.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was called to investigate and determined the liquid likely was groundwater contaminated with hexavalent chromium, according to The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE).

State officials said the liquid was entering a storm sewer on I-696. While the spill is taking place outside Macomb County, any material that enters storm drains along I-696 eventually travels to Lake St. Clair, according to a news release from Macomb County Public Works.

According to the U.S. Occupational Health and Safety Administration, hexavalent chromium is known to cause cancer at high levels of exposure.
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

Niall Dollard

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1057 on: December 24, 2019, 02:19:20 AM »

.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was called to investigate and determined the liquid likely was groundwater contaminated with hexavalent chromium, according to The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE).

State officials said the liquid was entering a storm sewer on I-696. While the spill is taking place outside Macomb County, any material that enters storm drains along I-696 eventually travels to Lake St. Clair, according to a news release from Macomb County Public Works.

According to the U.S. Occupational Health and Safety Administration, hexavalent chromium is known to cause cancer at high levels of exposure.

Hinkley still toxic from hexavalent chromium

https://grist.org/article/the-true-story-of-the-town-behind-erin-brockovich/

kassy

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1058 on: December 24, 2019, 12:36:40 PM »
Nobody bothered to clean up the hazardous waste storage facility?
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sidd

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1059 on: December 28, 2019, 11:13:12 PM »
Florida town sees the future:

“I don’t look out the windows anymore because I’m afraid I’ll see flooding,”

"Her only choice, she said, is to sell the home she’s lived in for 53 years, the one she had planned to die in."

"her town, Surfside, is pioneering what appears to be a first of its kind solution for residents in the decades to come — a fund for potential buyouts."

"“This is my life I am planning. You have got to tell me the truth,” she insisted."

"She said staff told her that even if she raised her sea wall 2 extra feet, she would only buy herself around seven years before the floodwaters started licking at her door."

“Our risk is undeniable. The modelers get it. The mortgage institutions get it. Insurance gets it.”

https://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/2019/12/27/a-south-florida-towns-pioneering-plan-to-fund-retreat-from-sea-rise/

sidd

vox_mundi

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1060 on: January 07, 2020, 04:36:23 PM »
Magnitude 6.4 Earthquake Has Knocked Out Power For All of Puerto Rico
https://earther.gizmodo.com/a-magnitude-6-4-earthquake-has-knocked-out-power-for-al-1840850931

Just a day after a 5.8 magnitude earthquake knocked out power to the southern part of Puerto Rico, the entire island is in the dark after a 6.4 magnitude earthquake broke out early Tuesday morning, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

... All this damage and the subsequent blackout comes at a period that the island continues to be in need of aid to recover from Hurricane Maria, which devastated Puerto Rico more than two years ago. The loss of power shows how much work the island still needs to be prepared for future natural disasters, and how little the Trump administration has done to help.
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

Sigmetnow

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1061 on: January 08, 2020, 10:15:56 PM »
Fortunately, no tsunami:
Quote
* AN EARTHQUAKE WITH A PRELIMINARY MAGNITUDE OF 6.0 OCCURRED IN
THE PUERTO RICO REGION AT 1118 UTC ON TUESDAY JANUARY 7 2020.

* BASED ON ALL AVAILABLE DATA... THERE IS NO SIGNIFICANT TSUNAMI THREAT FROM THIS EARTHQUAKE. HOWEVER... THERE IS A VERY SMALL POSSIBILITY OF TSUNAMI WAVES ALONG COASTS LOCATED NEAREST THE EPICENTER.
https://ptwc.weather.gov/ptwc/text.php?id=caribe.TIBCAX.2020.01.07.1122
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vox_mundi

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1062 on: January 11, 2020, 12:39:01 AM »
The World is 'Running Out of Sand', and It's Fuelling Murders, Mafias and Ecological Devastation
https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-11/illegal-sand-trade-india-mafia-murders-vince-beiser/11779570



... Sand from the desert is unsuitable for construction, so instead we mostly use sand found at the bottom of rivers, lakes, oceans and on beaches.

Beiser says the world uses 50 billion tonnes of this kind of sand every year — more than any other natural resource, "except for water".

"When you are talking about quantities that large, sooner or later you're going to run into shortages, and that is in fact what is happening in a growing number of places around the world," he says.

"We are running out, believe it or not."

"No sand, no modern civilisation."
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

oren

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1063 on: January 11, 2020, 02:17:53 AM »
So considering the biblical tale about the promise to Abraham to multiply his descendants as the sand on the seashore, maybe this should be a hint to Abraham's alleged progeny to halt this mindless compund multiplying?

vox_mundi

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1064 on: January 13, 2020, 08:36:53 PM »
Simulations Show Parts of Amazon Switch from Carbon Sink to Carbon Source by 2050
https://m.phys.org/news/2020-01-simulations-amazon-carbon-source.html

A team of researchers led by Paulo Brando, assistant professor at the University of California, Irvine, has found evidence that parts of the Amazon Rainforest could switch from a carbon sink to a carbon source by 2050. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes environmental simulations they developed and what they learned from them.

Their simulations showed that if deforestation continues at its current rate, the increased dryness that results would lead to burning approximately 16 percent of the southern Brazilian Amazon forest by 2050. That amount of lost forest, they suggest, could be enough to flip the region from a carbon sink to a carbon source. And that would mean an increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, leading to a hotter planet.

Open Access:P.M. Brando at University of California, Irvine in Irvine, CA el al., "The gathering firestorm in southern Amazonia," Science Advances (2019)
“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

Tom_Mazanec

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1065 on: January 13, 2020, 10:07:39 PM »
vox_mundi:
2050 is what we project now.
Based on recent history, the actual date might be 2040 or even 2030.

kassy

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1066 on: January 13, 2020, 10:24:27 PM »
And other research says we have 1% margin left so that will be early 2020s by current rates.

Also the typical way to open up the lands makes it more vulnerable. Project somewhere, then roads to project creating much more forest edge and then someone will burn it down to farm there for a bit.
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sidd

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1067 on: January 14, 2020, 02:09:59 AM »
Bittle at the Baffler on flood and sea level impacts in the USA:

"a neighborhood that feels more like an unclaimed frontier than a subdivision in one of the nation’s fastest-growing metropolitan areas. Dogs run free across acres of empty land, the sound of a falling acorn echoes for blocks"

"Funded by the federal government, local governments in coastal states are buying out thousands of homes in vulnerable areas every year, reshaping and breaking up communities as they go. In their wake, the departed residents of these communities have left what may be the country’s first climate ghost towns, abandoned places made uninhabitable by the warming of the planet."

"the federal bureaucracy tasked with handling response to these disasters still treats them as individual events rather than constituent parts of a larger crisis"

"No one would argue that these projects are useless, but they represent an outmoded way of thinking, one that assumes Mother Nature wreaks havoc in a relatively stable and predictable manner. Recent storm events in particular have disproved that assumption, becoming so monstrous and erratic over the past decade as to make designing the flood barriers of the 2030s and the 2040s a task akin to dressing for the weather on this day ten years from now."

"what about the lessons no one sees coming? The other question, of course, is why invest in a barricade that you know will someday burst, if not in the 2040s then in the 2050s?"

"While the program often had to borrow money from the Treasury, the sums were once small and quickly repaid. But as the pace of natural disasters has escalated, the cost of flood recovery has outstripped the amount the program’s five million participating households can afford to pay into the central pot, and it has fallen into unprecedented debt. "

"one house in Houston that flooded on twenty-two separate occasions between 1979 and 2017, filing an insurance claim each time."

"The people who continue to live in these areas are doing something so risky that the government will at some point no longer be able to subsidize it, whether by repairing homes after a flood or fortifying them against the next one. "

" “You have some places where there are high property values, high development, and people are incentivized to build there,” she says—think South Beach or the Hamptons. “But then you have these other communities in the same states, where [people are] not living there because it’s prime real estate or they’re wealthy, they’re living there because they historically can’t afford to live anywhere else.” "

"Where buyouts do occur, they lead to different outcomes for the rich and the poor, disproportionately benefiting wealthier and whiter families who have the means to sustain themselves as they buy new houses and settle in new communities."

"Even if New York City one day builds a seawall around Manhattan, protecting the East Village forever from the kind of dissolution that took place in Arbor Oaks, hundreds of smaller and less affluent communities will fall apart piece by piece in the coming decades as the storms continue."

"Americans displaced by weather events often have at most the right to material compensation for whatever property they lost during a natural disaster. Such a system, pegged as it is to real estate valuations, will always reproduce the inequality that existed prior to the catastrophe, if it doesn’t make that inequality even worse."

"In 2018, when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) finally released new rainfall predictions for Texas, the agency found that storms which were previously considered once-in-a-century events could now be expected every twenty-five years."

"When the new maps take effect in the early 2020s, Wade says, the floodplain will get much larger ...  the floodplain area will likely expand from a thin stripe on either side of a creek into a swath of land a mile wide, covering thousands of homes and businesses. "

“A lot of our job, really, is to physically uncover the environment so we can have a more resilient place,”

"  “[There] are entire neighborhoods that are now within the hundred-year floodplain,” and many residents are living there because that’s what they can afford. They aren’t likely to find comparable housing elsewhere for what the county can offer them in a buyout."

 “Our future is part of what we lost,”

"families who can’t move or don’t want to will become the living collateral of the retreat process, their neighborhoods emptied and lives uprooted because of forces well beyond their control: not only the weather itself, but the policies of the people who govern them. "

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/on-the-waterfronts-bittle

sidd

Sigmetnow

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1068 on: January 15, 2020, 04:19:48 PM »
ESPN Australia & NZ on Twitter: "Awful scenes in Melbourne. Dalila Jakupovic has abandoned her #AusOpen qualifying match after suffering a coughing fit while playing in thick smoke caused by the #AustralianFires.”
https://twitter.com/ESPNAusNZ/status/1216943379507867649
Video at the link.
People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

nanning

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1069 on: January 15, 2020, 05:52:15 PM »
How very stupid that they are playing whilst doctors are always warning to not do heavy excercise outside in bad airpollution.
Darwinian? (I know it's in Melbourne)
"It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly" - Bertrand Russell
"It is preoccupation with what other people from your groups think of you, that prevents you from living freely and nobly" - Nanning
Why do you keep accumulating stuff?

kassy

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1070 on: January 16, 2020, 12:10:51 AM »
The money they make of the show is more important. One of the tennis players tweeted that of course there would be experts saying it is ok to play in current conditions because they also did that when it was really wet at wimbledon (which is a hazard for knees i guess) and really hot (wild guess on my part) in the US open.
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nanning

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1071 on: January 16, 2020, 06:54:39 AM »
Money or health? What a choice. They should ask old people to answer that question.
Money or a future? They should ask the children to answer that question.
The blind God of accumulation strikes again. And these people are already very rich.
"It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly" - Bertrand Russell
"It is preoccupation with what other people from your groups think of you, that prevents you from living freely and nobly" - Nanning
Why do you keep accumulating stuff?

El Cid

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1072 on: January 16, 2020, 08:11:24 AM »
Money or health? What a choice. They should ask old people to answer that question.

The greatest wealth is health, no question about that

TerryM

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1073 on: January 16, 2020, 09:01:11 PM »
Money or health? What a choice. They should ask old people to answer that question.
Money or a future? They should ask the children to answer that question.
The blind God of accumulation strikes again. And these people are already very rich.


As a resident "old person" I'd opt for depends. ;)


In the US ridiculous sums of money are required to assure yourself of barely adequate health care. In most of the world health and wealth can be separated to a great extent. I don't believe this to be true in America, the exception yet again.


I met Johnny Weissmuller when he was in his late '60's. He was working as a celebrity lifeguard at a high end residential hotel in Southern California. He could still do 3 finger pushups and appeared an (aged) picture of health.
His greatest regret was that he hadn't invested well and would be forced to work 'till he died. He was certainly healthy, but not noticeably happy. He spent much of our time together bitching about others and seemed more concerned with past glories than present circumstances.


Wealth can smooth over a lot of bumps, & if gaining more doesn't control your life it can provide nice percs. Health is fundamental. It stands alone and can't be compared to anything.


Happiness with who you are, what you have, & where you're headed probably trumps everything.


Stay Happy!
Terry

oren

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1074 on: January 17, 2020, 02:49:47 AM »
Well said Terry.
Sadly I'm afraid the separation between health and wealth is fraying or even breaking down in other parts of the world too.

TerryM

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1075 on: January 17, 2020, 05:38:26 AM »
^^
Thanks oren


It's sad hearing that health care is being rationed by the availability of cash. I've lived the difference in the US & Canada. Sidds examples are not exaggerations. I've seen the sick and injured flee an ambulance ride, an ambulance ride that they needed but couldn't afford.


A friend died waiting until he would turn 63 and Social Security would pick up the bill for his failing heart.
Terry

nanning

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1076 on: January 17, 2020, 07:24:10 AM »
^^
That's just awful. Unimaginable. Our media should show video's of that 'American Dream'. That'll be shocking and dream busting.

I postpone going to the dentist because of costs. My teeth are not in great condition. I still have 2 molars left and I found out it is possible to chew without molars.

This thread's title "livable" is becoming literal for many poor people. How much further down the road can this go?
"Places becoming less survivable"
"It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly" - Bertrand Russell
"It is preoccupation with what other people from your groups think of you, that prevents you from living freely and nobly" - Nanning
Why do you keep accumulating stuff?

sidd

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1077 on: January 17, 2020, 08:36:32 PM »
Deutsche Welle did a show on homelessness in the USA:

https://www.dw.com/en/homeless-in-the-us/av-42600628

sidd

Sigmetnow

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1078 on: January 17, 2020, 08:40:28 PM »
‘Least snow I’ve seen in my life’: climate change in Japan worries experts and tourism operators
- The city of Sapporo is having to truck in snow for its annual festival, while some ski resorts have closed early in Hokkaido’s mildest winter on record
- Experts say there are fears the changing climate could see more, larger typhoons and a lack of water in the summertime

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3046523/least-snow-ive-seen-my-life-climate-change-japan
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kassy

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1079 on: January 23, 2020, 01:51:48 PM »
Sometimes you places become less livable in a way that you cannot directly notice and then no body does anything either....

US drinking water contamination with ‘forever chemicals’ far worse than scientists thought


The contamination of US drinking water with manmade “forever chemicals” is far worse than previously estimated with some of the highest levels found in Miami, Philadelphia and New Orleans, said a report on Wednesday by an environmental watchdog group.

...

The findings here by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) show the group’s previous estimate in 2018, based on unpublished US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data, that 110 million Americans may be contaminated with PFAS, could be far too low.

Of tap water samples taken by EWG from 44 sites in 31 states and Washington DC, only one location, Meridian, Mississippi, which relies on 700ft (215m) deep wells, had no detectable PFAS. Only Seattle and Tuscaloosa, Alabama had levels below 1 part per trillion (PPT), the limit EWG recommends.

In addition, EWG found that on average six to seven PFAS compounds were found at the tested sites, and the effects on health of the mixtures are little understood. “Everyone’s really exposed to a toxic soup of these PFAS chemicals,” Andrews said.

...

The EPA has known since at least 2001 about the problem of PFAS in drinking water but has so far failed to set an enforceable, nationwide legal limit.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/22/us-drinking-water-contamination-forever-chemicals-pfas

And also...

'Biggest Loss of Clean Water Protection the Country Has Ever Seen': Trump Guts Safeguards for US Streams and Wetlands

The Trump administration is set to continue its corporate friendly assault on U.S. environmental regulations Thursday by finalizing a rule that will allow companies, landowners, and property developers—including golf course owners like the president—to dump pesticides and other pollutants directly into many of the nation's streams and wetlands, potentially threatening the drinking water of millions of Americans.

...

"This is not just undoing the Obama rule. This is stripping away protections that were put in place in the '70s and '80s that Americans have relied on for their health."

...

Janette Brimmer, an attorney in the Northwest regional office of climate group Earthjustice, said in a statement that the rule further shows "President Trump's administration wants to make our waters burn again."

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/23/biggest-loss-clean-water-protection-country-has-ever-seen-trump-guts-safeguards-us
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Aporia_filia

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1080 on: January 24, 2020, 11:55:09 AM »
Modeling migration patterns in the USA under sea level rise

"Sea level rise in the United States will lead to large scale migration in the future. We propose a framework to examine future climate migration patterns using models of human migration. Our framework requires that we distinguish between historical versus climate driven migration and recognizes how the impacts of climate change can extend beyond the affected area. We apply our framework to simulate how migration, driven by sea level rise, differs from baseline migration patterns. Specifically, we couple a sea level rise model with a data-driven model of human migration and future population projections, creating a generalized joint model of climate driven migration that can be used to simulate population distributions under potential future sea level rise scenarios. The results of our case study suggest that the effects of sea level rise are pervasive, expanding beyond coastal areas via increased migration, and disproportionately affecting some areas of the United States."

My bold, access here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0227436

be cause

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1081 on: January 24, 2020, 12:56:33 PM »
Locusts are devastating crops and nature across Kenya and the Horn of Africa .. the price of last year's rains .. b.c.
Conflict is the root of all evil , for being blind it does not see whom it attacks . Yet it always attacks the Son Of God , and the Son of God is you .

gerontocrat

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1082 on: January 24, 2020, 02:54:45 PM »
The contamination of US drinking water with manmade “forever chemicals” is far worse than previously estimated with some of the highest levels found in Miami, Philadelphia and New Orleans, said a report on Wednesday by an environmental watchdog group.

And also...

'Biggest Loss of Clean Water Protection the Country Has Ever Seen': Trump Guts Safeguards for US Streams and Wetlands

The Trump administration is set to continue its corporate friendly assault on U.S. environmental regulations Thursday by finalizing a rule that will allow companies, landowners, and property developers—including golf course owners like the president—to dump pesticides and other pollutants directly into many of the nation's streams and wetlands, potentially threatening the drinking water of millions of Americans.
Actions such as these are a threat to the United States. If a foreign power attacked the USA by polluting water supplies and poisoning drinking water, it would be an Act of War. By a US citizen, such action would be treason under Article III, Section 3 of the United States Constitution.
_____________________________________________________________
Treason laws in the United States - Wikipedia
Definition: In Article III, Section 3 of the United States Constitution, treason is specifically limited to levying war against the US, or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.
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"And that's all I'm going to say about that". Forrest Gump
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kassy

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1083 on: January 25, 2020, 10:55:00 AM »
This is a cute one. All places everywhere.

Quote
Richard Betts, from the Met Office Hadley Centre and University of Exeter, said that 2020 was likely to be the second year running where Earth’s carbon sinks were unable to offset humanity’s ever-increasing carbon emissions.

“Although the series of annual levels of CO? have always seen a year-on-year increase since 1958, driven by fossil fuel burning and deforestation, the rate of rise isn’t perfectly even because there are fluctuations in the response of ecosystem carbon sinks, especially tropical forests,” he said.

“Overall these are expected to be weaker than normal for a second year running.”

https://www.financialexpress.com/lifestyle/science/alarming-carbon-emissions-from-australia-bushfire-fuel-biggest-ever-annual-spike-in-co2-levels
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pleun

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1084 on: January 25, 2020, 11:11:36 AM »
no worries. I just read that we are actually below rcp 2.6 so nothing can happen...

Tom_Mazanec

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1085 on: January 25, 2020, 11:22:48 AM »
no worries. I just read that we are actually below rcp 2.6 so nothing can happen...
Where did you read this?

pleun

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1086 on: January 25, 2020, 11:31:31 AM »
don't remember, but it was a very respectable source.

TerryM

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1087 on: January 25, 2020, 12:17:52 PM »
^^
Please keep the link in your private stash. ::)
Terry


wdmn

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1088 on: January 25, 2020, 02:21:16 PM »
no worries. I just read that we are actually below rcp 2.6 so nothing can happen...
Where did you read this?

Probably Ken Feldman's post here: https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,2994.msg246050.html#msg246050
« Last Edit: January 25, 2020, 02:30:54 PM by wdmn »

kassy

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1089 on: January 26, 2020, 02:09:01 PM »
In a follow up to Reply #1083

This is how they model it:

Quote
The size of the annual CO2 rise depends on anthropogenic emissions and the strength of natural carbon sinks which are affected by climate variability.  Our method uses a statistical relationship between the annual CO2 rise, anthropogenic CO2 emissions and sea surface temperatures (SSTs) in the Niño3.4 region of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. We predict the rise between 2019 and 2020 will be similar to that between 2018 and 2019, which was larger than in the previous two years (Figure 2), because of relatively warm temperatures in the Niño3.4 region. Such "El Niño-like" conditions are generally associated with modified tropical weather patterns that make many land regions drier and reduce the ability of plants to grow and absorb CO2, temporarily reducing the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/seasonal-to-decadal/long-range/forecasts/co2-forecast

Picture of the Niño3.4 region
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/teleconnections/enso/indicators/sst/

Quote
Historically, scientists have classified the intensity of El Niño based on SST anomalies exceeding a pre-selected threshold in a certain region of the equatorial Pacific. The most commonly used region is the Niño 3.4 region, and the most commonly used threshold is a positive SST departure from normal greater than or equal to +0.5°C. Since this region encompasses the western half of the equatorial cold tongue region, it provides a good measure of important changes in SST and SST gradients that result in changes in the pattern of deep tropical convection and atmospheric circulation.

So off course at some time the 3.4 region might become colder again but meanwhile we are cuting into the Amazon and other old forests which will in itself eats away at the sinks.

Off course the real important fact is that 2019 was the first year we overwhelmed the carbon sinks...

One highly theoretical solution is to immediately cut our emissions to below what the system can handle but that assumes sanity and by now we are on Planet Wetiko.  >:(

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sidd

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1090 on: January 29, 2020, 08:08:27 AM »
Sea level rise hitting inland:

" Their results suggest that coastal regions will be far from the only ones affected by sea-level rise. A huge number of counties far from the coast—some deep in the US interior—will see dramatic changes in the number of people relocating there."

https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/01/as-sea-levels-rise-little-of-the-united-states-will-be-unaffected/           

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0227436

sidd

Sigmetnow

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1091 on: February 17, 2020, 08:40:44 PM »
U.S.:  Florida

Fort Lauderdale mayor seeks state, federal aid after 211M gallons of sewage leaks from pipes into streets, drinking water
Quote
”Considering the extent of this pollution, we should be more than eligible for state and federal assistance," Mayor Dean Trantalis told the Sun-Sentinel. "We cannot suffer this burden alone."

About 127 million gallons of sewage spewed from six separate breaks in the pipe system into the Tarpoon River, the Himmarshee Canal and streets in three neighborhoods in December, the Sun-Sentinel reported. During a 10-period from Jan. 30 to Feb. 8, an additional 79.3 million gallons spilled into George English Lake, city officials reported to the Department of Environmental Protection. Then 5.4 million gallons of sewage flooded into streets near the park located by a major shopping mall.
 ...
“All the fish are dead there,” Maggio told the newspaper. “Everything’s just gone. Crabs, oysters, barnacles and plankton. Crews have been out there picking up hundreds of fish out of the water so it doesn’t look like holy hell. Manatees are swimming in that poison.” ...
https://www.foxnews.com/us/fort-lauderdale-mayor-seeks-state-federal-aid-after-211m-gallons-of-sewage-leaks-from-pipes-into-streets-drinking-water
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kassy

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1092 on: February 28, 2020, 11:49:41 PM »
'Houses On The River Will Fall': Cambodia's Sand Mining Threatens Vital Mekong

....

While China is building dams that sharply reduce the water flow and sediment downstream, other countries along the river share some of the blame.

Cambodia, for instance, is experiencing a building boom that is transforming its capital, Phnom Penh. Sitting at the confluence of the Mekong and the Tonle Sap rivers, the city's low-slung French colonial architecture is being replaced with high-rise apartment buildings, malls and luxury car dealerships. Sand from the Mekong's sediment is key to that construction growth.

...

What's more, taking too much sand from the Mekong is also causing problems for the people who live alongside it.

"When you extract all the sediment from the beds of a river, the river looks for new sediment," says Brian Eyler, a Southeast Asia expert at the Stimson Center think tank and author of Last Days of the Mighty Mekong. "So it pulls the banks of the river into the river, and this has resulted in roads collapsing into the river and lines of homes and towns falling into the river."

...

"It's all about the money. The business, the benefit, not about the environment or the people," says Hun Vannak, an activist with Mother Nature Cambodia, an environmental advocacy group. He spent five months in prison beginning in 2017 for protesting illegal sand mining when Cambodia was selling huge amounts of sand to Singapore, the tiny city-state that has been buying sand from Southeast Asian countries for years in an effort to increase its landmass. The uproar and bad press over Cambodia's dredging of its coastal wetlands led Cambodia to officially ban sand exports in 2017.

But there's plenty more for the miners to find and sell domestically. And that worries environmentalists like Vannak.

"We are doing too much sand mining right now, and we do not control it," he says.

....

Marc Goichot, the World Wildlife Fund's Mekong program director, says the majority of the Mekong's sediment loss has come from upstream damming by China. But the indiscriminate sand dredging in downstream countries such as Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam has made things even worse.

"We have lost, since 1994, 77% of the total sediment transported by the river [the Mekong], which is huge," Goichot says.

"The demand is great, and the extraction is already absolutely not sustainable," he says, "because we are probably extracting somewhere between 60 and 80 million tons a year when the river today probably barely produces 5 [million tons]."

That's bad news for the 20 million people who live in the Mekong Delta and depend on river sediment from seasonal flooding for growing crops. And the fish in the world's largest freshwater fishery depend on that sediment too.

https://www.npr.org/2020/02/27/808807512/houses-on-the-river-will-fall-cambodia-s-sand-mining-threatens-vital-mekong
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1093 on: February 29, 2020, 02:09:43 AM »
U.S., Louisiana

Climate refugees: Isle de Jean Charles tribe searches for new home
Quote
ISLE DE JEAN CHARLES, La. — It’s all but assumed this island will one day disappear beneath the waves.

Perhaps the water will only cover the road, leaving Isle de Jean Charles a Venetian ghost town in Cajun country. Maybe the water will rise higher, or the island will sink lower, and only rooftops will be visible to passing boats and those wondering what used to be here.

By then, those who could say will no longer be around to tell. At least, that’s the plan.

The state of Louisiana is three years into an ambitious $48 million plan to move Isle de Jean Charles residents northward onto the mainland. Most are French-speaking members of the Isle de Jean Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe, a group of interrelated and indigenous descendants of tribes whose ancestors fled the Trail of Tears and found refuge in the bayous.

Since 1955, they've seen the island shrink from 22,000 acres to 320, a loss of 98 percent. Barrier marshland responsible for keeping floodwaters low withered away. Mink and muskrat traps now turn up empty on these ancestral hunting grounds.

Land loss and higher storm surges led to an exodus of residents. After Hurricane Barry, more abandoned houses than ever dot the landscape, and it's estimated that less than 50 still reside where a community of 400 once thrived. Those remaining on Isle de Jean Charles have been dubbed the nation's first climate change refugees, a title many in the tribe dislike despite the attention it's garnered their cause.

“Starting in the '70s and '80s, as storms come in and go out, so do the people,” said Chantel Comardelle, secretary for the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe. “And we’ve noticed a transition away from cultural traditions and a disconnect as a tribal community. If that continues, the culture is lost.” ...
https://www.theadvertiser.com/in-depth/news/2020/02/27/isle-de-jean-charles-louisiana-climate-refugees-resettlement/2448973001/
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kassy

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1094 on: March 03, 2020, 02:49:47 PM »
Beach bums are screwed:

Half of world’s sandy beaches could disappear due to sea level rise by 2100

Up to half of the world’s sandy beaches are at risk of disappearing by the end of this century if no action is taken to limit greenhouse gas emissions. That’s according to a new study, published in Nature Climate Change. Even assuming a better outcome for action on climate change, where global emissions peak around 2040, well over one-third (37 per cent) of the world’s beaches would be lost by 2100.

Researchers had previously analysed satellite images showing shoreline change from 1984 to 2016. They found that a quarter of sandy beaches worldwide had already eroded at a rate of more than 0.5 metres per year, shedding over 28,000 square kilometres of land to the sea.

...

More than 60 per cent of sandy beaches in Gambia and Guinea-Bissau may be lost to erosion by rising seas, while Australia is expected to lose nearly 12,000 km of sandy coastline. For small island states such as Kiribati, the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu, losing 300 m of land — as predicted for some — would be catastrophic.

https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/climate-change/half-of-world-s-sandy-beaches-could-disappear-due-to-sea-level-rise-by-2100-69556
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vox_mundi

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1095 on: March 04, 2020, 03:25:28 PM »
Pakistan Struggles to Combat Devastating Locust Plague
https://m.phys.org/news/2020-03-pakistan-struggles-combat-devastating-locust.html

Pakistan's farmers are struggling to combat the worst locust plague in nearly three decades as insect swarms decimate entire harvests in the country's agricultural heartlands and send food prices soaring.

Heavy rains and cyclones sparked "unprecedented" breeding and the explosive growth of locust populations on the Arabian peninsula early last year, according to the United Nations.

The insects have since fanned out and wreaked havoc on farms from East Africa to India before making their way into Pakistan from the desert on the country's southwestern border with Iran.

The crisis is so severe that the government has declared a nationwide emergency and urgently appealed for help from the international community.

... Local authorities had "launched a combat operation" to clear the area of infestation with pesticide sprays, he said.

Clouds of the noxious gas envelop the nearby fields each morning, where villagers gather the husks of dead insects for an official bounty of 20 rupees (13 cents) per kilogramme bag.

"We spray twice a day here," says Fayyaz Azeem, clad in a face mask and thick industrial gloves on top of a tractor discharging pesticide into rows of crops.

But the process is slow and time-consuming, and by the time locusts are killed off in one field they have often already destroyed the next.

The pesticides used by officials are also dangerous for consumption, so even when the locusts are dead the remaining crops have to be discarded.

... A team of Chinese experts has arrived in Pakistan to survey the crisis, food security ministry chief Muhammad Hashim Popalzai told AFP.

Beijing could also offer aerial spraying—a much faster and more efficient method of pest control—and Pakistan may also import pesticides from China.

“There are three classes of people: those who see. Those who see when they are shown. Those who do not see.” ― anonymous

Insensible before the wave so soon released by callous fate. Affected most, they understand the least, and understanding, when it comes, invariably arrives too late

kassy

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1096 on: March 07, 2020, 11:45:32 AM »
Due To Climate Change, The Next American Dust Bowl Could Be Coming

...

In a recently published study, we estimate that if the world stays on its current greenhouse gas emissions path, rising fine dust levels could increase premature deaths by 130 percent and triple hospitalizations due to fine dust exposure in this region.

...

The southwestern United States, much of which consists of deserts and drylands, has the nation’s highest levels of airborne dust. The first question we investigated was how drought conditions occurring in different hydrologic systems, such as surface soils, river discharge areas and groundwater storage, have been influencing levels of airborne fine dust in recent years.

By analyzing data collected between 2000-2015 at 35 monitoring sites in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah, we found that year-to-year changes in fine dust levels observed at each monitoring site tended to occur in sync. This pattern suggests that there is one or more common cause of large-scale changes in fine dust levels.

Indeed, we found that these changes were significantly correlated with soil moisture conditions across southwestern North America. Years with higher-than-normal fine dust levels were also marked by drier-than-normal soil moisture in areas spanning the Chihuahuan, Mojave and Sonoran deserts, the southern Great Plains and the Colorado Plateau.

Studies have shown that dust emissions within these regions primarily come from desert areas, dry lake beds, previously burned areas and lands disturbed by agricultural activities and fossil fuel development. Our findings are consistent with previous field studies showing that soil moisture can control dust emissions by modulating vegetation cover and soil stability.

....

Under the worst-case scenario – the path we’re currently on – fine dust levels in the Southwest could increase by 30 percent by the end of this century compared to present-day values. This would result in a 130 percent increase in premature deaths and a 300 percent increase in hospital admissions attributable to fine dust exposure.

Even under the best-case climate mitigation scenario, we project that fine dust levels in the region could increase by 10 percent. This rise would increase premature deaths and hospital admissions due to fine dust exposure by 20 percent and 60 percent respectively, compared to present-day values.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/due-climate-change-next-american-dust-bowl-could-be-coming-130417
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kassy

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1097 on: March 08, 2020, 09:51:20 AM »
We need a serious conversation': River flows could decline 40% in Australia's foodbowl

River flows in Australia's food bowl, the Murray Darling Basin, will decline by as much as 40 per cent over the next 50 years under the current trajectory of global warming, one of Australia's top hydrologists has warned.

Internationally recognised hydrologist Francis Chiew, a CSIRO research leader and co-author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said Australia was the driest and among the most water-dependent countries in the world.

"We have the driest inhabited continent, we've got the least water by far per square kilometres of land surface," Dr Chiew said.

"Australia actually has among the world's highest per capita water use - comparable to Asia and the Americas."

Dr Chiew said the upper range forecast is for a 40 per cent decline in the volume of water flowing down rivers and a "conservative" forecast sees Australian river flows declining 20 per cent.

His forecast is based on global average temperatures increasing by 2 degrees, which is the target of the international emissions reduction targets under the Paris Agreement. The IPCC puts the current trajectory of warming, without increasing emissions reduction, at more than 3 degrees.

more on:
https://www.watoday.com.au/environment/climate-change/we-need-a-serious-conversation-river-flows-could-decline-40-percent-in-australia-s-foodbowl-20200304-p546t4.html
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Sigmetnow

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1098 on: March 08, 2020, 03:54:05 PM »
Because climate change comes with more severe weather events, here’s a great thread on severe weather alerts by a meteorologist, rolled up at the link below.

Quote
After a very long 3-4 days, some thoughts on the recent deadly #tornado outbreak in TN.

1. An off duty NWS employee can easily become part of the "general public" and go to bed unaware of the threats that exist. No social media post or media message will help if not checking.

2. WEA does you no good if you go to bed with your phone set to do not disturb. It is true you must have a second way to get warnings. In this case it was my dog waking me up. I need to follow our own advice on that one.

3. It's true that humans will often seek visual confirmation of a threat before acting, even a meteorologist. Even after seeing the warning, it wasn't until I saw the tornado approaching from my back deck that I scrambled to shelter with little time left. Precious minutes wasted.
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https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1235966754746064899.html
People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

kassy

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Re: Places becoming less livable
« Reply #1099 on: March 14, 2020, 07:11:43 PM »
Heat stress may affect more than 1.2 billion people annually by 2100

Heat stress from extreme heat and humidity will annually affect areas now home to 1.2 billion people by 2100, assuming current greenhouse gas emissions, according to a Rutgers study.

That's more than four times the number of people affected today, and more than 12 times the number who would have been affected without industrial era global warming.

The research is published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

...

Annual exposure to extreme heat and humidity in excess of safety guidelines is projected to affect areas currently home to about 500 million people if the planet warms by 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) and nearly 800 million at 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). The planet has already warmed by about 1.2 degrees (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above late 19th century levels.

An estimated 1.2 billion people would be affected with 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming, as expected by the end of this century under current global policies.

In New York City, extreme heat and humidity, comparable to the worst day in a typical year today, is projected to occur on four days in a typical year with global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) and about eight days per year with warming of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit). With 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming, extreme heat and humidity are projected to occur for about 24 days in a typical year.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200312142256.htm
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