You and I might care about sustainable forestry and check that any product made from the trees of this world are carefully sourced to protect ancient and rare trees.
Auditors who assist in green labelling are part of a multi billion dollar industry. But are they really helping us protect this planet? Perhaps they may be assisting criminals to conceal their ill gotten timber under green labelling to avoid prosecution?
Read the ICIJ latest report on the topic by clicking on the link below:
There are honorary consuls in Toronto and Ontario, and there are negative associations now emerging from ICIJ of countries being robbed by those appointed. See:
As this outrageous oil exploration project is planned for this rare pristine wilderness in Botswana, there are others like the French oil exploration in Virunga Park, DRC. This deal was led by Boris Johnson of the UK.
We should all be protesting at the highest levels.
So sad to see one of the few pristine Arctic wilderness environments will now be trashed by Willow Oil company. Fossil fuels are here to stay, and they will retain what we think of as vital for growth but we are knowingly extinguishing the last vestiges of hope for life on this amazing planet.
We have seen the devastation of the Nigerian delta by Dutch Shell and we know about the centuries of ongoing theft of wealth from exploited areas of Africa. Royal Dutch Shell was founded by Sir Henri Deterding, an ardent Nazi. From WW2 to the present day, there is a notorious story linked to this oil group, written up by John Donovan.
We can’t use the war in Ukraine as an excuse to continue to destroy treasured wilderness in Africa, nor of any other rare, pristine area of this wonderful earth.
Read the story of Sir Henri Deterding and the power of Royal Dutch Shell, by John Donovan, 2016:
The outcome of acquittal has been a disappointment to Nigerians. Social Justice is rarely achieved when the scales are tipped into the greedy hands of the exploiters.
I am reproducing this website as it best illustrates how rebuilding countries which have suffered massive destruction could be achieved in an eco way. Surely, there should be no reason to build using pre-eco design methods?
“I choose to work within three parameters; nature, resourses and aesthetics. By “nature” I mean the Gaia theory of natural systems in which life itself controls the biosphere. Designers need to see the city as an ecosystem in which all parts are interlinked and influence each other. “Resources” are human, natural and economic. By “aesthetics” I refer to a new relationship between designer and nature where the former copies the processes of nature and not nature itself.”
Zach Wichter wrote an article in the New York Times (June 20, 2017) entitled “Too Hot to Fly? Climate Change May Take a Toll on Flying.”
He pointed out that when temperatures get too high, the aerodynamic that allow planes to take off is negated.
4 years ago, Aviation website explained:
“On a hot and humid day, the aircraft will accelerate more slowly down the runway, will need to move faster to attain the same lift, and will climb more slowly. The less dense the air, the less lift, the more lackluster the climb, and the longer the distance needed for takeoff and landing. Fewer air molecules in a given volume of air also result in reduced propeller efficiency and therefore reduced net thrust. All of these factors can lead to an accident if the poor performance has not been anticipated.”
In 2021, flights were grounded due to intense heat:
“Airbus and Boeing jets are able to operate at higher temperatures, but performance may still be impaired by heat. Earlier this month Hainan Airlines decided to delay the departure of its flight from Las Vegas to Beijing for the summer, because of the capacity restrictions imposed by high afternoon temperatures.
The Chinese carrier has switched the departure time from 2.10pm to 1am. Flight HU7970 will take off in the early hours until the end of October.”
When we take a round trip journey from New York to London, our flight costs the Arctic three more square meters of ice. See:
Dirk Notz and Julianne Stroeve, Observed Arctic Sea-Ice Loss Directly Follows Anthropogenic CO2 Emission,” Science 354, no.6313 (Nov 2016).
We have seen the increase of permafrost melting in Arctic areas of Russia. The most alarming consequence is illustrated by the oil spill a couple of years ago:
Food security is deteriorating due to many factors, but a major one is climate change.
Economical disaster will hit farmers who remember perfect conditions for their produce in mid latitude countries. They will have had a good living during their lifetime, but now will see their land turning to desert. It will be a Grapes of Wrath scene on a massive scale.
Yet emissions continue to rise and the consequences are what we know already.
The classification of countries will change as mid latitude countries lose out due to climate change. As some economies shrink, so others will grow, but globally the world is suffering due to high use of fossil fuels in industrial settings.
We know the ongoing Ukraine war has forced a postponement of plans to make us less reliant on fossil fuels. The weaponising of energy has stopped us in our tracks.
A precursor to Ukraine was Tigray, fighting for independence but trashed by Ethiopian and Eritranean warfare when the large dam was bombed in 2021 and the country went dark.
Now we see 2022 to present day, the massive attacks on the Ukrainian energy infrastructure which was built in the Soviet era and Russia has the maps of where every part of it is located.
Destroying energy infrastructure with intent is a crime against humanity. More so if the global consequences are to increase emissions which accelerate climate change.
Environmental damage through war is immense. Economic damage is immense.
Research before the blackouts in Tigray and Ukraine estimated economic damage with already known factors, and the outlook is dire:
Economic stability is a fiction given our trajectory of insane perpetuation of harmful activities.
And Africa is an easy target for plunder, all countries continue to exploit its vast resources, for example, Russia in Eritrea and Sudan extracting gold and potash reserves, whilst the population suffer in drought conditions across the Horn of Africa:
How US lawyers and bankers aided powerful Haitian tycoons now sanctioned over corruption by Canada
Two wealthy Haitians recently sanctioned by Canada owned or had other links to almost 20 companies and trusts created in some of the world’s most secretive tax havens, according to documents from the Pandora Papers.
The above story was put out February 7, 2023 and should greatly concern all of us.
Enablers provide tax advice, letters of reference and assist those with criminal intent to exploit their position of trust to steal millions of state funds of their respective countries.
Their ‘position of trust’ is gained by becoming an honorary consul which affords immunity from further investigation, ie. diplomatic protections.
These people have become adept at funnelling their illegal gains into offshore trusts, thus enjoying wealth which should have been benefiting the country they stole it from – yet this nonsense of ‘Honorary consul’ status is perpetuated, and thus the criminals laugh all the way to the bank.
Read about Gulnara Karimova, a daughter of the dictator of Uzbekistan, who stole from her country until her crimes caught up with her in 2016 and her father had died so could no longer protect her:
“Pyridine appears as a clear colorless to light yellow liquid with a penetrating nauseating odor. Density 0.978 g / cm3. Flash point 68 °F. Vapors are heavier than air. Toxic by ingestion and inhalation. Combustion produces toxic oxides of nitrogen.CAMEO Chemicals
Pyridine is a colorless liquid with an unpleasant smell. It can be made from crude coal tar or from other chemicals. Pyridine is used to dissolve other substances. It is also used to make many different products such as medicines, vitamins, food flavorings, paints, dyes, rubber products, adhesives, insecticides, and herbicides. Pyridine can also be formed from the breakdown of many natural materials in the environment.CDC-ATSDR Toxic Substances Portal
Pyridine is an azaarene comprising a benzene core in which one -CH group is replaced by a nitrogen atom. It is the parent compound of the class pyridines. It has a role as an environmental contaminant. It is a mancude organic heteromonocyclic parent, a monocyclic heteroarene, an azaarene and a member of pyridines.ChEBI”
In the case of the river Tees, a site of centuries of toxic waste allowed to pollute the river when there was no regulation, and so all life in the river died.
“Dredging is also performed to reduce the exposure of fish, wildlife, and people to contaminants and to prevent the spread of contaminants to other areas of the water body. This environmental dredging is often necessary because sediments in and around cities and industrial areas are frequently contaminated with a variety of pollutants. These pollutants are introduced to waterways from point sources such as sewer overflows, municipal and industrial discharges, and spills; or may be introduced from nonpoint sources such as surface runoff and atmospheric deposition”
In which case, if this was environmental dredging, the contaminants should not have entered the North Sea, but should have been safely disposed of where toxins could not even enter groundwater.
The answer to this poisoning of marine life must be found and action taken to protect sea life in future from whatever mistaken error was made in this instance.
From the above map we learn Saudi Arabia has the most desalination plants in the world:
“eight plants using the reverse osmosis technology and 12 using the multi-stage distillation process. The country has the largest floating desalination plant in the world with a capacity of producing up to 882,867 cubic feet.”
United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Israel operate most of the world’s plants, design and build them for other countries.
The above provides a history of desalination, which they tell us has been understood by humans for thousands of years.
….”Greek sailors used to boil water to evaporate fresh water away from the salt, and Romans used clay filters to trap salt.”
The World Bank reports that at least 80 countries have water shortages and 2 billion people lack access to clean water. More disturbingly, the World Health Organization has reported that 1 billion people lack enough water to simply meet their basic needs, unfortunately in many countries water is scarce or contaminated.
Australia’s experience with desalination includes wood-fired stills at the Coolgardie goldfields 100 years ago, solar ponds at Coober Pedy, and electrodialysis for the first plant at Yulara.
There are about 270 desalination plants in Australia, most of them small-scale plants to desalinate seawater or brackish water for a range of uses. This includes drinking water supplies for communities or tourist destinations (e.g. Kangaroo and Rottnest islands), industrial processes, irrigation of sports grounds, and agricultural uses.
Desalination plants have been constructed in major Australian coastal cities to produce large amounts of drinking water for urban populations.
The importance of the history and application of reverse osmosis is explained in the above article. Here are some timeline facts:
…..”Osmosis has taken place for millions of years and happens in our bodies every day.
The process of osmosis through semipermeable membranes was first observed in a laboratory setting in 1748 by Jean-Antoine Nollet, using a pig’s bladder as a membrane. He proved that a solvent could pass selectively through a semi-permeable membrane through the process of natural osmotic pressure and the solvent will continually enter through the cell membrane until dynamic equilibrium is reached on both sides of the bladder.
Over the next 200 years, osmosis was only a phenomenon observed in the laboratory. In 1949, the University of California at Los Angeles was the first to look to osmosis and semipermeable membranes for a solution of removing salt from seawater. Researchers from both the University of California and the University of Florida successfully produced fresh water from seawater in the mid-1950s, however, the product was not commercially viable due to high flux. John Cadotte, of FilmTec Corporation, later discovered that membranes with particularly high flux and low salt passage could be made by interfacial polymerization of m-phenylenediamine and trimesoyl chloride. By 2001, over 15,00 desalination plants were up and running, or planned for, around the world.
The above link explains the desalination plant design which precede the American designed reverse osmosis system.
Multi-stage flash has been superseded by reverse osmosis. Older MSF plants are not environmentally friendly and they are costly, but when introduced were providing vital drinking and irrigation water to desert lands.
Multi-stage flash (MSF) is a thermal desalination process. It distills water by boiling it under vacuum (also known as flashing), then condensing the pure water vapour. It uses multiple shell and tube heat exchangers called stages.
MSF was the market leader in terms of sea water desalination for many years. Around 2009 reverse osmosis overtook MSF as the most popular in terms of installed sea water desalination capacity.
Israel has recently built a highly sophisticated reverse osmosis plant which provides drinking and fresh irrigation water to land hit by 6 years of drought in southern Israel. Gaza lies in the same region but has no such facility although it lies on the coast.
Now Israel has achieved such a respected name for what it has achieved it is building a desalination plant, based in San Diego, California.
“Fast emerging technologies are now making desalination a viable proposition not only for the arid areas of the world but for places not usually associated with water shortages. IDE Technologies, a leading water sector Israeli company which is internationally recognized as a pioneer and leader in the delivery of sophisticated water solutions, is leading the charge.”
Of the new California contract they proudly state:
“Providing a new source of water in a state that has long suffered severe droughts, the Claude “Bud” Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant will be quenching the thirst of roughly 10 percent of San Diego County, according to IDE. Employing advanced pretreatment and seawater reverse osmosis technologies, the plant is able to generate potable water of the highest quality while significantly reducing energy consumption.”
Magnesium is lost from drinking water when the salt is removed, therefore magnesium, vital for human health, must be added to the drinking water.
There are many coastal countries in the world whose peoples would not be dying from years of famine caused by long term drought if these same plants were to be built under a rescue plan. Then they could provide for themselves and not need costly aid from foreign intervention. No person should be without fresh, clean water.
“Judah Cohen, a climatologist at MIT and the director of seasonal forecasting at Atmospheric and Environmental Research, told Newsweek that, as average global temperatures rise, winter temperatures are increasing at a slower rate than expected.”
As the current dramatic winter storm hits Canada and particularly most parts of the US except California, again- as in 2014 – we learn the cause is a ‘wobbly polar vortex’ as it strikes vehemently down on the continent. See the 2014 coverage:
Normally, the polar vortex swirls from west to east in the stratosphere above the Earth’s poles, keeping cold air over the Arctic and Antarctica.5 At the same time, the jet stream also circulates, keeping warm air to its south and cold air to its north.
Sometimes in the winter, the Arctic stratosphere will heat up through an event known as a Sudden Stratospheric Warming (SSW).6 This causes the winds keeping the polar vortex in place to weaken or even reverse, which in turn weakens the jet stream, making it wavier. The cold Arctic air is then brought down into the mid-latitudes.
The polar vortex itself is not a new phenomenon, and NOAA says the term likely originated in 1853.
………the Arctic has been warming two to three times faster than the rest of the planet on average, and a growing body of observational research links this Arctic warming with extreme winter weather in Eurasia and North America, which has in fact increased in the past two decades7.8
A 2018 paper found that extreme cold and snowfall in the eastern U.S. were more common when the Arctic was warmest.9 ……..
Another 2020 study found that the melting of sea ice in the Barents and Kara Seas was associated with a weaker polar vortex in mid-January to late-February, which was typically displaced over Eurasia.10
At the same time, sea ice melt near Greenland and eastern Canada was associated with a weaker polar vortex from December to early February, that was displaced over Europe.
This trend is a problem for both the U.S. and Europe, and the Arctic itself.
Many billions of us now depend on internet servers to carry out the most vital to the most trivial day to day human involvement.
Like the air we breathe, we expect it to be there. But there are many threats to its future.
Climate change events such as Californian wildfires, plus dependence on massive energy consumption have not been designed into present systems resilience planning.
Backup power can only be generators, and we run them on diesel. Fuel is finite, particularly oil based. So servers backed up by generators when there is an oil supply shortage is maybe not going to be the whole answer. Would you give priority to supplying diesel to servers over hospital generators?
And then there is the huge drain on energy by the global system banking industry with the additional drain from servers for cryptocurrency.
….”research by ARK Investment Management found the Bitcoin ecosystem consumes less than 10% of the energy required for the traditional banking system. While it’s true the banking system serves far more people, cryptocurrency is still maturing and, like any industry, the early infrastructure stage is particularly intensive.”
Computer systems require air conditioning to keep their locations cool. In Saudi Arabia it can take over 700,000 barrels of oil a day to run the nation’s total power plants.
“The use of electricity in the IT sector has both financial and environmental significance. Many data centres consume as much electricity in their cooling systems as in their servers. This has both cost and power availability implications. It is believed the IT sector has a bigger carbon footprint than air travel and consumes over 5% of the developed world’s electricity. Many operators want to reduce their impact on the environment by consuming less energy.”
Leading on from my previous blog about ultrafine particulates found in the air we breathe, this company avoid that harm…..They say:
“When fresh air is used in a data centre there can be a risk of either particulate or gaseous contamination. The quality of the air in the locality of the data centre can affect the feasibility of the use of fresh air. It is now normal to fit filtration to a minimum of EU4/G4 standards. EcoCooling would usually advise dual filtration for IT installations. Air intake filtration (pre-filter jackets) is designed to eliminate potential contamination from external air. In addition cartridge filters can be used in either ducting or as replacement ceiling tiles to filter the recirculated air.”
As far as I am aware all filters are manufactured using petroleum based materials and are thus not biodegradable. They will be tossed into landfill after use and therefore become a plastic contaminant of groundwater.
Looking back on a 2017 blog about Twitter building infrastructure to support the platform:
We must not allow harm to the environment when building facilities which involve crypto mining. The cost-benefit analysis must put quality of the environment first, as should all new industrial sites.
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