Stories to think about
When a large group of scientists, including many Nobel laureates, released a report warning that the planted needed urgent attention if we were to avoid a global catastrophe, almost all news organisations around the world considered it un-newsworthy. http://archive.peacemagazine.org/v09n2p23.htm
Using too much water
Once the world's fourth largest inland sea with an area of 68,000 km², the Aral Sea has been steadily shrinking since the 1960s, after the rivers Amu Darya and Syr Darya that fed it were diverted by Soviet Union irrigation projects. By 2004, the sea had shrunk to 25% of its original surface area, and a nearly fivefold increase in salinity had killed most of its natural flora and fauna. By 2007 it had declined to 10% of its original size, splitting into three separate lakes, two of which are too salty to support fish. The once prosperous fishing industry has been virtually destroyed, and former fishing towns along the original shores have become ship graveyards. With this collapse has come unemployment and economic hardship. Wickipedia
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The changes in the Aral sea between 1989 and 2003. Progressively the fishing fleet end up stranded on sand. |
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Stranded fishing boats in a new "desert" caused by the use of water feed thing the Aral Sea for cropping |
Some David Suzuki wisdom.
Imagine a bacteria in a test tube full of food that doubles its size each minute. In sixty minutes the bacteria will have grown to fill the whole test tube. How long will it take to half fill the test tube? 59 minutes.
Working backwards the test tube would be quarter full at 58 minutes, eighth full at 57 minutes and a sixteenth full at 56 minutes. What if a nervous bug said at 53 minutes that it was concerned about the rate at which their resources were being consumed? The others would say that it was silly as in their whole life time they had consumed less than 2% of their resources.
What if at 58 minutes, when it was obvious that their resources were quickly running out, one bacteria went searching and found three brand new full test tubes of food. What would the future be? Would they all be saved?
Well, the first test tube would be full at 60 minutes, the second one would be full at 61 minutes and by 62 minutes all four test tubes would be gone.
Of Mice and Men?
When I was at primary school I used to sell white mice to my class mates as pets. Strange at it may seem more girls bought my mice than the boys.
The problem arose, as is often then case in a free market system, where the number of buyers dropped off and I started to develop an over supply problem. The double whammy was that the mice didn’t practice any population control and kept breeding at their usual rate. My stock went into exponential growth
In a short period of time the cage simply became too small and they got to the stage where they were climbing over each other in the cage just to get around. One day, while I was at school, they solved the problem and had a short but brutal war. By the time I got home from school Mum had just finished getting rid of the dead. Where once there had been dozens, there was now only one male and one female. Garnett
This is a compilation of ideas and notes compiled by Garnett Znidaric who has been observing the evolving situation for more than thirty years. Send comments to info@gzrecord.com |