Category Archives: Ecosystem

News about our ecosystem (environment, creatures, etc.).

That Foul Thing We Buried in Greenland

Leave a comment

Late in the sixties, the USA, along with Denmark who controlled Greenland at the time, thought that it’s pretty safe to bury the remnants of a military nuclear reactor within the ice sheet. They assumed continual snowfall would only bury the waste deeper.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2016/0805/What-to-do-about-toxic-waste-buried-in-Greenland-s-rapidly-melting-ice-caps^

Needless to say, the assumption was not only wrong, but the exact opposite is happening. Due to global warming, in as little as 75 years, the buried remnants will resurface and will have to be dealt with, or else. Or else they’ll enter our ocean.

Taking care of the problem isn’t really rocket science. Extract the waste, haul it some hundred kilometers north and bury it again, this time in a concrete or metal sarcophagus. It won’t be cheap but it’s probably the easiest solution. A more complicated solution would be to mail it to Washington.

Sadly, we’ve proven ourselves once again to be incapable of finding a good long-term solution for the mess we’re making through irresponsible use of technology (which is more often than not related to the military industrial complex). But humans eventually learn from past mistakes, even if sometimes the lesson needs to be repeated a hundred too many times.

[ax_meta lnimgurl=’http://mentatul.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/00938-ThatFoulThingWeBuriedInGreenland-Thumb.jpg’ lnimgw=’250′ lnimgh=’250′ title=’That Foul Thing We Buried in Greenland’ desc=’Late in the sixties, the USA, along with Denmark who controlled Greenland at the time, thought that it's pretty safe to bury the remnants of a military nuclear reactor within the ice sheet.’]

The Overview Effect

2 Comments

When we become aware of our planet’s fragility and beauty, a cognitive shift in awareness occurs. This short but emotional presentation shows what a few of those that went through the difficult training required to travel away from Earth have to say about The Overview Effect:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHMIfOecrlo^

[ax_meta lnimgurl=’http://mentatul.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/00752-TheOverviewEffect-Thumb.jpg’ lnimgw=’250′ lnimgh=’250′ title=’The Overview Effect’ desc=’When we become aware of our planet's fragility and beauty, a cognitive shift in awareness occurs’]

The United Arab Emirates and Climate Interventionism

2 Comments

In typical “man versus nature” fashion, the UAE wants to alter the rainfall patterns in the region. The country plans to achieve this by erecting an artificial mountain, which should literally scrape the atmosphere for humidity and cause it to fall as rain:

http://gizmodo.com/hell-no-the-uae-should-not-build-a-rain-making-mountai-1775007447^

Sometimes, these projects are nothing more than attention grabbers and pompous declarations. But our planet’s climate is no laughing matter. It’s disturbing that such plans have even made it this far.

It’s what I’d like to call “climate interventionism”. As if it wasn’t enough that we’ve worsened global warming, now we go about thinking we can understand climate models well enough to tamper with the airflow of an entire region.

What terrified me is not that the project is doomed to fail. It’s that it might work. The question we should be asking the builders is: at whose expense will this benefit you? Obviously, if the UAE diverts ocean humidity for its own purposes, somebody down the line is going to get less of it. And, as the butterfly effect^ shows, the consequences will be global and difficult to fathom.

Our planet’s air is much more of a shared resource than our rivers and lakes. Building a dam on a river has less of a global effect than interfering with massive quantities of air that was otherwise going on its merry way towards the other side of the planet.

To me, such projects showcase the extreme arrogance of man. We’re talking here about a country that wastes water in huge quantities, as the article I linked above points out. I have nothing against a country that tries to survive, but some humbleness would be expected before invoking the survival instinct.

We’ve seen many gargantuan projects completed by the oil-spoiled countries of the Middle East. Part of the heat that is currently building up in our oceans and atmosphere comes from oil extracted there. I wonder if they’ll think of this when the planetary ocean drowns their Palm Islands^. Life is not without a sense of irony.

[ax_meta lnimgurl=’http://mentatul.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/00616-UAEAndClimateInterventionism-Thumb.jpg’ lnimgw=’250′ lnimgh=’250′ title=’The United Arab Emirates and Climate Interventionism’ desc=’The UAE plans to erect an artificial mountain, which should literally scrape the atmosphere for humidity and cause it to fall as rain.’]