The Showtime documentary series (click here) that began airing last night, “Years of Living Dangerously,” is a powerful reminder of why we need to act now to address climate change. More hurricanes, floods, droughts, intense storms, food scarcity—it’s all there in detail. Expertly done, with graphic images and insightful commentary, the episode makes an impression and hopefully will prompt people to take this crisis more seriously, and to action to reduce the carbon pollution that’s causing the problem.
But being honest here, research has shown that when people are presented with a whole bunch of seriously bad news on a massive scale, they can shut down. What this series is missing so far is an equal emphasis on the things we can do to help right this wrong.
That's why it was somewhat heartening to read some relatively good news in the morning papers. Yesterday the world's most authoritative body on climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), issued a very influential report, Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change." And while there's a bunch of bad news in there, there's also some cause for optimism. "Many Pathways to Substantial Emissions Reductions are Available," one of the press release headlines reads...
David Arnold
August 20, 2014
Two-and-a-half years ago, a group of children in the Syrian city of Dara’a triggered one of the bloodiest conflicts in the 21st century when they painted some anti-government graffiti on a school wall in the ancient farming community.
The children were quickly detained and tortured, leading to widespread protests in the city that were met with harsh repression. The government’s brutal response led to a nationwide revolt that has now stagnated into a bloody stalemate with no end in sight.
Dara’a is a mostly agricultural community in a region that has suffered an unrelenting drought since 2001. Some experts say it’s no accident that Syria’s civil war began there.....
Drip-trickle irrigation is the only effective form of moving water directly to the plant. The sprinkler systems actually waste a lot of water. The pipes need to be filled and then the actual water reaching the roots is diminished. The sprinklers waste water into water vapor as well as depositing most of the water on leaves and not the ground. It takes far more water from sprinkler systems to achieve the same effect as drip-trickle which delivers the water at the level of the ground where it is shaded by plant leaves and available to root systems.
...Each of us (click here) drinks 3
to 4 liters of water a day in one form or another, but it takes nearly
2,000 liters of water to produce the food we consume each day. 40
percent of the worlds grain harvest is grown on irrigated land and
agriculture is responsible for between 70 and 78 percent of global water
consumption. Irrigation systems often perform poorly, wasting up to 60
percent of the water, and they diminish surface water because of
evaporation and plant transpiration....
An illustration of a 'drip' system. The water once it enters the delivery system immediately is distributed to the plants throughout it's length. Drip systems conserve water and requires less energy. The pressure into the system to deliver the water is far less because it does not have to be pushed to any height be it one foot or six. A drip system could bring function back to the farmland currently too parched. That cow could be on pasture right now. In returning water to the land once parched has to be slow otherwise it will remove the top soil and create very deep quick sand or better said, mud flats.
The League of Conservation Voters is teaming up with the NDRC to strengthen it's positions.
Issued by LCV - League of Conservation Voters
April 14, 2014
