alanjjohnstone
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Trees take in CO2 when they carry out photosynthesis – the process where plants absorb CO2 in order to build new materials, such as shoots, roots and leaves. This means that, as long as forests remain intact, they can act as long-term “sinks” of CO2. However, rising temperatures threaten land’s ability to absorb CO2. One reason for this is that temperature plays a chief role in moderating photosynthesis.
The land’s ecosystems are fast approaching a “temperature tipping point”, beyond which they could switch from soaking up CO2 to releasing it to the atmosphere, a new study finds.
Dr Katharyn Duffy, lead author and postdoctoral scientist at Northern Arizona University : “Unlike other tipping elements in the Earth system, the climate tipping point for the terrestrial biosphere could be exceptionally close – 20-30 years away – without action.”
Again research that stresses the urgency of mitigating action to be taken.
The US Supreme Court has reinstated a requirement that women visit a hospital or clinic to obtain a drug used for medication-induced abortions, lifting an order by a lower court allowing the drug to be posted or delivered during the coronavirus pandemic.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/13/us-supreme-court-reinstates-restrictions-abortion-pill
Grubs for grub.
Yellow mealworm became the first to be found safe for human consumption by the EU food safety agency. The insect’s main components are protein, fat and fibre, offering a potentially sustainable and low carbon-emission source of food for the future. When dried, the maggot-like insect is said to taste a lot like peanuts.
Over-population catastrophist Paul Ehrlich joins other researchers in positing an apocalyptic future scenario.
The report warns that climate-induced mass migrations, more pandemics and conflicts over resources will be inevitable unless urgent action is taken.
The planet is facing a “ghastly future of mass extinction, declining health and climate-disruption upheavals”
“The scale of the threats to the biosphere and all its lifeforms – including humanity – is in fact so great that it is difficult to grasp for even well-informed experts,”Prof Tom Oliver, an ecologist at the University of Reading, who was not involved in the report, said it was a frightening but credible summary of the grave threats society faces under a “business as usual” scenario.
Prof Rob Brooker, head of ecological sciences at the James Hutton Institute, who was not involved in the study, said, “We certainly should not be in any doubt about the huge scale of the challenges we are facing and the changes we will need to make to deal with them,”
Out of sight, out of mind, eh?
Have i not made it clear in the more recent post that i am in a minority of one?
I have insisted that the thread is very much related to ecological sustainability and not based on sanctimonious views or morality.
Frequently, i have posted links that support the opinions of my critics because i do believe the topic is worthy of debate and discussion.
The return of liberation theology?
A Catholic priest in the Philippines is set to stand trial on charges of “conspiracy to commit sedition” over an alleged plot to oust President Rodrigo Duterte.
Father Flavie Villanueva is a fierce critic of the president’s “war on drugs”, which since July 2016 has seen thousands killed in police operations. He has been accused, alongside 10 others, of being behind a viral video series that the government says tarnished the president’s reputation.
J’accuse:
rationalisation.
self-deception
anthropomorphism
Pet industry exceeds the child toy industry. Business marketing focuses upon ensuring that humans assign human traits to their pets.
Attributing human intent to non-human animals is related to totem fetishism in religion.
When the social need for pets disappear, just like religion, the desire to substitute relationships with pets for genuine human interactions will disappear, too.
We are encouraged to spend much of the house-hold budget on keeping a pet in the pleasure of self-indulgence – making another creature worship you unconditionally for the reward of a full food-dish, rather instead using those resources on neutering and vaccinating feral cats and dogs.
Where i am, the preponderence of vets concentrate on where the income is highest, and it is not the care of liestock but the pets. And much of the health problems of pets are the mirror-image of the life-style illness of humans such as obesity.
Priorities?
Have any asked yourself what size is animal charities compared with human charities? RSPCA, RSPB, PDSA.
Protect animals but not people?
I have written of how the wild-life charities have persecuted such communities as the Bushmen in Africa.
Pet slavery
Rather than end the institution of bondage, imagine if the aspiration of the abolitionist movement was merely to catch and penalise the cruel slave-master and to reward the kind slave-master. Socialists rightly perceive the hypocrisy of the philanthropic.
Do i have pets? Yes. Do i have double-standards? Yes. Have i walked passed a beggar to buy food for my dogs and cats and not for him or her? Yes.
I recall the reaction i got during the miners strike in the 80s when they were collecting groceries for miners at the supermarkets and i donated a couple of cans of dog-food. If looks could kill…
Ahhh…you, i think, went to the source of my statistic, i think.
But there other opinions on the impact,
https://www.dw.com/en/your-cat-is-killing-the-earth-but-you-can-prevent-it/a-40003245
Marius Adrion, part of the team for bird protection with the German Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union (NABU), underscores this risk. “There is a clear influence of cats into birds’ population,”
Like ship rats, cats have been an invasive species and contributed to the extinction of some native birds and are a continued threat to rare creatures in Australia
https://www.animalwised.com/cats-killing-birds-separating-fact-from-myth-1366.html
But i will happily concede that most damaging to nature and birds in particular is not cats but is the expansion of human settlement and farming methods such as monoculture, and the accompanying pollution.
Israel bans a documentary on the 2002 massacre of Palestinian refugees in Jenin
We saw this exact same game-play during the build-up of war against Iraq.
He will when socialism is established.
What James Connolly said applies to i think every faith group, barring the fundamentalists
“To use a homely adage the Church “does not put all her eggs in one basket,” and the man who imagines that in the supreme hour of the proletarian struggle for victory the Church will definitely line up with the forces of capitalism, and pledge her very existence as a Church upon the hazardous chance of the capitalists winning, simply does not understand the first thing about the policy of the Church in the social or political revolutions of the past. Just as in Ireland the Church denounced every Irish revolutionary movement in its day of activity, as in 1798, 1848 and 1867, and yet allowed its priests to deliver speeches in eulogy of the active spirits of those movements a generation afterwards, so in the future the Church, which has its hand close upon the pulse of human society, when it realises that the cause of capitalism is a lost cause it will find excuse enough to allow freedom of speech and expression to those lowly priests whose socialist declarations it will then use to cover and hide the absolute anti-socialism of the Roman Propaganda. When that day comes the Papal Encyclical against socialism will be conveniently forgotten by the Papal historians, and the socialist utterances, of the von Kettelers, the McGlynns, and McGradys will be heralded forth and the communistic utterances of the early fathers as proofs of Catholic sympathy with progressive ideas. Thus it has been in the past. Thus it will be, at least attempted, in the future.”
https://www.marxists.org/archive/connolly/1908/09/cathsoc.htm
James, the purpose of this topic was not to highlight the many many failings of the Catholic Church, from its opposition to women’s reproductive rights to its systemic child sex-abuse.
Who can forget the film the ‘Magadalene Sisters’?
I hoped the topic was demonstrating that one of the historically most conservative and reactionary institutions was capable of transformation because of social changes in society and could no longer appeal to its dubious charitable alms-giving as justification for its existence.
H. Are you aware of the ecological damage pet cats and dogs do?
First, the decimation of birds and small mammals. In the UK alone, felines catch up to 100 million prey items over spring and summer, of which 27 million are birds. It is very much conservative number. Feral cats not being included in any count.
Secondly, the clay-pits for cat-litter most often produced by strip-mining and the end-product sent to land-fill contaminating it with potentially harmful bacteria.
Thirdly, the consumption of protein. People assume that because the tins have ‘not for human consumption’ it is all meat and fish by-products waste being used. Increasingly as a selling point, some cat food is now edible quality and classed as organic. It is a long known marketing strategy…you sell to the pet-owners weaknesses, hence the appetising sounding ingredients.
Fourthly, the diversion of medical resources. Ever since pet insurance became a standard requirement, vets have up-graded to more and more elaborate and sophisticated technology for their surgeries and many possess equipment that in the undeveloped and developing parts of the world, hospitals and clinics for people would dearly wish to have available.
Fively, the growth of pedigree cat and puppy farming with regulatory over-sight only now being passed,
Sixth If we really lack company and social interaction and are so in need of that pet-human bonding as a substitute for family and community relationships, then there are more environmental-friendly pets such as vegetarian-diet rabbits and guinea-pigs or a budgie (one of my co-workers would swear by the affection and intelligence of his little ‘Bluey’)
H, My view is a minority of one so far on the forum, so don’t fear. I presently have two dogs and one cat, a drop from three dogs and five cats – all rescue animals.
