Global Warming

[Lynx]

Wild life can indeed be fascinating!

p.s. That article was great, GPIG. It sounds like a super challenging profession.

[GPIG]

Love Vanity Fair Lynx, great articles. It sure does sound like a great profession.

[Lynx]

New things to worry about:
The forgotten environmental catastrophe; the loss of arable land
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/9/6/1883866/-The-forgo ... -arable-land

Lots of comments on that page talking about improving the soil, growing vegs if you can.

[Bookfan]

Gotta listen:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/09/1 ... -scientists/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2019/09/2 ... forgive-you/

[Lynx]

Is it public or do you need a subscription to listen?

They won't let me read stuff these days.

[Bookfan]

Try these:

[Lynx]

I saw them on another site. She is remarkable. I have such respect for her.

She tells it like it is.

[Sef]

Brave girl.

[Lynx]

This is what we are ignoring, with our heads in the sand.

Millitary collapse. And surely, societal collapse. All this, sooner rather than later.

US Army finds that the 'military could collapse within twenty years' thanks to climate breakdown.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/10/26/1892307/-US-Army ... limate-chaos

[Lynx]

Sadly another study brings very bad news. It has been discovered that calculations to determine the amount of flooding due to sea level rise are inaccurate.

The error was in estimating the impact of sea rise based primarily on 3-D satellite imagery from NASA, which led scientists to erroneously establish “the planet’s upper surfaces—such as treetops and tall buildings,” as ground level.

New study finds errors in rising sea level predictions: It's much, much worse than anyone imagined.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/10/30/1896046/-By-2050 ... paign=recent

[Sef]

Sadly, that doesn't surprise me. I have long suspected that we're past the point of no return where the environment is concerned.

[Bookfan]

I knew the military has been concerned about this for quite a while. And yeah, maybe we have passed the tipping point.

[Sef]

I sometimes wonder how different everything would be now, had Al Gore won.

[Bookfan]

Which might have actually been the case. Remember the recount in FL? And the Supreme Ct. decision?

[Sef]

Yes, and I'll always be convinced that was in fact the case (Gore won).

[Bookfan]

I don't think there would have been an Iraq War. And really, that's huge.

[Lynx]

Ditto, Bookfan.

It's such a sad "what if". So many people killed in that war.

[Sef]

No 9/11.

[Lynx]

Yes, quite likely no 9/11.

So many, many more died in the Iraq war than died on 9/11.

9/11 was a terrible day. The war that followed, more terrible still. The Washington Post cites this website as providing one analysis of the numbers:
https://www.iraqbodycount.org/

Total violent deaths, including combatants:
288,000

Their estimate of civilians killed (mostly through bomb strikes):
Between 184,382 and 207,156 civilians.

The Washington Post also cites a "2013 analysis by researchers from the United States, Iraq and Canada took a broader look at the likely death toll from the war." Their findings:

From March 1, 2003, to June 30, 2011, the crude death rate in Iraq was 4.55 per 1,000 person-years (95% uncertainty interval 3.74-5.27), more than 0.5 times higher than the death rate during the 26-mo period preceding the war, resulting in approximately 405,000 (95% uncertainty interval 48,000—751,000) excess deaths attributable to the conflict. Among adults, the risk of death rose 0.7 times higher for women and 2.9 times higher for men between the prewar period (January 1, 2001, to February 28, 2003) and the peak of the war (2005—2006). We estimate that more than 60% of excess deaths were directly attributable to violence, with the rest associated with the collapse of infrastructure and other indirect, but war-related, causes.

"We bolded the key phrase: About 400,000 deaths were probably attributable to the conflict from 2003 to 2011, about 240,000 of them a result of violence and 160,000 from war-related causes. "

See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

[Bookfan]

"were directly attributable to violence, with the rest associated with the collapse of infrastructure and other indirect, but war-related, causes."
People tend to forget this one. I bet a lot of people died in Haiti because of this. It significantly ups the death count. But really, all they needed was more paper towels.

The people who were running the war didn't care about civilian deaths. After, they were foreign and not white.