Change the World Wednesday – 5th Nov

Buds on Clorinha’s guava tree

I’m not really ready to do this post, it’s 10 o’clock and already I am sweating.

I need more coffee, but it’s too hot to use the stove.

In Rio de Janeiro we are approaching 110 days without meaningfull rain. Really that is a drought, when we should be having the daily spring rains

The plants in the praça are wilting badly. I have just taken a bucket of water over to the patch of bushes in front of my house and poured a jug of water at the base of some.

I water Clorinha’s guava tree daily, and it is thriving, it even has the buds of four blossoms developing.

If the small bushes respond to my water, I’ll do it again tomorrow.

The heat of the past weeks has become oppressive, broaching 40ºC (106ºF) daily, with the thermal index even higher.

São Paulo had a lot of rain over two days, but not enough to fill the reservoirs, just enough to stop them from getting any lower.

The bushes are wilting sadly

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Time to move on with this week’s CTWW on laundry detergent.

This week, please do an honest review of the laundry detergent that you are currently using. Do a little research on the list of ingredients to find out which are safe and which are not. Talk about how the product performs, especially in cold water. What kind of packaging does it come in. How does the price rank compared to other brands. If you’d like to mention the brand, please do so. The idea this week is to share information on laundry detergents so that we all benefit.

I am currently using Ypê. Although I sometimes use Ariel, the deciding factor is the price.

And, I admit that I haven’t given a thought about what’s in it.

So, let’s have a look. Wow, the printing is so small I can’t read it even with my glasses. I had to take a photo to see it clearly on screen.

Okay, so the content is listed in Portuguese, English and Spanish.

OMG! I just had a FireFox crash… luckily it restored my post.

• Anionic surfactant – biodegradable surface acting agent that lowers surface tension
• Suspending agent – helps to active pharmaceutical ingredients stay suspended in the washing water.
• Chelant is basically a natural water softener like citric acid
• Alkaline agent – is actually delicate laundry detergent; specially formulated with Polymer-A (an anti-redeposit agent)
• Inorganic salt
• Optical brightener – synthetic chemicals added to liquid and powder laundry detergents to make clothing appear whiter and brighter, and thus cleaner. May be potentially toxic to humans and “Aminotriazine- or stilbene-based whiteners…may cause developmental and reproductive effects.”
• Active Ingredient: Linear alkylbenzene sulphonate – rapidly biodegrades, but initially toxic to fish. (See note anionic surfactant above)

NB: the Portuguese list does not equate with the English translation.

Many Brazilians use cloro (chlorine) to soak clothes before hand washing. I have found that this practice rots the material and reduces the life of garments.

My big beef, is that they use generic terms for the ingredients, and not specific terms that can be identified.

Brazilians basiclly don’t give a shit about this information, besides, if they did, generally they don’t have the education to remotely understand it. Which, of course, suits the manufacturers fine.

From my point of view, I am really none the wiser. I have understood that some of the ingredients are basically not so good for the environment, but because of the generic names I can’t pursue the matter and be more specific.

But it has prompted me to buy Ariel next time and compare the ingredients.

Both are usable in cold water and come in a cardboard box with some kind of glossy lining.

That’s my lot for the day.

Monday Moaning

A drought is coming to land near you.

In recent months Brazil has undergone a severe water shortage, particularly in the state of São Paulo. A report in the news this morning is rather disturbing. It appears that deforestation of the Amazon basin has reached a threshhold The vegetation of the Amazon basin let moisture rise and so produce the clouds that moved across the country and fell as rain. Apparently, there is not enough vegetation left to make suffcient moisture to form the necessary clouds. Brazil’s inaction, or insufficient action, has caused their own demise. Had the country been more prudent earlier, we wouldn’t have these drought problems. Another example of man’s inability to husband the planet effectively.

Drought bites as Amazon’s ‘flying rivers’ dry up

Scientists say deforestation and climate change responsible for forests not producing vapour clouds that bring rain to Brazil, reports Climate News Network

Amazon rainforest kick up humidity that brings rain to Brazil – it’s a giant water pump, but human activity is damaging it. Photograph: Fernanda Preto/Getty Images

The unprecedented drought now affecting São Paulo, South America’s giant metropolis, is believed to be caused by the absence of the “flying rivers” − the vapour clouds from the Amazon that normally bring rain to the centre and south of Brazil.

Some Brazilian scientists say the absence of rain that has dried up rivers and reservoirs in central and southeast Brazil is not just a quirk of nature, but a change brought about by a combination of the continuing deforestation of the Amazon and global warming.

This combination, they say, is reducing the role of the Amazon rainforest as a giant “water pump”, releasing billions of litres of humidity from the trees into the air in the form of vapour.

Meteorologist Jose Marengo, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, first coined the phrase “flying rivers” to describe these massive volumes of vapour that rise from the rainforest, travel west, and then − blocked by the Andes − turn south.

Satellite images from the Centre for Weather Forecasts and Climate Research of Brazil’s National Space Research Institute (INPE) clearly show that, during January and February this year, the flying rivers failed to arrive, unlike the previous five years.

Deforestation all over Brazil has reached alarming proportions: 22% of the Amazon rainforest (an area larger than Portugal, Italy and Germany combined), 47% of the Cerrado in central Brazil, and 91.5% of the Atlantic forest that used to cover the entire length of the coastal area.

Latest figures from Deter, the real time deforestation detection system based on high frequency satellite images used by INPE, show that, after falling for two years, Amazon deforestation rose again by 10% between August 2013 and July 2014. The forest is being cleared for logging and farming.

Tocantins, Pará and Mato Grosso, three states in the Greater Amazon region that have suffered massive deforestation, are all registering higher average temperatures.

As long ago as 2009, Antonio Nobre, one of Brazil’s leading climate scientists, warned that, without the “flying rivers”, the area that produces 70% of South America’s GNP would be desert.

Source: TheGuardian Read more

Another warning

Casanare drought raises Colombia climate fears

Colombian cattleman Daniel Cuadra: “I don’t know what the future holds, but we need to prepare ourselves because next year could be worse.”

The rotting corpses of dead cows and wild capybaras line the road that leads from Paz de Ariporo to Hato Las Taparas in the Colombian province of Casanare.

At least 20,000 animals, including wild pigs, deer, small crocodiles and tortoises have died of thirst during a catastrophic dry season in this central region.

And many fear this year’s drought is only heralding a future of increasingly harsh summers and even more severe water shortages in Colombia’s plains.

Dry as bone

“Here we have two very distinct seasons: a dry season and a rainy season,” explains Angely Rodriguez who overseas agricultural and environmental affairs in Paz de Ariporo.

“In a couple of months, it will be raining so much, all this will be like a mirror, completely flooded.”

But that will be of little consolation to farmers whose livestock has been decimated.

Ms Rodriguez says dry spells – which usually last from December to April – are nothing new for the inhabitants of Casanare, but “never before during the dry season did we have such a lack of water”.

As we drive across the yellow plains, all we seem to come across are tanker lorries.

Some are carrying water to replenish ponds, marshes and other natural drinking sources as part of efforts by the authorities to alleviate the suffering of wildlife and cattle.

Water is being delivered to some of the worst hit areas to replenish ponds, but many of the lorries carry oil

But the large majority carry oil extracted from under the soil of these plains.

Ms Rodriguez thinks the recent boom in oil exploration and extraction in the area is to blame for the water scarcity in the summer months. “We’ve seen water sources that used to last all summer run completely dry,” she tells the BBC.

“We’re aware global climate change is part of the problem. But we also need to look into the consequences of seismic exploration and how much water the oil industry is extracting,” she says, as we drive past a flock of vultures feasting on another dead cow.

‘Too simplistic’

Like Ms Rodriguez, many worry about the consequences of seismic reflection – an exploration method that uses small controlled explosions to create an image similar to a sonogram to help locate new oil deposits.

Many in Colombia fear that this method affects water sources, and dismiss oil industry studies which suggest the contrary.

Read more

Monday Moaning

One of the biggest eco-problems of today is the city.

The bigger the city the bigger the problem.

Apart from cities being so badly designed that you need a car or public transport to get around, there is a greater problem.

São Paulo in Brazil is a city of some 20 million. That number of people require two basic things water and power.

At the moment São Paulo is lacking the former, and heading for problems with the latter.

Why?

The city relies on the large catchment area of the state for water and hydroelectric power. Currently, the catchment area has a big problem, drought. The dams and reservoirs are only at a fraction of their capacity. Most down to 30% and some even down to 16% because of the lack of rain.

Where has the rain gone?

No, we are not talking global warming here, but rather the mass of concrete that is used in a city of this size. It has altered the heat rising properties, stealing the clouds from the catchment area so the rain falls over the city, creating a further problem, flooding.

There is a real probability that São Paulo will have water rationing and planned power cuts in the very near future.

The sheer size of the city is creating their own problems.

São Paulo is a huge city

We need to halt the ever expanding city. Better still, we need to dismantle the cities in favour of returning to a rural self-sufficient lifestyle.

If we don’t, we are creating more problems.

 

Monday Moaning

A Texan tragedy: ample oil, no water

Fracking boom sucks away precious water from beneath the ground, leaving cattle dead, farms bone-dry and people thirsty

Fracking boom sucks away water from underground, leaving cattle dead, farms bone-dry and people thirsty

Beverly McGuire saw the warning signs before the town well went dry: sand in the toilet bowl, the sputter of air in the tap, a pump working overtime to no effect. But it still did not prepare her for the night last month when she turned on the tap and discovered the tiny town where she had made her home for 35 years was out of water.

“The day that we ran out of water I turned on my faucet and nothing was there and at that moment I knew the whole of Barnhart was down the tubes,” she said, blinking back tears. “I went: ‘dear God help us. That was the first thought that came to mind.”

Across the south-west, residents of small communities like Barnhart are confronting the reality that something as basic as running water, as unthinking as turning on a tap, can no longer be taken for granted.

Three years of drought, decades of overuse and now the oil industry’s outsize demands on water for fracking are running down reservoirs and underground aquifers. And climate change is making things worse.

In Texas alone, about 30 communities could run out of water by the end of the year, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

Nearly 15 million people are living under some form of water rationing, barred from freely sprinkling their lawns or refilling their swimming pools. In Barnhart’s case, the well appears to have run dry because the water was being extracted for shale gas fracking.

The town — a gas station, a community hall and a taco truck – sits in the midst of the great Texan oil rush, on the eastern edge of the Permian basin.

A few years ago, it seemed like a place on the way out. Now McGuire said she can see nine oil wells from her back porch, and there are dozens of RVs parked outside town, full of oil workers.

But soon after the first frack trucks pulled up two years ago, the well on McGuire’s property ran dry.

No-one in Barnhart paid much attention at the time, and McGuire hooked up to the town’s central water supply. “Everyone just said: ‘too bad’. Well now it’s all going dry,” McGuire said.

Ranchers dumped most of their herds. Cotton farmers lost up to half their crops. The extra draw down, coupled with drought, made it impossible for local ranchers to feed and water their herds, said Buck Owens. In a good year, Owens used to run 500 cattle and up to 8,000 goats on his 7,689 leased hectares (19,000 acres). Now he’s down to a few hundred goats.

Source: The Guardian Read more and see the video

Opinion:

There’s not a lot to say really, other than fracking and shale oil are the death of an already raped planet.