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Thread: More Than 75 Percent of Earth’s Land Areas Are ‘Broken,’ Major Report Finds

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    More Than 75 Percent of Earth’s Land Areas Are ‘Broken,’ Major Report Finds

    Source: MOTHERBOARD


    Once-productive lands have become deserts, are polluted, or deforested, putting 3.2 billion people at risk.




    In Thailand, global warming and lack of rainfall causes cultivated land to dry up and crack.

    Like a broken cell phone that can only text or take pictures, but not make a single call, more than 75 percent of the Earth’s land areas have lost some or most of their functions, undermining the well-being of the 3.2 billion people that rely on them to produce food crops, provide clean water, control flooding and more.

    These once-productive lands have either become deserts, are polluted, or have been deforested and converted for unsustainable agricultural production. This is a major contributor to increased conflict and mass human migration, and left unchecked, could force as many as 700 million to migrate by 2050, according to the world’s first comprehensive evidence-based assessment of land degradation, released today in Medellín, Colombia.




    Deforestation in Madagascar.

    Land degradation—including deforestation, soil erosion, and salinity and pollution of fresh water systems—is also driving species to extinction and aggravating the effects of climate change, the report concludes. It was written by more than 100 leading experts from 45 countries for the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). IPBES is the ‘IPCC for biodiversity,’ a scientific assessment of the status of non-human life that makes up the Earth’s life support system. A major companion report was released Friday documenting the rapid and dangerous decline in biodiversity. It called for fundamental changes in how we live, run our societies, and the economy.

    “This is an extremely urgent issue that we need to address yesterday,” said Robert Scholes, a South African ecologist and co-chair of the assessment. “Land degradation is having the single biggest impact on the well-being of humanity,” Scholes said in an interview in Medellín.

    Human activities, mainly those involving agriculture and urbanization, have destroyed or degraded topsoil, forests, and other natural vegetation and water resources nearly everywhere, the report found. Wetlands have been hit hardest, with 87 percent lost globally in the last 300 years. Wetlands continue to be destroyed in southeast Asia and the Congo region, mainly to plant oil palm trees.

    Less than 25 percent of the Earth’s land surface has escaped the substantial impacts of human activity—and by 2050, this will have fallen to less than 10 percent. Most of these future land losses will be in Central and South America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia. The only places left relatively unaffected will be polar regions and tundra, high mountains, and deserts, the report projects.

    Ending land degradation is “an urgent priority to protect the biodiversity and ecosystem services vital to all life on Earth and to ensure human well-being,” said Luca Montanarella, a soil scientist from Italy and co-chair of the assessment.

    “We’ve know about this for over 20 years, but it is only getting worse,” Montanarella said in an interview in Medellín. There is little public awareness and it is not considered an urgent issue by most governments. The only way to stop the decline is at the local level, and through the choices each of us make, he said.




    River bank erosion in Bangladesh.

    Those choices include choosing to eat less meat and buying food from local growers who use the most sustainable farming practices. Up to 40 percent of food is wasted globally at various points, from farms to overstuffed refrigerators, said Robert Watson, IPBES Chair. Countries also need to end their production subsidies in agriculture, fisheries, energy, and other sectors, Watson told Motherboard.

    Rich countries need to take responsibility for the impacts that their consumption of imported products may have. The country landscape of the United Kingdom is a tourist attraction because the country imports 35 to 40 percent of its food from other countries, said Watson. “People don’t see the impacts of their consumption.”

    Ending land degradation and restoring damaged lands would provide more than one third of the most cost-effective greenhouse gas mitigation activities required by 2030 to keep global warming to below 2°C. And doing this would cost at least three times less than doing nothing and create much better livelihoods and jobs for local people, said Watson.

    “Implementing the right actions to combat land degradation can transform the lives of millions of people across the planet, but this will become more difficult and more costly the longer we take to act,” he said.


    Source: MOTHERBOARD
    = DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR =

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    Senior Member Aianawa's Avatar
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    I keep confidance by remembering that chins plants lots of tree's all the time.

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    Not to worry, the sun will blow up before 2030. Gaia will then reset and get a much needed rest from us fleas...

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    The east coast is always trying to turn back into a forest. Baby trees grow everywhere. If we didn't mow the stretch of grass in the backyard it would be a hickory thicket with oaks waiting to ultimately take over.

    The bad thing happening is disease and parasites. Two ash trees had to come down due to emerald bore beetle. Leaf wilt got the Mimosa. Some other bug killed the walnut. I've learned, to my horror, that there is a disease that gets the oak roots and kills the trees.

    Oaks support almost exponentially more life than other tree varieties. The less diverse an ecosystem is, the weaker it is. And more disease comes in.


    When the ice at the poles starts melting, there could be many pathogens released that haven't seen the light of day in a long time.

    Then we'll all be in crisis and no one will be acting.

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    Quote Originally posted by Dreamtimer View Post
    The east coast is always trying to turn back into a forest. Baby trees grow everywhere. If we didn't mow the stretch of grass in the backyard it would be a hickory thicket with oaks waiting to ultimately take over.

    The bad thing happening is disease and parasites. Two ash trees had to come down due to emerald bore beetle. Leaf wilt got the Mimosa. Some other bug killed the walnut. I've learned, to my horror, that there is a disease that gets the oak roots and kills the trees.

    Oaks support almost exponentially more life than other tree varieties. The less diverse an ecosystem is, the weaker it is. And more disease comes in.


    When the ice at the poles starts melting, there could be many pathogens released that haven't seen the light of day in a long time.

    Then we'll all be in crisis and no one will be acting.
    According to this guy:

    https://www.amazon.com/Not-Fire-but-.../dp/0964874687



    We may be dealing with the cold before everything melts. With the recent uptick in earthquakes and volcanism, he may be right. His basic point is when the poles start swapping, the volcanos start letting loose causing sun attenuation from all the aerial ash and gasses.

    ...GF and I hate the fricking cold, btw...
    Last edited by Dumpster Diver, 27th March 2018 at 13:51.

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    Speaking of things breaking...

    ...the video captures the “already-floating” parts detach and begin to flow away from the front, while the “thicker sections” of Helheim that rest on the bedrock of the seafloor, “detach, lift up and tip backward as they float to the surface”.

    Last edited by Dreamtimer, 10th July 2018 at 13:30.

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    Ice Quakes!


    In brief: When vast icebergs break off at the end of tidal glaciers, they tumble in the water and jam the glaciers themselves backwards. The result is a seismic event detectable across the Earth.


    “These are all around magnitude 4.6 to 5.2, they’re all pretty close to magnitude 5,” says Meredith Nettles of the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, a co-author of the study. “Which is a pretty big earthquake.”

    Granted, these earthquakes aren’t caused by faults – they’re caused by massive movements of ice and how those impact the ground beneath. Compared with the early 1990s, Nettles says, scientists are now measuring seven times as many of these glacial earthquakes coming from Greenland — the rate has shot up as the ice sheet has begun to lose more mass from the calving of icebergs at the front end of glaciers.

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    Repent fleas, you are about to get smacked...

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    Senior Member Emil El Zapato's Avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by Aragorn View Post
    Unfortunately, it has been scientifically speculated that Earth is on the downslide...past its prime. I take no joy in that, in case anyone is wondering. But humanity has to plan for the future!

    Quote Originally posted by Dumpster Diver View Post
    According to this guy:

    https://www.amazon.com/Not-Fire-but-.../dp/0964874687



    We may be dealing with the cold before everything melts. With the recent uptick in earthquakes and volcanism, he may be right. His basic point is when the poles start swapping, the volcanos start letting loose causing sun attenuation from all the aerial ash and gasses.

    ...GF and I hate the fricking cold, btw...
    Velikovsky theorized that the 'natural' configuration of Earth was not a globe but a frozen hexagon from which all the tectonic stresses resulted because Earth was trying to be in its natural state, an ice crystal. It can turn easily in either direction but what is critical is the ambient (world mean) temperature when the tipping point is hit. Sorta like an offshoot of chaos theory.
    Last edited by Emil El Zapato, 10th July 2018 at 23:33.
    “El revolucionario: te meteré la bota en el culo"

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    Administrator Aragorn's Avatar
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    Quote Originally posted by Dumpster Diver View Post
    According to this guy:

    https://www.amazon.com/Not-Fire-but-.../dp/0964874687



    We may be dealing with the cold before everything melts. With the recent uptick in earthquakes and volcanism, he may be right. His basic point is when the poles start swapping, the volcanos start letting loose causing sun attenuation from all the aerial ash and gasses.
    A magnetic pole reversal would never have any such drastic geological effects, although it probably would make Earth more vulnerable to coronal mass ejections from the sun.

    A geographical pole reversal is nothing you should worry about, because that would take thousands upon thousands of years, and if it were to happen quite suddenly — as some doomsday prophets predict — then you still shouldn't worry about it, because then you would be killed off by the massive earthquakes and tsunamis right away.





    Quote Originally posted by NotAPretender View Post
    Velikovsky theorized that the 'natural' configuration of Earth was not a globe but a frozen hexagon from which all the tectonic stresses resulted because Earth was trying to be in its natural state, an ice crystal. It can turn easily in either direction but what is critical is the ambient (world mean) temperature when the tipping point is hit. Sorta like an offshoot of chaos theory.
    Earth is, and has always been, decisively spherical, albeit that it's a little flatter in the polar regions as the result of the centrifugal forces associated with Earth's rotation around its own axis.
    = DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR =

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    Senior Member Emil El Zapato's Avatar
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    well, tell that to Velikovsky...
    “El revolucionario: te meteré la bota en el culo"

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    It looks like the most deleterious effects of warming are on insect populations which are down by very large amounts. This includes pristine areas where there isn't farming or spraying. As we lose the bugs, we're more and more screwed.

    Climate cycles of earth show that warming comes before the big freeze. I'm not sure we'll make it through the warming as our ecosystems collapse.

    Our president doesn't care 'cause he"won't be here".

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