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30 Jun 2021 13:06

I love this article, it talks about soil as a living organism and trees are necessary to keep soil healthy and prevent it from eroding away.

https://climatechange.ucdavis.edu/news/ ... eath-feet/

Soil food
Similar to how people can feed probiotics and prebiotics to the microbes in their guts to improve their health, farmers can use cover crops and apply compost, yard waste and other organic matter to feed microbes in the soil. Reduced tillage, efficient irrigation and other methods also strengthen the soil’s ability to store carbon.

Such techniques have long been used by farmers to enhance soil—particularly on organic and small farms.

“This is ancient knowledge, really,” said Pelaymo Alvarez, outreach director for the Petaluma-based Carbon Cycle Institute and a graduate of UC Davis. “When you increase soil organic matter in the soil, good things happen. But climate change is bringing new attention to it. And regardless of climate change, we should be doing this for many reasons—for productivity, erosion control, drought tolerance. It’s going back to our roots, no pun intended.”
 
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02 Jul 2021 06:28

sounds like a lot of light pollution and space junk is oncoming :(  I hope they have a way to clean this all up.

On a different topic, here is how bad lobbying is in this country

https://supermanalexthegreat.wordpress. ... orruption/

https://www.rawstory.com/exxonmobil-controls-11-senators/

https://www.channel4.com/news/revealed-exxonmobils-lobbying-war-on-climate-change-legislation


"When you have an opportunity to talk to a member of Congress, I liken it to fishing, right? You know you have bait, you throw that bait out. And they say: 'Oh, you want to talk about infrastructure, yeah,'" McCoy continued. "And then you start to reel them in and you start to have these conversations about federal leasing programs, you start to have these conversations about a carbon tax. You know, it's all these opportunities that you use and to use the fishing analogy again just to kind of reel them in."

"I make sure I get them the right information that they need so they look good. And then they help me out. They're a captive audience. They know they need you. And I need them," McCoy also said.
 
Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Senator Joe Manchin, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Senator Jon Tester, Senator Maggie Hassan, Senator John Barrasso, Senator John Cornyn, Senator Steve Daines, Senator Chris Coons, Senator Mark Kelly and Senator Marco Rubio," were all cited.
He went on to explain that the last thing they want is to appear in a public hearing before Congress where the American people can see.
"We don't want it to be us, to have these conversations, especially in a hearing. It's getting our associations to step in and have those conversations and answer those tough questions and be for, the lack of a better term, the whipping boy for some of these members of congress," McCoy confessed.
 
The explosive footage was obtained by Unearthed, Greenpeace UK’s investigative platform, who posed as head-hunters to obtain the information from one of ExxonMobil’s most senior Washington lobbyists.
The recordings appear to reveal the secretive behind-the-scenes activities of a lobbyist for a company that claims in public to support action on climate change, while fighting against legislative attempts to tackle it.
 
Keith McCoy is a senior ExxonMobil lobbyist on Capitol Hill and has represented the company in its liaison with the US Congress for the last eight years.
Greenpeace UK’s Unearthed platform posed as head-hunters looking to hire a Washington D.C. lobbyist for a major client. They approached Mr McCoy, who agreed to speak over Zoom.
During the covert recordings, which have been passed to Channel 4 News, Mr McCoy claims:
  • the company secretly fought against legislative action on climate change using third-party organisations
  • he lobbied key senators to remove and/or diminish climate change measures from President Biden’s US $2 trillion infrastructure and jobs bill as it proceeds through the legislative process
  • he regards trade bodies like the American Petroleum Institute as “whipping boys” in order to avoid public scrutiny on Capitol Hill
During the virtual meeting held on 7 May, the investigators asked Mr McCoy questions about ExxonMobil’s current and historical lobbying on environmental issues.
In the excerpts from the footage to be broadcast on Channel 4 News tonight, Mr McCoy claims that ExxonMobil has aggressively fought science to deny climate change in order to maximise profit and shareholder return. He alleges that ExxonMobil joined “shadow groups” to pursue climate change denial.
Mr McCoy said: “Did we aggressively fight against some of the science?  Yes. Did we hide our science?  Absolutely not.  Did we join some of these shadow groups to work against some of the early efforts? Yes, that’s true. But there’s nothing, there’s nothing illegal about that.
“We were looking out for our investments. We were looking out for our shareholders.”
Mr McCoy likens the approach to lobbying congressmen to the way fishermen target fish, claiming that ExxonMobil puts out “bait” and then “reels in” congressmen on issues like carbon tax, electric vehicles, chemicals, taxation and infrastructure.
Mr McCoy said: “When you have an opportunity to talk to a member of Congress, I liken it to fishing, right? You know you have bait, you throw that bait out. And they say: ‘Oh, you want to talk about infrastructure, yeah.’
“And then you start to reel them in and you start to have these conversations about federal leasing programmes, you start to have these conversations about a carbon tax. You know, it’s all these opportunities that you use and to use the fishing analogy again just to kind of reel them in.”
He added: “I make sure I get them the right information that they need so they look good. And then they help me out. They’re a captive audience. They know they need you. And I need them.”
He says lobbyists aim to have a direct relationship with a member of congress, adding: “You want to be able to go to the chief… and say we need congressman so and so to be able to either introduce this bill, we need him to make a floor statement, we need him to send a letter. You name it, we’ve asked for everything.”
 
Mr McCoy names 11 senators who he says are “crucial” to ExxonMobil: Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Senator Joe Manchin, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Senator Jon Tester, Senator Maggie Hassan, Senator John Barrasso, Senator John Cornyn, Senator Steve Daines, Senator Chris Coons, Senator Mark Kelly and Senator Marco Rubio
 
Mr McCoy described Senator Joe Manchin as “the Kingmaker” in the Senate and he says he spoke to his office on a weekly basis.
The FEC data shows Senator Manchin has received at least $12,500 from the ExxonMobil Political Action Committee in declared disbursements since the beginning of the 2011-12 election cycle.
Mr McCoy described how a “big piece of [his] job is education and advocacy” and says that in his work on behalf of ExxonMobil he argues that US government programmes to roll out electric vehicles are unrealistic.
He said: “The research and development conversation has taken us a long way because of climate change. And there is a struggle to find solutions and to get the reductions that they’re looking for. And you’re not going to be able to just switch to battery operated vehicles or wind for your electricity. And just having that conversation around why that’s not possible in the next 10 years is critically important to the work that we do.”
 
Mr McCoy described a lobbying strategy in which he claims ExxonMobil uses third parties to mask its interests from public view and accountability.
He said: “We don’t want it to be us, to have these conversations, especially in a hearing. It’s getting our associations to step in and have those conversations and answer those tough questions and be for, the lack of a better term, the whipping boy for some of these members of congress.”
He added: “There was something we were working on earlier this week where we, where our CEO was invited to a hearing from a member of congress who we know is just going to rip him to shreds when he goes there. So, we look at it and we say: well, why us?”
Mr McCoy claims that ExxonMobil lobbied Congress to dilute the climate provisions of President Biden’s Infrastructure Bill.
 
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02 Jul 2021 08:42

I can understand your point. Most people talk about the fact that Starlink satellites will increase the number of space junk. However, as Musk claims Starlink satellites will be able to lead themself to the atmosphere of Earth in order to burn themself down there and not to increase the number of space junk. Maybe such the number of satellites is needed to make appropriate internet connection all over the globe.
 
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07 Jul 2021 08:30

This is a video about the possibility of the colonization of Venus put forward by NASA. Personally, I think the idea of colonizing Venus is a completely useless idea. Even more useless than colonizing Mars. Venus's environment is even more harsh than the environment on Mars which will we should understand that the life of human beings will be changed completely as a result of the harsh environment of Venus and will not be the same as we have on Earth.   
Colonize in the form of permanent settlement, yeah it's pretty useless for living, but for the science it's incredibly productive.
We're not looking for a place to stay and to live in, I agree than Venus it's too much dangerous to even think of putting your feet on the surface, living in a airship is not as safe as it may seem, but it is a bit safer.
A lot of people lives in Antarctica but not to drink wine or to go to parties, they live there to study the environment, Antarctica is orders of magnitude safer than Venus, still a few researchers died. Also there is people who wouldn't care about it and will give they're whole heritage to be able to visit another planet  :D
The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

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07 Jul 2021 12:35

Floating cities of Venus is an old idea, and might not be a less far fetched idea than permanent bases on Mars.  In both cases the communities will be highly dependent on Earth for supplies.  Such settlements are basically space stations with extra challenges.  There is no "second Earth".

Kurtzgesagt recently made a video about terraforming Venus.  That is utterly futile.  People would like to remove some CO[sub]2[/sub] in Earth's atmosphere but we're unable to.  On Venus the task is 100 million times larger and 100 million km away.
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08 Jul 2021 06:37

Yeah I guess we can do it on Mars because Mars has much less than we do?
 
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08 Jul 2021 06:48

Actually,  I think we could keep all the CO[sub]2[/sub] on Mars if we could add enough nitrogen, oxygen and water to get at least the pressure we have on Earth.  But even though Mars is cold, such an atmosphere would eventually leak due to Mars' low gravity.
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11 Jul 2021 18:21

Actually,  I think we could keep all the CO[sub]2[/sub] on Mars if we could add enough nitrogen, oxygen and water to get at least the pressure we have on Earth.  But even though Mars is cold, such an atmosphere would eventually leak due to Mars' low gravity.
Meanwhile we are trying to remove nitrogen from our coastal waters because they are causing toxic brown algae blooms (from fertilizers, cesspools, etc.)

By the way the Spacer era has now begun, Sir Richard Branson just launched into space!

https://twitter.com/i/events/1414167242728644622

He reached an altitude of 53.5 miles.
 
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14 Jul 2021 20:15

‘Wobbling’ moon will cause devastating worldwide flooding, Nasa warns

I knew the moon has a 18.6 year gravitational cycle that governs the extremes of the tides but didn't know about this!

In the piece they were talking about the wobble of the moon combined with climate change making for long lasting extremes of coastal flooding from the 2030s thru the 2050s!
 
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15 Jul 2021 16:31

By the way the Spacer era has now begun, Sir Richard Branson just launched into space!

https://twitter.com/i/events/1414167242728644622

He reached an altitude of 53.5 miles.
"Poor man's space".  Surely an awesome experience, but in my opinion, suborbital flights don't really count.
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15 Jul 2021 20:41

By the way the Spacer era has now begun, Sir Richard Branson just launched into space!

https://twitter.com/i/events/1414167242728644622

He reached an altitude of 53.5 miles.
"Poor man's space".  Surely an awesome experience, but in my opinion, suborbital flights don't really count.
I actually thought space began where the exosphere merges with space, which would be around 600 miles or 1000 km up.  Next week Bezos is going to be at around 62.5 miles or just over 100 km.  He's taking the youngest (18) and oldest (82) that have ever gone into space.
 
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17 Jul 2021 13:03

I actually thought space began where the exosphere merges with space, which would be around 600 miles or 1000 km up.
There's no hard limit, but 100 km is often used, though this is way to low for an orbit.  Fast moving meteors will leave a glowing trail up to 120-130 km, so the atmosphere still significant there.  Satellites need at least 160 km.
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19 Jul 2021 05:50

So Jeff Bezos will actually make complete space flight soon and become the first complete space tourist in the world. So keep monitoring this future event with Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin
 
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19 Jul 2021 09:10

I hope they will include this rocket in SE, I see we already have some of Musk's rockets.
 
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23 Jul 2021 14:12

Did anyone see the second real image of an black hole? This time the main protagonist was Centaurus A galaxy. 

Here´s the image if you didn´t :)
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