Who Did That?

Interesting 4/17/25 LiveScience article how the destruction of the Aral Sea is causing dramatic crystal movement.  The sentence that made me quiver:

"The uplift is due to the "quiet Chernobyl" environmental disaster that struck the region in the 1960s, when humans diverted two rivers that flowed into the Aral Sea for irrigation, scientists say."

Which humans?  That is a very imprecise word.  The correct phrase is "Soviet socialist economic planners."  The largest environmental disaster in recent history was the result,  not of capitalism,  or individual greed, but of bureaucrats who ignored even what little pricing information was available in a socialist economy to make very bad decisions.

They diverted those rivers to grow cotton, what Stalin called "white gold."  As the Aral Sea evaporated,  the fisheries that provided employment for many in the region ended.  To keep the people packing fish employed, the Soviet Union flew fish in from the Arctic Ocean.   You know that costs of that in a market economy would have made for golden cans of fish.   This would have ended any capitalist attempt at ameliorate of the disaster.

Environmentalists are very reluctant to point fingers at a system that regarded capitalism as the great evil.

Making a Superfund Site

 If you are my age, you doubtless grew up hearing about Superfund Sites, places so massively polluted with no firm left to hold accountable for cleanup.  This video is about one: Picher, Oklahoma:

The narration and fact delivery is matter of fact and has no screaming "Save Mother Earth" hysteria, but then again, it does not need it.  The tribe whose land was expropriated for one of the largest zinc and lead mines in America now has ownership of it again, and are in charge of cleanup.  Their environmental quality director is not bitter; he puts a positive cast on how they are being paid to restore their land.

If you are familiar with the silver mining region in north Idaho, parts of this will seem familiar; lead mining poisoning and retarding children, although that was suppressed for a long time with large payments and NDAs.  While the environmental movement tends towards hysteria, when not outright fraud, there are disasters like Picher we need to remember.  How many of these new mines to produce electric car batteries are going to be the 21st century's Pichers?  A little calmer approach to the next big technology is in order.

Who Needs Food Anyway? A Universal Basic Income is Enough

7/27/22 CTV News:

"THE HAGUE, NETHERLANDS - 

Dutch farmers protested government plans to reduce nitrogen emissions by dumping manure and garbage Wednesday on highways and setting fires alongside roads -- the latest actions in a summer of discontent. Police urged them to stop for safety reasons and were investigating who was responsible.

"Traffic authorities said several roads in the central and eastern Netherlands were completely or partially blocked by the early morning blockades and fire services rushed to clear roads as traffic built up. Cleanup operations were expected to take hours on some roads."

This is about attempts to reduce nitrogen emissions.   You know that gas that is 78% of our atmosphere.   There's no such thing as fossil nitrogen.  I think the perpetual busybodies just ran out of things to ban with a plausible basis.

What's The Error Bar On That?

7/24/22 Daily Mail:

Tour de France fans took matters into their own hands yesterday as they angrily removed a gang of eco-protesters threatening to disrupt the historic bike race by sitting in the middle of the road to block oncoming riders. 

Eight climate activists from French campaign group Dernière Rénovation (Last Renovation) sporting T-shirts emblazoned with the message 'we have 978 days left' to tackle environmental decline tried to stop the race during the 20th stage between Lacapelle-Marival and Rocamadouron on Saturday. 

But their attempts to wreak havoc at the stage were thwarted by spectators, who stormed onto the road and dragged them out of the path of the oncoming bikes even before the police arrived on the scene to make arrests. 

978 days?  The precision impresses me.  What is the uncertainty of that?  In 2006 Al Gore said we had ten years.  Again, no error bar.  If it was large enough we could combine his and theirs and get a more certain "too late; no need to bother" date.

What makes this sort of fanaticism especially sad is that their goal like that of a sister group in Britain is among all the climate change objectives, the least objectionable: have the government insulate buildings.  This would reduce both heating and cooling costs without impoverishing anyone (except taxpayers).  

I went all out on insulating my last house and it really made a difference.  We have a few others home improvement projects in mind first, but increasing insulation on this house is on my list.

Save the Earth!

7/15/22 Los Angeles Times article about how all those solar panels California made happen starting in 2006 are becoming a recycling problem.

Wow!  There really is no free lunch!  Who would have guessed.