Most movies about climate change are disaster flicks, but the real-life plight of cemeteries affected by climate change is pure horror. Floods and other extreme weather phenomena present unprecedented challenges to cemeteries, reports Scientific American.
Millions of people are dead.
It's a climate change crisis!
Don't know about you, but I don't care what happens to my corpse....
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Californians have recently endured the dual hardships of wildfires and mass power outages meant to prevent them, not always effectively. Now comes word that desert communities in the Golden State could be at risk of flooding.
Dam, that seems odd. But it turns out that the underlying reason is because California's dams, much like their electrical infrastructure, are in really bad shape.
In February 2017, both spillways for the Oroville Dam in Northern California were damaged by floodwaters, resulting in a crisis that forced nearly 190,000 to flee their homes.
Now there are worries as well involving the Mojave River Dam, built in 1971. It's always something, down there. And although the Mojave is the driest place in North America, rain - when it occurs - often takes the form of a cloudburst. That generates flash-flooding events; hence the construction of the dam in the first place.
Now, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has switched the Dam Safety Action Classification of the Mojave River Dam from low to high urgency of action, meaning steps must be taken to safeguard communities close to the river – such as Hesperia, Apple Valley, Victorville and Barstow – from flood hazards.
A failure would affect downstream properties to the tune of about $1.5 billion.
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In promotional materials and patents, Joi Scientific has claimed to have found an efficient way to generate hydrogen from seawater, something that would be a major scientific breakthrough. (Joi Scientific)
Presumably, they've also found a way to turn lead into gold.
A Florida-based hydrogen company that received millions of public dollars from New Brunswickers has told shareholders that its technology doesn't work as previously described, CBC News has learned. NB Power paid Joi Scientific $13 million Cdn to license a technology that claims to be able to efficiently generate hydrogen gas from seawater to generate electricity on demand, something that would be a major scientific breakthrough.
One of the company's patents claims it can generate hydrogen at 200 per cent efficiency. For one watt of input energy, the patent says two watts of energy in the form of hydrogen gas are produced.
Evidently, the geniuses running that Canadian power company are unaware of Florida's long-standing history of scams. 200% efficiency? Really? Somebody must have flunked high-school physics.
Hydrogen is magic, all right....
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FREDERICK, Md. (KUTV) -- A deaf woman in Maryland got a surprise in the mail when she opened her water bill and discovered she was being charged nearly $5,000, according to the Frederick News-Post.
The city of Frederick, Md. told Denise Sansonese she has until Thursday, October 31 to pay her bill or her water will be shut off.
Denise Sansonese is deaf and could not hear that her toilet was running after a water pump tube malfunctioned.
That water ran continuously for days until her son, who was visiting home from college and is not deaf, discovered the problem.
Hope he was able to get a handle on it; the city must have thought she was flush with cash.
Fortunately, news of the bill reached the Frederick Community Action Agency (FCAA), which stepped in Tuesday to help pay the bill; they made sure the bill was zeroed out.
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BLUE RIVER, Ore. - A threatened fish species is starting to make a comeback in parts of the McKenzie River.
For the first time in nearly half of a century, fish experts have counted hundreds of spring Chinook salmon nests in the Lower South Fork McKenzie River in Blue River. The good news comes after the U.S. Forest Service, McKenzie Watershed Council and other agencies took on about a $2 million restoration project to the area.
Until now, the stretch was essentially devoid of fish. Now, in addition to the salmon, trout are also thriving.
Other wildlife will also benefit from the restoration effort.
Like bears. But it shows that we can undo damage done; in this case, it was the 1960s construction of Cougar Dam that negatively impacted habitat. Mitigation work today appears to be succeeding. I'll have to go back there, come spring.
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Hit by powerful Typhoon Hagibis and an earthquake:
The storm, Typhoon Hagibis, is forecast to be Japan's worst typhoon in six decades.
It made landfall Saturday southwest of Tokyo shortly after an earthquake shook the area. The U.S. Geological Survey said the magnitude 5.3 quake was centered in the ocean off the coast of Chiba, near Tokyo.
At least one person is confirmed dead. A man died after a tornado flipped over his car.
But the above is an early report; last I read, the toll had risen to eleven, and it seems likely that it'll continue to climb. There's a lot of flooding, and mudslide warnings have been issued. Most events and venues have been cancelled or shut down. Tokyo Disneyland is closed, and flights and train services have been halted. It's not looking promising, over there.
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PULLMAN, Wash. — The City of Pullman has been fined $2,700 for violations stemming from its rescue efforts during the city's historic April flood.
The fire department rescued 22 people, including an infant, during the flooding, according to Pullman Mayor and Fire Department spokesman Glenn Johnson.
The fines stem from safety violations while crews used a front-end loader to rescue people.
Apparently, the state bureaucrats feel it would have been better to just let the folks drown.
The first violation occurred when the fire department used a front-end loader carrying three firefighters at four different locations during the flood. The second fine came from allowing firefighters wearing their gear to be unsecured in the bucket of the front-end loader without personal flotation devices or a helmet appropriate for water rescues. The last fine was due to the city not providing and requiring "the use of appropriate safety devices and safeguards, including allowing an employee to ride unsecured" in the front-end loader.
There were no injuries during the rescue operations.
Not that it matters.
"Emergency situation, my foot! We got rules here, buddy. You follow them or else!"
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“SUBJECT: DEQ … File No.97-59-0023; T11N; R10W, Sec 20; Lycoming County
Dear Mr. DeVries:
It has come to the attention of the Department of Environmental Quality that there has been recent unauthorized activity on the above referenced parcel of property.
You have been certified as the legal landowner and/or contractor who did the following unauthorized activity: Construction and maintenance of two wood debris dams across the outlet stream of Spring Pond.
A permit must be issued prior to the start of this type of activity. A review of the Department’s files shows that no permits have been issued Therefore, the Department has determined that this activity is in violation of Part 301, Inland Lakes and Streams, of the Natural Resource and Environmental Protection Act, Act 451 of the Public Acts of 1994, being sections 324.30101 to 324.30113 of the Pennsylvania Compiled Laws, annotated.
The Department has been informed that one or both of the dams partially failed during a recent rain event, causing debris and flooding at downstream locations… We find that dams of this nature are inherently hazardous and cannot be permitted.
The Department therefore orders you to cease and desist all activities at this location, and to restore the stream to a free-flow condition by removing all wood and brush forming the dams from the stream channel.
All restoration work shall be completed no later than January 31, 2013. Please notify this office when the restoration has been completed so that a follow-up site inspection may be scheduled by our staff.
Failure to comply with this request or any further unauthorized activity on > > the site may result in this case being referred for elevated enforcement action.
We anticipate and would appreciate your full cooperation in this matter. Please feel free to contact me at this office if you have any questions.
Sincerely,
David L. Price
District Representative and Water Management Division
Dear Mr. Price,
Your certified letter dated 11/17/12 has been handed to me. I am the legal landowner but not the Contractor at 2088 Dagget Lane, Trout Run, Pennsylvania.
I would like to challenge your department to attempt to emulate their dam project any time and/or any place you choose. I believe I can safely state there is no way you could ever match their dam skills, their dam resourcefulness, their dam ingenuity, their dam persistence, their dam determination and/or their dam work ethic.
These are the beavers/contractors you are seeking. As to your request, I do not think the beavers are aware that they must first fill out a dam permit prior to the start of this type of dam activity. If you want the damed stream ‘restored’ to a dam free-flow condition please contact the beavers — but if you are going to arrest them, they obviously did not pay any attention to your dam letter, they being unable to read English.
Boy, is that ever familiar: at my last house, there was a stream running through my back yard. Then the beavers showed up. The pond resulting from their work caused a neighbor upstream to come to my door to complain about "my beavers" that flooded his vegetable garden. Next up - yep, the Portland Bureau of "Environmental Services". They informed me that I could not trap and relocate the animals, nor could I shoot them. But I had to do something about their dam, as it was "impeding the free flow of water".
Yeah, that's a big help.
So, ever the cooperative guy, I took an axe to the dam. The beavers rebuilt it overnight.
Now they were starting to tick even me off.
i knew that beavers react to the sound of flowing water, so I got an eight-foot length of PVC pipe and a couple of 90-degee elbows.
Chopped a hole in the dam and laid in the pipe - with one elbow to drop water onto the back-side of the dam. Moved the rest of the pipe and elbow facing downward into the pond. Sure enough, water flowed quietly through the rig, and sure enough, the beavers plastered over the pipe at their dam. So it was part of their dam, but I could keep the water at a manageable level.
Made the neighbor happy and mollified BES.
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Drinking tap water.
Chemicals in the nation's drinking water could result in 100,000 cases of cancer in the U.S. over a lifetime, according to a study released Thursday by the Environmental Working Group. The findings may bolster the argument for investing in protections for U.S. source water, as well as for consumers to use water filters at home, the nonprofit environmental advocacy group said.
The vast majority, or 87%, of the more than 100,000 estimated cancer cases linked to drinking tap water are due to byproducts of chemicals used to disinfect water and naturally occurring arsenic, according to the findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal Heylion. The remaining cancer cases were attributed to radioactive chemicals in drinking water.
Well, that seems sort of scary, although here in Portland, the water isn't treated; filtered, yes, but it's so clean that treatment is not needed.
For those less fortunate, there's always Zero Mass:
Zero Mass Water CEO and founder Cody Friesen is the winner of the 2019 Lemelson-MIT Prize, snaring $500,000 for his invention of a hydropanel that extracts drinking water from sunlight and air. The company’s Source hydropanels are used in 33 countries and provide clean drinking water in communities, refugee camps, government offices, hotels, hospitals, schools, restaurants and homes around the world.
The Lemelson-MIT Prize, awarded by the Portland, Oregon-based Lemelson Foundation, is the largest cash prize for U.S. inventions. It is administered by the School of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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