Picastoc et al: - another busy day today. Yesterday I had surprise visitors and I showed them some of NBD's work - they were part-impressed - liked the realistic stuff (landscapes) couldn't cope with some of the Dali-esque landscapes (which I like - good thing we have different tastes!). Today more cleaning, but I am so tired . . . . will have to space myself a bit.
I have just translated an article from the Scientific American (from 2017) to shut up a friend (Europe) who keeps posting nasty stuff against that Greta girl and I don't react, or if, negatively, so he challenged me. Don't know if this is the right thread for it, but Ill just quote one paragraph from that article, because I am still shocked, didn't think it was that bad, so the more people know these facts, the better, and in the light of the bush fires . . . . etc. with little bit of paraphrasing:
".... a burning coniferous forest releases about 4.81 tons of carbon per acre (I don't know what the figures are for gum trees, probably similar,as oil is a constituent of eucalypts as well)
suppose: If one had lit a fire in a coniferous forest in the mid 18th century (1751 - beginning of the Industrial Revolution) and allowed it to keep burning for 263 years - and assuming that at the low end 80% of that carbon came out as Co2 - it would require about 1.5 billion acres of forest to burn every year during that time; i.e. 263 years! That's 6 million square kilometers of burning forest every year for more than 2 centuries. That's a square patch of about 2,450 X 2,450 kilometers, or about 1,500 X 1,500 miles, which is about the size of more than 3/4 of the U.S.A. totally destroyed."
So,yes, the young people do have something to protest about; the biggest increase in Co2 production happened in theirs and their parents (*we are all in this together!! - possibly another generation as well) lifetimes, i.e. in 27 years, as much as the total of the preceding 236 years - and we are now into 2020 - another 3 years later and we are now producing worldwide 40 billion tonnes of emissions per year (that figure is from 2017)!
It will take more than anger to find a solution, good sense, good will and acquiring of a brain by those in power.
