Tag Archives: Mark Rober

December 2, 2023 · 19:44

Two carbon based stories

Yup, we have carbon based cars, carbon based credit cards and also carbon based stories (this one). You see, two stories brought it up to the front in all this. The second story is given to us by the Guardian. It is ‘how a UAE sheikh quietly made carbon deals for forests bigger than UK’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/30/the-new-scramble-for-africa-how-a-uae-sheikh-quietly-made-carbon-deals-for-forests-bigger-than-uk) where we are given “The rights over vast tracts of African forest are being sold offin a series of huge carbon offsetting deals that cover an area of land larger than the UK. The deals, made by a little-known member of Dubai’s ruling royal family, encompass up to 20% of the countries concerned” and the one missing part is that this concerns Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook al-Maktoum. We see here a larger impact into how business is done, how corporations and how governments do business. A simple setting, no laws broken and all on the up and up. 

You see, this relates to the entirety with the first article that we also got from the Guardian titled ‘Most sponsors of Cop28 have not signed up to UN-backed net zero targets’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/29/most-sponsors-cop28-not-signed-up-to-un-net-zero-targets). Here we see “Most companies sponsoring the UN climate talks in Dubai are not committed to cutting their greenhouse gas emissions in line with globally recognised net zero targets, it has been revealed”. You see, the hands of the Guardian aren’t clean either. They refused (and failed) to report on the EEA report that showed that 50% of all the damage came from 147 facilities. They don’t give you that part do they? They will report on jets for rich people and whilst they hide behind their ‘walls’ they cater to who-knows-who. In addition there is the article from former NASA engineer Mark Rober (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7nJBFjKqAY) he showed how 20,000,000 trees were being planted. The article was from 2019 and so far they are at 24,513,083 trees. As such that team did more than most western governments. And they are still at it. So whilst we are pointing fingers and whilst the media is all about the blame game (more digital dollars) others are doing things, others are making it happen. Should Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook al-Maktoum decide to donate to TeamTrees ($1 per tree) we could see that the UAE has done more by itself then all the European nations (and the United Kingdom) combined. Scary isn’t it?

Another field where America and Europe fall short. A simple equation and a simple outcome. So whilst we are all wondering what all that carbon tax is all about others are actually doing something about it, but the media will not give us that snippet of news, will they?

So whilst we consider that, also consider “The global accountancy firm EY, formerly Ernst and Young, which has been hired as the independent verifier of the climate record of all the sponsors, has also not set targets with the net zero scheme.” Another target not met, another target in the wind and the media stays quiet (or something like that). 

So whilst we look at COP28 and point fingers towards some, consider that it was that this Swedish Primary School kid named Greta Thunberg showed us that COP26 was all about ‘blah blah blah’ she was proven correct and how much media coverage did they get? So whilst CNN gives us ‘US announces rule to slash powerful planet-warming gas by nearly 80%’, the part we all seem to miss is that this target is set by 2038 and we should not forget that there is every chance that at that point there will be no United States of America left. When their debts explode, no environmental target will count, no target will matter but that part will only come to the surface AFTER the collapse (and that will make sense). 

So much blah blah blah and none of them are doing anything real about it, the only ones doing things and making things happen is TeamTrees, consider that this weekend.

Cheerio.

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August 28, 2023 · 13:49

The speculated danger

Yes, that is where I am. Whatever I am about to give you, there is a decent amount of speculation involved, as such there is every chance that there are issues that aren’t covered and people with that kind of knowledge aren’t speaking out at present. Not to debunk my speculations and not to enforce it. I believe that the filtered media we are getting is now likely the more danger we face. This all started last night when I saw ‘UAE records hottest day of the year as temperature crosses 50 degree mark’ (at https://english.alarabiya.net/News/gulf/2023/08/27/Temperature-crosses-50-degree-mark-again-as-UAE-records-hottest-day-of-the-summer). Here we see “The rising heat in the UAE crossed the scorching 50 degrees Celsius threshold on Saturday, marking this summer’s highest temperature. According to the National Center of Meteorology (NCM), the mercury touched 50.8 degree Celsius in Abu Dhabi’s Owtaid in Al Dhafra region at 2:45 p.m.” We see all kinds of heat messages, but for a place like the United Arab Emirates to give that to the readers is a little new to me and that place is warm on any usual day. This started me to mull several things over and it also made me think back to the 60’s (when I was young and innocent. Yes, I was innocent once). That year is forever marked in my brain. Not because of the year as I am not certain what year it was. Yet I remember that it was -20 Celsius. The coldest I could ever remember. In addition to the ice flowers on my window, something I had never seen before there was something else. The streets were iced. Now we had ice in the winter, I grew up in a city named Rotterdam. But this was different, the streets were covered in ice. I could literally skate to school which had never happened before and I do not recall that it happened since. This is what I would call a temperature outlier. These things happen and there is nothing strange about it. Now consider this heat in the UAE. In addition consider (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/08/10/the-part-we-seem-to-forget/) the stage I reported in ‘The part we seem to forget’ where I quoted “Within the next two decades, temperatures are likely to rise by more than 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, breaching the ambition of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, and bringing widespread devastation and extreme weather” (source: the Guardian) You can forget about the decennia part, I personally believe we are there now. To get that stage we need to add three elements. 

  1. “Researchers say deforestation has caused the Amazon to absorb less than half as much carbon dioxide as it did twenty years ago.” With the added “In the last fifty years, Brazil’s Amazon has lost about a fifth of its forest cover—almost 300,000 square miles. This includes at least 5,110 square miles lost in 2021”
  2. “From 2001 to 2022, Indonesia lost 29.4 Mha of tree cover, equivalent to a 18% decrease in tree cover since 2000, and 21.1 Gt of CO₂e emissions” which gives us Indonesia. 
  3. “Beginning in March 2023, and with increased intensity starting in June, Canada has been affected by an ongoing, record-setting series of wildfires. All 13 provinces and territories have been affected” with a total of 13,999,922 ha displacing well over 250,000 people. With Al Jazeera (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/23/mapping-the-scale-of-canadas-record-wildfires) giving us “Canada is battling more than 1,000 active fires, and nearly two-thirds of them are out of control”

This is where the speculation starts. We have decimated our forests and the ability to regain the oxygen. Now, this is not going anywhere soon, our atmosphere has a curtain of well over 5 miles of oxygen, so we aren’t running out. But we now have a markable point where we use more oxygen than nature can correct for. The three largest places with forests are down by too much and there are side effects. The smoke of the Canadian fires, that go all through to the US will have a secondary impact

People wear protective masks as the Roosevelt Island Tram crosses the East River while haze and smoke from the Canadian wildfires shroud the Manhattan skyline in the Queens Borough New York City, June 7, 2023. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

The sun will warm us less and you might think that is a good thing, but you would be wrong and that is why I made mention of the outlier in the 60’s. I personally believe that we are about to face the harshest winters ever and it will not be one year. This will start a trend that will be a 3-7 year stretch, not all at once, but we will face at least 2 harsh winters over the next 5 years with a few more after that. Even if the forests in Canada are replanted using Team Trees with Mark Rober, it will take close to a decade to see that impact and the forest fires will return next year too. Less likely to the same scale, but forest fires are a normal setting in Canada, the three elements combined is different and new.

Some will have seen the Netflix movie How it Ends and we aren’t facing that, but the nuclear winter that follows such fires are not entirely impossible, I would go on stating that they are becoming more and more likely. The media will trivialise this and state that I am a doom sayer, yet they have never given us the real deal in this and they are unlikely to do so now. I am not saying this will happen, but I feel certain that we are heading to really harsh winters and the first one will hit us before January 2025 which is expected to cripple the UK and Europe to a larger degree. Canada and the nordic nations will not be crippled to such a degree, but they too will feel the bite of the winter that comes. In the meantime with the winter hitting us and the heat being a larger problem extreme weather is coming our way and it is coming now, not in a decade. 

So consider what I told you, fell free to check the numbers you can and be certain that you take note of the trivialisation you see in the media and take note of the media that trivialised it. They are no longer to be trusted ever. They are filtering the information to keep you asleep, especially in a time when you should have been awake a lot more. It is not the one thing, there is no one thing, it is the combination of a whole range of issues and it is not the private jet setting, that is utter bullshit. What they are all happy to ‘ignore’ or forget is what I mentioned in ‘A COP26 truth’ a setting we see (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/11/13/a-cop26-truth/) two elements stand out. “over the last 15 years 15,000,000 additional flights were added. That amounts to 41,000 flights a day, every single day. So how much CO2 do these flights create?” The Guardian was all about private jets and made no mention of this element. Do you really think that these flights were essential? Then there was “We are that close to suffocating. On the other side, we have seen clear reports that 50% of the damage comes from 147 plants, the media ignored it, I wrote about it and placed the documents of UNEP and the EEA for you to read, they had graphics too.” How interesting was it that the Guardian and its environmental pages did not mention that report. Two elements and you were kept in the dark and now these elements start to form a biased opinion (from me) but feel free to come up with better settings and this has been going on since 2021. So with all the space they had they ignored the European Environmental Agency? 

It is my personal speculated believe that these elements are part of a greater impact and the Canadian fires with the deforestation elements are adding up to a new picture. I might be so brazen to suggest that the 8 billion people this year onwards (for some time) will be using more oxygen than the planet can renew, this has a larger impact now, the winters and summers will both be harsh, more harsh then anyone can remember. I would leave it to the media, but I don’t thin they can be trusted any longer. In fact there are trust issues on all sides and so there should be, but those who give us the news aren’t (it is now filtered information). Am I right? Am I wrong?

I honestly do not know, but this is my speculated opinion. I might be going from numbers, but it remains speculation. 

So breath and get through the day, the weekend is behind you the next one might be coming in 5 days. Enjoy.

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August 19, 2023 · 00:41

Our house is burning down. Down!

By now we have all heard of the fires in Canada. There is nothing that I can say, invent or imagine that makes this setting easier. These fires are making the fires of Rome (64AD) and burning of London (1666AD) look like a simple BBQ (or clambake if you are from the US). At this time the fires are well over 13,500,000 Hectare, and it has displaced around 200,000 people. Which is almost 1% of the population. The largest fire in recorded history. I have never ever heard of a fire this big and I have been around for well over half a century. I wonder what the eco-deniers make of this setting, who will they blame? The fact that from all over the world firefighters are coming to Canada to fight a fire too big to comprehend is only one setting. The stage that planes are so loaded that they need to turn away those fleeing the disaster they face. 

People wear protective masks as the Roosevelt Island Tram crosses the East River while haze and smoke from the Canadian wildfires shroud the Manhattan skyline in the Queens Borough New York City, June 7, 2023. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

And that is before you realise that NYC is orange, orange from smoke by Canadian fires. An event that has never happened before. So yes, I looked at plenty of issues before I looked at this. I am on the other side of the planet, but I took notice, I took notice several times and now I decided to write about it. 

The setting hasn’t changed, I did. I am starting to realise that that much forest gone will impact our oxygen supply and it will take lose to a decade for a decent amount to be rebuild. We can argue on the timeline. But the forests in the Amazon are depleted, the ones in Indonesia have seen depletion as well Indonesia lost 29.4 Mha of tree cover, equivalent to a 18% decrease in tree cover since 2000. Did you think that was nothing? Now the forests of Siberia are almost all that remain and I reckon that this is not a path we want to walk on. This fire might not be what we wanted, but there is a negative part in me that states that this is the fire we the people (not just Canadians) have been entitled to. A small reminder that exploitation of our world will hurt us all and people more intelligent than me would have been aware of this for several years and the Canadian fires are merely bringing it to the foreground. Some articles are drawing in the people by looking at how it started, some are set on the blame factor, but if you need someone to blame you only need to look into a mirror. Politicians are not held to account, all whilst driving the gravy train. We are being told that places like the UK that woodland creation has increased by 40 percent since last year to 3,128 hectares. It isn’t much, but it is a start, all being it being half a decade late. People like Mark Rober (formerly with NASA) have aided organisations like Team Trees, an organisation that as of 29 June 2023, the project has raised $24,438,806, exceeding the fundraiser’s goal to plant 20 million trees. As anticipated, more than 20 million trees have been planted. So one ex-NASA with an organisation achieved more in 2 years that the UK achieved in a decade and it is people like this that Canada will need, their solutions will be required when the fires are stopped. When? Your guess is as good as mine and it will rely on guessing as we have never faced a fire like this ever before, not in well over 2000 years as far as I can tell. 

So what is the option? I am not sure we have one, our house is burning down and whilst most houses have a garden to evacuate to, the planet has nothing surrounding itself but empty space and that is a place where we cannot survive. I wonder how long it will take some to blame the rich, tax everyone and whatever other solution people give, but the simple equation is that until we change our lives from a consumer based life towards an essential goods stage this will keep on going on. And with a little over 8,000,000,000 consumers in this house, we are destined for a larger failing than we care to admit to. You see it is not merely the fires, it is the simple equation where 34 million acres are not there to give us the oxygen we need to breath. So how short will our oxygen supply be in 2024? You can ignore it all you want but that will be the largest topic we ever faced and it is coming. None of it is the fault of Canada or Canadians. We all did our best to ignore Brazil and Indonesia. The media skated around the issue and now the blame game starts. Well as soon as the fires have been digitally exploited to the maximum. That is how I see it. Do you think I am wrong?

Enjoy the weekend and consider the numbers, the numbers tend to be correct.

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November 13, 2021 · 11:06

A COP26 truth

Yes, it is time to slam down, slam dunk and slam punk some people. The Evening Standard gives us ‘New draft deal appears to water down curb on fossil fuels’. The article (at https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/cop26-latest-news-glasgow-last-day-climate-change-talks-outcomes-so-far-alok-sharma-boris-johnson-b965809.html) is not even a surprise to me. So in the end, the only true thing of the COP26 was an 18 year old girl named Greta Thunberg. The rest was full of shit. And do not take my word for it. Mark Rober (former NASA) started in 2019 #TeamTrees with MrBeast (his name apparently) and so far they planted 23 million trees. How many did the UK plant? How many did the US plant? How many did the EU plant? Do the math and you will see how right I am. Two people (with drones and donations) did more in a year than the better part of 30 governments with billions. So you tell me.

In other news, there was a decent form of objections to my article ‘1095 minus one’ two days ago (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/11/11/1095-minus-one/). The opposition was that my example was nice, but that the balloon would have been massively larger. That is fair enough. And that person would be right. But the setting is not merely that there are 8 billion in need of oxygen (without the CO2), the larger issue is that over the last 15 years 15,000,000 additional flights were added. That amounts to 41,000 flights a day, every single day. So how much CO2 do these flights create? More people and more flights, not the flights from the uber rich, no normal airline flights. I am willing to take a bet that at least 25% of those flights are useless and could be scrapped. 

So whilst we look at media outlets like Al Jazeera giving us “Analysts question the text of COP26’s final agreement citing ‘watered down’ language on hydrocarbon eradication and missing commitments on emission cuts” (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/12/watered-down-new-cop26-draft-deal-moves-away-from-hard-targets) we see the truth. Greta Thunberg was right, the COP26 was all blah-blah-blah. No real deal is in the works and as Indonesia and there are questions on the real deal with Brazil. Even now as we are shown “Data from the national space research agency shows deforestation increased by 5 percent from October 2020”, yes Brazil could end deforestation by 2030 because there will be no forest left. So my prediction that we have wiped out 50% of all forests by 2030 is getting awfully close. Now reconsider the Montgolfier principle I gave two days ago and consider the balloon going up with only 50% burner power (the trees), we will be adding CO2 quicker than oxygen and that means the end of the balloon (we all get to die). I get it, it is not fair on Brazil or Indonesia. There are also Papua New Guinea. They have a grievous matter to settle, which is the claim Gordon Brown (former UK PM) made in 2009 on funds for the stricken nations, that money never came, and this government does not have the funds. So the setting of blah-blah-blah goes from bad to worse. 

And that does not beat all yesterday I saw some news pass buy that they have a replacement for plastic bags, this is good! Thy have a new wood based bag, which is debatable… at this point at least. So you still doubt my estimate of 50-80 million trees in three years? I might be wrong, it will need to be higher if Brazil and Indonesia are any indication and so far the governments are all talk and no result. 

There is a larger issue, there actually are two, one on each side of the equation. Brown gold on one side is essential for the economy of several economies, not merely Indonesia and Brazil, but Canada, India ad the US as well. The US being the largest timber producing nation on the planet. As we see, the solution from #TeamTrees seems to work, so why are they not reforesting what is lost? I know it is not always possible, yet we are now in a stage where we either get more trees or teach our grandkids to live by breathing carbonised oxygen (CO2). We are that close to suffocating. On the other side, we have seen clear reports that 50% of the damage comes from 147 plants, the media ignored it, I wrote about it and placed the documents of UNEP and the EEA for you to read, they had graphics too. Yet the media is largely ignoring those 147 plants, where they are and why they are allowed to continue (there might be a real reason, I do not know) yet the media remains silent, they are all about the flames of COP26, but in three weeks time the will move on, why is that?

We allow the wrong players to continue their destructive plans and it costs us dearly, if we are lucky enough to avoid that, our kids will not, they will live through it and curse us for not actively solving the problems they inherited. I leave you to figure it out. 

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November 10, 2021 · 11:15

1095 days

OK, first off, this is HIGHLY speculative, optionally presumptive. So if any environmentalist shoots this view to bits, that might just be correct. As I was relaxing and contemplating things. I suddenly had a moment where my mind went racing in all the wrong places. My thoughts are giving us that we are being lied to. We are talking global warming and some notion of 1.5C towards global warming. But I believe that the setting is wrong. I reckon that we will have 4 degrees towards global warming by 2028. You see, some players are looking at the trends, but they forgot that logging continued unabated, the population grows and we are now in a 1095 day setting where either we plant millions of trees (closer to 50M) in 1095 days, or we will face a harsher setting. You see, growing trees will become increasingly more difficult and places that are too warm, the sprouts will die to a much larger degree and in 2028 too many places of this planet will turn arid. The Wall Street groups of brown gold will deny and oppose this, but am I wrong? I hope, I truly hope that I am wrong, but I feel uncertain. You see, as I wrote earlier. In the last 25 years one third of our forests have been cut, this started a global warming trend, yet to counter it we would have to replant that in half the time and that is not going to happen, and it would be rather delusional to expect that. Yet, as I see it we need to make a much larger effort the next 1095 days to stop the advancement of global warming. And there are other factors as well, water will be an issue to grow the trees and too much of that is polluted, rain is in less places and where it does rain it rains a little too much, so to sprout a forest will be increasingly depending on where it is possible and the places where it is possible are diminishing.

I thought it was me, but I found a piece by the McGill University that gives us ‘Over half of the world’s rivers cease to flow for at least one day a year on average’. The paper (at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/06/210616113838.htm) also gives us “Given continued global climate and land use change, an increasingly large proportion of the global river network is expected to cease to flow seasonally over the coming decades” and there is the issue. As rivers run dry, the trees who rely on rivers will not grow, will have diminished growth and optionally die. When we see this added element, the stage of 1095 starts making sense. This is not one river, one place. No this is projected to 51%-60% of ALL the rivers on the planet. And that is ignoring places like the Nile where growth is pretty much a faded option. And as Indonesia states that stopping deforestation by 2030 is not possible, the issue increases. There are people who can get 50,000,000 trees planted (ask Mark Rober formerly with NASA), but that means starting now, that means creating the surge now, not when it pleases Wall Street, it will be too late at that point. A stage where we saw it all coming and we all ignored it for too long. 

Am I right, am I wrong? 

I honestly do not know, I will be clear about that part, but perhaps the media will take a larger look at that (if Wall Street allows them to). Enjoy the day, optionally.

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December 11, 2019 · 16:15

The List

What happens when we demand certain action by the media, yet that same media might not think it is in their interest to pursue such actions, will the people win, or will the media win. It is a direct question as we are being told (via the media) that we have been kept in the dark for years now and we need the media to step up, will they do it?

I have been playing with this idea for a while now and I think it has become a largely visible issue now. I am taking the action as per ‘Greenland’s ice sheet melting seven times faster than in 1990s‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/10/greenland-ice-sheet-melting-seven-times-faster-than-in-1990s), and it is time to recognise the players. 

The first fact is that this particular issue has been playing for well over 20 years, so we now have a timeline. Even as the media now alerts us through “Scale and speed of loss much higher than predicted, threatening inundation for hundreds of millions of people”, the issue has been playing for well over a decade, so we now can demand a list.

The list needs to show ANY scientist who have been hiding or trivialising facts. These scientists are NEVER EVER to be considered for government jobs or for environmental jobs, they are to be named and any of them attached to big business will find their presence to be a nullifying factor in assessing a company’s environmental value. When we are given the value “Glaciers calving icebergs in south-west Greenland, which has lost 3.8tn tonnes of ice since 1992, and the rate of ice loss has risen from 33bn tonnes a year in the 1990s to 254bn tonnes a year in the past decade“, we need to see the dangers that some scientists have presented us with. So any scientist who altered their views to please governments will alo be marked and in that stage we will see a fading view of intentional misrepresentation. Scientists have been protected by cushy jobs for the longest of times, by smearing the truth in different directions by marking these people governments will have to face the issues thrown at them, not set them to lay by. 

Even now as we see: “That means sea level rises are likely to reach 67cm by 2100, about 7cm more than the IPCC’s main prediction. Such a rate of rise will put 400 million people at risk of flooding every year, instead of the 360 million predicted by the IPCC, by the end of the century” we see an issue that could have been a reason for illumination years ago, but in the age of 1996-2006 the world was swallowed by the need of greed. Even now, we see blatant misrepresentation ‘Fossil fuel firms ‘could be sued’ for climate change‘, is that so? So we want to shove that bill to the Middle East? How about shoving it off to the US, they wanted a car driven population. So as I see ‘Filipino human rights committee finds world’s biggest oil companies have legal and moral responsibilities to act‘, which sounds partly fine when we see the international actions by the Royal Dutch Shell, yet in the end it is an economy that pushed for $29 plane seats, as such that the economy suddenly had cash to burn (almost literally), yet no one sets the value of such drives to the test. So as we are treated to “The head of a Philippines Commission on Human Rights panel, which has been investigating climate change for three years, revealed its conclusions on Monday that major fossil fuel firms may be held legally responsible for the impacts of their carbon emissions” (at https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/cop25-madrid-climate-change-greta-thunberg-fossil-fuel-lawsuit-a9239601.html) we see an absolute absence of the economies that pushed for those solutions, all to ignore a stage of economy no one wants to hear about in our times of debt and debt driven economies. Even now as we see the stories from half a dozen sources go on about how tree planting jobs could be yours, whilst NASA Engineer Mark Rober (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7nJBFjKqAY) showed a working solution that was modern and could be implemented months ago. he even gave visibility at https://teamtrees.org/, where we see that in 6 weeks he got to 17,756,768 of their required goal of 20,000,000 trees. A clear solution that is (obviously) being ignored by mainstream media. Even as the Independent (at https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/brexit-tree-planting-michael-gove-eu-conservatives-a9205371.html) gives us “‘It’s nonsense’: Michael Gove criticised after blaming EU for government missing tree-planting target” on November 16th 2019, way after the Mark Rober solution was presented, and whilst he presented it, it is clear that this working format was already in existence, so whilst Greenpiece and Michael Gove are butting heads, neither of them make mention of the solution that a NASA Engineer gave visibility to and tried (via viral ways) to entice people to help him get to the 20 million tree target. As I see it, the government, Greenpiece and several journo’s all missed the point that was out there to see for all. I wonder how many scientists have been overlooking certain solutions.

So whilst we get another clear view via “Successive Conservative governments have already ensured we will miss one tree-planting target in 2020, and we’re on track to miss the one in 2022. Now they’ve set themselves a new target for 2025 and people will be wondering whether this is raising the ambition or just moving the goalposts yet again“, we do not see the names of the people who have been pushing for these changes, I think that we are entitled to that, those people should not be allowed to hide behind the media, we are allowed to see the emphasis of all who agree of changed goalposts. And even as UK Labour will find some picture (like a baby in a hospital) to hide behind, lets face the truth that the sliding environmental values started in the 90’s, that measn that both sides of the isle is guilty of environmental rape. 

So whilst we see “Parties across the political spectrum have been boasting about the tree-planting efforts they would undertake if they won the general election” we should add the need to invalidate their right to govern for no less than 3 administrations should they FAIL to keep their word, especially when a happily flaky NASA engineer was able to show the opposite in a clear video, all with examples on how to tackle merely some of the issues we face on how to quickly plant trees (in an affordable way).

This all loosely relates an article in the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/07/oceans-losing-oxygen-at-unprecedented-rate-experts-warn) ‘Oceans losing oxygen at unprecedented rate, experts warn‘, the fact that we see “Dead zones – where oxygen is effectively absent – have quadrupled in extent in the last half-century, and there are also at least 700 areas where oxygen is at dangerously low levels, up from 45 when research was undertaken in the 1960s“, so where were all the alert signs a decade ago? Two decades ago? Were we all asleep? Was it hidden in the news papers on page 35 below the fold? The numbers give us that 650 oxygen deprivation areas were added in half a century, I reckon it would have been news two decades ago, so who aided people to hide these truths? As I see it those people are equally dangerous as mass murderers and any scientist on that stack of choices gets to be put on a list. So any scientist that is considering the ‘befehl ist befehl‘ excuse that some Germans used in November 1945, they better realise that the people had no qualms about hanging those people as well. In light of some information we can optionally agree with “the most profound impact on the marine environment has come from fishing. Ending overfishing is a quick, deliverable action which will restore fish populations“, if that is true, then why is there no global agreement on the actions of overfishing? Why do we see the laughingly inactions by Australian law groups in the Great Barrier reef? Why are poachers not arrested, their boats set up for action in another state (to prevent reacquisition) to limit poaching? There are dozens of other options and actions not being seen and the inactions against criminals acting against the environment is an almost global problem, as such the inactions of governments is becoming more and more debatable.

As such I wonder when the media will look at an actual list and give the people a clear view on who is misrepresenting the factual parts, I wonder what we see those scientists say. And lets not forget the number one action that governments use when the data does not meet the question, at that point some will merely rephrase the question, have you considered how often this solution has been an option for governments in environmental questions?

 

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May 7, 2019 · 12:16

Education off the grid

We have been watching all the impacts (250 from the west bank) and a few impacts (by the Israeli air force, but when we look outside the things the media wants you to notice and the side that they want to give to you for emotional impact. We see that there is a side that we are not made aware off, or being made aware of a little as possible. In light of all we see this is a much larger issue than you think. If you are to go beyond the sides you need to go, if you want to grow in any way, you need to reach out and start looking at things that are not usually seen.

It is a form of ‘off the grid’ education. Now, this can be done with almost every subject. There are millions of eager students when it is about biology (reproduction and fornication), and there are plenty of people when it comes to science experiments that are cool, and actually give additional respect to the creator of the golf ball. In this first example let’s look at SmarterEveryDay (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JT0wx27J9xs), I will not tell you too much, because what you see is pretty amazing and in this episode he gets assistance from Mark Rober, an engineer, who is as daft as a door nail (in a good way), which is probably why he ended up being the perfect fit for NASA. And as the video shows that manpower did not do the trick, they decided to let Mark make them a rocket powered golf club (for real), it is like watching roadrunner come to life and whilst there was no obvious Wile. E. Coyote swinging the club, the results are there to be seen. We see the engineer (Overconfidentii vulgaris) take a swing at records and watch the movie to see how they go at that in test 3, it will stay with you for a long time. Long before the end of the movie, I ended up having massive respect for the golf ball and the person who invented it. The YouTube video is playful and still extremely informative and educational in an area where I had a little knowledge.

Yet is it not about Mark Rober or SmarterEveryDay (even though you should check them out). It is about learning and in this specific case learning more about culture. I have been learning more about Islam and Saudi Arabia, mostly because the large 5G opportunities will be there over the next few years and I never shy away from a challenge. Yet, as a Christian in a Muslim nation you have little options and more important, there is every risk of a person unintentional insulting the wrong person, it is a danger not unlike someone from western Europe going into Japan and thinking he can present his PowerPoint at a CEO thinking that his sense of humour get him the deal. Even in Europe, I once witnessed a large deal going sour because the person slipped up and accidentally said ‘pour toi‘ instead of ‘pour vouz‘, it translates exactly the same, but mixing up the formal and informal is a dangerous step to do in any condition.

So I started to become a lot more Islam aware. This gets us to the entire issue at hand that Gulf News gave me (at https://gulfnews.com/world/gulf/saudi/saudi-arabia-has-most-beautiful-ramadan-experience-1.63611502). Most people know about Ramadan, we hear it around us in Muslim areas that observe it. Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar and is observed by Muslims worldwide as a month of fasting to commemorate the first revelation of the Quran to Muhammad. I also learned that Ramadan is a lot more strict in Saudi Arabia and if caught in public eating and or drinking during the day there are indeed harsh punishments, including flogging, imprisonment and, for foreigners, deportation. So there is your step to get a chance at great fortune and you get put on the next plane to London because you had a drink in public when the sun was up.

A lot of that was unknown to me; I have had almost no exposure to that knowledge. I was amazed how little exposure to Muslim culture I seemingly had as a Christian. From my point of view, accepting that there are Muslims around me is one thing, to remain ignorant of any of the cultural issues is just stupid. Australia is not a Muslim nation, the United Kingdom is not a Muslim nation and neither is the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Kingdom of Sweden and so on, does that mean we need to remain ignorant of other cultures?

So as I took in ‘Saudi Arabia has most beautiful Ramadan experience‘, I became curious as I knew that Muslims have a month of fasting, but that fasting was a ‘beautiful experience’ was a new label to see. The reality is that I am almost a real seal (I have a coat of blubber to protect me from the arctic cold). The quote “Gulf News spoke with expatriates who have experienced Ramadan in the kingdom and are now missing the infectious festive spirit in their home country” was interesting as I never saw fasting as a moment to rejoice, or as something beautiful. So as I was introduced to “The Ramadan vibe is almost non-existent in London. It’s so difficult to maintain the spiritual mindset that one usually tries to adapt during the holy month because of the busy hustle of London life. The fasting hours are long and coupled with the regular school routine, it’s also draining. There’s a rush to finish work, to finish eating, to reach night prayers and then get up again at the crack of dawn to resume work,” that did not make sense to me. You see there are close to 700,000 Muslims in London, it boils down to roughly 13.1% of the London population, as such there should be a decent Ramadan population, if we believe is freedom of religion, should that not matter? If we see that places in Burwood Australia (decent sized Muslim group) banks on the Ramadan event in their shop, it makes no sense that London is so largely absent of it. And let’s face it, should we feel threatened by such an event?

In the Netherlands the newspapers are full of extra protection of Mosques, yet almost nothing on the religious impact and reason for Ramadan, merely “extra attention and vigil is kept at the Mosques after the events in Christchurch“. Even as we see that acts are claimed by Pegida, we see little action to aid in lowering fear and tension to the Muslims visiting mosques. So as the reach of Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the Occident) is now clearly in the Netherlands as well, we see an absence of cultural education to the people at large via media and newspapers. As we see the party created by Lutz Bachmann giving us: “Pegida believes that Germany is being increasingly Islamicized and defines itself in opposition to Islamic extremism.” we see too large a lack of countering anti-Muslim events. I believe that educating the people is a first. As a Catholic, I need not be anti-Muslim; we do not need to be anti-Muslim culture driven people. I find it hypocrite in the extreme of those claiming to be Christians, being nothing more than hooligans and criminals, people that often not having seen the inside of a church more than 4 times a year feeling threatened by a Muslim holding a Quran. In my personal view that speaks more about their lack of faith than the implied intention of a Muslim. I believe that fear is negated by information and education, when the ignorant are seeing that culture and cultural knowledge is a positive thing, they will learn more and see that there is no fear but the fear that grows within the part of you that does not know.

In the end it is up to you what you do, I am not telling you do read it all and follow it all, I am merely asking you to consider not to turn away when the information and knowledge is offered to you. We all accept that people like Mark Rober and the people behind SmarterEveryDay make knowledge (read: science) more fun to watch, it is at times harder to find that motivation when it is cultural or sometimes even religiously based, yet that does not make for an event that is less informative. Consider that Saudi Arabia is in a stage where $1.2 trillion is spend on construction and infrastructure, would it hurt to know more so that you have an option to make some serious cash? And it is not just Saudi Arabia (they are the biggest though), together with the UAE and Qatar they represent opportunities that are well over 600% of what the US and the UK combined are doing over the next decade. Cultural ignorance is but one, yet optionally the largest hindrance to connect to these opportunities. I am not stating that acquiring knowledge needs to be profit based; I have however seen over the decades that this motivates a lot more people, so should I avoid such an obvious selling technique? To be honest, I should not take that step, yet as anti-Muslim sentiments are flaring up on a global scale, upping the ante in all this is a valid point with the hopeful result to lower tensions (I might be up for the Nobel peace prize if I achieve the impossible here).

To get the smallest view, we (non-Muslims) will appreciate the evening meal that is enjoyed by the people during Ramadan (after sunset). The movie (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ev1OLMgrbo) gives a mere glimpse not only on the preparation of the meal; the end shows how thousands are enjoying a meal seemingly in silence together. In this case it is the Iftar in the UAE. I had hoped to add one from Riyadh, however I could not find an English version (or one with English subtitles). And consider the other side of all it, if our creativity is awakened by learning new things, what could we consider when we start looking into a direction that most people have never looked?

Education off the grid can be amazing, when you feel the internal motivation to learn more you tend to learn more easily, optionally not better, but there is a lot to be said for the enthusiasm factor when acquiring knowledge, you merely need to connect to the best information source you can.

 

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