dealing with the moronic one notion’s crew and the noah’s social club's chief, on a chemically lucky planet…

reeeef

As the Machiavellian Murdoch through his mouthpieces, mainly the DT (the Delirium Telegruff), tells you today (1/4/19), not as a joke but "horror of horror", that Bill wants to reduce Australian carbon dioxide emissions — we need to look at the history of this very lucky planet on which you and me live.

Unfortunately, 4.5 billion years of evolution has mainly led to the optimum development of the morons, imbeciles, fool, idiot, cretin, dolt, halfwit, ass, dunce, dullard, simpleton, nincompoop, blockhead, ignoramus, clod, dope, thickhead, ninny, chump, dimwit, dummy, dum-dum, dumbbell, jackass, bonehead, fathead, numbskull, dunderhead, airhead, pinhead, lamebrain, pea-brain, birdbrain, dipstick, donkey, noodle, nit, nitwit, twit, numpty, clot, muppet, plonker, berk, prat, pillock, wally, wazzock, divvy, bozo, turkey, goofus, knobhead, asshat, that we call homo sapiens — otherwise known as amentis hominis or silly monkey’s uncle.

Meanwhile, we have had too few Einsteins, Einthovens, Elhuyars, Bose, Bohr, Becquerels, Boyles, Hubbles, Lavoisiers, Laplaces, Lemaîtres, Linnaeuses, Newtons, Platos and Plancks.

Those top brains who understood things and created the future, have unfortunately made zilch (zero-nada-none-bugger/all) impact on the "Pravum amentis politica hominibus" (the average devious politician).

So, in order to turn the table against them — these average devious politician — and against their loony mate, Rupert — we definitively need to look at someone like Preston Ercelle Cloud, Jr. (1912–1991)

Cloud was an eminent American earth scientist, biogeologist, cosmologist, and paleontologist. He was a member of the faculty of Harvard University, University of Minnesota, University of California, Los Angeles, and then worked for the University of California, in Santa Barbara. Cloud was best known for his work on the geologic time scale and the origin of life on Earth, and as a pioneering ecologist and environmentalist.

He coined the term biogeology and his works on the significance of Cambrian fossils in the 1940s led to the development of the "Cambrian explosion” concept which he also defined as an "eruptive evolution” — mostly due to the changes in the atmospheric gaseous composition.

Yep, this lucky little planet managed a couple (amongst 10 zillion-millions) of accidental feat — two noticeable moments with the "manufacture" of water and of some small amount of free oxygen in the Archean eon. More complicated biochemical evolution cascaded from this — though some of this free oxygen in the atmosphere production had started earlier with some already complex molecules (microbes and bacterias) that started to live and die off. Life as such began to change the planet.

Then, there is a marked jump in the proportion of “free oxygen” (O2) in the atmosphere — from about 0.0005 per cent average (of present levels) during the Archean eon started 4 billion years ago — into the Proterozoic eon, around 2.5 billion years ago when the level of oxygen rose and stabilised at about 5 per cent of present oxygen level…

The Proterozoic eon mark the development of "less" primitive life in the seas — bacteria and blue-green algae, as well as some of the first oxygen-dependent animals, the Ediacara fauna — all living under water.

At this point around 550 million years ago, several processes — some biotic activity and some due to the shifting of continents, and to the Milankovitch cycles — helped the level of oxygen to rapidly rise from 5 per cent to near 100 per cent of what it is today.

From then on, followed a massive change to the general environment factors on the planet, in what we called the Phanerozoic eon, which started with what we define as the Cambrian period. The Phanerozoic eon is still defining the planet today, until...

The Cambrian Period was the first geological period of the "Paleozoic Era", within the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 55.6 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 541 million years ago, to the beginning of the Ordovician Period 485.4 million years ago.

With more oxygen available in the atmosphere, plants and animals could invade the exposed lands which to this point had been bare and subjected to massive erosion and some uplifts.

This invasion of land, first begun from the shallow seas into wet areas, started the “Cambrian explosion of life”. In the early Cambrian, Earth was generally cold but was warming gradually as the glaciers of the late Proterozoic Eon receded.
The middle of the Cambrian Period began with an extinction event: at the end of the Botomian stage (the "Botomian stage" [nickname] of the Early Cambrian epoch lasted from about 524 to about 517 million years ago), there was a mass extinction that wiped out a high percentage of the organisms for which fossils were found.
Among the animals that evolved during the Cambrian period were the chordates — animals with a dorsal nerve cord, hard-bodied brachiopods which resembled clams and arthropods — ancestors of spiders, insects and crustaceans.

Though there is some scientific debate about what fossil strata marks the beginning of the period, the International Geological Congress places the lower boundary of the Cambrian period at 543 million years ago with the first appearance in the fossil record of worms that made horizontal burrows. The end of the Cambrian Period is marked by evidence in the fossil record of another mass extinction event about 490 million years ago. The Cambrian Period was followed by the Ordovician Period.

We use the various biogeological events of the planet to define eons, eras, periods, and refine these denomiation of events to the present day. Note: there even was a time when there was more "free oxygen" (O2) than now, around 300 million years ago, leading to some "big" insects roaming the earth.

Presently, many biologists suspect we’re living through the SIXTH major mass extinction.

Without counting the Botomian "relative extinction", Earth has witnessed five major extinction events, when more than 75% of species disappeared. Palaeontologists define these extinction events when species go missing from the global fossil record. “We don’t always know what caused these extinctions but most of them had something to do with rapid climate change”, says Melbourne Museum palaeontologist Rolf Schmidt. All this is biogeologically accurate. Here are the events:

Ordovician–Silurian Extinction, 439 million years ago, 86% of life on Earth was wiped out.

Late Devonian, 375 million years ago, 75% of species lost. ...

End Permian, 251 million years ago, 96% of species lost. ...

End Triassic, 200 million years ago, 80% of species lost. ...

End Cretaceous, 66 million years ago, 76% of all species lost (Dinosaurs included).

Where to from here now? Remember: most extinction events had something to do with rapid climate change.

And please don't mention the biblical deluge and Noah’s leaky barcaza… See also: the guardian needs to examine its own brain...

So informed biologists suspect we’re living through the sixth major mass extinction…

Why? If you don’t know, it’s because you’re not paying attention. The Great Barrier Reef is on its last northern legs within the next ten years. Most animals species are under massive stress from loss of habitats, from global warming (yes, it’s really happening FAST in geological terms), due to human intervention leading to fires, to unmitigated and mitigated floods and to death pools of rivers filling with toxic waste, blue green algaes, resistant diseases, poisons from herbicides to inseticides, plastic vortexes, pollution, radio-activity, wars, and not just the EXTRA CO2 but also our mismanagement of the Nitrogen cycle.

Yes Nitrogen, that most of the “neutral” atmosphere gas we breathe, can become toxic or beneficial depending on its elementary associations — and on our usage of fertilisers for crops and for meat production. This is an under-sung MAJOR problem — all together with the other already mentioned factors that are changing the surface of the planet for the worse conditions for most species to survive in. Extinction? SURE! And we clear more lands in New South Wales and Queensland to make a buck, while destroying habitats for animals and plants — and digging MORE COAL.

We’re too smart for our boots... Can WE escape this sixth mass extinction which is on the way… Really, can we? After some years of relative peace, will our morons — imbeciles, fool, idiot, cretin, dolt, halfwit, ass, dunce, dullard, simpleton, nincompoop, blockhead, ignoramus, clod, dope, thickhead, ninny, chump, dimwit, dummy, dum-dum, dumbbell, jackass, bonehead, fathead, numbskull, dunderhead, airhead, pinhead, lamebrain, pea-brain, birdbrain, dipstick, donkey, noodle, nit, nitwit, twit, numpty, clot, muppet, plonker, berk, prat, pillock, wally, wazzock, divvy, bozo, turkey, goofus, knobhead, asshat, average devious politician — give us a chance to survive?

Statistically computing our chances, the way we are burning fossil fuel, there will be a moment when we, the amentis hominis, exceed the natural and practical boundaries of the planet (we have, but we don't know yet). This is a given. When the full blast of this extinction event hits us, it will be too late to stop it, despite our smart-arsedness. We will loose more than 80 per cent of humanity — which means the death of about 8 billion people in a quick collapse, a population not far from reaching its 10th billion by 2055…

Meanwhile, many places on this planet will become uninhabitable.

So, in the meantime, the RICH amentis hominis (idiots) of the species will work very hard to make as much cash as possible before YOU die… Bang, they win.

You know the rest.

Gus Leonisky
Your local atheistic (r)evolutionary

By Gus Leonisky at 1 Apr 2019 - 8:39pm
Gus Leonisky's blog
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the rise of the idiots...

pauline

The morons — imbeciles, fool, idiot, cretin, dolt, halfwit, ass, dunce, dullard, simpleton, nincompoop, blockhead, ignoramus, clod, dope, thickhead, ninny, chump, dimwit, dummy, dum-dum, dumbbell, jackass, bonehead, fathead, numbskull, dunderhead, airhead, pinhead, lamebrain, pea-brain, birdbrain, dipstick, donkey, noodle, nit, nitwit, twit, numpty, clot, muppet, plonker, berk, prat, pillock, wally, wazzock, divvy, bozo, turkey, goofus, knobhead, asshat as average devious politician — will destroy the planet....

Human activities have greatly perturbed the global nitrogen cycle. Planetary boundaries, which describe a safe operating space for humanity, have already been exceeded for the nitrogen cycle (1). In some parts of the world, excess nitrogen has negative impacts on biological diversity, human health, and climate. However, in other parts of the world, nitrogen shortages mean that food needs cannot be met. This large-scale disturbance of the nitrogen cycle presents considerable challenges that require wide-scale adoption of locally appropriate nitrogen management approaches.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6427/578.summary

By Gus Leonisky at 2 Apr 2019 - 4:38am
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bleaching and FOI...

Researchers have documented what they are describing as the most severe coral bleaching to hit the world’s southern-most reef at Lord Howe Island.

Scientists from Newcastle University, James Cook University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have spent the past two weeks surveying corals around the island in the far south Pacific Ocean after they were alerted to bleaching in isolated areas.

Bill Leggat, a coral biologist at Newcastle University, said the worst of the bleaching was in shallow water closer to the shoreline.

“It’s quite variable but where it’s severe it is actually quite severe,” he said.

“Some of the sites are looking at 80-90% bleaching going very close inshore.”

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/apr/01/lord-howe-island-...

A legal expert has slammed Australia’s freedom of information regime after spending two years and more than $1,000 trying to shed light on Australia’s enormous lobbying effort to prevent the Great Barrier Reef from being listed as “in danger”.

In 2014-15, Australian government officials spent more than $100,000 visiting and lobbying members of Unesco’s world heritage committee to keep the Great Barrier Reef off the “in danger” list.

A group of Australian and US environmental lawyers had found the dangers to the reef overwhelmingly met the criteria for such a listing, but Australia’s lobbying was ultimately successful.

The legal academic Prof Reece Walters, of Deakin University, wanted to understand how far Australia had gone in its taxpayer-funded campaign.

Walters lodged a freedom of information request in August 2016 for relevant correspondence between the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Great Barrier Reef taskforce and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA).

He was given documents that were so heavily redacted “so as to render the information useless for any meaningful interpretation”.

“The request included minutes of meeting – on all occasions the entire minutes are deleted, leaving nothing but the agenda and day on meeting,” he said.

Walters asked the information commissioner to review the case. The GBRMPA argued the information was highly sensitive and would undermine its relations with foreign governments and organisations if released.

It argued the documents, if made public, would also potentially undermine upcoming negotiations with the committee over the status of the Great Barrier Reef in 2019-20.

Eventually, the information commissioner ordered the authority to disclose more – but far from all – of the material to Walters. But Walters told Guardian Australia the information is not what he originally wanted. Even if it were, the two and a half years of delays had rendered it almost useless.

“Who’s now interested in the ways in which the GBR was assessed by an international panel and how those particular members were in any way colluded or corrupted by government?

“It’s an old story, who cares? And that’s part of the subversion [of the FOI system], because if I had written this up when it was before the Senate, it might have got some traction.”

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/apr/02/foi-regime-thwart...

Please note: last year (2018), some friends came from Europe and only saw dead corals on their reef excursions.

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By Gus Leonisky at 2 Apr 2019 - 7:14am
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warmer than usual...

An abnormally hot summer in Australia ended with the warmest March on record, new data from the Bureau of Meteorology shows.

The latest monthly climate breakdown shows that despite two severe tropical cyclones in the northern states, temperatures across Australia were 2.13C above the average throughout last month in part due to an unusually dry summer in Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

“One of the standout features of March was there was above-average temperatures just about everywhere; more than 99% of the country,” Blair Trewin, a senior climatologist at the bureau told Guardian Australia.

“Really a few things came together: the overall, long-term background trend [of rising temperatures] means you’re starting from a higher base, which increases the probability of records.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/apr/02/march-was-austral...

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MEANWHILE AT THE MORONIC MURDOCH PRESS:

News Corp launches offensive against Labor's climate policy amid glowing budget 2019 previews

Murdoch papers label Shorten’s energy plans a ‘lunchbox tax’ and paint Coalition as saviours of Australian ‘workers.

THIS WAS TODAY:

lunch box

THIS WAS YESTERDAY:

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By Gus Leonisky at 2 Apr 2019 - 3:10pm
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meanwhile worldwide...

The report found that flooding was the climate-related disaster that impacted the largest number of people in 2018 —more than 35 million. Hurricanes Florence and Michael in the U.S. cost around $49 billion in damages and killed more than 100 people. Super typhoon Mangkhut killed at least 134 people and impacted 2.4 million, mostly in the Philippines.

WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said that the extremes recorded for 2018 showed no sign of reversing.

"Extreme weather has continued in the early 2019, most recently with Tropical Cyclone Idai, which caused devastating floods and tragic loss of life in Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi. It may turn out to be one of the deadliest weather-related disasters to hit the southern hemisphere," Taalas said in the WMO press release. "Idai made landfall over the city of Beira: a rapidly growing, low-lying city on a coastline vulnerable to storm surges and already facing the consequences of sea level rise. Idai's victims personify why we need the global agenda on sustainable development, climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction."

The report was completed with assistance from UN agencies, national weather and hydrological services and scientists from around the world. Here are some of its other key findings.

https://www.ecowatch.com/un-extreme-weather-climate-change-2633131018.ht...

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By Gus Leonisky at 3 Apr 2019 - 7:26am
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a dire warning from sir david...

The renowned academic speculated on the development phase that Earth is at today, drawing a parallel with one that saw the dinosaurs, which lived on our planet throughout the Mesozoic Era, being completely wiped out.

Renowned British natural historian Sir David Attenborough has warned in an explicit way that Earth is facing a mass extinction, much like the one that caused the dinosaurs to die out. Speaking at the launch of his new Netflix series titled “Out Planet”, the 92-year-old researcher and broadcaster was quoted by British media as saying:

"Right now we are in the midst of the Earth's sixth mass extinction — one every bit as profound and far reaching as that which wiped out the dinosaurs", expressing fear that millions of living organisms will disappear into thin air as their habitats are increasingly affected by climate change.

Sir David, the holder of an unrivalled 32 honorary degrees from Britain’s universities, told the audience at the Natural History Museum, which hosted the event, that mankind has shattered the Earth’s natural order as a result of a massive environmental pollution.

https://sputniknews.com/science/201904061073886029-earth-extinction-warn...

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the natural wonder will collapse...

Australia’s top Great Barrier Reef officials warn the natural wonder will virtually collapse if the planet becomes 1.5 degrees hotter – a threshold that scientists say requires shutting down coal within three decades.

This federal election campaign is a potential tipping point for Australia’s direction on climate action, as the major parties pledge distinctly different ambitions for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

However neither party has rejected the proposed Adani mine outright or promised to phase out coal, an export on which Australia is heavily reliant.

Climate change has already wrought devastating effects on the World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef, including two consecutive years of mass coral bleaching in 2016 and 2017.

In response to the threat, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority – the federal government’s lead agency for managing the reef – has prepared a climate change position statement.

The document, obtained by the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age under freedom of information laws, has not been released to the general public despite being in development for the past 15 months.

It states that limiting the average global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees or below since industrial times began – the higher end of the Paris agreement target - “is critical to maintain the ecological function of the Great Barrier Reef”. The world has already warmed by 1 degree.

Ecological function refers to roles performed by the reef's plants, animals and habitats, including providing a tourist experience. The authority has said these processes are necessary for the reef to exist.

The document cites scientific evidence that the reef could experience temperature-induced bleaching events twice per decade by about 2020 and annually by 2050 under high-emissions scenarios.

https://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2019/radical-climate-action-crit...

See toon at top. Read from top.

GBR and adani

From: https://www.insidetasmania.com/p/cartoons_3.html

By Gus Leonisky at 14 Apr 2019 - 7:43am
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