Climate Change and the Environment

Mark Dolan asks: Can going vegan save the planet?

May 20, 2022



Well, as mankind and most other organisms that inhabit planet earth have been consuming animal and it's derivatives since time immemorial, I venture to suggest no, it will not make the slightest difference.

If it turns out to be illegal to consume animal products then I can foresee cannibalism making a dramatic comeback.  Will we face penalty if caught trying to enter the local butchers, or secretly slipping a dollop of meat in the supermarket trolley?  Perhaps a hefty fine will be imposed, or a levy introduced to discourage meaty eaters.

Can I continue to eat fish?  Can't resist a plate of roasted sea bass.

This is nothing but an enforced guilt trip.

Mind your own business.  What we eat and drink is our decision alone to make - how flippin' dare you try to dictate how we live our lives.

I've just heard a radio news report, an environmental activist has savagely attacked the iconic portrait of the Mona Lisa at the prestigious Louvre museum.

Well such is the media - here is the Telegraph's version..



The Mona Lisa came under a “cake” attack on Sunday after a male visitor masquerading as a wheelchair-bound granny hurled a slice of “gateau” at the world’s best-known painting.

Leonardo Da Vinci's masterpiece was undamaged in the incident at the Louvre, as it is protected behind a thick, glass case.

The unnamed man said afterwards that he had carried out the stunt to raise awareness about the state of “the planet”.

The incident, which took place at lunchtime on Sunday, was caught on camera by several visitors among the hundreds queuing up to get a glimpse of “la Joconde”, as the French call the painting.

The man, who was wearing make-up and a black wig, was pushed to the front of the queue in a wheelchair. He then jumped up and hurled the slice of cake at the painting, which could be seen smeared in white icing.

He proceeded to throw red rose petals before being seized by museum security guards and led away. They could then be seen wiping off the cream with a cloth.

Incredulous visitors took to social media, with one saying: “I’ve just seen a man throw a piece of cake a the Mona Lisa.”

Another Twitter user said: “Maybe this is just nuts to me but a man dressed as an old lady jumps out of a wheelchair and attempted to smash the bulletproof glass of the Mona Lisa.

“Then proceeds to smear cake on the glass, and throws roses everywhere all before being tackled by security???”

Before being escorted out, the Frenchman was filmed saying: “Think about the Earth. There are people destroying the Earth. That’s why I did it. Think about the planet.”



The Louvre declined to comment, but according to Le Parisien it has filed a legal complaint for “public defacement”.

This is by no means the first time the Mona Lisa has come under attack. It has been behind glass since a Bolivian man threw a rock at the painting in December 1956, damaging her left elbow.

In 2009, a Russian woman threw an empty teacup at the painting, which slightly scratched the case.

Hanging in the Louvre’s Salle des États, the world’s most visited painting was given a new glass cover in 2019 that “enhances transparency thanks to the latest anti-reflective technology while improving security”, according to the museum.

As part of a ten-month spring clean, the walls behind the frame also changed colour from eggshell yellow to midnight blue.

Meanwhile, a new queuing system was introduced to create shorter waiting times and a more intimate experience with the painting.

The Mona Lisa attracts 10.2 million people a year, with about 80 per cent of visitors to the museum believed to come just to see the work.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/05/30/mona-lisa-survives-cake-attack-environmental-activist-disguised/

Mmmmm .... so Mrs Cake, where were you ?

Last time I visited the Louvre, many many years ago admittedly, you couldn't get near enough to deface the bullet-proof, nuclear-proof, atomic-proof, Brueckner-proof protection barrier.

Firstly you need to penetrate at least fifty layers of Asian tourists armed with state of the art photographic equipment - pre-digital!

Poor old trout, been sitting there for centuries - how can she be blamed for climate change?

The world's gone stark raving bonkers.

I have a rock solid alibi - I was in the dentist's chair. I don't like the Mona Lisa, but I wouldn't waste cake on her. I hope it wasn't salted caramel.

Ah, it happened on Sunday - my neighbours saw me in the a garden, thinking about doing some weeding, which I didn't do.

Yeah yeah - tell it to the marines.

 

Just about sums up today's snowflakes.

Urgent 'action to save the planet' speech written for the plebs by Prince William Klaus Schwab the day after his grandmother had a Platinum Jubilee flypast of 72 aircraft and his brother arrived, then flew home early, on a...private jet.

Even the Royals should lead by example.

Climate change could trigger a surge in domestic violence: Sexual assaults and physical abuse against women increase during extreme weather events, study warns

Researchers from the University of Cambridge have analysed previous studies and found a link between extreme weather and violence against women, girls, and sexual and gender minorities.


Does that mean the Police won't need to investigate these crimes because it's the weather's fault?

Monsoon Madness



Slightly better version..

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5pmxuy

Not for the wokehearted!

Sort of climate change related insofar as it's anit-pollution, I saw one of these earlier today advertising it's wares



Isn't it dinky.

I thought I'd like one of them, great for town parking and potentially pollution free but what do you do with cargo - drag a cart behind on tow-bar?

Guessing the wife and kids will have to walk ....

Climate change ISN'T killing all the polar bears: Scientists discover a population THRIVING in the ice-free sea as the animals adapt to rising temperatures

Researchers from the University of Washington have discovered a new population of polar bears thriving in the ice-free sea in Southeast Greenland.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10926337/Is-climate-change-really-killing-polar-bears-Scientists-new-population-ice-free-sea.html

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-61825371

No it's not - tis nothing but a quirk of nature, common throughout history

There was a time when summer in the UK was summer, now summer is winter aside from the occasional spell of warmer conditions. Like today - one day out of 365 a year.

Heat Waves Throughout History

Find out what happens when things start to really heat up with this look back at some of the most infamous heat waves in history.

Jennie Cohen
Updated:
Jul 27, 2020
Original:
Jun 25, 2013

London’s Great Stink of 1858

This summer heat wave has lived in infamy not only for its soaring temperatures but also for the malodorous stench it unleashed on England’s capital. Many Londoners had recently traded in their chamber pots for water closets, which flushed an unprecedented amount of water and waste into the city’s 200,000 cesspits. As sewage overflowed into the River Thames and its tributaries, the warm weather encouraged the growth of bacteria with an odor so noxious that sheets soaked in chloride of lime were hung from the windows of the newly built House of Commons in an effort to blunt the smell. London’s poor still drank from the Thames, and thousands died that summer from cholera, typhoid and other diseases; these epidemics had yet to be linked to contaminated water and were instead blamed on the reeking air. One newspaper declared that “whoso once inhales the stink can never forget it and can count himself lucky if he lives to remember it.”

Amid public outcry, Parliament resolved to overhaul the city’s antiquated sewer system, enlisting the help of Joseph William Bazalgette, a brilliant and celebrated civil engineer. His sprawling network of drains and pumping stations, designed to handle 420 million gallons of liquid waste a day, officially opened in 1865 and became fully operational a decade later. Many credit Bazalgette with saving thousands of lives–and, of course, sparing countless noses from London’s intolerable stink.

The Great New York Heat Wave of 1896

At the end of the 19th century, New York City was home to some 3 million people, many occupying the notoriously cramped and stifling tenements of the Lower East Side and other low-income neighborhoods. When 10 days of relentless heat baked the Big Apple in August 1896, these abysmal living conditions went from an uncomfortable reality to a death sentence for an estimated 1,300 New Yorkers. Roasting in their jam-packed bedrooms and barred from sleeping in public parks by a citywide ban, many tenement dwellers sought a breath of fresh air on rooftops, fire escapes and piers. A sizable share of the heat wave casualties occurred when people fell asleep, rolled from their perches and plummeted to their deaths; others succumbed to heat stroke and other heat-related ailments. More than 1,000 horses also died during the crisis.

Even as the death toll mounted, the city government did little to address the disaster, and the heat wave was on the verge of waning by the time the mayor called an emergency meeting. One relatively obscure official emerged as a hero: Theodore Roosevelt, the city’s police commissioner, who had angered New Yorkers earlier in the summer by cracking down on taverns that stayed open beyond the legal closing time. The future president instructed the police force to distribute free ice in tenement neighborhoods and provide ambulance services to the sick. According to some historians, the heat wave salvaged Roosevelt’s faltering political career and ultimately helped propel him to the White House.

The North American Heat Wave of 1936

In the United States, the timing of the 1936 North American heat wave could not have been worse. Battered by the Great Depression, bled dry by years of drought and blinded by perpetual dust storms, the country took yet another debilitating hit when temperatures soared to all-time highs in 12 states, clearing the 120-degree mark in some regions. (The Canadian provinces of Ontario and Manitoba also saw record heat that summer.) Like the blistering summer of 2010, the 1936 heat wave started early and followed an unusually cold winter, leaving Americans unprepared for such a drastic change in weather.

Reports of dramatic and horrific scenes poured in from around the country. The Midwest had been battling a grasshopper infestation for several years, and as temperatures climbed their broiled, lifeless bodies began dropping from the sky like antennaed hail. In New York City, which hit a record high of 106 degrees, 75 seamstresses at a single factory fell into a collective, heat-induced swoon. In Detroit, one of the steamiest cities, doctors and nurses collapsed while treating patients, overcome by heat and exhaustion, and the morgues were overrun with bodies. By summer’s end, upward of 5,000 Americans and 1,100 Canadians had died from heat-related causes or drowned while trying to cool off in rivers and lakes.

The Chicago Heat Wave of 1995

Like much of the central and eastern United States, Chicago had suffered through the devastating heat waves of 1980 and 1988, which persisted for weeks and caused tens of thousands of fatalities nationwide. But in the summer of 1995, the Windy City lost approximately 700 residents in just five humid and sweltering days–a staggering mortality rate that exposed the city’s inadequate response system while debunking common assumptions about which groups are most susceptible to heat-related death.

On July 13, the temperature in the city hit 106 degrees and the heat index, which takes humidity into account to gauge how hot it actually feels, surpassed 120 degrees. As the heat lingered, much of Chicago’s urban infrastructure began to break down: excessive air conditioner use maxed out the power grid; relief seekers opened so many hydrants that several communities lost water pressure; and train rails and roads buckled, causing massive commuter delays. Paramedics, hospitals and morgues were quickly overwhelmed, and midway through the heat wave there was a backlog of hundreds of bodies. In the aftermath of the tragedy, researchers found that most of those who died were older men who lived alone, despite the fact that senior women outnumbered senior men in the area; they concluded that women’s stronger social connections to the community had acted as a defense. Four years later, when another heat wave hit the city, better preparation and a more rapid response limited the deaths to just over 100.

The European Heat Wave of 2003

In July and August of 2003, countries across Europe sizzled through what some scientists deemed their hottest summer since 1500 A.D. The scorching temperatures peaked in the last two weeks of August and claimed at least 40,000 victims, taking a heavy toll on the very young, the chronically ill and elderly people living alone or in nursing homes. Forest fires raged in Portugal, Spain and Italy, while melting glaciers triggered flash floods in the Alps and crops withered throughout southern Europe.

France was hit hardest by the crisis, suffering an estimated 14,000 fatalities as temperatures soared to 104 degrees in a country with an aging population and limited air conditioning. In France and elsewhere, the appallingly high death toll revealed a lack of preparedness for extreme weather in regions with historically temperate climates. Reports cited treatment delays, unawareness of heat-related conditions like dehydration and inadequate medical personnel. In the years since 2003, most European governments have developed action plans for extreme heat that emphasize green spaces, public education, warning systems and emergency measures for the most vulnerable.

https://www.history.com/news/heat-waves-throughout-history

Yesterday the UK had it's annual quota of climate change, global warming, for 2022?

Back to the thermals today?

The cow has been on this planet much longer than any motorised vehicles , no complaints about them effecting climate change so far !


They were much bigger when our ancestors were around as well .

I wouldn't like to lock myself in a garage with an auroch , not at 7 feet tall !

Glastonbury: ‘I’ve had enough of Greta Thunberg' | Rebecca Jane reacts to her climate change speech

Jun 26, 2022



Bugger-off you irritating little minx - how dare you profane Glastonbury with your vapid drivel. Go find something more productive to do with your idle time - like a course in professional public speaking - or even evolution!.

Yeah, but at least we'll be happy.