tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5549306427964459740.post4963455378974459999..comments2023-12-23T05:14:34.273-05:00Comments on Wit's End: The WAGES of Sin...an Environmental ScourgeGail Zawackihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01800944469843206253noreply@blogger.comBlogger18125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5549306427964459740.post-28009432592934760212015-02-14T12:51:48.534-05:002015-02-14T12:51:48.534-05:00Great post on the anthropogenic nitrogen saturatio...Great post on the anthropogenic nitrogen saturation of out land, water, and atmosphere.Wind Spirit Keeperhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08593821563591272476noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5549306427964459740.post-58051018516779342232012-01-04T23:54:10.278-05:002012-01-04T23:54:10.278-05:00Poe's Law - never fails. I know he's a jo...Poe's Law - never fails. I know he's a joke!Gail Zawackihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01800944469843206253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5549306427964459740.post-36693348456002853272012-01-04T23:00:32.417-05:002012-01-04T23:00:32.417-05:00Hello! Anybody home?
John Moore is a military go...Hello! Anybody home?<br /><br />John Moore is a military gossip, homicide dick, with his own little talk radio show. John lectures on terrorism in his spare time. <br /><br />Oh, and by the way, John is an expert on Global Warming. <br /><br />Gail, this guy is a joke.PLoveringhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04027992777731735792noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5549306427964459740.post-77676506221276121762012-01-04T13:07:48.879-05:002012-01-04T13:07:48.879-05:00Okay Plovering, here's back atcha!
http://www...Okay Plovering, here's back atcha!<br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyKQTQEzak4&feature=player_embeddedGail Zawackihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01800944469843206253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5549306427964459740.post-37947483358539571332012-01-04T12:09:57.101-05:002012-01-04T12:09:57.101-05:00I think the future of forests and trees will be fo...I think the future of forests and trees will be found along the 'tree-line'. Shortened growing seasons there are similar to the reduced effectiveness of photo-synthesis that has been observed.<br /><br />Smaller trees <br /><br />Sprouting trees that get just big enough to make more seeds, then stop growing and don't live very long. <br /><br />Say goodbye to forest, but not to trees. Until the temperature or rainfall totals prevent any tree from living.<br /><br />"The tree line is the edge of the habitat at which trees are capable of growing. Beyond the tree line, they are unable to grow because of inappropriate environmental conditions (usually cold temperatures or lack of moisture). Some distinguish additionally a deeper timberline, where trees form a forest with a closed canopy."<br />http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_line<br /><br />CatmanAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5549306427964459740.post-55281021903996232062012-01-04T02:30:42.545-05:002012-01-04T02:30:42.545-05:00How the UN uses environmental initiatives to contr...How the UN uses environmental initiatives to control USA city councils:<br /><br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1q_YdTMVQg&feature=youtu.bePLoveringhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04027992777731735792noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5549306427964459740.post-81414404693750007182012-01-03T20:59:12.988-05:002012-01-03T20:59:12.988-05:00Ah! Catman, I just found time to listen to that s...Ah! Catman, I just found time to listen to that song.<br /><br />Aghast.<br /><br />Thanks so much.Gail Zawackihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01800944469843206253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5549306427964459740.post-13203850923971967742012-01-03T19:52:16.418-05:002012-01-03T19:52:16.418-05:00PS (Re your comment about a surge (or an uptick?)...PS (Re your comment about a surge (or an uptick?) in applications for gun permits, I've also heard several times that alcohol sales are booming. Oh, btw, guess who funded Nancy Reagan's Just Say No campaign? The booze business!)<br /><br />I've been looking at corporate crime recently, and it is ten million times worse than I ever imagined, and I also know that these companies have various ways (legal and illegal) that they use to keep most such things out of the press. So when I find that one of America's biggest companies has been responsible for the deaths of many people, over and over, and never really penalized (guilty of "fraud" for not informing consumers that a product it was selling had side effects t hat could be lethal for some people, and predictably, people died) and the co was guilty of nothing more than fraud. I wonder if I could get away with that if I poised dozens of children, and killed 11 of them? And the people who head this company are well-known and well-respected and very very highly remunerated. (There's a publication called The Corporate Crime Reporter that generally makes me laugh while shaking my head!) (The media is very complicit in this. Sometimes the companies threaten to sue papers with armies of lawyers and the papers don't have the resources to fight back, but it's more subtle than that. I looked up what the press had to say about a HUGE toxic tort case I know about and was SHOCKED by how little coverage it got, and how company-friendly the stories were and how it really downplayed the magnitude of what happened. It should have gotten a lot of coverage because of the number of plaintiffs involved (the papers got that wrong by half), the incredible amount of money involved, and because it involved one of the first uses of a bioengineered product. Innumerable studies were done to try to pin down what went wrong, and none of them came up with anything. The manufacturing process was very simple and nobody ever noticed anything wrong with it all, which made some suspect that there's something about bioengineering that we just don't don't understand well enough to ingest products made with it. Also, the symptoms the plaintiffs had were new in the medical literature (or basically so, I think the defense claimed that there was ONE prior case) and horrific for those who were hit hard by it. And the coverage was abysmal. NPR is horrible too, I've caught that station totally distorting the news to put a happy face on it so many times that I can't listen to it anymore. Stopped watching PBS as soon as Mark Shield's blessed Obama's decision not to prosecute the preceding administration for Gitmo etc.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5549306427964459740.post-9857920464275202802012-01-03T19:35:57.737-05:002012-01-03T19:35:57.737-05:00You know, at least we know that if a tree falls in...You know, at least we know that if a tree falls in the forest, Gail will document it! Great post, must take you an immense amount of time.<br /><br />I sympathize with the writer about about the despair she feels. I used to go out for several hours a day, I'm very athletic and I love the outdoors. I stopped a few months ago because of the unnaturally warm temps, the trees are all dead or dying, spring flowers were blooming in October and November, there's plastic grass in a park in my neigborhood now, and over a year ago, the police put up blockades along my running route supposedly for highway work (so why has it taken so long?) and they emit the most toxic odors I've ever smelled, whatever it is seems as though it has to be both carcinogenic and highly flammable. And then there are those helicopters overhead and the political/economic/cultural things that have happened in this country in the last thirty years that I scoffed at or was too squeamish or too naive or too distracted to pay attention to. And then there are all of the cameras everywhere, and the fact that everything one does on the internet is tracked and used for marketing purposed or sold to the government.<br /><br />I just can't run anymore because I feel like a cockroach on a kitchen floor, albeit one that knows that at any minute an angry housekeeper may turn on the light and kill me with a toxic cloud of Raid!<br /><br />It both consoles me to see the comments here and know that I'm not as alone in thinking this way as it seems (most people I know are more conservative than I am), and it grieves me and makes me very angry, with myself as much as anybody else because I always figured that somebody else was taking on those crazy right wingers, as long as I voted and gave money to important political causes and campaigns and did activism once in a while everything would be okay. And it's not, and it not going to be.<br /><br />The corporatocracy has overplayed its hand, which isn't surprising given that its guiding ethos is self-interest; I guess nobody ever taught them about enlightened self-interest or the Tragedy of the Commons. With globalization, NAFTA, GATT, and the WTO, they have plundered America just the way they've plundered the rest of the world, and while they'll be able to afford food and water longer than the rest of us can, global warming's going to get them too. I take very little consolation in that, I'm not a vengeful person at all and some of them will be innocent children. It's just so sad.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5549306427964459740.post-83574380910336530172012-01-03T02:06:12.931-05:002012-01-03T02:06:12.931-05:00I've had the same problem with my family claim...I've had the same problem with my family claiming I was overreacting to the tree problem. They couldn't really see it. My father said not to worry about it, the scientists would figure something out. He assured me the best people were likely working on the problem. <br /><br />I think a lot of humanity thinks the same way. They figure we don't need to worry about it because someone else is going to come take care of it for us. They really have no concept that the very foundations of our political and scientific systems prevent us from really making any serious progress towards solving the problem. <br /><br />It looks like a damned if we do, damned if we don't scenario now. Cut emissions and the planet heats up in a hurry and "civilization" probably collapses. Keep doing what we're doing and it collapses anyways when the environment is no longer tenable due to the food chain breaking up.<br /><br />On the bright side at least it appears that humanity will exterminate itself before it becomes technologically capable of finding and occupying another planet full of life. <br /><br />I guess in some ways the universe does take care of itself in the end. Non-viable species such as ourselves eventually meet their end. Like you said though, too bad we're going to cost millions of other species their existence by our transgressions.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5549306427964459740.post-13728749202476040072012-01-03T01:13:20.801-05:002012-01-03T01:13:20.801-05:00Dear Gail,
Gadzooks! This is one of your best eve...Dear Gail,<br />Gadzooks! This is one of your best ever blogs--educational, insightful, profound, poetic...<br /><br />Your concluding thoughts ring true. As Henry James once said, "Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't matter what you do in particular; so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?" So, on we go into the new year, mindless of the wind and weather, fa la la la la, la la la la! It's gonna be interesting.<br /><br />Keep up the fantastic photography and writing. There's still a ways to go until we're at our Wit's End!Rogerhttp://www.gothelimit.infonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5549306427964459740.post-11847068017696199132012-01-03T00:53:55.189-05:002012-01-03T00:53:55.189-05:00Hello Gail -
Looks as if we are en route to a wor...Hello Gail -<br /><br />Looks as if we are en route to a world of grass and cockroaches - do you suppose cockroaches will evolve into an intelligent species in a few million years?<br /><br />DaveW<br />Magog QCKeenOn350https://www.blogger.com/profile/06456731616821672577noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5549306427964459740.post-55492883043357275772012-01-02T16:59:50.722-05:002012-01-02T16:59:50.722-05:00oh gail,
the FEMA camps? really? where will they f...oh gail,<br />the FEMA camps? really? where will they find food? the agricultural system is collapsing now, all over. and there was another news that US refuses to limit airplane transits. this is good news because when they will stop, the sky will clear and the machine will accelerate very fast.<br /><br />i am ready. the house is clean. so is my spirit/soul. i have means to ease my way out when bad comes to worse. when you stop writing, i will probably stop reading.<br /><br />today's pictures make me cry.<br /><br />i stopped seeing the persons who ridicule me, them being family, "friends" or acquaintances. i do not have time any more.<br /><br /><br />love, michelemichele/montrealnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5549306427964459740.post-78148650350744944552012-01-02T16:03:09.972-05:002012-01-02T16:03:09.972-05:00Forget resource wars in the Middle East, the rise ...Forget resource wars in the Middle East, the rise of fascist governments, peak oil, rampant consumerism, et al. It is the death of the forests and the oceans which should be scaring us straight.<br /><br />But it isn't and that's even scarier!Paulnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5549306427964459740.post-7258777296554665512012-01-02T15:41:08.674-05:002012-01-02T15:41:08.674-05:00I'm coming back in about ten million years to ...I'm coming back in about ten million years to see how this all worked out! I just hope that's enough time.<br /><br /><br /><br />Eskimo Blue Day Jefferson Airplane<br />1969<br /><br />http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7epbdQ4YYI<br /><br />Snow cuts loose from the frozen<br />Until it joins with the African sea<br />In moving it changes it's cold and it's name<br />The reason I come and go is the same<br />Animal game for me<br />You call it rain<br />But the human name<br />Doesn't mean shit to a tree<br />If you don't mind heat in your river and<br />Fork tongue talking from me<br />Swim like an eel fantastic snake<br />Take my love when it's free<br />Electric feel with me<br />You call it loud<br />But the human crowd<br />Doesn't mean shit to a tree<br />Change the strings and notes slide<br />Change the bridge and string shift down<br />Shift the notes and bride sings<br />Fire eating people<br />Rising toys of the sun<br />Energy dies without body warm<br />Icicles ruin your gun<br />Water my roots the natural thing<br />Natural spring to the sea<br />Sulphur springs make my body float<br />Like a ship made of logs from a tree<br />Redwoods talk to me<br />Say it plainly<br />The human name<br />Doesn't mean shit to a tree<br />Snow called water going violent<br />Damn the end of the stream<br />Too much cold in one place breaks<br />That's why you might know what I mean<br />Consider how small you are<br />Compared to your scream<br />The human dream<br />Doesn't mean shit to a tree<br /><br /><br />catmanAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5549306427964459740.post-2251651956728799652012-01-02T15:09:18.974-05:002012-01-02T15:09:18.974-05:00Your blog breaks my heart, Gail. Have been dipping...Your blog breaks my heart, Gail. Have been dipping into it for a few months now, every time I visit I see photos of the death and damage that we humans have done to trees just so we can drive around, and it's utterly heartbreaking, the havoc we cause to other life forms on this planet. I only visit your blog when I have psyched myself up for another emotional punch to the gut.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5549306427964459740.post-71509936842455252462012-01-02T14:26:54.630-05:002012-01-02T14:26:54.630-05:00Excuse me while I scream: AAAUUUUUUUGGGGGFHHHHHHH...Excuse me while I scream: AAAUUUUUUUGGGGGFHHHHHHHH!!!!!<br /><br />Anon, that would be true but the problem is, THE TREES ARE NOT OLD. You might be interested to follow the link in the post to this entry from November:<br /><br />http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2011/11/freedoms-just-another-word.html<br /><br />which is based on a book about ancient trees in the UK, to see what I mean.<br /><br />Most species of trees are naturally disposed to live for CENTURIES. Virtually every inch of the Eastern seaboard was clear-cut after the Europeans arrived, and so with a few special exceptions found in colonial-era graveyards, towns, churchyards, and ivy-league campuses, the trees hereabouts are between 1 and 200 years at most, I think a maximum of 80 to 100 is typical for land that has reverted to forests.<br /><br />Your observation happens to be the one of the very first responses I received the first time I contacted a professional forester to discuss the condition of trees - at the Doris Duke Foundation property in Somerville, NJ. After I finally got him to admit that the trees are, in fact, dying, he claimed that it is because they are old.<br /><br />Simply. Not. True. The oldest of those trees are 80, and they should live to be 300. Oh, and the young trees are dying just as fast as the old trees, which should tell you something.<br /><br />Thanks for reading, Anon!Gail Zawackihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01800944469843206253noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5549306427964459740.post-49678628561753703372012-01-02T14:02:54.658-05:002012-01-02T14:02:54.658-05:00Trees are like people - they live a long time and ...Trees are like people - they live a long time and contract all kinds of damage and illnesses. Your photos are very interesting - if you did old people you would also find tons of disabilities and diseases. Hard to say if there is some global gremlin doing it or that trees, like us, are just getting old.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com