relianceschool @ relianceschool @slrpnk.net

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5 mo. ago

I'm personally focused on climate change, but where did you post that? And is there any way to archive that information? (Archive.org most likely saved a snapshot of the page.) The vast majority of the stuff I post gets single-digit upvotes, I think part of it is just a userbase issue. Even main page posts only get a few comments, I don't think we'll see real traction and engagement until the number of total users goes up by 10x.

Amidst all the horrible news about data purges and erasures, this is a glimmer of hope. The real losers (as usual) are the American people, who stood to benefit massively from clear, understandable data on climate risk at a local level. I've been pre-emptively archiving federal climate resources for the past 6 months, as it all seems to be on the chopping block.

2x on local hard drives, 2x in the cloud. Not taking any chances with this.

I think about this a lot when we're talking about animal, bird, and insect populations, because all those massive declines we're hearing about are measured from 1970 onwards. By that point industrial civilization had been chugging away for a full century, and ecosystems were already severely degraded. Then I think about how settlers clear-cut the Eastern US with just hand-powered axes and saws, and that was a hundred years before that.

In most areas we'd have to go back over 10 generations to encounter a truly healthy ecosystem. Shifting baseline is absolutely a real thing.

Since it's just me, I don't need to worry about pathogens for the simple reason that I can't give myself any bacteria/parasites that I don't already have. But I do share my food crops with others, so I'm being extra safe here.

I agree in that the vast majority of pathogens can't survive for more than a few months in a compost bin (even a cold one), and aging it for a year is enough to be 95% safe. The only organisms that can survive for years in the compost/soil are parasite eggs (such as roundworm, and a few others I'm forgetting at the moment), so that is something you want to be careful about. Humanure Handbook has a useful chart for this.

Agreed completely. I set up a humanure system a couple years ago and it's simple as can be. I get wood shavings for free from a local furniture shop, mix it with biochar, and use that as cover material. My bin hasn't gotten hot enough to kill all pathogens, so once it's full I'll just use it on my bushes & flowering perennials.

I'm currently renting, so unfortunately I'm not able to set up a greywater pond/rain garden for sink and shower water, but that's the end goal when/if I get a place of my own.

Ticks move into lawns as well, and while I haven't found studies comparing the density of ticks in shorter grass vs. flower beds, I would assume it's a wash; even if there are less ticks in turfgrass, you're walking/lying on that grass, allowing more opportunities for them to latch onto you. Whereas you're not walking through flower beds, so even if there's a greater tick population, you're not coming into contact with them as much.

Read the article; it's not abandonment, it's intentional cultivation. The former is more beneficial to wildlife than maintaining a pristine yard, but in most cases it'll just end up with your yard being taken over by invasives. The latter is managing your yard in a way that encourages native, pollinator-friendly (and beautiful!) plants.

My yard used to be hard-packed clay where only the most tenacious weeds could survive (field bindweed, burdock, thistle, dandelion), so my first step was putting down multiple layers of heavy cardboard to smother them, then covering that with about a foot of wood chip. That killed the latter three and helped to start softening up the soil (worms move in when organic matter is present), but bindweed just pushed through the cardboard and wood chip, so I had to hit that with (selective, judicious) applications of herbicide. It was a hobby for the first year, but now my yard is weed-free and the soil is turning more rich and loamy!

I've mostly used starts/seedlings to fill in my beds, but now that the weed pressure is lower I've started putting soil & compost over the mulch to encourage my plants to self-seed. I'm also filling in all the "blank spaces" with ground cover, to provide an additional barrier against weeds. A mature garden will require a little weeding now and then, but for me that's something I enjoy (it's a break from work, and time in the sun), and it's definitely not as intensive as vegetable gardening.

Water is essential to human survival, so I would consider that a primary problem. Trace pharmaceuticals in drinking water aren't great, but I would consider that a secondary (or even tertiary) problem, and a solvable one at that.

To start, the vast majority of water use is agricultural (nearly 90% in Colorado, for example), and soil & plants provide 2 more layers of biofilters for any contaminants that might remain. This paper delves into that, although from the cursory glance I gave it's not clear whether the concentrations are anywhere near an effective dose. My guess is no:

Diazinon, enrofloxacin, florfenicol and trimethoprim accumulated also in leaves of lettuce, while florfenicol, levamisol and trimethoprim in carrot roots (Boxall et al. 2006); according to the author, the results of research carried out so far show a low risk of exposure to these substances through the consumption of vegetables.

If recycled water was used purely for agriculture (drawing on watersheds & aquifers for drinking water), I imagine that would solve the scarcity issue while further diluting pharmaceutical contamination. When it comes to recycling drinking water, Harvard Health Publishing says that not much research has been done in this area, and I do think that's important to look into if (when?) water recycling becomes more of a necessity.

Is the city just going to fine each building $25 every time an inspector checks?

From the city's website, it looks like a fine of $300 can be assessed for buildings with more than 9 units (and for multiple infractions).

I assume this would incentivize owners to inform their tenants of the policy, and make composting more easily accessible to them. I can think of a dozen loopholes and unforeseen consequences of this law, but however imperfect, I still believe it's a step in the right direction. Food waste is a massive issue, as is nutrient loss from our soils, and ultimately I think that inconvenience is a small price to pay for addressing that. I realize that not everyone feels the same way, which is why incentives are needed.

This law is a negative incentive, so I would hope that some positive incentives could be implemented as well.

I love linking this story in composting subs when people ask if citrus peels are OK! Great demonstration of the power of adding organic matter.

That said, it should be acknowledged that moisture and heat probably played a big role in how quickly the peels broke down and fed the soil; I don't think you'd get similar results in a dry/desert ecosystem.

This is whataboutism.

Agreed. I'm getting tired of these pencil-pusher reports implying that "the economy" is going to keep chugging along at a reduced rate, as if we can just shuffle around our stock portfolios and weather the storm.

The "Planetary Solvency" report by IFoA is one of the first mainstream papers that's taking a sober look at the climate crisis. If we hit 2°C by 2050, they're seeing a significant likelihood of:

• 2 billion deaths
• High number of climate tipping points triggered, partial tipping cascade.
• Breakdown of some critical ecosystem services and Earth systems.
• Major extinction events in multiple geographies.
• Ocean circulation severely impacted.
• Severe socio-political fragmentation in many regions, low lying regions lost.
• Heat and water stress drive involuntary mass migration of billions.
• Catastrophic mortality events from disease, malnutrition, thirst and conflict.

I don't even want to think about 3°C and 4°C scenarios.

Jesuits are real ones. The Nazis considered them to be one of their "most dangerous enemies" due to their principled opposition. Glad to see they're keeping the flame alive.

Banks trying to take profits buying air conditioner stocks while society and the biosphere is crumbling around them is a perfect encapsulation of this crisis. I'm doing my best to laugh at the absurdity of it all, because the alternative is paralyzing depression.

If you're interested in the more fundamental dynamics at play here, I'd highly recommend giving these a watch:

• William Rees: The Enigma of Climate Inaction
• Daniel Schmachtenberger: Modeling the Drivers of the Metacrisis

It is the stock brokerage division of banks giving their boiler room reps a “hot tip” lead.

"When it gets hot, people will use more air conditioning." Thanks Morgan Stanley, that's some real insider knowledge.

Thank you for sharing! I'm a big proponent of the planetary boundaries framework, it's a great way to visualize overshoot. While climate change is a big (perhaps the biggest) issue facing global civilization right now, it's extremely important that we don't get tunnel vision and try to solve for one variable without looking at our biosphere holistically. (That's how we get carbon capture and geoengineering.)

A few more links/resources for those interested:

• This is the Stockholm Resilience Centre's home page for planetary boundaries, showing the change in overshoot from 2009 (when the framework was established) to 2023.
• Earth beyond six of nine planetary boundaries is the corresponding paper for their 2023 update, which goes more in depth into each boundary and what constitutes a transgression.

The IPCC, FAO (UN), and the World Resources Institute put emissions from (all) agriculture at around 20%-25% of total emissions.

This article cites a single paper in opposition, which claims that emissions from animal agriculture are more than double that number. I don't have the time or expertise to comb through that paper with a critical eye, but the reports of the above organizations cite dozens of studies so it seems the weight of evidence is tilting towards the 20% figure.

This isn't to say that animal agriculture isn't an issue - it's a huge issue, and not just for the climate. But I think it's important to acknowledge that these emissions numbers aren't widely accepted.