coriolis effect and winds

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_effect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winds

1. Low and high pressures
2. coriolis effect due to rotation of earth
3. Temperature difference between equator and poles
4. When temperature is high, causes pressure increase.
5. Centrifugal force

Thoughts on Earth sustainability

Needless to say that we are living in a time of human civilization where there are massive problems to solve in the coming half a century. It makes me worried if we are competent enough to solve them. What can an average Joe like me do? At this moment I would say that one has to understand the problems and what intelligent people are debating about, to solve energy crisis in the world. There seems to be abundance of information out there. We need to learn to ask the right questions and also find sustainable solutions to long term problems.

There seems to be a crisis at every level. There is a crisis in food production and agriculture where the salination of lands and use of pesticides caused the pollution of water and land at the same time over many decades now. Though, this kind of massive mono culture farming has helped us to increase the population on earth, we have no guarantee that this kind of farming can keep up with our needs forever. Humans have not yet seen failure of agriculture on a massive scale. We have not respected our
resources from nature. We have been abusing them from a long time now.

I want to list some of the major problems we are facing now due to population and culture of consumerism-
1. Global warming due to our dependency on oil
2. Mono culture agriculture
3. Pollution of our waters
4. Extinction of fishes, vertebrates and other animal species.

It is absurd that humans are not even having a rational discussion on how long our population pressure  can be sustainable. Now that the developing countries like China, India, Brazil and Mexico are in the process of following the same ecological destructive western example, unless new innovations in energy production come along there is little hope for the future.

It took us a century to get more understanding within our own race. We had colonialism, militancy, racism and civil rights to overcome. There were world wars where many millions have lost their lives.
The rise of corporate culture and power and collusion with politics for fulfilling self interests are on the rise. Not that we have completely solved within our selves, we now have to deal with another order of problems that we have never expected. We thought that all the natural resources are infinite and we could exploit them forever. But as the population and its demands have increased many folds within a short amount of time that is not true anymore. Now the problem is that if we continue the 'business as usual' way of life we may severely put many humans or even the race to great danger.

Humans can be very obstinate to change. Why should someone driving an SUV and having a party life give up for some distant Global warming problem? The only solution is that we need to see and love and give the next generation an opportunity to have a happy life. If we deplete and pollute all the resources of Earth, what will the coming generations live off?

All the animals on earth had a predator to control their populations, but man has none. He is leaving massive footprints on earth. Technology and green revolution are the primary reasons that we have populated incredibly. Not that I do not like human beings, but even Earth can only take so much, and what about the rest of the animals and destruction of their habitats due to mind less real estate frenzy.

We are logging forests in Brazil and other natural forest for real estate development in our cities.

Problem of boredom

Millions of people are now stuck in front of their computers and chatting on websites like facebook.  As we get more connected online and we are disconnected with our local community and  nature. Our relations online are superficial and virtual. Our relationship in reality are shallow.

We do not want to think anymore about serious issues concerning us. Where is the time one may ask after doing the 40 hr job and taking care of the family? I agree we do not have time now to have any intelligent discussion. All the non sense in the television fills our boring life with some irony.
We watch people dying in other countries and still not be affected and carry on our normal lives.

No one lives here forever. We need to give the best we can for the next generation before we leave this planet. I hope we muster courage to fight the greed and senseless of our age and turn our attention to the real problems and save our planet. We need to stop populating and putting pressure on environment any more.

Man is beset with problems within where he cannot find any certain happiness on a day to day life. Man is groping and searching for happiness which is a rare commodity. We get bored sitting alone. We need company. With company comes problems of sharing and selfishness. On one hand we cannot spend time alone and on the other hand we have problems living with other people. What a terrible fate? We have our moments of laughing and caring but there is always a hole, a void that need to be filled with happiness from within. To fill this inner void we try to replace it with outer life interactions.
This void within brings disturbances in our relationships in our outer life. We wonder why we get into problems albeit our good intension.

We need to fill this inner void with self happiness. We need to connect with our inner self. We need to spend time in silence and let the worrying mind rest in peace. I believe that not doing anything is better than destroying our surroundings. In our frustration we injure animals, plants and humans.
We do not care, because we are unhappy. Unhappy humans want to fill their inner void with money, consumerism, sex, drugs etc. We need to build a culture where happiness and filling void within should be an important priority.

Our fit with nationalistic tribalism must to give way for universal brotherhood. The problems we face now are not because of repression of the peoples of the democracy but the other way round. The people have taken their rights for granted and are addicted to this consumerism. We are happy with this way of life. We do not like anybody telling us that this way of life is unsustainable and the oil addiction is going to eventually make life miserable.

Although none of this original thought, I feel if we could organize and make things happen and bring some happiness into our lives, then we have achieved something. Where better to start than with our friends.

one fifth of the world’s plants and animals are under threat of extinction

http://www.iucnredlist.org/news/srli-plants-press-release
http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/article852262.ece

A fifth of the world’s mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fishes are in imminent danger of going extinct, says this year’s edition of the benchmark IUCN Red List. The percentages of threatened invertebrates and plants are similar.

Releasing the findings at the Oct. 18-29 UN biodiversity summit, being attended by 192 countries, here Wednesday, Simon Stuart, chair of the Species Survival Commission of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), said their findings on vertebrates showed that “nature’s backbone is at risk”.

Around 3,000 scientists from around the world have worked to put this Red List together. They have found that 25 percent of all mammals, 13 percent birds, 41 percent amphibians, 22 percent reptiles and 15 percent fishes risk extinction, mostly due to loss of their habitats and some due to overhunting.

A recent study by the Kew Botanical Gardens had found that around six million species — 20 percent of all plants and invertebrates — face the extinction threat too.

But it’s not all bad news. IUCN has found 64 species that have improved their status in the Red List, moving from the critically endangered to the endangered category, for example. Stuart said all these were in areas that had been protected, “proving the importance of conservation”. Results show that the status of biodiversity would have declined by at least an additional 20 percent if conservation action had not been taken.

The successes include three species that were extinct in the wild and have since been re—introduced back to nature: the California condor and the black—footed ferret in the US, and Przewalski’s horse in Mongolia.

Conservation efforts have been particularly successful at combating invasive alien species on islands. The global population of Seychelles Magpie—robin, increased from fewer than 15 birds in 1965 to 180 in 2006 through control of introduced predators, like the brown rat. In Mauritius, six bird species have undergone recoveries in status, including the Mauritius kestrel, whose population has increased from just four birds in 1974 to nearly 1,000.

But very few amphibians — the most threatened vertebrates — have shown signs of recovery.

This year’s study used data for 25,000 species from the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, to investigate the status of the world’s vertebrates (mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fishes) and how this status has changed over time. The results show that, on average, 50 species of mammal, bird and amphibian move closer to extinction each year due to the impacts of agricultural expansion, logging, over—exploitation, and invasive alien species.

“The ‘backbone’ of biodiversity is being eroded,” said the doyen of ecologists, Edward O. Wilson,of Harvard University. “One small step up the Red List is one giant leap forward towards extinction. This is just a small window on the global losses currently taking place.”

Southeast Asia has experienced the most dramatic recent losses, largely driven by the planting of export crops like oil palm, commercial hardwood timber operations, agricultural conversion to rice paddies and unsustainable hunting.

Recently, a UN—sponsored study called The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) calculated the cost of losing nature at $2—5 trillion per year, predominantly in poorer parts of the world. A recent study found one—fifth of more than 5,000 freshwater species in Africa are threatened, putting the livelihoods of millions of people dependent on these vital resources at risk.

Plate tectonics

It is interesting to know why mountains form and the cause of volcano and plate tectonics.

The Cascade range extends from western Canada to California-nevada ranges.

Subduction discovered

A profound consequence of seafloor spreading is that new crust was, and is now, being continually created along the oceanic ridges. This idea found great favor with some scientists, most notably S. Warren Carey, who claimed that the shifting of the continents can be simply explained by a large increase in size of the Earth since its formation. However, this so-called "Expanding Earth theory" hypothesis was unsatisfactory because its supporters could offer no convincing mechanism to produce a significant expansion of the Earth. Certainly there is no evidence that the moon has expanded in the past 3 billion years. Still, the question remained: how can new crust be continuously added along the oceanic ridges without increasing the size of the Earth?

This question particularly intrigued Harry Hess, a Princeton University geologist and a Naval Reserve Rear Admiral, and Robert S. Dietz, a scientist with the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey who first coined the term seafloor spreading. Dietz and Hess were among the small handful who really understood the broad implications of sea floor spreading. If the Earth's crust was expanding along the oceanic ridges, Hess reasoned, it must be shrinking elsewhere. He suggested that new oceanic crust continuously spreads away from the ridges in a conveyor belt-like motion. Many millions of years later, the oceanic crust eventually descends into the oceanic trenches — very deep, narrow canyons along the rim of the Pacific Ocean basin. According to Hess, the Atlantic Ocean was expanding while the Pacific Ocean was shrinking. As old oceanic crust is consumed in the trenches, new magma rises and erupts along the spreading ridges to form new crust. In effect, the ocean basins are perpetually being "recycled," with the creation of new crust and the destruction of old oceanic lithosphere occurring simultaneously. Thus, Hess' ideas neatly explained why the Earth does not get bigger with sea floor spreading, why there is so little sediment accumulation on the ocean floor, and why oceanic rocks are much younger than continental rocks.

Review of Stolen Harvest by Vandana Shiva

Vandana Shiva is a physicist by training and an environmental activist who has done massive work in preservation of traditional cultures and farming techniques. In an age of multinational corporations taking over of traditional cultures, their lands, their means of livelihood, this book is an eye opener to the range of exploitation done by these corporations on the name of free markets and liberalization.

One gets a sense of being robbed by these corporations the people’s commons and deprivation of nature’s ability to regenerate and flourish. There are several ways these corporations plunder the environment and the lives of the poor. Vandana first takes up the case of seed security in third world countries. Corporation like Montaso try to get patents for breeding techniques that have been in existence for centuries in these cultures. These corporate try to usurp the traditional practices and aim at dependency of the farming communities on their seeds that are genetically modified. Traditionally different varieties of seeds are exchanged between farmers but the corporations with the help of the WTO offend such practices as crime to the free trade policies. This causes dependency of farmers on genetically engineered seeds and also use of herbicides and pesticides made by the same corporations heavily. The latest seeds sold by Montaso cannot be reusable and can only be used once. They are genetically modified and not reusable.


The corporate greed to make money has no boundaries and the exploitations of nature’s resources and livelihood of the poor has no limits. The corporate supports monoculture of farming like soybeans which are dumped from United States to third world countries. The poor who depend on local industry and local farming are displaced of livelihood. She explains in detail with several examples how the cost of local commodities is reduced with this import of foreign goods. The farmers are plundered.

Vandana makes an important point about the dependency of farming land for manure from livestock and in turn their on the straw of the harvest. This chain is broken when we import foreign food which is unsuitable to people and cattle alike. She takes a strong anti-globalization stance by taking several examples like the excessive farming of shrimp on coastal areas that has eroded the land and made drinking water salty. Also excessive fishing in the last couple of decades has reduced the fish and turtle population and destroyed the biodiversity of the sea. Not only is the land and the sea no spared by the corporate greed, the cattle are looked upon as huge udders for milking money. They are given all kinds of chemical, antibiotics to grow fat for meat and eat the meat of cattle as a source of protein. She states that not giving them the right to subjectivity and slaughtering them is causing animal rights violation, suffering and disease to humans alike. BSE is a well know example of how the scientific community hid the facts of the dangers of its transfer from cattle to humans. Corporatism controls everything with their money power and the WTO policies. Genetic engineered seeds and plants are claimed to be more efficient than traditional farm varieties but they are in reality not that promising as they are advertised.

She gives compelling evidence of destruction to nature, people, environment, animals and the sea by the globalization and WTO policies. Her initiative Navdanya is an organization where seeds of biodiverse varieties of plants are collected and preserved so that the farming community is not deprived of diverse seed bank and enslaved to corporate control of seed production and monoculture. This monoculture has several disadvantages which the book goes in detail.

It is a right of the people to be able to sell and trade freely and also to be able to preserve their culture and livelihood. Free trade in agriculture can cause starvation and poverty the opposite of what it claims not to do. The reality is different from what is propounded in economic policies. Economics, culture and farming are interlinked hence the importance to local and decentralized economies.

All in all, the book makes strong points about the disadvantages of globalization and the exploitation of corporatism on third world countries. Luckily there is a lot of people’s awareness and movements in this direction due to concerned scientists and farming organizations around the world. The same theme of exploitation can be seen is all countries. Corporate monoculture pitted against diversity of nature is the fight of this age. This book can be beginner guide to corporate and WTO hegemony and the fight of the people against it.