Catastrophes

Is it my imagination, or are natural catastrophes getting more common? Perhaps not, but the earthquake in Morocco and the flooding in Libya have each destroyed large parts of cities, Marrakesh and Derna, respectively, and each has killed over 10,000 people.

The earthquake in Morocco was 6.8 on the Richter scale, and devastated large areas, including the center of the city of Marrakesh and many remote villages in the Atlas mountains. The flood in Derna was caused by the failure of two dams to withstand a hurricane, exacerbated by years of lack of maintenance due to the split in the country between the eastern (recognized by the West) and western regional authorities. In both cases the response of the authorities has been so slow and limited, that no doubt has increased the toll significantly. In other words the results of the disasters are a combination of both natural and human causes.

These largely natural disasters add to the human costs of illegal migration. Today it was announced that the Italian island of Lampedusa that is closest to Africa received over 10,000 immigrants. mainly from Tunisia, that had agreed to try to stem the tide of migrants to Europe via Italy, but so far has done nothing. This continuous flood of humans from as far away as Afghanistan and Nigeria, is putting great strain on Italy and other countries, and Germany announced that it will no longer accept migrants via Italy.

Other human disasters are taking place in Ethiopia, Sudan, and Yemen, where wars of various kinds are being waged with no concern for human suffering. Millions are being displaced and killed. It is not coincidence that all of these areas are within the Arab and North African regions. Of course, there is also a war being waged by Russia against Ukraine, but so far there has not been a humanitarian disaster there, even though thousands of innocent people are being killed.

There have also been extensive forest fires in western Canada, Greece and Spain. No doubt these have been caused by the current global warming trend, that has produced freak weather in many parts of the world. As we head further into a world of advanced technology, we are also apparently heading for a world of increased climatic and catastrophic events.

Hope for the Future of Humanity

Among the usual doom and gloom stories we read every day in the newspaper, more terrorism, global warming, earthquakes, bank failures, I found one positive article in the Jerusalem Post Magazine, entitled “The future is better than you think,” by Avi Jorisch (at https://www.jpost.com/business-and-innovation/all-news/article-734406). This presents a series of ten graphs that have been put together supposedly by 200 scientists from 50 countries. The graphs show what has actually been happening to humanity over the recent past, on such subjects as extreme poverty, undernourished population, life expectancy, number of child deaths, number of maternal deaths at birth, years of schooling, literacy rates, portion of population using the internet and annual change in renewable energy. In all these categories the graphs are showing an increase or decrease indicating an improvement in the lives of humanity overall.

For example: the number of people living in extreme poverty has decreased by a factor of nearly 4 from 1990 to 2019; the undernourished population has gone from ca 13% to 10% for the whole world with similar or greater decreases for each continent; life expectancy that was in the mide-40’s until the mid-1800’s has more than doubled in the western world (including Japan and South Korea) and has reached 70 years on average for the whole world; child deaths and maternal deaths have decreased by a factor of 2 during the period 1990-2000; years of schooling and literacy rates have increased; the share of population using the internet has increased dramatically and is levelling off at ca. 90% for North America and ca. 80% for Europe; annual renewable energy generation has fluctuated a lot, but is on the increase.

These trends show that the actual expectancy for humanity is improving, which is not surprising considering the tremendous increase in science and technology that has been applied to all aspects of life and especially human health. So try to remember this next time you read about how our planet is dying from exploitation and use of carbon-based fuels. In another context, every year there is a survey to find the happiest countries in the world (https://worldhappiness.report/news/happiest-countries-prove-resilient-despite-overlapping-crises/). For several years Finland has won this competition as the happiest country. Believe it or not, notwithstanding all the social and political upheaval and the effect of terrorism, Israel is now the fourth happiest country in the world! By comparison the US is at number 15. There is hope!

Baby Oil

Many people suffer from itching skin, that results from dryness. I get rashes around my ankles and used to have them on my thighs too. The best treatment that I have found for this condition, often called eczema, is baby oil. I just rub a handful of the clear transparent liquid into my skin, and voila, the rash and itching are gone in minutes. I won’t name the main producer of this pure product, but their initials are J&J. I had no problem using this wonderful treatment, until someone asked me “how many babies are sacrificed in order to produce a bottle of baby oil?” I must say this question stopped me in my tracks, I had never thought of it before. Was I needlessly adding to the suffering of the least able to protect themselves members of the human family? How do they make baby oil, by squeezing babies, do they suffer?

I remember some time ago being struck by the message on a bumper sticker, “Save the Gay Whales.” I had never thought of this before, every one is up in arms trying to save the heterosexual whales so that they reproduce, but what about the gay whales, shouldn’t someone be advocating for them, all alone and without a clear reason to be saved. Isn’t the issue of baby oil another human rights issue. I am sure there are some good, caring, tree-hugging liberals out there who will want to take up this issue and start a campaign, “stop baby suffering, stop making baby oil.”

Before all you vegan, immigrant-loving, leftist liberal demonstrators, who wanted to get rid of Trump and now want to get rid of Bibi, start a letter-writing campaign to J&J, please look up the word “satire” in the dictionary. And if you haven’t done so, ask your neighbor if he has stopped beating his wife, and ask the Irish PM to stop eating their babies, just because they once had a potato famine. And don’t forget to save the gay whales.

Eco-terrorism

Lloyds of London, the shipping authority, has confirmed the claim of the Israeli Environment Minister, Gila Gamliel, that an Iranian tanker delivering oil to Syria was deliberately responsible for the terrible pollution of thick tar on Israeli beaches last week. Not only is this an exceptional and irresponsible disaster, but the extent of the pollution, covering the shoreline from south to north makes it clear that this was no accidental spillage.

This brings a new dimension into the field of conflict, if you can’t directly attack your enemy, do it in a sneaky way by polluting his environment. Iran was prevented from their plan to poison the Israeli water supply. This thick oil dumping is another way for them to “attack” Israel. What to do in response? The oil tanker Emerald responsible for this pollution has now been traced and its journey from and back to Iran has been plotted. It is now sitting in the port of Bandar Abbas in Iran. My suggestion is to sink it in the port. This will not only cause tremendous damage to the port, but will result in oil pollution to Iran, that will give them the message, “don’t mess with us!”

Iran will try any means to defile and destroy Israel and all Jews in the world. Like the Nazis they plan to conquer the world, after defeating Israel they plan to defeat the Sunnis in the Middle East and then destroy the “great Satan” the USA, until the whole world will be Shia Muslim. What a ridiculous, stupid, yet dangerous ideology, because they believe God has ordained them to carry out this plan. If they achieve an atomic bomb there is no doubt that they will use it. That is why any deal with them, such as the JCPOA or its new version, will be futile and pointless. They must be stopped!

The Plastic Nile

I saw a program on Sky News entitled “The Plastic Nile.” Apparently the Nile River is one of the most polluted in the world.  Cairo is the largest city in Africa and the largest around the Mediterranean with a population of 21 million people.  These people depend on the water of the Nile for their very existence as well as their dependence on the fish from the River.  The Nile itself and its tributaries are clogged with thousands of tons of plastic that are not being degraded naturally.  There are small companies that collect plastic and physically break it down into small particles for recycling. But this is a pitiful effort compared to the actual colossal need.

This plastic pollution is found thoughout the length of the Nile. Research has found that fish from the River on which millions of inhabitants depend for their livelihood and their main food source contain microplastic particles. The effect of these on the humans who are ingesting these fish is unknown. Further, it has been found that these microparticles of plastic absorb toxic chemical pollutants that are in the water. The long term effects of these on human health cannot be foreseen.

This ecological catastrophe that is looming can affect the whole world, certainly central and north Africa as well as all Mediterranean countries. What is first needed is a huge commitment by the Egyptian Government to increase at least 100-fold, the collection and processing of the plastic that is clogging the Nile, There needs to be a major industrial project to harvest and process all the plastic that is accumulating in the Nile at an ever increasing rate as the pollution of Cairo increases year by year. Second there needs to be a concerted effort by all Mediterranean countries to take action against the increasing pollution of the Mediterranean and particularly to deal with the plastic microparticles that are being spread on the tides throughout the region. Thirdly there needs to be a concerted effort to ensure that fish do not become inedible because of plastic microparticles and other pollution, that will drive hundreds of thousands of fishermen out of work in central Africa and Egypt and result in the death of millions of people whose main food source will be gone. Are Egypt or the other countries affected doing anything about this looming environmental catastrophe? The answer is no!

Environmental Complexity

Recently radicals have stirred up hysteria over the environment. Activists like Greta Thunberg have put it on top of the world’s agenda. A new organization calling itself the Extinction Rebellion have brought traffic to a standstill in London and other cities around the world, with the aim to force people and governments into action.

Let me state at the outset that I am a convinced environmentalist.  I have seen the evidence of glaciers retreating in Alaska and Iceland, where a huge lagoon has been formed where a glacier once stood. I agree that action needs to be taken about plastic that ends up in the sea.  But we need to control the waste disposal of plastic, not stop using it.

But, all is not clear-cut.  For example take global warming due to carbon-based gases being released into the atmosphere.  Methane (CH₄) is 23 times more effective at causing warming that carbon dioxide (CO₂), so we should try to cut the sources of methane.  Cows produce by far the largest amount of methane in the world, so the environmentalists argue that we should stop eating meat.  This is a bad idea since many people, especially the young, need protein to grow and since the body does not store protein they need to keep eating a good source of protein, and the best source is meat. But, in addition to cutting out meat the alternative is to eat more plant material, i.e. to become vegetarian or vegan.  However, eating plant material, which contains mainly the carbohydrate cellulose, produces more methane (just like the cows) and since there are 8 billion people in the world, you don’t want them all to become vegetarians and increase the output of methane.  

I agree that there is global warming, most people agree, but the question is, is it man-made.  The bulk of the evidence seems to indicate yes.  But, it is not definite, there have been warming periods previously in history.  We can’t afford to gamble with our future, but I do not agree with the tactics of bringing cities to a halt.  The radical left always finds the latest fad, and then claim that it is a matter of life or death.

 

Saving the Environment

Much has been written about the environment and it is an act of faith, and some would say of fact, that the environment is undergoing a possibly irreversible transition.  Global warming seems to be increasing rapidly and there seems to be no way to stop it.  The world’s population continues to grow, and the energy being used continues to increase.  Yet, there may be several simple ways to attempt to stop the dreadful decline.

1. Stop eating meat.  Cows produce the largest amount of methane in the atmosphere that is the most effective greenhouse gas causing global warming, far more effective (x30) than carbon dioxide.  Switching from fossil fuels (carbon sources) of producing energy (such as burning coal, oil or natural gas) to alternative means, such as wind, solar or wave power, will reduce the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but significantly reducing the number of cows on earth will do much more.  The only way to do this is for people to stop eating meat.  I know it’s much to ask, but that is the simple fact.
2. Use Led lights.  Light emitting diodes (Leds) are widely available and although more expensive than the old tungsten fiber bulbs, they are much more efficient and longer lasting, and so more economical.  Since they use about one eighth of the power required to produce the same amount of light, if all the world switches to Led bulbs then the amount of energy being consumed would be greatly reduced.
3. Reduce plastic use.  The amount of un-degradable plastic in the oceans is a disgrace.  People should not only reduce their use of plastic in general and one-time use in particular (such as plastic bags from stores), but we should all insist on buying only degradable plastic.  If there is public demand there will be supply.  Such plastics as poly-carbonates that are naturally degradable are already on the market.  There simply needs to be much more demand.
4. Switch to electric cars.  Electric cars produce no fumes or carbon dioxide.  There is an argument that the electricity required to charge and run battery-driven cars produces as much as emissions into the air as from the cars.  But, overall the air in our cities will be less polluted without cars emitting fumes and there will be fewer accidents if in future the cars are self-driving, so that everything is computer controlled and this will greatly reduce speeding and human error.
5. Tube travel. Elon Musk has introduced the idea of tube travel, where people will sit in a cabin inside a tube and be transported at high-speed by pressurized air.  Of course, this is a new means of mass transit and will take some time to become accepted.  But it will be much cleaner and more efficient than current means of train or air travel between cities.  If people can travel between San Francisco and Los Angeles or New York and Washington in a few hours in this comfortable and efficient manner, then the amount of fuel consumption and pollution will be greatly reduced.

These are only a few of the simple ideas that will help to reduce pollution and may help to improve the environment.  However, it may be too late to actually reverse the effects of global warming.

Genetically Modified Foods

All human foods that come from plants are genetically modified (GM).  What do I mean by this statement?  I mean that all plant foods that are mass-produced throughout the world for food (wheat, corn, barley, rice, vegetables, fruits, etc.) have been selected by humans over time and/or modified by chemical or other procedures.   The simplest form of genetic selection is that a farmer will select seeds from the most productive plants or fields to grow a more productive crop (i.e more tons per acre).

Another way that farmers have used from the beginning of farming is to supply various fertilizers and even more recently to add various bacterial strains that produce greater yields.  The current crops of cereal plants are so removed from their origins that they can be unrecognizable, with much larger edible sections and hundreds of times more nutrients and they are unable to reproduce themselves, with no viable seed dispersal means without human intervention.  Thus, the current development of GM crops using methods of molecular biology is merely a more efficient way of selecting crop seeds for greater yields with superior insect resistance.

This article is based on a talk that Irwin Weintraub, an agronomist, gave at the English Speaking Seniors Discussion Group in Beer Sheva, in which he showed a short video (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqJAeReFr8I) by Nina Fedoroff, a leading geneticist and molecular biologist, who has written a book entitled “Mendel in the Kitchen.”   In this she points out that the prediction by Robert Malthus, a British scholar who wrote a book in 1798 entitled “An Essay on the Principle of Population,” that the exponential increase in population growth would outpace the ability to grow enough food to feed them, has not come to pass.  In fact, as time has gone on, the selection of plants, improved fertilizers, improved irrigation and mechanized agricultural production have produced more food than is needed by the current world’s population.  All over the world supermarkets are packed with a huge variety of foods because of the wonderful advances in production and distribution.  The main current problem is not the lack of production of food but rather that the cost is too high for many people to be able to afford it.

In other words, we need to produce food more efficiently in order that the price does not rise, but goes down, so that more people can afford the food.  This requires not only the most efficient selection of food seeds, but also the use of more efficient means to prevent the decimation of corps by bugs and micro-organisms.  For example, if there had been a means to prevent the potato blight that caused great famine in Ireland in the years 1845-49, then millions of lives would have been saved and the history of Ireland would have been quite different.  Now this can be done with genetic modification.

Similarly, massive famines in the far east, particularly China, were caused by failures in the rice crop.  There are two ways to avoid this, prevent the population from increasing so fast or increase the yield of rice per acre.  The Communist Governments first used the population control method, now they are using the production of improved yield rice.  The Green Revolution that occurred between the 1930’s and the 1960’s resulted from the development of high yield varieties of cereal crops.  Norman Borlaug is credited with pioneering this approach, which saved billions of lives, and he received the Nobel Prize in 1970.  These crops were selected genetic hybrids.

There is a current fad of eating only organically grown (OG) food.  This is a retrogressive step often taken by so-called progressive people in the belief that these foods will be superior to those grown with advanced selected varieties, modern fertilizers, pesticides and even GM.  But, there is no evidence that these OG foods have any advantage as far as nutrition and safety are concerned over regularly grown crops.  Further OG requires old-fashioned manure that is far less efficient than modern fertilizers and with less pest control, much more of the OG crop is wasted.  Given the rapid increase in the world’s population the move to OG products would result in more people dying of famine.

There is no evidence after 30 years of production, testing and use that any GM product is dangerous for human consumption.  In fact, one wouldn’t expect it to be, because the genes that are transferred from one organism to another to produce an improved crop, either for greater yield or pest resistance, have no direct effect on humans.  The changes are so selective and minute that such dangers are highly unlikely.  Furthermore, genes are transferred between organisms all the time.  Portions of the human genome is now known to have originated from viruses and bacteria, and indeed there are such things as “jumping genes” known as transposons discovered by Barbara McClintock who won the Nobel Prize in 1983 for her work.  The fear that genes from GM plants will spread to other organisms is misplaced, since genes do transfer between species as a natural process in evolution.  So to conclude, GM is the only way to increase the yield of crops in order to feed the world’s growing population.

The Plastic Whale

“The Plastic Whale” refers to a Cuvier beaked whale that surfaced near Bergen, Norway, and then died.  When it was opened up it was found to have 30 plastic bags of all kinds and many other pieces of micro-plastic filling its stomach and blocking its intestines.   This is not unique, such findings have been made in other countries where whales are being caught and where they live, including Japan and the UK.

A survey of beaches in places as far apart as the far north of Norway and tiny islands in the center of the Pacific Ocean show enormous amounts of plastic being washed up on shore, so much so that it seems impossible to clean them.  Literally tons of plastic, bags, sheets, lines, buckets, toothbrushes, computer parts, every possible kind of plastic is ending up in the sea, and because it is indestructible it is remaining for many, many years.  A recent survey was made of Henderson Island, an uninhabited atoll of the Pitcairn group of islands, and the astounding finding was that it had 17 tons of plastic on its beaches consisting of 38 million pieces of plastic!

And this doesn’t include the pieces of micro-plastic that are ground down by the effect of the sea and waves and are as small as the grains of sand.  All such plastic collects in the bodies of sea creatures, fish, crustaceans, sharks, dolphins and whales, and they are unable to digest/excrete them and it leads to their death.  What is astounding it that whales that spend only a small part of their time at the surface of the ocean breathing have so much plastic in them that they must have ingested in the depths of the ocean.

Who is responsible for this terrible state of affairs?  Of course, the public that uses plastic for so many things, but the consumers can’t take all of the blame.  Those who dispose of trash in the sea and the oceans are chiefly responsible for this devastating infestation. Also, the manufacturers of plastic packaging materials.  They must switch to new kinds of materials that can be degraded by sea and water.  People will be prepared to pay a little more for their goods if they know the packaging will not be polluting the planet and its oceans and killing its wild-life for generations to come.

Generally, I am not considered to be a liberal.  I remember being amused years ago by the bumper sticker “Save the gay whales.”  But this is serious, something must be done! Public pressure in Norway has caused the Government to agree that the Environment Ministry will take responsibility for cleaning the beaches and will change its policies regarding the use of plastic.  Also, they will bring a suitable proposal to the UN, because it really is an international problem.   A whale constructed from plastic found inside whales will be touring the UK.  Let’s try to stop killing the whales.  Let’s stop dumping plastic into the sea, let’s reduce the amount of plastic we throw in the trash.  It can be done.