Speaking of aquifers drying up…the Ogallala aquifer is one of them.

After decades of irrigation, the aquifer that makes life possible in dry western Kansas is reaching a critical point. Several counties have already lost more than half of their underground water. But a new plan could save more of what’s left.

…

Fly over these dry plains and you won’t see many rushing rivers or glimmering lakes. You’ll see circles. Mile after mile of green geometric crop fields spun into the near-desert landscape by wells that tap water hidden beneath the surface and the center pivot irrigation sprayers splayed around them.

Which could make you think “Dang, human ingenuity, aren’t we clever.” Or it could make you think “Dang, I bet that water under the surface isn’t actually infinite.”

But across western Kansas, more and more wells sit abandoned as underground water levels drop and drop some more. Vast swaths of the region have seen more than half of their water disappear since the dawn of irrigation. Wallace County on the Colorado border has lost roughly 80%.

Story of the planet in miniature. Yes, it’s big, it’s huge, it’s massive, but it’s not infinite. If you treat it as infinite you will eventually bump up against its limits.

The subterranean reservoirs of the sprawling Ogallala aquifer make life possible here — from powering the multibillion-dollar agricultural economy to filling up cups at the kitchen sink.

But after decades of large-scale crop irrigation, that water is running out. And now farmers and state leaders struggle to agree on how to save the future of life in western Kansas without choking the livelihoods of the people who live here.

Good luck to them.

H/t iknklast

When words have more than one meaning…

Yes, language can be powerful, but it can also be complicated. For instance the word “field” can mean something other than a piece of land where a crop is planted. I have a feeling that migrant workers and descendants of slaves aren’t really all that bothered by anthropologists who talk about their field work.

And speaking of words being powerful, I think it’s something of an abuse of power for academics to claim that talking about field work equals “white supremacy, anti-immigrant and anti-blackness ideologies.” Also they’ll need to get the Field Museum to change its name.

“Words are powerful, but even more so is action.” Clarity is useful, but even more so is pretentious opaque bafflegab. When you want to sound deep, reverse your word order for no reason; it impresses the peasants I mean the people in the field I mean the people of pastoral identity.

I think the label “virtue signalling” is applied too broadly, but this little item strikes me as absolutely textbook virtue signal. Round of applause for USC Social Work.

Oops, we’ve broken Great Salt Lake.

Emergency measures are required to avert a catastrophe in Utah’s Great Salt Lake, which has been drying up due to excessive water use, a new report warns. Within years, the lake’s ecosystems could collapse and millions will be exposed to toxic dust contained within the drying lakebed, unless drastic steps are taken to cut water use.

Will drastic steps be taken? Of course not. They never are. We just sit here stupidly watching the lions and wolves and hyenas and tigers approach.

A team of 32 scientists and conservationists caution that the lake could decline beyond recognition in just five years. Their warning is especially urgent amid a historic western megadrought fueled by global heating. To save the lake, the report suggests 30-50% reductions in water use may be required, to allow 2.5m acre-feet of water to flow from streams and rivers directly into the lake over the next two years.

…

…Already, the lake has lost 73% of its water and 60% of its surface area, as trillions of litres of water are diverted away from it to supply farms and homes. As a result, the lake is becoming saltier and uninhabitable to native flies and brine shrimp. Eventually, the lake will be unable to sustain the more than 10 million migratory birds and wildlife that frequent it.

…

A legacy of water overuse is the main threat to the largest saltwater lake in the western hemisphere, and huge water diversions to irrigate vast operations to grow alfalfa and hay are no longer sustainable in Utah, Abbott said, nor are lush lawns in cities and suburbs.

Tick tick tick.

On the one hand this is just a typically infuriating usurpation aka “appropriation”; on the other hand it’s an interesting point about an outsider point of view.

Men who call themselves women of course don’t “understand the experience of womanhood” better than women do. On the other hand they do have the advantage of the outsider point of view, which is at least different from the insider one, and has at least the potential to offer insights.

It’s like being a foreigner (which, in turn, is like being an anthropologist or a sociologist, minus the training). You’re clueless about a lot but you’re in a good position to make comparisons, which can be interesting and/or useful.

Someone looking for a libel suit, I’m guessing.

Originally a comment by Rev David Brindley on We cannot even manage those minor changes.

Even IF we can slow, or reverse the rising temperatures, we are still doomed.

The world may come to run on 100% renewable electricity and 100% hydrogen, but there are still limits.

We will still need oil, not for ICEs, but for plastics, pharmaceuticals, fertilisers, etc.

We will still need plastics, not for excessive packaging, but for all its other myriad uses in medicine, science, engineering, etc.

We will run out of silica sands for making solar panels. Fraser Island has enormous deposits of almost 100% pure silica, but mining has been banned since the 70’s. But will that ban hold as silica supply exceeds demand?

We will still need to mine iron ore, copper, and all the other metals needed to build solar panels, and wind turbines, connect them to the grid and distribute the electricity. South Australia has a huge uptake of rooftop solar on homes and commercial properties, but not everywhere in the world is blessed with that amount of sunlight, even in winter.

And then we still have the pollution problem, the industrial waste to dispose of. Solar panels don’t last forever, and there is currently no way to recycle them. A similar problem exists with the blades of wind turbines.

And, that is just the beginning of future problems.

None of that is to argue we should give up the fight, because even if we achieve nothing but cleaner air and water that will be a massive win.

This has been your daily dose of doom and gloom.

Originally a comment by iknklast on Existential crisis.

Trumpists are neither conservative nor liberal; they want to break things. Conservatives don’t want to break things, they want to keep them intact the way they are. They also don’t want change to their own lives; liberals want to make changes to the overall system.

I actually think Trumpists are confused about what they want and about how possible it is for a society to work the way they want. Most of them are the ones who failed seventh grade civics and think the teacher had it in for them because of some sort of liberal bias that kept her from seeing their brilliance.

They don’t understand government; they don’t know what it does. They just know they hate it. They know they hate paying for it. They have been convinced that it does nothing for them, and does everything for the people they hate.

And they perceive that everyone has it better than they do. That’s not really the case, though some of the working class could claim a lot of people have it better than they do…just often not the people they think it is. The ones who have it better than they do are often the ones they vote for, believing them to be just like the “average American” voter – in short, themselves. The rich gaudiness of a Trump merely indicates he has reached what they want to attain, and he is the one to help them attain it.

BBC Live on the news from Brazil:

A joint statement has been issued at a North America summit in Mexico City, with the leaders of Canada, the US and Mexico condemning what they describe as “attacks on Brazil’s democracy”.

US President Joe Biden, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated they all “stand with Brazil, as it safeguards its democratic institutions”.

“Our governments support the free will of the people of Brazil,” the three leaders said in their statement.

The CIA used to overthrow elected governments in Central and South America whenever the mood struck them.

“Influencers” are doing their bit to track down the perps.

One of them is Felipe Neto, a Brazilian Youtuber and one of the loudest critics of Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro. He wants his 16 million Twitter followers to share “screenshots that show the faces of those involved in the terrorist invasion of the National Congress”.

A lot of people have noticed similarities to Sedition Hunters, an online group that helped find those who attacked the US Capitol two years ago.

Fact-checking news outlet Agencia Lupa has also set up a database to gather “anti-democratic posts in recent days on social networks or messaging applications” that led to the riots.

On its website, it says its intention is “to understand how the acts of vandalism seen in Brasília were organised.”

They should have a chat with Steve Bannon.

Trump’s army did its bit.

The scenes in Brasilia looked eerily similar to events at the US Capitol on 6 January two years ago – and there are deeper connections as well.

“The whole thing smells,” said a guest on Steve Bannon’s podcast, one day after the first round of voting in the Brazilian election in October last year.

The race was heading towards a run-off and the final result was not even close to being known. Yet Mr Bannon, as he had been doing for weeks, spread baseless rumours about election fraud.

It’s a bizarre hobby.

Along with other prominent Trump advisers who spread fraud rumours, Mr Bannon was unrepentant on Sunday, even as footage emerged of widespread destruction in Brazil.

“Lula stole the Election… Brazilians know this,” he wrote repeatedly on the social media site Gettr. He called the people who stormed the buildings “Freedom Fighters”.

…

Bolsonaro supporters railed online about an existential crisis and a supposed “communist takeover” – exactly the same type of rhetoric that drove the rioters in Washington two years ago.

Little Nazi Germanys everywhere.

Speaking of the capture of the BBC by the trans clown posse, Glinner reminded us of this Glinner Update post by JL from October 2020:

Wednesday 21st October was International Pronouns Day. Our National Broadcaster decided to celebrate by gaslighting children.

BBC Bitesize is an online educational resource for children. How is it “educational” to publish confusing cartoons about parts of speech? What next, “what are verbs?” illustrated with a cartoon of giraffes and watering cans and Wembley Stadium?

On Twitter, the post attracted a barrage of negative comments and so was deleted rather hastily.

It reappeared again the following day. This time with the replies turned off.

The Stonewall Influence was powerful.

Their tweet has gone but the corresponding article is still on the BBC Bitesize website, telling kids as young as six that some people are neither male nor female.

And then there’s Woman’s Hour – well there’s bound to be, isn’t there. Can’t have women talking about womeny issues, can we, not unless they let the men in.

On Tuesday 20th October, Woman’s Hour included an item about the politicisation of Mumsnet.

During the item, presenter, Jane Garvey, asked author, Sarah Pedersen, how the gender recognition act was discussed on Mumsnet.

Pederson explained that women concerned about the effect of GRA reform on female rights have found that Mumsnet is one of very few arenas in which they can safely air their views. She mentioned that some site users have become involved with feminist groups such as Filia, WPUK and Fair Play for Women.

Garvey interrupted her and stated, “I just need to be very clear that they are groups that some people have described in some circumstances as transphobic”.

She didn’t “need” to be “very clear that” any such thing, of course, except in the sense that she feared the punishment she would get for neglecting this putative necessity.

The organisations concerned responded with the following joint statement:

“FiLiA, FPFW and WPUK are not transphobic. It is not acceptable for a BBC journalist to repeat libellous comment about us as if it is fair comment or a balancing of the discussion. There is simply no basis in fact for this comment to be made. It is the repetition of misogynist slander to which too many women are subjected.“

All because, it seems, the BBC had Stonewall telling it what to do all the time while it had no comparable women’s organization telling it what to do all the time. The BBC allowed Stonewall to censor and punish and vilify women via the BBC itself.

Last month, broadcasting legend and former Woman’s Hour presenter, Dame Jenni Murray, spoke out about being censured by the BBC after challenging trans rhetoric in an article for The Times.

Now the Woman’s Hour presenters are deferential to Stonewall and its ridiculous gender ideology.

Originally a comment by James Garnett on We’ve come to believe our own press clippings.

I don’t think Earth will support eight billion humans living off the land.

Oh, I don’t disagree with that, at all. I’ve been saying for some years now that humanity and civilization are far past the point of sustainability; the great fall of humanity is not only inevitable, I think, but it’s coming far sooner than most people probably expect. My comment that “there are those who have taught themselves the old ways” is not a call for humanity to return to a hunter/gatherer lifestyle, it was simply an observation that there are people who do that. Because they lament the state that we’ve gotten into, among other reasons. It’s not going to save humanity.

Look, we’ve got maybe a decade and likely even less before climate crises become our #1 problem, and that is something over which we very much do have control, even with relatively minimal changes to our lifestyles, and we cannot even manage those minor changes. Every few years our besuited representatives gather at public expense to eat fine meals and somberly agree to carbon-limit targets which we all then cheerfully ignore until the next somber meeting where the previous targets are tweaked and re-agreed-upon while everyone else is busy doing things like obliviously generating “Living the RV Life” YouTube reels wherein they drive around the world in enormous land-yachts consuming resources at a furious pace, instilling envy into their followers, and economists loudly bemoan the fact that the growth of that kind of self-absorbed earth-killing living is “only growing at a 4% adjusted yearly rate”. Yeah, we’re doomed.

This has been your monday-morning dose of PNW cynicism.

Finally there is some pushback at the BBC:

Tim Davie is facing a revolt as he is accused of letting the transgender Pride network “police” the BBC.

Staff have told him to shut down the Pride network.

The latest trans row to hit the broadcaster began with a testy exchange between Nathan Wren, BBC Studios Pride’s co-chair, and Malcolm Clark, a science producer, at the World Congress of Science & Factual Producers last month.  Mr Clark claims he complained that the group “policed” BBC output and stifled debate, prompting Mr Wren to reply: “We only intervene, when, say, a trans subject is being covered and then we’ll press to ensure trans voices are being heard.”

Oh is that all.

By the way, is there a Feminism network at the BBC? Do women get to “intervene” when a subject that affects women is being covered? If so does anyone obey the network?

Now, the Telegraph can reveal that some staff are calling for a crackdown on the group, accusing it of being “homophobic” by eroding the sanctity of binary, immutable biological sex by promoting self-identified genders, thus undermining same-sex attracted people. 

“Sanctity” is the wrong word entirely. It’s a matter of definitions and understanding and clarity, not one of religion.

Is anyone accusing the group of being misogynist by obliterating the meaning of the word “woman”?

The growing influence of the BBC Pride networks has been partly blamed as a hangover from the BBC’s long-standing ties with Stonewall, the contentious LGBT charity.

Here again, why did Stonewall have so much clout when no feminist charity had any at all?

Such emboldening was evident in June 2021, when leaked minutes of BBC Pride’s board showed they were demanding to “attend commissioning meetings” and play a role in “editorial processes” on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

…

Following the latest row over BBC Studios Pride chiefs suggesting they want more influence, a BBC insider said: “Pride believes the rights of transwomen are more important than the rights of women to single-sex spaces and sports.”

Or anything else. Pride believes women just don’t matter at all.

The insider claimed BBC Sport reporters were told to refer to the transwoman athlete Laurel Hubbard as a woman in the Tokyo 2021 Olympics, as an example of the effects. 

A second BBC source said: “It’s intimidating, how much power the Pride group has on trans activist issues and there’s no one to stop them or put the counter case. “Editors don’t want to do anything to offend internal activists because they’re afraid of the inevitable argument and internal complaints that would follow. Even if they know they made the correct editorial decision. It’s all about trans, not LGB.”

Not LGB and not women.

H/t latsot

The Guardian Live on events in Brasilia:

Democratic congressman Joaquin Castro has joined Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s call for former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s extradition from the US.

Seriously. Boot him out.

An hour ago:

Brazil’s GloboNews is reporting that the country’s Congress, supreme court and presidential palace have all been retaken by security forces.

…

GloboNews has also shared footage of the aftermath of the attack on the palace taken by the minister of communications, Paulo Pimenta, in which he says of his office: “Look what the vandals did here! The chaos. Unbelievable. They are criminals.”

In three blocks before that one the Guardian calls the attack “the protests,” which seems very mistaken. A coup is not a protest. An attempted coup is not a protest.

It’s…January 8.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has ordered the federal government to take control of policing in Brazil’s capital, Brasília, after hundreds of hardcore supporters of the former president Jair Bolsonaro stormed the country’s congress, presidential palace and supreme court.

Gee. Our fascists missed a trick, they just stormed the congress. If only they’d thought to take on the supreme court and the White House too maybe they would have won. The White House would have welcomed them and handed over the keys.

“What we are witnessing is a terrorist attack,” the news anchor Erick Bang announced on the GloboNews television network as word of the upheaval spread. “The three buildings have been invaded by coup-mongering terrorists.”

Shocking video footage showed the pro-Bolsonaro militants sprinting up the ramp into the Palácio do Planalto, the presidential offices, roaming the building’s corridors and vandalising the nearby supreme court, whose windows had been smashed.

We live in horrible times. Fascists are vying with global warming to see who can destroy everything first.

Lula, a veteran leftist, was sworn in as Brazil’s new president last Sunday in celebrations attended by hundreds of thousands of Brazilians.

But thousands of pro-Bolsonaro extremists have refused to accept Lula’s narrow victory in October’s election, spending recent weeks camping outside army bases across the country and calling for a military coup.

All too familiar.

Military police in Brasília were conspicuous by their absence and the mobs faced little opposition as they marched towards the three branches of government.

Lula said capital law enforcement bodies showed “incompetence, bad faith or malice” and promised swift action. He vowed to return to the capital on Sunday and visit the three buildings under attack.

By the end of the afternoon, authorities appeared to have retaken control of some of the buildings, with GloboNews reporting 150 people had been arrested. TV footage showed dozens of people handcuffed and lying on the ground watched over by law enforcement officers.

Reichstag. Congress. Palácio do Planalto.

Observers have spent months warning that Bolsonaro hardliners might stage a South American version of the US’s Capitol invasion in the hope of overturning Lula’s win. During his tumultuous four-year administration, Bolsonaro repeatedly hinted that a military takeover might be in the works and battled to undermine Brazil’s internationally respected electronic voting system.

…

Bolsonaro, a far-right former army captain whose main international ally was Trump, flew out of Brazil on the eve of Lula’s inauguration and is currently in Florida.

Florida. Naturally.

H/t What a Maroon

Disturbances in the field:

Notice that to the “sex work is work!!” crowd, all political analysis that says prostitution is a feminist issue aka bad for women aka not a human right aka exploitation is “attacking sex workers.” So unionizing auto workers and coal miners and factory workers is “attacking workers”? Makes about as much sense.

Hilarious that Jolyon thinks he doesn’t tell others what to say and think.

You will talk about what we tell you to talk about. Or else.

Hahahahaha it’s hilarious to watch Jolyon caught in his own trap.

Originally a comment by Your Name’s not Bruce? on They appointed an expert group.

I strip you naked and stand you out in the savannah in front of a hungry lion, you will understand. Biology rules not only us but lions…tigers…bears…spiders…snakes…etc etc etc

We’ve used our intelligence and technology to smooth over some of the rough edges of material existence. Unfortunately we’ve fooled ourselves into thinking that we’ve completely escaped all that biology stuff, and that we are beyond the jurisdiction of the rules that govern the rest of life.

In a very short time, most of us in the West have become divorced from the basic processes that sustain the lifestyle to which we’ve become accustomed. Food comes from a supermarket. Electricity comes from a hole in the wall. We can get almost anything, from anywhere, delivered to our doorstep with a few clicks of a button.

We’ve come to believe our own press clippings, and think we’re a self-made species. “Natural Selection what? Underclass who?” This ease and this ignorance has come at a price.

In the process of creating our comfortable, insular lifestyle, we’ve degraded and destroyed the natural foundation upon which it’s all actually based. It’s now a disaster to be without electricity, or the internet. People will die without them; this is how dependent we’ve become on the civilizational sandcastle we’ve built for ourselves.

This second order dependence masks the deeper dependencies we thought we’d left behind on the savannah. Much of what passes for wealth is completely disconnected from the physical facts of material existence, and depends on data in computers; a mighty Empire built on nothing, calling the shots. Even now, while the world burns, trillionaires-in-the-making are planning their moves; our fate is in the hands of the spiritual heirs of Ozymandius.

But while their influence is indeed powerful, it is not supernatural. We are all on the savannah; it’s right outside the office cubicle, waiting. You’ll get by for a lot longer without a bank than you will without clean air, clean water, and food. Unfortunately, the banks have discovered that we can live (for a while at least) on dirty air, dirty water, and a bit of food, which is fine, so long as we pay our credit card bills every month, which are the only bills they think are important enough to pay.

We’re told all the time that we shouldn’t live beyond our financial means, that we should avoid debt. (Or at least that’s what we non-billionaires are told; restraint is for you, not your betters.) Well, we as a civilization are living way beyond our physical means, overextending our “credit” against what the planet can support in anything beyond a very short term.

In 2022, Earth Overshoot Day (“the date when humanity has used all the biological resources that Earth regenerates during the entire year”) was July 28. Anything used after that day was either from the proceeds of theft, or burning up capital. If you eat your seed corn, you have nothing to plant. This is also true if you buy, or steal your neighbour’s seed corn and eat it. At some point there’s nothing to plant and nothing to eat. Bankers seem not to have cottoned on to this concept, nor have they realized that at some point, they’re going to run out of clean air, clean water, and food. It’s all connected, and all the high-finance shenanigans in the world won’t change that.

If you’re in the mood to get really angry, watch this clip:

James Esses in the Spectator:

Childline has acted as a haven for struggling children for over 35 years. In 2006, it became part of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), to further its child safeguarding mission. 

He used to work there, and he says it’s put ideology ahead of safeguarding.

I was a volunteer counsellor at Childline between 2015 and 2020. In my time there, I spent thousands of hours counselling children through a variety of issues. Supporting the welfare and wellbeing of children was extremely fulfilling. 

Over time, I began to notice a change in the presentation of children coming through to speak to me. Increasing numbers of children were telling me that they were ‘trans’; that they felt trapped in the wrong body. These children were also becoming younger and younger. 

You know…in a sense, children are born in the wrong body, not some or lots of them but all of them. They’re born tiny and weak, and it takes them many years to catch up to adults. They’re powerless compared to adults, and they also lack the brain power and experience and accumulated knowledge of adults. This makes them very vulnerable to stupid ideas pushed on them by the grownups in their lives. Religions have exploited this vulnerability since forever, and now trans ideologues are doing the same thing.

Some of the foundational principles of counselling include exploration, neutrality and not going into the conversation with a pre-determined outcome. However, I noticed that gender ideology was becoming more prevalent within Childline. I believed this was in breach of the core therapeutic ethics of the charity. 

It doesn’t seem all that therapeutic to tell children they’re in the wrong body.

It became clear that Childline were collaborating more closely with Stonewall. The first time I became aware of this was when I attended a shift and noticed that there were Stonewall posters plastered throughout the counselling room. They read: ‘Some People Are Trans; Get Over It’.

“Some People Can Fly; Get Over It.”

“Some People Are Tigers; Get Over It.”

“Some People Are Superior; Get Over It.”

I soon discovered that Stonewall appeared to have significant influence over the Childline webpage on ‘Gender Identity’, a site frequented by large numbers of young people. This page reads more as propaganda than nuanced guidance with the welfare of children at heart.  

Gender ideology is far more valuable and important than the welfare of anyone other than people who call themselves trans.

The webpage reads as more of a road map towards ‘transitioning’ than neutral advice. For example, Childline suggest ‘changing how you look or dress’ and ‘changing your name’. They even recommend ‘using different pronouns’, such as ‘ze and zir’ or ‘zey and zem’. This is even though we know that ‘social transition’ may cause irreversible change to a young person’s brain. Worryingly, there is not a single mention of the fact that gender dysphoria is a mental health condition, which, for most children, will resolve itself over time. 

In short it’s recruitment rather than counselling.

Childline kicked Esses out, and has continued to embrace trans ideology and urge it on the children it’s supposed to be helping.

There are also serious concerns over the lack of safeguarding in the counselling being offered to children. This can be seen through ‘Ask Sam’ ­– Childline’s publicly available messaging service, in which a child can send in a message and ‘Sam’ will respond with advice and guidance that can be read by all Childline users. 

In 2019, a 14-year-old girl wrote to ‘Ask Sam’, stating ‘I’m struggling with my gender identity’ and ‘I hate my breasts’. Just four paragraphs into the response, ‘Sam’ suggests the use of breast binders, something we know can cause irreversible physical damage to a young girl’s body. This is deeply concerning. 

In another letter, from 2021, a young girl states that she is ‘trans’ and suffering from ‘dysphoria’. She expresses worry about getting ‘pregnant’ in later life, even though she eventually wants ‘biological kids’. Within a few sentences of the response, ‘Sam’ suggests the option of ‘surgery and hormones’ for this confused, young girl. The response goes on to say that ‘because you’re male living in a female body, you don’t have the sperm to make a baby’. Most concerning of all is when ‘Sam’ suggests to the young girl: ‘have a surrogate mother carry the baby for you.’ 

Yes, just go to the surrogate mother office and rent a surrogate mother. Easy, quick, guaranteed.

Man boasts about his implacable campaign to force himself on women in a vulnerable situation:

Saying there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop me is very rapey. Very very very rapey.

Jolyon Maugham is on the naughty step?

Why does Jolyon Maugham’s Good Law Project have to explain a tweet from someone called Right to Equality? The two are In Partnership.

Teaming up with Jolyon Maugham of all people to campaign for women’s rights – nah, thanks, I’ll pass.

So it’s nice to see them fighting.

Taste of his own medicine for Jolyon eh?

H/t latsot