The fields of barley, rice and wheat that feed much of India are running out of water, according to a new study based on satellite data and published online in Nature today. The heartland of last century's Green Revolution lost 109 cubic kilometers of water from its Indus River plain aquifer between August 2002 and October 2008. (Scientific American is part of the Nature Publishing Group.)
"By our estimates, the water table is declining at a rate of one foot per year averaged over the Indian states of Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana, including the national capital territory of Delhi," an area in northwestern India that covers more than 438,000 square kilometers, says NASA hydrologist Matthew Rodell, lead author of the paper. "We are not able to estimate the total amount of groundwater in storage [in the aquifer], so we can't say when it will be gone, but residents are already feeling the effects and it will only become worse."
The consequences include wells that run dry, water shortages in India's capital and, potentially, a decline in yields from agriculture. India's Ministry of Water Resources has long suggested that tapping the aquifer for irrigation was exceeding the limited regional rainfall that replenishes its water, and the World Bank has warned that the country faces a water crisis. On a yearly basis, nearly 63 cubic kilometers of water are drawn from the aquifer, whereas the Indian government estimates that roughly 45 cubic kilometers of water recharge the aquifer annually.
The scientists relied on data from the pair of GRACE satellites—NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment orbiters launched in 2002—that measure subtle changes in Earth's gravitational field, which are often the result of shifting water, whether on the surface or deep beneath it. In addition to large-scale water losses detected in Greenland and other polar regions by the GRACE satellites, northwestern India stands out as another area of rapid water loss. "Basically, it is like we weigh Earth every month and we look at the changes," explains geophysicist Isabella Velicogna of the University of California, Irvine, part of the research team.
The primary reason for such groundwater depletion is irrigation, which has fed the Green Revolution that transformed cereal production in the region and helped sustain a growing population that has reached 114 million people. Between 1970 and 1999 irrigated fields in India tripled in overall extent to cover more than 33 million hectares.
That irrigation now looks unsustainable: "The problem is that groundwater consumption was not capped at a sustainable level and now it will be difficult to curb demand," Rodell notes.
It is also clear that global warming's accelerated melting of the nearby Himalayan glaciers is not the primary culprit in the region's water deficit. These meltwaters feed the rivers of northwestern India and beyond, but that water soon flows out of the area and is lost to it. Even with a generous assumption that all Himalayan glacial melting since 1962 (roughly 13.4 cubic kilometers per year) was concentrated in the 150-kilometer stretch of land closest to the study zone rather than spread across the entirety of the Himalayas, the scientists could explain, at most, 15 percent of the water loss in northwestern India. And the arid region's rainfall levels were above the average of 50 centimeters per year from 2002 to 2008.
The water contained in the Indus River plain aquifer, once pumped, is lost to the region via evaporation from irrigation or transpiration from irrigated plants. And GRACE has detected similar depletion in the U.S., as well, including the Ogallala Aquifer under the western plains and the groundwater in the California's Central Valley. "Groundwater resources are being rapidly depleted in many regions of the world," says U.C. Irvine hydrologist James Famiglietti, another team member. "These signals of groundwater loss, in particular in the Central Valley, are very strong."
The solution may be to impose limits on pumping aquifer water— particularly in the case of northwestern India, which uses it to fill seasonal rice paddies covering some 38,000 square kilometers. "If farmers would shift away from water-intensive crops, such as rice, and implement more efficient irrigation methods, that would help," Rodell says.
As population growth continues and food production increases, however, demand for groundwater will only increase, Famiglietti warns. Nevertheless, this research, he says, "suggests that we can keep track of rates at which groundwater reserves are dwindling the world over."
(Courtesy:SciAm.)
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Paleo-Climate Labels of Late Quaternary, Southern Tamil Nadu.
Paleo-Climate Labels of Late Quaternary, Southern Tamil Nadu.
Thrivikramj.K.P. and Joseph, S
thrivikramji@gmail.com
Formerly, University of Kerala, Dept. of Geology, Kariavattom Campus, 695581
Univ. of Kerala, Environmental Sciences, Kariavattom Campus, 695581
Abstract
The planet earth, since the very early days of its history, had gone through dramatic climate shifts (like repetitive glaciations, Humid-temperate spells and periods of aridity) of widely varying amplitudes. The labels of past climate or climate shift are invariably or often hidden in the rocks, especially in fossil assemblages, mineral associations, sedimentary facies associations, geochemical attributes etc.. Further older the rock formation, harder it is for the labels to come by, which is primarily due to multiple deformations and variations in the chemistry of pervading fluids through the rock-intergranular- pores. .
The Teris of southern Tamil Nadu, a fairly contiguous and distinctly prominent sedimentary deposit, coloured in sharp or well defined shades of red, is noticed in the Tirunelveli Dist. (Table 1). Colour of the sand sheet ranges from yellowish red (5YR 4.5/6) to dark reddish brown (2.5 YR ¾) and to dark red (10R 3/6) Teris are broadly grouped into the ITD or Inland Teris Deposits (with poorly sorted, medium to coarse sand) occurring adjacent to the eastern side of the Western Ghats (area =~33.0 km2) and CTD (moderately sorted, medium sand) or coastal teri deposits (area=387.0 km2) positioned adjacent to modern or ancient shorelines of the Tirunelveli Dist.
This thick sheet sand of variable thickness especially in the CTD has been moulded into large barchans, barchanoids and transverse-subaerial-dunes, which in turn are covered by bedforms like ripples of different morphologies, suggesting the current occurrence of a dynamic surface layer of wind driven sand. This “sea of red sand” is unique to India, in that that there is no other comparable occurrence anywhere else in the rest of the country.
The Teri sand sheet rests unconformably either on variably weathered and/or eroded Precambrian basement (e.g..Kulathur) or on a calcareous sandstone (e.g., at Melmandi) or on a fossiliferous limestone bed (like at Meyyur and Menjanapuram). Inspite of the considerable thickness of the sand body (10.0 m at Sattankulam and 12.0 m at Ovari), the primary depositional structures are difficult to discern in the sections – perhaps due to shift in mass balance during pedogenesis.
The ITD has a large content of feldspar, in contrast with the CTDs wherein large presence of opaques and subordinate feldspar are noticed. Clay fraction in both ITD and CTD is not only autochthonous but display larger bulk of kaolinite and subordinate content of illite. Hematite and goethite dominate the mineralogy of cutan.
The kaolinisation (a humid climate label) and illitisation (a semi-arid climate label) processes that the teri sand underwent did not over lap instead the former preceded the latter. The scarce or intensely corroded garnet grains, altered pyriboles, opaques and feldspar in the teri sediment unequivocally point to intrastratal origin of cutan.
The ubiquitous occurrence of rhizoliths of calcrete in the teris of Syyarpuram and Sattankulam, and calcretisation of the basement crystallines rimming the teri sheet sand clearly indicate the continuation of the semi-aridity that promoted ilitisation of earlier formed kaolinite through the modern times. The 14C date of 3680+-110 yr B.P. of calcrete, is a robust timeline indicating transition from the humid to semi-arid climate in southern Tamil Nadu.
Further, in future i.e., by 2050, the extent of semi-arid zone in Tamil Nadu and rest of India are bound expand and enlarge further forced by the climate change phenomenon. Therefore, the Tamil Nadu state along with the other Indian states will have to brace itself to face up the challenges of the impending climate change by harnessing the tools and services of science and technology , and possibly a a new and appropriate life style..
-------------------------------
Thrivikramj.K.P. and Joseph, S
thrivikramji@gmail.com
Formerly, University of Kerala, Dept. of Geology, Kariavattom Campus, 695581
Univ. of Kerala, Environmental Sciences, Kariavattom Campus, 695581
Abstract
The planet earth, since the very early days of its history, had gone through dramatic climate shifts (like repetitive glaciations, Humid-temperate spells and periods of aridity) of widely varying amplitudes. The labels of past climate or climate shift are invariably or often hidden in the rocks, especially in fossil assemblages, mineral associations, sedimentary facies associations, geochemical attributes etc.. Further older the rock formation, harder it is for the labels to come by, which is primarily due to multiple deformations and variations in the chemistry of pervading fluids through the rock-intergranular- pores. .
The Teris of southern Tamil Nadu, a fairly contiguous and distinctly prominent sedimentary deposit, coloured in sharp or well defined shades of red, is noticed in the Tirunelveli Dist. (Table 1). Colour of the sand sheet ranges from yellowish red (5YR 4.5/6) to dark reddish brown (2.5 YR ¾) and to dark red (10R 3/6) Teris are broadly grouped into the ITD or Inland Teris Deposits (with poorly sorted, medium to coarse sand) occurring adjacent to the eastern side of the Western Ghats (area =~33.0 km2) and CTD (moderately sorted, medium sand) or coastal teri deposits (area=387.0 km2) positioned adjacent to modern or ancient shorelines of the Tirunelveli Dist.
This thick sheet sand of variable thickness especially in the CTD has been moulded into large barchans, barchanoids and transverse-subaerial-dunes, which in turn are covered by bedforms like ripples of different morphologies, suggesting the current occurrence of a dynamic surface layer of wind driven sand. This “sea of red sand” is unique to India, in that that there is no other comparable occurrence anywhere else in the rest of the country.
The Teri sand sheet rests unconformably either on variably weathered and/or eroded Precambrian basement (e.g..Kulathur) or on a calcareous sandstone (e.g., at Melmandi) or on a fossiliferous limestone bed (like at Meyyur and Menjanapuram). Inspite of the considerable thickness of the sand body (10.0 m at Sattankulam and 12.0 m at Ovari), the primary depositional structures are difficult to discern in the sections – perhaps due to shift in mass balance during pedogenesis.
The ITD has a large content of feldspar, in contrast with the CTDs wherein large presence of opaques and subordinate feldspar are noticed. Clay fraction in both ITD and CTD is not only autochthonous but display larger bulk of kaolinite and subordinate content of illite. Hematite and goethite dominate the mineralogy of cutan.
The kaolinisation (a humid climate label) and illitisation (a semi-arid climate label) processes that the teri sand underwent did not over lap instead the former preceded the latter. The scarce or intensely corroded garnet grains, altered pyriboles, opaques and feldspar in the teri sediment unequivocally point to intrastratal origin of cutan.
The ubiquitous occurrence of rhizoliths of calcrete in the teris of Syyarpuram and Sattankulam, and calcretisation of the basement crystallines rimming the teri sheet sand clearly indicate the continuation of the semi-aridity that promoted ilitisation of earlier formed kaolinite through the modern times. The 14C date of 3680+-110 yr B.P. of calcrete, is a robust timeline indicating transition from the humid to semi-arid climate in southern Tamil Nadu.
Further, in future i.e., by 2050, the extent of semi-arid zone in Tamil Nadu and rest of India are bound expand and enlarge further forced by the climate change phenomenon. Therefore, the Tamil Nadu state along with the other Indian states will have to brace itself to face up the challenges of the impending climate change by harnessing the tools and services of science and technology , and possibly a a new and appropriate life style..
-------------------------------
THE EMAK WORKSHOP (Nov.3-4/11/09, Trivandrum)
SUGGESTIONS TO THE DRAFING COMMITTEE OF THE EMAK WORKSHOP
(Nov.3-4/11/09, Trivandrum)
thrivikramji@gmail.com
1. With the exception of distributing CFL to the BPL segment of the society, for good reasons or no reasons the state government is not paying any serious attention to the issue of climate change and consequences to the state of Kerala. In fact being a littoral state and drained by the 41 west flowing rivers the people are endowed with decent quantities of water for irrigation, drinking and power generation. By 2050 the state may add another crore of people raising the annual water demand.
Keralites shall start feeling the consequences of CC by 2025. The erratic monsoons and the current weak NE monsoon may become the order of the day. Any decrease or unseasonal rains in Kerala will immediately be reflected in the following year in the states economy, which is an agricultural economy.
The fall production of rubber, tea, coffee, cardamom, coconut, arecanut and other farm produce will affect the SDP of the state. No need to indicate the consequences of water scarcity, spread of vectoral diseases, heat exhaustion, general unrest among the individuals in the society etc which are projected as other potential distresses.
Therefore to advice the government on policy decisions and if necessary in formulating legislations, the Govt. must create a Climate Change Commission as a statutory body., which will advice the government on measures, policies and initiatives to mitigate or adapt the consequences of climate change.
2. Along the lines of other committees of legislature, a separate Legislative Committee on climate change needs to be created to assist the state legislature in formulating mitigation and adaptation measures.
3. Essential changes in the statutes of the agriculture department should be introduced to require the sellers of pesticides in the state to give a brief cautioning the applicator to use safety gadgets like dress and masks.
4. CWRDM has launched a study of water quality in the state of Kerala. The CPCB assists the state board in doing similar water quality checks in the state. It is advisable to have the agencies collect water samples from the same collection points or sampling stations in the respective rivers to enable cross comparison and avoidance possible disparities.
------------------
.
(Nov.3-4/11/09, Trivandrum)
thrivikramji@gmail.com
1. With the exception of distributing CFL to the BPL segment of the society, for good reasons or no reasons the state government is not paying any serious attention to the issue of climate change and consequences to the state of Kerala. In fact being a littoral state and drained by the 41 west flowing rivers the people are endowed with decent quantities of water for irrigation, drinking and power generation. By 2050 the state may add another crore of people raising the annual water demand.
Keralites shall start feeling the consequences of CC by 2025. The erratic monsoons and the current weak NE monsoon may become the order of the day. Any decrease or unseasonal rains in Kerala will immediately be reflected in the following year in the states economy, which is an agricultural economy.
The fall production of rubber, tea, coffee, cardamom, coconut, arecanut and other farm produce will affect the SDP of the state. No need to indicate the consequences of water scarcity, spread of vectoral diseases, heat exhaustion, general unrest among the individuals in the society etc which are projected as other potential distresses.
Therefore to advice the government on policy decisions and if necessary in formulating legislations, the Govt. must create a Climate Change Commission as a statutory body., which will advice the government on measures, policies and initiatives to mitigate or adapt the consequences of climate change.
2. Along the lines of other committees of legislature, a separate Legislative Committee on climate change needs to be created to assist the state legislature in formulating mitigation and adaptation measures.
3. Essential changes in the statutes of the agriculture department should be introduced to require the sellers of pesticides in the state to give a brief cautioning the applicator to use safety gadgets like dress and masks.
4. CWRDM has launched a study of water quality in the state of Kerala. The CPCB assists the state board in doing similar water quality checks in the state. It is advisable to have the agencies collect water samples from the same collection points or sampling stations in the respective rivers to enable cross comparison and avoidance possible disparities.
------------------
.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
The Benefits of Flaxseed
The Benefits of Flaxseed
Is flaxseed the new wonder food? Preliminary studies show that flaxseed may help fight everything from heart disease and diabetes to breast cancer.
By Elaine Magee, MPH, RD
WebMD Feature Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD
Some call it one of the most powerful plant foods on the planet. There’s some evidence it can help reduce your risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes. That’s quite a tall order for a tiny seed that’s been around for centuries: flaxseed.
Flaxseed was cultivated in Babylon as early as 3000 BC, according to the Flax Council of Canada. By the 8th century, King Charlemagne believed so strongly in the health benefits of flaxseed that he passed laws requiring his subjects to consume it. Fast-forward 13 centuries, and some experts would say we have preliminary research to back up what Charlemagne suspected all those years ago.
These days, flaxseed is found in all kinds of foods, from crackers to frozen waffles to oatmeal. In the first 11 months of 2006, 75 new products were launched that listed flax or flaxseed as an ingredient. Not only has consumer demand for flaxseed gone up, agricultural use has also increased -- to feed all those chickens laying eggs that are higher in omega-3 fatty acids.
Although flaxseed contains all sorts of healthy components, it owes its healthy reputation primarily to three ingredients:
Omega-3 essential fatty acids, "good" fats that have been shown to have heart-healthy effects. Each tablespoon of ground flaxseed contains about 1.8 grams of plant omega-3s.
Lignans, which have both plant estrogen and antioxidant qualities. Flaxseed contains 75- 800 times more lignans than other plant foods
Fiber. Flaxseed contains both the soluble and insoluble types.
The Health Benefits of Flax
Although Lilian Thompson, PhD, an internationally known flaxseed researcher from the University of Toronto, says she wouldn’t call any of the health benefits of flax "well established," research indicates that flax’s possible health benefits include reducing the risks of certain cancers as well as cardiovascular disease and lung disease. Here are more details:
Cancer
Recent studies have suggested that flaxseed may have a protective effect against cancer, particularly breast cancer, prostate cancer, and colon cancer. At least two of the components in flaxseed seem to contribute, says Kelley C. Fitzpatrick, M.Sc., director of health and nutrition with the Flax Council of Canada.
In animal studies, the plant omega-3 fatty acid found in flaxseed, called ALA, inhibited tumor incidence and growth.
Further, the lignans in flaxseed may provide some protection against cancers that are sensitive to hormones. Some studies have suggested that exposure to lignans during adolescence helps reduce the risk of breast cancer, Thompson says.
Lignans may help protect against cancer by:
Blocking enzymes that are involved in hormone metabolism.
Interfering with the growth and spread of tumor cells.
Some of the other components in flaxseed also have antioxidant properties, which may contribute to protection against cancer and heart disease
(Courtesy:WebMD
Is flaxseed the new wonder food? Preliminary studies show that flaxseed may help fight everything from heart disease and diabetes to breast cancer.
By Elaine Magee, MPH, RD
WebMD Feature Reviewed by Louise Chang, MD
Some call it one of the most powerful plant foods on the planet. There’s some evidence it can help reduce your risk of heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes. That’s quite a tall order for a tiny seed that’s been around for centuries: flaxseed.
Flaxseed was cultivated in Babylon as early as 3000 BC, according to the Flax Council of Canada. By the 8th century, King Charlemagne believed so strongly in the health benefits of flaxseed that he passed laws requiring his subjects to consume it. Fast-forward 13 centuries, and some experts would say we have preliminary research to back up what Charlemagne suspected all those years ago.
These days, flaxseed is found in all kinds of foods, from crackers to frozen waffles to oatmeal. In the first 11 months of 2006, 75 new products were launched that listed flax or flaxseed as an ingredient. Not only has consumer demand for flaxseed gone up, agricultural use has also increased -- to feed all those chickens laying eggs that are higher in omega-3 fatty acids.
Although flaxseed contains all sorts of healthy components, it owes its healthy reputation primarily to three ingredients:
Omega-3 essential fatty acids, "good" fats that have been shown to have heart-healthy effects. Each tablespoon of ground flaxseed contains about 1.8 grams of plant omega-3s.
Lignans, which have both plant estrogen and antioxidant qualities. Flaxseed contains 75- 800 times more lignans than other plant foods
Fiber. Flaxseed contains both the soluble and insoluble types.
The Health Benefits of Flax
Although Lilian Thompson, PhD, an internationally known flaxseed researcher from the University of Toronto, says she wouldn’t call any of the health benefits of flax "well established," research indicates that flax’s possible health benefits include reducing the risks of certain cancers as well as cardiovascular disease and lung disease. Here are more details:
Cancer
Recent studies have suggested that flaxseed may have a protective effect against cancer, particularly breast cancer, prostate cancer, and colon cancer. At least two of the components in flaxseed seem to contribute, says Kelley C. Fitzpatrick, M.Sc., director of health and nutrition with the Flax Council of Canada.
In animal studies, the plant omega-3 fatty acid found in flaxseed, called ALA, inhibited tumor incidence and growth.
Further, the lignans in flaxseed may provide some protection against cancers that are sensitive to hormones. Some studies have suggested that exposure to lignans during adolescence helps reduce the risk of breast cancer, Thompson says.
Lignans may help protect against cancer by:
Blocking enzymes that are involved in hormone metabolism.
Interfering with the growth and spread of tumor cells.
Some of the other components in flaxseed also have antioxidant properties, which may contribute to protection against cancer and heart disease
(Courtesy:WebMD
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
SUGGESTIONS TO THE DRAFING COMMITTEE OF THE EMAK WORKSHOP
SUGGESTIONS TO THE DRAFING COMMITTEE OF THE EMAK WORKSHOP
(Nov.3-4/11/09)
thrivikramji@gmail.com
I1. With the exception of distributing CFL to the BPL segment of the society, for good reasons or no reasons the state government is not paying any serious attention to the issue of climate change and consequences to the state of Kerala. In fact being a littoral state and drained by the 41 west flowing rivers the people are endowed with decent quantities of water for irrigation, drinking and power generation. By 2050 the state may add another crore of people raising the annual water demand.
Keralites shall start feeling the consequences of CC by 2025. The erratic monsoons and the current weak NE monsoon may become the order of the day. Any decrease or unseasonal rains in Kerala will immediately be reflected in the following year in the states economy, which is an agricultural economy.
The fall production of rubber, tea, coffee, cardamom, coconut, arecanut and other farm produce will affect the SDP of the state. No need to indicate the consequences of water scarcity, spread of vectoral diseases, heat exhaustion, general unrest among the individuals in the society etc are projected as other potential distresses.
Therefore to advice the government on policy decisions and if necessary in formulating legislations, the Govt. must create a Climate Change Commission as a statutory body., which will advice the government on measures, policies and initiatives to mitigate or adapt the consequences of climate change.
2. Along the lines of other committees of legislature, a separate Legislative Committee on climate change needs to be created to assist the state legislature in formulating mitigation and adaptation measures.
3. Essential changes in the statutes of the agriculture department should be introduced to require the sellers of pesticides in the state to give a brief cautioning the applicator to use safety gadgets like dress and masks.
4. CWRDM has launched a study of water quality in the state of Kerala. The CPCB assists the state board in doing similar water quality checks in the states. It is advisable to have the agencies collect water samples from the same collection points or sampling stations in the respective rivers to enable cross comparison and avoidance possible disparities.
(Nov.3-4/11/09)
thrivikramji@gmail.com
I1. With the exception of distributing CFL to the BPL segment of the society, for good reasons or no reasons the state government is not paying any serious attention to the issue of climate change and consequences to the state of Kerala. In fact being a littoral state and drained by the 41 west flowing rivers the people are endowed with decent quantities of water for irrigation, drinking and power generation. By 2050 the state may add another crore of people raising the annual water demand.
Keralites shall start feeling the consequences of CC by 2025. The erratic monsoons and the current weak NE monsoon may become the order of the day. Any decrease or unseasonal rains in Kerala will immediately be reflected in the following year in the states economy, which is an agricultural economy.
The fall production of rubber, tea, coffee, cardamom, coconut, arecanut and other farm produce will affect the SDP of the state. No need to indicate the consequences of water scarcity, spread of vectoral diseases, heat exhaustion, general unrest among the individuals in the society etc are projected as other potential distresses.
Therefore to advice the government on policy decisions and if necessary in formulating legislations, the Govt. must create a Climate Change Commission as a statutory body., which will advice the government on measures, policies and initiatives to mitigate or adapt the consequences of climate change.
2. Along the lines of other committees of legislature, a separate Legislative Committee on climate change needs to be created to assist the state legislature in formulating mitigation and adaptation measures.
3. Essential changes in the statutes of the agriculture department should be introduced to require the sellers of pesticides in the state to give a brief cautioning the applicator to use safety gadgets like dress and masks.
4. CWRDM has launched a study of water quality in the state of Kerala. The CPCB assists the state board in doing similar water quality checks in the states. It is advisable to have the agencies collect water samples from the same collection points or sampling stations in the respective rivers to enable cross comparison and avoidance possible disparities.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Basu da calls for procongress votes.
The commien in WB are in deep distress so that the grand old man, Basuda is asking for congress supporters to support the leftists to stave off the win by Trinamool as well as congress candidates. Basuda is right because it is his last wish that commies come back with flying colours so that he can rest in peace. Luck has it that that kind of peace running away from the commies court to noncommies.
After 30 yr of misrule of WB or partisan rule of WB the population the aam aadmi learned well and instantly that they are madeup their minds to rout the commies.
Like they enjoyed a nonchallenegd stay in power for the last thirty tears, it is time for relaxing and brooding without power. Days are gone for the commies both in WB and Kerala. The hospitals, mansions in every town, amusement parks all are symbols of the commies attitude to aam aadmi. All we need is only a vote nothing more. Dont ask anything from us. We will promise and not give. This is the neocommies new slogan.
Well that is the way it is on the second day of Nov. 09.
After 30 yr of misrule of WB or partisan rule of WB the population the aam aadmi learned well and instantly that they are madeup their minds to rout the commies.
Like they enjoyed a nonchallenegd stay in power for the last thirty tears, it is time for relaxing and brooding without power. Days are gone for the commies both in WB and Kerala. The hospitals, mansions in every town, amusement parks all are symbols of the commies attitude to aam aadmi. All we need is only a vote nothing more. Dont ask anything from us. We will promise and not give. This is the neocommies new slogan.
Well that is the way it is on the second day of Nov. 09.
AERATE PONDS AND LAKES: RENEW THEIR LIFE AND OUR PLEASURE
AERATE PONDS AND LAKES: RENEW THEIR LIFE AND OUR PLEASURE
thrivikramji@gmail.com
Introduction
World over the ponds and lakes are destined to die biologically and to disappear to the dislike of vast majority of nature lovers as well as those making a livelihood directly or indirectly out of these. Though the reasons for the degeneration are not unknown, due to other priorities and commitments, scarcely we turn our attention to these water bodies.
However, due to reasons like scarcity of water due to rising demands and impending climate change phenomenon, this natural water harvesting structure began to attract the attention of the society and societal leaders. Yet, at least in our country especially in the semi-arid zones in our country, it seems to me that proposal regarding the clarification of these ponds has restricted itself to utilization of NREGS funds, to cut and remove manually the humus laden mud from the bed of the ponds, if and when these go dry at least partially
But given the climate of Kerala, the chances for these ponds going dry to allow complete or even partial removal of the accumulated sediment (mud) at the bottom are relatively rare. More over complete desilting of the pond bed goes contrary to the assumption of resulting higher efficiency is also grossly misplaced hydro-geologically.
By desilting process we effectively remove a seamless water seal covering the pond bed. For at least a short period of say 5 to 10 yr., the pond will be a water loosing structure after desilting. Of course there is the plus point of the pond recharging the aquifer. Unfortunately this recharge process sets in as early as the beginning of the rainy season and hence the final aim of recharging the aquifer is also missed.
In other words the aquifer will earn the water leaking from the pond bed and in turn will release it to the streams. Or else, the intent of improving or enhancing the duration of base flow will not materialize at least for a period of under a decade. It is the fine mud that seals the bottom of the pond and restricts the speedy loss to the aquifer.
Menace of Eutrophication
Incidentally, whether they be temple/public/private ponds, due to continued neglect the waters in these structures have reached the peak of eutrophication, which is result of accumulation of nutrients mainly from phosphate based bath or washing soaps, and fertilizer residues or farm discharge. Express symbol of the eutrophication is the luxurious growth of amphibious (both floating and rooted ones along the shores) vegetation, after whose death needs large quantities of oxygen/air for their decay.
Oxygen enters the water only along the water-air interface. As a consequence, eutrophication enhances the organic sedimentation in the pond/lake and attains a peak by encouraging the encroachment by the rooted amphibious plants to the dismay of the users and reduced biodiversity of fish life. When the oxygen level in waters diminishes only very small fish that can survive with little oxygen live in the pond and that too very close to the surface to harvest the little oxygen entering the waters from the air above it. Of course the larger fish cannot survive in these waters, because of the lack or reduced oxygen levels in the bottom layers of the water column.
.
.
Status of Ponds in Kerala
This concept though had been in vogue for a long time in t he western societies, had never had a chance to be considered around here in our country, primarily because of our limitations regarding the affordability and partly due to unfamiliarity or exposure. The Kerala Fisheries Development Corporation had published a multi volume set of books called Panfish and in one of those there is a list of districts of Kerala printed against the number of ponds and the aerial coverage.
Anyone who had walked along the embankment along side a pond would know for sure the degree of negligence; these heritage water harvesting structures are in. More over what is also unknown to the non-specialist is the fact that these ponds are destined to be filled over by sediment and organic debris generated in situ as well as these days dumped by the town and city cleaning staff, if periodic revival is not undertaken.
In fact with little more scientific attitude and a desire to salvage these structures, we as a society can conserve the scarce water now and by 2050 with the playing out of the consequences of climate change. Well, again with a changing climate, I very much doubt about the continuation of the pattern of precipitation that we currently receive around here in our state.
In terms of science, all the ponds or at least the majority of ephemeral ponds are in some state of eutrophication. In lay citizens parlance it is the infestation of water surface with floating and fixed or rooted weeds closer to the shoreline in the limewaters. This is the plain consequence of rising levels of nutrients in the pond waters, i.e., due to accumulation of fertilizer residues as well as use of phosphate based soap for washing clothes or bathing. With the rise in nutrients, the waters get enriched in weeds turning the pond water unusable. As the life cycle of these weeds are short, they die early and for the decay put great pressure on the oxygen levels of the water. The oxygen depletion is directly proportional to the density of weeds and inversely proportional to the fish life etc. Scientifically speaking if this process continues, the pond will turn to a marsh and become useless in so far as original intent at the time building of the pond. These ponds are in an advanced state of eutrophication.
In the early stages, the water will acquire a greenish colour from a distance and will only look turbid if taken in the cupped palm of hand. The greenishness is the direct result of presence of algae and the first km in the road to eutrophication.
Any solutions?
In this background there is a not so old a technology practiced all over the world for us to consider and adopt. This type of clarification of water bodies is by aeration or if really flush with funds, by the process of oxygenation. This technology came into being with the improvements in the waste water collection, disposal and clarification before discharging into natural water bodies like ponds, streams and rivers.
Aeration is a scaled up version of the aerator in the home aquarium. A properly conceived and design of aerator if installed in the pond/s, the onward march to eutrophication can be decelerated and even reversed in the longer run. There are several internationally known outfits undertaking such tasks, with their outposts in the country.
All the waste water and waters in the ponds and lakes that have reached peak eutrophication can be easily rehabilitated with the aeration process. The chief mechanism among the various methods of aeration is erection of fountains in the ponds and lakes (E.g., Lake Geneva, where these fountains are visible right from the windows of airplanes landing in the runway of the Geneva airport).
Though city center fountains have been considered as symbol of affluence and wealth, when built and operated in the dirty waters of community/temple/public ponds and lakes, they serve the hidden purpose of aerating the waters and reviving the water health of such water bodies
When constructed in the pond or lake, it will be a wonderful attraction to passers by the visitors and leisure seekers during the summer months. Indeed it is a pity that even the GCDA had not yet implemented a set of dancing fountains to the upstream of Venduruthy or Thevara bridges away from the ship channel and harbors in the Kayal, and other places in the lagoons coastal land of Kerala.
Equally potentially ideal locations can be located in the Pookottu kayal, Sasthamkotta kayal or Vellayani Kayal. I might even go to the extent of building such fountains in the temple ponds of most crowded temples of the state like the Padmatheertham, Guruvayoor temple pond and so on.
Summary
1. The ponds whether they be in public/temple/private ownerships, all have one thing in common, i.e., they are all under a high degree of eutrophication.
2. Eutrophication is a consequence of abundant supply of nutrients from anthopogenic sources especially in respect of the ponds/lake either close to or in the middle of towns and cities. Eutrophication is a state of a pond, where by the dissolved oxygen is at its lowest level or even absent at least at the sediment water interface. As a consequence the diversity of fish life is reduced to minimum and leaving only small fish to survive and that too along the water-air interface.
3. One of the ways of getting rid of the problem of eutrophication is to build systematically placed water fountains. These play a role very much similar to the aeration pumps we buy and maintain in the home aquarium.
-------------------------
thrivikramji@gmail.com
Introduction
World over the ponds and lakes are destined to die biologically and to disappear to the dislike of vast majority of nature lovers as well as those making a livelihood directly or indirectly out of these. Though the reasons for the degeneration are not unknown, due to other priorities and commitments, scarcely we turn our attention to these water bodies.
However, due to reasons like scarcity of water due to rising demands and impending climate change phenomenon, this natural water harvesting structure began to attract the attention of the society and societal leaders. Yet, at least in our country especially in the semi-arid zones in our country, it seems to me that proposal regarding the clarification of these ponds has restricted itself to utilization of NREGS funds, to cut and remove manually the humus laden mud from the bed of the ponds, if and when these go dry at least partially
But given the climate of Kerala, the chances for these ponds going dry to allow complete or even partial removal of the accumulated sediment (mud) at the bottom are relatively rare. More over complete desilting of the pond bed goes contrary to the assumption of resulting higher efficiency is also grossly misplaced hydro-geologically.
By desilting process we effectively remove a seamless water seal covering the pond bed. For at least a short period of say 5 to 10 yr., the pond will be a water loosing structure after desilting. Of course there is the plus point of the pond recharging the aquifer. Unfortunately this recharge process sets in as early as the beginning of the rainy season and hence the final aim of recharging the aquifer is also missed.
In other words the aquifer will earn the water leaking from the pond bed and in turn will release it to the streams. Or else, the intent of improving or enhancing the duration of base flow will not materialize at least for a period of under a decade. It is the fine mud that seals the bottom of the pond and restricts the speedy loss to the aquifer.
Menace of Eutrophication
Incidentally, whether they be temple/public/private ponds, due to continued neglect the waters in these structures have reached the peak of eutrophication, which is result of accumulation of nutrients mainly from phosphate based bath or washing soaps, and fertilizer residues or farm discharge. Express symbol of the eutrophication is the luxurious growth of amphibious (both floating and rooted ones along the shores) vegetation, after whose death needs large quantities of oxygen/air for their decay.
Oxygen enters the water only along the water-air interface. As a consequence, eutrophication enhances the organic sedimentation in the pond/lake and attains a peak by encouraging the encroachment by the rooted amphibious plants to the dismay of the users and reduced biodiversity of fish life. When the oxygen level in waters diminishes only very small fish that can survive with little oxygen live in the pond and that too very close to the surface to harvest the little oxygen entering the waters from the air above it. Of course the larger fish cannot survive in these waters, because of the lack or reduced oxygen levels in the bottom layers of the water column.
.
.
Status of Ponds in Kerala
This concept though had been in vogue for a long time in t he western societies, had never had a chance to be considered around here in our country, primarily because of our limitations regarding the affordability and partly due to unfamiliarity or exposure. The Kerala Fisheries Development Corporation had published a multi volume set of books called Panfish and in one of those there is a list of districts of Kerala printed against the number of ponds and the aerial coverage.
Anyone who had walked along the embankment along side a pond would know for sure the degree of negligence; these heritage water harvesting structures are in. More over what is also unknown to the non-specialist is the fact that these ponds are destined to be filled over by sediment and organic debris generated in situ as well as these days dumped by the town and city cleaning staff, if periodic revival is not undertaken.
In fact with little more scientific attitude and a desire to salvage these structures, we as a society can conserve the scarce water now and by 2050 with the playing out of the consequences of climate change. Well, again with a changing climate, I very much doubt about the continuation of the pattern of precipitation that we currently receive around here in our state.
In terms of science, all the ponds or at least the majority of ephemeral ponds are in some state of eutrophication. In lay citizens parlance it is the infestation of water surface with floating and fixed or rooted weeds closer to the shoreline in the limewaters. This is the plain consequence of rising levels of nutrients in the pond waters, i.e., due to accumulation of fertilizer residues as well as use of phosphate based soap for washing clothes or bathing. With the rise in nutrients, the waters get enriched in weeds turning the pond water unusable. As the life cycle of these weeds are short, they die early and for the decay put great pressure on the oxygen levels of the water. The oxygen depletion is directly proportional to the density of weeds and inversely proportional to the fish life etc. Scientifically speaking if this process continues, the pond will turn to a marsh and become useless in so far as original intent at the time building of the pond. These ponds are in an advanced state of eutrophication.
In the early stages, the water will acquire a greenish colour from a distance and will only look turbid if taken in the cupped palm of hand. The greenishness is the direct result of presence of algae and the first km in the road to eutrophication.
Any solutions?
In this background there is a not so old a technology practiced all over the world for us to consider and adopt. This type of clarification of water bodies is by aeration or if really flush with funds, by the process of oxygenation. This technology came into being with the improvements in the waste water collection, disposal and clarification before discharging into natural water bodies like ponds, streams and rivers.
Aeration is a scaled up version of the aerator in the home aquarium. A properly conceived and design of aerator if installed in the pond/s, the onward march to eutrophication can be decelerated and even reversed in the longer run. There are several internationally known outfits undertaking such tasks, with their outposts in the country.
All the waste water and waters in the ponds and lakes that have reached peak eutrophication can be easily rehabilitated with the aeration process. The chief mechanism among the various methods of aeration is erection of fountains in the ponds and lakes (E.g., Lake Geneva, where these fountains are visible right from the windows of airplanes landing in the runway of the Geneva airport).
Though city center fountains have been considered as symbol of affluence and wealth, when built and operated in the dirty waters of community/temple/public ponds and lakes, they serve the hidden purpose of aerating the waters and reviving the water health of such water bodies
When constructed in the pond or lake, it will be a wonderful attraction to passers by the visitors and leisure seekers during the summer months. Indeed it is a pity that even the GCDA had not yet implemented a set of dancing fountains to the upstream of Venduruthy or Thevara bridges away from the ship channel and harbors in the Kayal, and other places in the lagoons coastal land of Kerala.
Equally potentially ideal locations can be located in the Pookottu kayal, Sasthamkotta kayal or Vellayani Kayal. I might even go to the extent of building such fountains in the temple ponds of most crowded temples of the state like the Padmatheertham, Guruvayoor temple pond and so on.
Summary
1. The ponds whether they be in public/temple/private ownerships, all have one thing in common, i.e., they are all under a high degree of eutrophication.
2. Eutrophication is a consequence of abundant supply of nutrients from anthopogenic sources especially in respect of the ponds/lake either close to or in the middle of towns and cities. Eutrophication is a state of a pond, where by the dissolved oxygen is at its lowest level or even absent at least at the sediment water interface. As a consequence the diversity of fish life is reduced to minimum and leaving only small fish to survive and that too along the water-air interface.
3. One of the ways of getting rid of the problem of eutrophication is to build systematically placed water fountains. These play a role very much similar to the aeration pumps we buy and maintain in the home aquarium.
-------------------------
Monday, October 26, 2009
Commies correction document
The correction document approved has gestation time of two yr. In fact by that time there will be more trouble at home in the kitchen.The credibility issu e will grow wide and tall that the bas will start eroding faster than ever before. Interestingly the growth rate of economy is bond t accelerate the erosion.
Scientifically speaking there is the question of entropy here. It means that every system will have to degenerate and go to a degree of disorder. Even large groups of people follow this principle. So what is urgently needed is to go to the base of the population pyramid and enroll them to cadres so that the base is not lost. Or else it will go the way of other political parties, especially like the CPI.
Scientifically speaking there is the question of entropy here. It means that every system will have to degenerate and go to a degree of disorder. Even large groups of people follow this principle. So what is urgently needed is to go to the base of the population pyramid and enroll them to cadres so that the base is not lost. Or else it will go the way of other political parties, especially like the CPI.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
When Parents Are Too Toxic to TolerateE
When Parents Are Too Toxic to TolerateE
By RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN, M.D.
Published: October 19, 2009
You can divorce an abusive spouse. You can call it quits if your lover mistreats you. But what can you do if the source of your misery is your own parent?
Granted, no parent is perfect. And whining about parental failure, real or not, is practically an American pastime that keeps the therapeutic community dutifully employed.
But just as there are ordinary good-enough parents who mysteriously produce a difficult child, there are some decent people who have the misfortune of having a truly toxic parent.
A patient of mine, a lovely woman in her 60s whom I treated for depression, recently asked my advice about how to deal with her aging mother.
“She’s always been extremely abusive of me and my siblings,” she said, as I recall. “Once, on my birthday, she left me a message wishing that I get a disease. Can you believe it?”
Over the years, she had tried to have a relationship with her mother, but the encounters were always painful and upsetting; her mother remained harshly critical and demeaning.
Whether her mother was mentally ill, just plain mean or both was unclear, but there was no question that my patient had decided long ago that the only way to deal with her mother was to avoid her at all costs.
Now that her mother was approaching death, she was torn about yet another effort at reconciliation. “I feel I should try,” my patient told me, “but I know she’ll be awful to me.”
Should she visit and perhaps forgive her mother, or protect herself and live with a sense of guilt, however unjustified? Tough call, and clearly not mine to make.
But it did make me wonder about how therapists deal with adult patients who have toxic parents.
The topic gets little, if any, attention in standard textbooks or in the psychiatric literature, perhaps reflecting the common and mistaken notion that adults, unlike children and the elderly, are not vulnerable to such emotional abuse.
All too often, I think, therapists have a bias to salvage relationships, even those that might be harmful to a patient. Instead, it is crucial to be open-minded and to consider whether maintaining the relationship is really healthy and desirable.
Likewise, the assumption that parents are predisposed to love their children unconditionally and protect them from harm is not universally true. I remember one patient, a man in his mid-20s, who came to me for depression and rock-bottom self-esteem.
It didn’t take long to find out why. He had recently come out as gay to his devoutly religious parents, who responded by disowning him. It gets worse: at a subsequent family dinner, his father took him aside and told him it would have been better if he, rather than his younger brother, had died in a car accident several years earlier.
Though terribly hurt and angry, this young man still hoped he could get his parents to accept his sexuality and asked me to meet with the three of them.
The session did not go well. The parents insisted that his “lifestyle” was a grave sin, incompatible with their deeply held religious beliefs. When I tried to explain that the scientific consensus was that he had no more choice about his sexual orientation than the color of his eyes, they were unmoved. They simply could not accept him as he was.
I was stunned by their implacable hostility and convinced that they were a psychological menace to my patient. As such, I had to do something I have never contemplated before in treatment.
At the next session I suggested that for his psychological well-being he might consider, at least for now, forgoing a relationship with his parents.
I felt this was a drastic measure, akin to amputating a gangrenous limb to save a patient’s life. My patient could not escape all the negative feelings and thoughts about himself that he had internalized from his parents. But at least I could protect him from even more psychological harm.
Easier said than done. He accepted my suggestion with sad resignation, though he did make a few efforts to contact them over the next year. They never responded.
Of course, relationships are rarely all good or bad; even the most abusive parents can sometimes be loving, which is why severing a bond should be a tough, and rare, decision.
Dr. Judith Lewis Herman, a trauma expert who is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, said she tried to empower patients to take action to protect themselves without giving direct advice.
“Sometimes we consider a paradoxical intervention and say to a patient, ‘I really admire your loyalty to your parents — even at the expense of failing to protect yourself in any way from harm,’ ” Dr. Herman told me in an interview.
The hope is that patients come to see the psychological cost of a harmful relationship and act to change it.
Eventually, my patient made a full recovery from his depression and started dating, though his parents’ absence in his life was never far from his thoughts.
No wonder. Research on early attachment, both in humans and in nonhuman primates, shows that we are hard-wired for bonding — even to those who aren’t very nice to us.
We also know that although prolonged childhood trauma can be toxic to the brain, adults retain the ability later in life to rewire their brains by new experience, including therapy and psychotropic medication.
For example, prolonged stress can kill cells in the hippocampus, a brain area critical for memory. The good news is that adults are able to grow new neurons in this area in the course of normal development. Also, antidepressants encourage the development of new cells in the hippocampus.
It is no stretch, then, to say that having a toxic parent may be harmful to a child’s brain, let alone his feelings. But that damage need not be written in stone.
Of course, we cannot undo history with therapy. But we can help mend brains and minds by removing or reducing stress.
Sometimes, as drastic as it sounds, that means letting go of a toxic parent.
Dr. Richard A. Friedman is a professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College.NYT-10/22/09
By RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN, M.D.
Published: October 19, 2009
You can divorce an abusive spouse. You can call it quits if your lover mistreats you. But what can you do if the source of your misery is your own parent?
Granted, no parent is perfect. And whining about parental failure, real or not, is practically an American pastime that keeps the therapeutic community dutifully employed.
But just as there are ordinary good-enough parents who mysteriously produce a difficult child, there are some decent people who have the misfortune of having a truly toxic parent.
A patient of mine, a lovely woman in her 60s whom I treated for depression, recently asked my advice about how to deal with her aging mother.
“She’s always been extremely abusive of me and my siblings,” she said, as I recall. “Once, on my birthday, she left me a message wishing that I get a disease. Can you believe it?”
Over the years, she had tried to have a relationship with her mother, but the encounters were always painful and upsetting; her mother remained harshly critical and demeaning.
Whether her mother was mentally ill, just plain mean or both was unclear, but there was no question that my patient had decided long ago that the only way to deal with her mother was to avoid her at all costs.
Now that her mother was approaching death, she was torn about yet another effort at reconciliation. “I feel I should try,” my patient told me, “but I know she’ll be awful to me.”
Should she visit and perhaps forgive her mother, or protect herself and live with a sense of guilt, however unjustified? Tough call, and clearly not mine to make.
But it did make me wonder about how therapists deal with adult patients who have toxic parents.
The topic gets little, if any, attention in standard textbooks or in the psychiatric literature, perhaps reflecting the common and mistaken notion that adults, unlike children and the elderly, are not vulnerable to such emotional abuse.
All too often, I think, therapists have a bias to salvage relationships, even those that might be harmful to a patient. Instead, it is crucial to be open-minded and to consider whether maintaining the relationship is really healthy and desirable.
Likewise, the assumption that parents are predisposed to love their children unconditionally and protect them from harm is not universally true. I remember one patient, a man in his mid-20s, who came to me for depression and rock-bottom self-esteem.
It didn’t take long to find out why. He had recently come out as gay to his devoutly religious parents, who responded by disowning him. It gets worse: at a subsequent family dinner, his father took him aside and told him it would have been better if he, rather than his younger brother, had died in a car accident several years earlier.
Though terribly hurt and angry, this young man still hoped he could get his parents to accept his sexuality and asked me to meet with the three of them.
The session did not go well. The parents insisted that his “lifestyle” was a grave sin, incompatible with their deeply held religious beliefs. When I tried to explain that the scientific consensus was that he had no more choice about his sexual orientation than the color of his eyes, they were unmoved. They simply could not accept him as he was.
I was stunned by their implacable hostility and convinced that they were a psychological menace to my patient. As such, I had to do something I have never contemplated before in treatment.
At the next session I suggested that for his psychological well-being he might consider, at least for now, forgoing a relationship with his parents.
I felt this was a drastic measure, akin to amputating a gangrenous limb to save a patient’s life. My patient could not escape all the negative feelings and thoughts about himself that he had internalized from his parents. But at least I could protect him from even more psychological harm.
Easier said than done. He accepted my suggestion with sad resignation, though he did make a few efforts to contact them over the next year. They never responded.
Of course, relationships are rarely all good or bad; even the most abusive parents can sometimes be loving, which is why severing a bond should be a tough, and rare, decision.
Dr. Judith Lewis Herman, a trauma expert who is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, said she tried to empower patients to take action to protect themselves without giving direct advice.
“Sometimes we consider a paradoxical intervention and say to a patient, ‘I really admire your loyalty to your parents — even at the expense of failing to protect yourself in any way from harm,’ ” Dr. Herman told me in an interview.
The hope is that patients come to see the psychological cost of a harmful relationship and act to change it.
Eventually, my patient made a full recovery from his depression and started dating, though his parents’ absence in his life was never far from his thoughts.
No wonder. Research on early attachment, both in humans and in nonhuman primates, shows that we are hard-wired for bonding — even to those who aren’t very nice to us.
We also know that although prolonged childhood trauma can be toxic to the brain, adults retain the ability later in life to rewire their brains by new experience, including therapy and psychotropic medication.
For example, prolonged stress can kill cells in the hippocampus, a brain area critical for memory. The good news is that adults are able to grow new neurons in this area in the course of normal development. Also, antidepressants encourage the development of new cells in the hippocampus.
It is no stretch, then, to say that having a toxic parent may be harmful to a child’s brain, let alone his feelings. But that damage need not be written in stone.
Of course, we cannot undo history with therapy. But we can help mend brains and minds by removing or reducing stress.
Sometimes, as drastic as it sounds, that means letting go of a toxic parent.
Dr. Richard A. Friedman is a professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College.NYT-10/22/09
Sweden Looks to Diet to Cut Global Warming
Sweden Looks to Diet to Cut Global Warming
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: October 22, 2009
STOCKHOLM — Shopping for oatmeal, Helena Bergstrom, 37, admitted that she was flummoxed by the label on the blue box reading, “Climate declared: .87 kg CO2 per kg of roduct.”
This is the ninth in a series of articles about stopgap measures that could limit global warming. Future articles will address industry and cars.
“Right now, I don’t know what this means,” said Ms. Bergstrom, a pharmaceutical company employee.
But if a new experiment here succeeds, she and millions of other Swedes will soon find out. New labels listing thecarbon dioxide emissions associated with the production of foods, from whole wheat pasta to fast food burgers, are appearing on some grocery items and restaurant menus around the country.
People who live to eat might dismiss this as silly. But changing one’s diet can be as effective in reducing emissions of climate-changing gases as changing the car one drives or doing away with the clothes dryer, scientific experts say.
“We’re the first to do it, and it’s a new way of thinking for us,” said Ulf Bohman, head of the Nutrition Department at the Swedish National Food Administration, which was given the task last year of creating new food guidelinesgiving equal weight to climate and health. “We’re used to thinking about safety and nutrition as one thing and environmental as another.”
Some of the proposed new dietary guidelines, released over the summer, may seem startling to the uninitiated. They recommend that Swedes favor carrots over cucumbers and tomatoes, for example. (Unlike carrots, the latter two must be grown in heated greenhouses here, consuming energy.)
They are not counseled to eat more fish, despite the health benefits, because Europe’s stocks are depleted.
And somewhat less surprisingly, they are advised to substitute beans or chicken for red meat, in view of the heavy greenhouse gas emissions associated with raising cattle.
“For consumers, it’s hard,” Mr. Bohman acknowledged. “You are getting environmental advice that you have to coordinate with, ‘How can I eat healthier?’ ”
Many Swedish diners say it is just too much to ask. “I wish I could say that the information has made me change what I eat, but it hasn’t,” said Richard Lalander, 27, who was eating a Max hamburger (1.7 kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions) in the shadow of a menu board revealing that a chicken sandwich (0.4 kilograms) would have been better for the planet.
Yet if the new food guidelines were religiously heeded, some experts say, Sweden could cut its emissions from food production by 20 to 50 percent. An estimated 25 percent of the emissions produced by people in industrialized nations can be traced to the food they eat, according to recent research here. And foods vary enormously in the emissions released in their production.
While today’s American or European shoppers may be well versed in checking for nutrients, calories or fat content, they often have little idea of whether eating tomatoes, chicken or rice is good or bad for the climate.
Complicating matters, the emissions impact of, say, a carrot, can vary by a factor of 10, depending how and where it is grown.
Earlier studies of food emissions focused on the high environmental costs of transporting food and raising cattle. But more nuanced research shows that the emissions depend on many factors, including the type of soil used to grow the food and whether a dairy farmer uses local rapeseed or imported soy for cattle feed.
Business groups, farming cooperatives and organic labeling programs as well as the government have gamely come up with coordinated ways to identify food choices.
Max, Sweden’s largest homegrown chain of burger restaurants, now puts emissions calculations next to each item on its menu boards. Lantmannen, Sweden’s largest farming group, has begun placing precise labels on some categories of foods in grocery stores, including chicken, oatmeal, barley and pasta.
Consumers who pay attention may learn that emissions generated by growing the nation’s most popular grain, rice, are two to three times those of little-used barley, for example.
Some producers argue that the new programs are overly complex and threaten profits. The dietary recommendations, which are being circulated for comment not just in Sweden but across the European Union, have been attacked by the Continent’s meat industry, Norwegian salmon farmers and Malaysian palm oil growers, to name a few.
“This is trial and error; we’re still trying to see what works,” Mr. Bohman said.
Next year, KRAV, Scandinavia’s main organic certification program, will start requiring farmers to convert to low-emissions techniques if they want to display its coveted seal on products, meaning that most greenhouse tomatoes can no longer be called organic.
Those standards have stirred some protests. “There are farmers who are happy and farmers who say they are being ruined,” said Johan Cejie, manager of climate issues for KRAV.
For example, he said, farmers with high concentrations of peat soil on their property may no longer be able to grow carrots, since plowing peat releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide; to get the organic label, they may have to switch to feed crops that require no plowing.
Next year KRAV will require hothouses to use biofuels for heating. Dairy farms will have to obtain at least 70 percent of the food for their herds locally; many previously imported cheap soy from Brazil, generating transport emissions and damaging the rain forest as trees were cleared to make way for farmland.
The Swedish effort grew out of a 2005 study by Sweden’s national environmental agency on how personal consumption generates emissions. Researchers found that 25 percent of national per capita emissions — two metric tons per year — was attributable to eating.
The government realized that encouraging a diet that tilted more toward chicken or vegetables and educating farmers on lowering emissions generally could have an enormous impact.
Sweden has been a world leader in finding new ways to reduce emissions. It has vowed to eliminate the use of fossil fuel for electricity by 2020 and cars that run on gasoline by 2030.
To arrive at numbers for their company’s first carbon dioxide labels, scientists at Lantmannen analyzed life cycles of 20 products. These take into account emissions generated by fertilizer, fuel for harvesting machinery, packaging and transport.
They decided to examine one representative product in each category — say, pasta — rather than performing analyses for fusilli versus penne, or one brand versus another. “Every climate declaration is hugely time-intensive,” said Claes Johansson, Lantmannen’s director of sustainability.
A new generation of Swedish business leaders is stepping up to the climate challenge. Richard Bergfors, president of Max, his family’s burger chain, voluntarily hired a consultant to calculate its carbon footprint; 75 percent was created by its meat.
“We decided to be honest and put it all out there and say we’ll do everything we can to reduce,” said Mr. Bergfors, 40. In addition to putting emissions data on the menu, Max eliminated boxes from its children’s meals, installed low-energy LED lights and pays for wind-generated electricity.
Since the emissions counts started appearing on the menu, sales of climate-friendly items have risen 20 percent. Still, plenty of people head to a burger restaurant lusting only for a burger.
Kristian Eriksson, 26, an information technology specialist, looked embarrassed when asked about the burger he was eating at an outdoor table.
“You feel guilty picking red meat,” he said.
(Courtesy New York Times)
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
Published: October 22, 2009
STOCKHOLM — Shopping for oatmeal, Helena Bergstrom, 37, admitted that she was flummoxed by the label on the blue box reading, “Climate declared: .87 kg CO2 per kg of roduct.”
This is the ninth in a series of articles about stopgap measures that could limit global warming. Future articles will address industry and cars.
“Right now, I don’t know what this means,” said Ms. Bergstrom, a pharmaceutical company employee.
But if a new experiment here succeeds, she and millions of other Swedes will soon find out. New labels listing thecarbon dioxide emissions associated with the production of foods, from whole wheat pasta to fast food burgers, are appearing on some grocery items and restaurant menus around the country.
People who live to eat might dismiss this as silly. But changing one’s diet can be as effective in reducing emissions of climate-changing gases as changing the car one drives or doing away with the clothes dryer, scientific experts say.
“We’re the first to do it, and it’s a new way of thinking for us,” said Ulf Bohman, head of the Nutrition Department at the Swedish National Food Administration, which was given the task last year of creating new food guidelinesgiving equal weight to climate and health. “We’re used to thinking about safety and nutrition as one thing and environmental as another.”
Some of the proposed new dietary guidelines, released over the summer, may seem startling to the uninitiated. They recommend that Swedes favor carrots over cucumbers and tomatoes, for example. (Unlike carrots, the latter two must be grown in heated greenhouses here, consuming energy.)
They are not counseled to eat more fish, despite the health benefits, because Europe’s stocks are depleted.
And somewhat less surprisingly, they are advised to substitute beans or chicken for red meat, in view of the heavy greenhouse gas emissions associated with raising cattle.
“For consumers, it’s hard,” Mr. Bohman acknowledged. “You are getting environmental advice that you have to coordinate with, ‘How can I eat healthier?’ ”
Many Swedish diners say it is just too much to ask. “I wish I could say that the information has made me change what I eat, but it hasn’t,” said Richard Lalander, 27, who was eating a Max hamburger (1.7 kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions) in the shadow of a menu board revealing that a chicken sandwich (0.4 kilograms) would have been better for the planet.
Yet if the new food guidelines were religiously heeded, some experts say, Sweden could cut its emissions from food production by 20 to 50 percent. An estimated 25 percent of the emissions produced by people in industrialized nations can be traced to the food they eat, according to recent research here. And foods vary enormously in the emissions released in their production.
While today’s American or European shoppers may be well versed in checking for nutrients, calories or fat content, they often have little idea of whether eating tomatoes, chicken or rice is good or bad for the climate.
Complicating matters, the emissions impact of, say, a carrot, can vary by a factor of 10, depending how and where it is grown.
Earlier studies of food emissions focused on the high environmental costs of transporting food and raising cattle. But more nuanced research shows that the emissions depend on many factors, including the type of soil used to grow the food and whether a dairy farmer uses local rapeseed or imported soy for cattle feed.
Business groups, farming cooperatives and organic labeling programs as well as the government have gamely come up with coordinated ways to identify food choices.
Max, Sweden’s largest homegrown chain of burger restaurants, now puts emissions calculations next to each item on its menu boards. Lantmannen, Sweden’s largest farming group, has begun placing precise labels on some categories of foods in grocery stores, including chicken, oatmeal, barley and pasta.
Consumers who pay attention may learn that emissions generated by growing the nation’s most popular grain, rice, are two to three times those of little-used barley, for example.
Some producers argue that the new programs are overly complex and threaten profits. The dietary recommendations, which are being circulated for comment not just in Sweden but across the European Union, have been attacked by the Continent’s meat industry, Norwegian salmon farmers and Malaysian palm oil growers, to name a few.
“This is trial and error; we’re still trying to see what works,” Mr. Bohman said.
Next year, KRAV, Scandinavia’s main organic certification program, will start requiring farmers to convert to low-emissions techniques if they want to display its coveted seal on products, meaning that most greenhouse tomatoes can no longer be called organic.
Those standards have stirred some protests. “There are farmers who are happy and farmers who say they are being ruined,” said Johan Cejie, manager of climate issues for KRAV.
For example, he said, farmers with high concentrations of peat soil on their property may no longer be able to grow carrots, since plowing peat releases huge amounts of carbon dioxide; to get the organic label, they may have to switch to feed crops that require no plowing.
Next year KRAV will require hothouses to use biofuels for heating. Dairy farms will have to obtain at least 70 percent of the food for their herds locally; many previously imported cheap soy from Brazil, generating transport emissions and damaging the rain forest as trees were cleared to make way for farmland.
The Swedish effort grew out of a 2005 study by Sweden’s national environmental agency on how personal consumption generates emissions. Researchers found that 25 percent of national per capita emissions — two metric tons per year — was attributable to eating.
The government realized that encouraging a diet that tilted more toward chicken or vegetables and educating farmers on lowering emissions generally could have an enormous impact.
Sweden has been a world leader in finding new ways to reduce emissions. It has vowed to eliminate the use of fossil fuel for electricity by 2020 and cars that run on gasoline by 2030.
To arrive at numbers for their company’s first carbon dioxide labels, scientists at Lantmannen analyzed life cycles of 20 products. These take into account emissions generated by fertilizer, fuel for harvesting machinery, packaging and transport.
They decided to examine one representative product in each category — say, pasta — rather than performing analyses for fusilli versus penne, or one brand versus another. “Every climate declaration is hugely time-intensive,” said Claes Johansson, Lantmannen’s director of sustainability.
A new generation of Swedish business leaders is stepping up to the climate challenge. Richard Bergfors, president of Max, his family’s burger chain, voluntarily hired a consultant to calculate its carbon footprint; 75 percent was created by its meat.
“We decided to be honest and put it all out there and say we’ll do everything we can to reduce,” said Mr. Bergfors, 40. In addition to putting emissions data on the menu, Max eliminated boxes from its children’s meals, installed low-energy LED lights and pays for wind-generated electricity.
Since the emissions counts started appearing on the menu, sales of climate-friendly items have risen 20 percent. Still, plenty of people head to a burger restaurant lusting only for a burger.
Kristian Eriksson, 26, an information technology specialist, looked embarrassed when asked about the burger he was eating at an outdoor table.
“You feel guilty picking red meat,” he said.
(Courtesy New York Times)
Geoengineering to mitigate climate change
Many scientists now support serious research into “geoengineering,” deliberate actions taken to slow or reverse global warming.
Of the various geoengi neering proposals, the ones that shade the earth from the sun could bring about the most immediate effects. But all of them have drawbacks and side effects that probably cannot be anticipated.
Pumping sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, as volcanoes do, is the most well established way to block the sun. Other proposals call for brightening clouds over the oceans by lofting sea salt into the atmosphere and building a sunscreen in space.
Enter "marine cloud brightening," a geoengineering scheme that would increase cloud reflectivity over the ocean by spraying them with an ultrafine saltwater mist from ships. The clouds, containing more particles, would cast enough sunlight back into space to at least partially offset the warming effects of all that CO2 from burning fossil fuels.
(Courtesy:Scientific American-Compiled by thrivikramji@gmail.com)
Of the various geoengi neering proposals, the ones that shade the earth from the sun could bring about the most immediate effects. But all of them have drawbacks and side effects that probably cannot be anticipated.
Pumping sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, as volcanoes do, is the most well established way to block the sun. Other proposals call for brightening clouds over the oceans by lofting sea salt into the atmosphere and building a sunscreen in space.
Enter "marine cloud brightening," a geoengineering scheme that would increase cloud reflectivity over the ocean by spraying them with an ultrafine saltwater mist from ships. The clouds, containing more particles, would cast enough sunlight back into space to at least partially offset the warming effects of all that CO2 from burning fossil fuels.
(Courtesy:Scientific American-Compiled by thrivikramji@gmail.com)
THE ARUVIKKARA RESERVOIR SAND MINING: POTENTIAL PUBLIC HEALTH HARMS
THE ARUVIKKARA RESERVOIR SAND MINING: POTENTIAL PUBLIC HEALTH HARMS
thrivikramji@gmail.com
1. The construction industry is at its lowest ebb, due to scarcity of fine aggregate or sand in the industry parlance. As a responsive government, the problem needs to be resolved to help the construction sector which is an area warranting great stimulus to get out of the recession due to global meltdown in Kerala.
So a wonderful idea has come up from the Aruvikkara Panchayath administration to remove the sediment in the reservoir, wash it clean of mud (particle <62.5 microns) and then sell at a reasonable profit so that employment and construction are saved in one shot. Obviously a very glamorous proposal
Unfortunately, the lay mind has seen only one side of the issue. At times of contingencies, this is the problem with the human mind. But for a trained mind like me, I see a variety of human issues arising out of the desilting of the reservoir at Aruvikkara, which is the only drinking water source for the greater Trivandrum area.
2. The questions begging answers are many. Say the question of disposal of contaminated water used for washing and removal of mud (silt+clay), which constitutes the lions share of (at least 75% or more) the reservoir sediment. How do we keep this water away from the water source we rely on for daily needs? Where would the remainder of sediment i.e., mud will go? Now, what about the re-released chemical ions (some of which are deleterious to human health and organic life in the waters)? Will they join the drinking water source in the reservoir or will be transported away by some mechanical means.
Though the boring was carried down to 5 or 6 meters in the sand bars in the channel, would anybody think of going down to such depths below the reservoir/water levels at any point in time using conventional methods and not suction dredging. Why in the world, after all, humans are employed to remove the sediment? The longer it takes for removal of sediment, the greater are the chances and risks of contamination of the drinking water of the reservoir.
3. The 80,000 m3 of sediment estimated tentatively cover all the size fractions or only the sand in the sediment? If it is the total accumulated stuff then 20-30% will be the sand component. Or sand fraction will be like 16,000 m3 (2666 tipper truck loads) to 24,000 m3 (4000 tipper truck loads) only.
Any process of desiltation should be using suction dredges which will cause only the least or minimum disturbance. Finally, is the sand reserve the only consideration among all others, when the waters are used for drinking water supply? Unless all these questions are answered scientifically, the Panchayat should be banned and prohibited from the desilting of the reservoir.
Finally has anybody looked into the worth gem-chrysoberyl (or Vaiduriyam) accumulated along with the sediment? Who will have the ultimate right on the Vaiduriyam.
Bit of History
The Wellingdon Water Works, the fore runner of the Trivandrum Water Supply System was operational like in the 1930”s. At the present Aruvikkara dam site, it was only a weir that had pooled the water for pumping to the processing plants and water supply in the city. Then came second five year plan, when a larger diameter cast iron pipe line was laid to augment the water supply to the town. Then, height of the weir was raised and finally shutters were built to regulate the through flow of the river to ensure drinking water for the city dwellers.
Sedimentation in the reservoir
Sediment accumulation in the reservoir is as much a reality as the reservoirs and dams. The difference is only in the degree. All along sediment has been acceleratedly accumulating in the reservoir, since the days of Wellindon Water Works. Enhanced sedimentation was primarily due to the location of the reservoir in the habited or populated area, with a cultivated catchment in the midland of Kerala, where primary pursuit of the people (landed and landless) were to cultivate Tapioca and other seasonal or annual crops.- the right ingredients for sediment loss from the prepared land and deposition in the reservoir pool.
Farming trends in the catchment.
Over the decades, the catchment of the Aruvikkara reservoir in the Karamana R. basin went through intense cultivation of rubber and tea and now with pineapple, seasonal vegetables etc. Undoubtedly, all these farms do make use of the biocides (some quite harmful) as well as chemical fertilizers. And the geochemistry has it that a large portion of it will join the waters as dissolved ions and finally to the reservoir, and in the reservoir sediment. Another portion however will escape the trap in the reservoir to reach the sea.
. . .
Dissolved ions in water and the problems
To the lay citizens what accumulates in the reservoir is only sediment which is more silt and clay (<62.5 micron in size) and very less sand (>62.5 micron) and perhaps only under 20-30% of all the sediment in the reservoir. In contrast, along with sediment, also transferred to the reservoir are several naturally supplied dissolved ions and human introduced chemical ions which are trapped and bound along with the fine sediment.
Yet another un-addressed aspect is the amplification of concentrations of the chemical ions in water, in the pore-water (i.e., water held in the inter-granular spaces of sediment particles) and finally in the finer sediment particles like silt and clay. The Unforeseen consequence is that when the sediment is disturbed, removed, washed and cleaned for meeting the need for sand or fine aggregate, the finer particle bound chemical ions are released and will join the waters, that we ultimately drink as well as it might mix with the through flow harming the waters down stream.
Summary
1. Thus the hidden trap in the proposition of the Aruvikkara Panchayat, is that it will release harming chemical ions to the drinking waters supplied in the city of Trivandrum, as well as in the waters that flow downstream of the dam. .
2. Scientific estimates of the potential sand reserve have not been made yet. Only the size of the reservoir fill is known and stands at 80,000 m3.
3. Generally only 20 to 30% of the fill is fine aggregate grade sediment. So until such estimates are made hold back the implementation. My own back of the envelope estimates show only 16,000-24,000 m3 of sand.
4. Unless plans for disposal of washed waste are designed wisely, do not jump into the process with 200 men and women with shovels and baskets - a method never to be implemented in a drinking water reservoir.
5. We need to worry about the type and nature of chemical ions trapped and bound on the fine sediment particles and the degree of harm they can do to people and the society. So make sure of the inert/safe nature of these ions before jumping into manual removal of reservoir sediment.
6. Firstly identify the locations for storage of the mud-separate coming off the washing process of reservoir sediment to obtain the salable sand. In other words 70 to 80 percent of 80,000 m3 needs to be disposed off with out harming the area and people and farmland for several decades to come.
7. Has the period for the manual removal of reservoir sediment been estimated and if so what is the duration? If it is carried out in summer where would one find water in large quantities for washing the sediment? Lastly, has any body thought of the potential of Vaiduriyam in the sediment and its worth?
-------------------------------------------
thrivikramji@gmail.com
1. The construction industry is at its lowest ebb, due to scarcity of fine aggregate or sand in the industry parlance. As a responsive government, the problem needs to be resolved to help the construction sector which is an area warranting great stimulus to get out of the recession due to global meltdown in Kerala.
So a wonderful idea has come up from the Aruvikkara Panchayath administration to remove the sediment in the reservoir, wash it clean of mud (particle <62.5 microns) and then sell at a reasonable profit so that employment and construction are saved in one shot. Obviously a very glamorous proposal
Unfortunately, the lay mind has seen only one side of the issue. At times of contingencies, this is the problem with the human mind. But for a trained mind like me, I see a variety of human issues arising out of the desilting of the reservoir at Aruvikkara, which is the only drinking water source for the greater Trivandrum area.
2. The questions begging answers are many. Say the question of disposal of contaminated water used for washing and removal of mud (silt+clay), which constitutes the lions share of (at least 75% or more) the reservoir sediment. How do we keep this water away from the water source we rely on for daily needs? Where would the remainder of sediment i.e., mud will go? Now, what about the re-released chemical ions (some of which are deleterious to human health and organic life in the waters)? Will they join the drinking water source in the reservoir or will be transported away by some mechanical means.
Though the boring was carried down to 5 or 6 meters in the sand bars in the channel, would anybody think of going down to such depths below the reservoir/water levels at any point in time using conventional methods and not suction dredging. Why in the world, after all, humans are employed to remove the sediment? The longer it takes for removal of sediment, the greater are the chances and risks of contamination of the drinking water of the reservoir.
3. The 80,000 m3 of sediment estimated tentatively cover all the size fractions or only the sand in the sediment? If it is the total accumulated stuff then 20-30% will be the sand component. Or sand fraction will be like 16,000 m3 (2666 tipper truck loads) to 24,000 m3 (4000 tipper truck loads) only.
Any process of desiltation should be using suction dredges which will cause only the least or minimum disturbance. Finally, is the sand reserve the only consideration among all others, when the waters are used for drinking water supply? Unless all these questions are answered scientifically, the Panchayat should be banned and prohibited from the desilting of the reservoir.
Finally has anybody looked into the worth gem-chrysoberyl (or Vaiduriyam) accumulated along with the sediment? Who will have the ultimate right on the Vaiduriyam.
Bit of History
The Wellingdon Water Works, the fore runner of the Trivandrum Water Supply System was operational like in the 1930”s. At the present Aruvikkara dam site, it was only a weir that had pooled the water for pumping to the processing plants and water supply in the city. Then came second five year plan, when a larger diameter cast iron pipe line was laid to augment the water supply to the town. Then, height of the weir was raised and finally shutters were built to regulate the through flow of the river to ensure drinking water for the city dwellers.
Sedimentation in the reservoir
Sediment accumulation in the reservoir is as much a reality as the reservoirs and dams. The difference is only in the degree. All along sediment has been acceleratedly accumulating in the reservoir, since the days of Wellindon Water Works. Enhanced sedimentation was primarily due to the location of the reservoir in the habited or populated area, with a cultivated catchment in the midland of Kerala, where primary pursuit of the people (landed and landless) were to cultivate Tapioca and other seasonal or annual crops.- the right ingredients for sediment loss from the prepared land and deposition in the reservoir pool.
Farming trends in the catchment.
Over the decades, the catchment of the Aruvikkara reservoir in the Karamana R. basin went through intense cultivation of rubber and tea and now with pineapple, seasonal vegetables etc. Undoubtedly, all these farms do make use of the biocides (some quite harmful) as well as chemical fertilizers. And the geochemistry has it that a large portion of it will join the waters as dissolved ions and finally to the reservoir, and in the reservoir sediment. Another portion however will escape the trap in the reservoir to reach the sea.
. . .
Dissolved ions in water and the problems
To the lay citizens what accumulates in the reservoir is only sediment which is more silt and clay (<62.5 micron in size) and very less sand (>62.5 micron) and perhaps only under 20-30% of all the sediment in the reservoir. In contrast, along with sediment, also transferred to the reservoir are several naturally supplied dissolved ions and human introduced chemical ions which are trapped and bound along with the fine sediment.
Yet another un-addressed aspect is the amplification of concentrations of the chemical ions in water, in the pore-water (i.e., water held in the inter-granular spaces of sediment particles) and finally in the finer sediment particles like silt and clay. The Unforeseen consequence is that when the sediment is disturbed, removed, washed and cleaned for meeting the need for sand or fine aggregate, the finer particle bound chemical ions are released and will join the waters, that we ultimately drink as well as it might mix with the through flow harming the waters down stream.
Summary
1. Thus the hidden trap in the proposition of the Aruvikkara Panchayat, is that it will release harming chemical ions to the drinking waters supplied in the city of Trivandrum, as well as in the waters that flow downstream of the dam. .
2. Scientific estimates of the potential sand reserve have not been made yet. Only the size of the reservoir fill is known and stands at 80,000 m3.
3. Generally only 20 to 30% of the fill is fine aggregate grade sediment. So until such estimates are made hold back the implementation. My own back of the envelope estimates show only 16,000-24,000 m3 of sand.
4. Unless plans for disposal of washed waste are designed wisely, do not jump into the process with 200 men and women with shovels and baskets - a method never to be implemented in a drinking water reservoir.
5. We need to worry about the type and nature of chemical ions trapped and bound on the fine sediment particles and the degree of harm they can do to people and the society. So make sure of the inert/safe nature of these ions before jumping into manual removal of reservoir sediment.
6. Firstly identify the locations for storage of the mud-separate coming off the washing process of reservoir sediment to obtain the salable sand. In other words 70 to 80 percent of 80,000 m3 needs to be disposed off with out harming the area and people and farmland for several decades to come.
7. Has the period for the manual removal of reservoir sediment been estimated and if so what is the duration? If it is carried out in summer where would one find water in large quantities for washing the sediment? Lastly, has any body thought of the potential of Vaiduriyam in the sediment and its worth?
-------------------------------------------
MINING OF SEA BED SAND: ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW.
MINING OF SEA BED SAND: ANOTHER POINT OF VIEW.
Introduction
The ingenuity of man always had motivated him to explore the nature to locate usable commodities for the sustenance of humanity and hence of civilization. Recent idea of gathering construction grade fine aggregate or sand from the seabed in the continental shelf is one of those. It is not at all a new idea any way. We all now know that several island nations as well as others have been gathering sand for application in the concrete or cement mortar. In this article I will examine briefly the feasibility of the proposition from a geological stand point – most often ignored point. In a very short time, the public mindset in Kerala got sharply divided into one of the two camps, viz., the protagonists and the antagonists.
Any construction using cement concrete and steel calls in what are called in industry circles, as coarse and fine aggregates. As far as the former is concerned, there is no great confusion as to the types or sources, by the sheer knowledge that natural processes of weathering of rocks and erosion and transport do not produce it. Thus, obvious and uncontroversial recourse had been and is from a rock-crushing-sizing plant. Contrary to this, the fine aggregate (= commercially designated as sand) used to be sourced and gathered from the modern and ancient river channels, shallow sea bed in the inner shelf as well as provinces away from the riverine or shelf sources, from the crusher tailings (after screening). With out a geo-scientific knowledge of origin of sea sand, its mining scenario may run into sentiment and emotion ridden realms and unrealities.
Geological background
Truly, quantities of sand sized quartz (a primary constituent of commonest surface rocks like gneisses and granite with a share of only 30% by volume and a mineral of chemical and physical neutrality to cement) is under transport in the stream channels, from the erosion rocks and soils (disaggregated by chemical weathering). Further, this sand has many temporary storages like in the channels as sand bars of various types, in the flood plains, in the abandoned channels etc.
Unfortunately not only that we exhausted the all of stream channel sand as result of the construction boom in the last decades, but ecologically and physically killed all the rivers themselves for ever (in human terms), by the continuing the sanction to gather sand to the local bodies under the three tier panchayats. River sources its sand immediately from the soil only, and majority of us do not know that a meter of soil needs at least a million years to form, and in an in situ soil, sand sized quartz is just about 20 to 30 percent. Hence the rate of sand production is an extremely slow process.
In addition, sand that reaches the sea bed is again worked by the wave and tide generated currents and gradually transported beach ward to be deposited there sometimes permanently. Like in many beaches of Kerala, sand that accumulated in the beach face is eroded and shifted massively to the inshore to be stored in the in shore as longshore submarine bars, and to be slowly re-deposited in the beach any way.
Due to the large scale fluctuations of sea level, in the Pleistocene, the shorelines of the continents including that of India stood several 10s meters ( for India 100 m.) below the present shoreline, forcing the rivers draining the continents to traverse through longer courses (along the modern continental shelf) and depositing the sand there. This scenario is unfortunately not in the knowledge base of lay citizens or the non-specialists - hence, all the hue and cry fouling the air.
Data - State of the art
. The most productive shelf region of Kerala, is rather vast and stands at 22400 Km2 (length 560 Km and width of shelf ~ 40Km) or 20,000 Km2 - to strike conservative figure. As a marine geologist, I say that there exists a considerably large quantum of reliable data with the NIO, MW of GSI and some others, indicating the earlier lower stands of sea level and hence of the past shoreline elevations. Mapping of the sandy sediment in the seabed can be taken up by shallow geophysical and geological work, in order to isolate potential areas for commercial dredging. The dredged can be primarily washed in seawater, and later on further washed in fresh water and not exactly drinking standard water. More over the special cement that would accommodate mildly salty sand will go along way in reducing the water use by this process.
We often ignore, vastness of the resources of the continental shelf - living and non-living and renewable to varying degrees (including sea bed sediment of a decameter or two in depth), which is so large in proportion to the land based resources, due to the very sheer size of the sea bed. We have been gathering large quantities of the living resources of the oceanic realm to complement our (sea) food needs. Large hue and cry is expressly unheard of about this issue, as it supports and contributes to the gastronomic needs and also to the GDP. On top of this we also believe in the ability of the species to regenerate.
I might state that the sandy-mud or the gravelly-sandy-mud (containing black minerals in certain parts off Kerala, and certain other continents) covering sea bed – a non-living resource in the conventional sense- is only forming at very low rate day, but were supplied to the seabed by the west flowing rivers - large and small draining the continental-scape – in the Quaternary or say during the last 1.8 million yr. BP. Therefore it is wise to be able to keep an inventory of all the viable sources of the raw materials useful to mankind. This is only commonsensical any way. The question of express exploitation comes only as the close second.
Numbers game
With the geological background of the sea bed, rate of soil formation and erosion and transport process, weathering of rocks, rock composition and hence nature of sediment cover, some volume estimates essential to fully appreciate the science of sea sand mining. Given a land area of 38863 Km2 for Kerala, it is possible to estimate the size of the sand content (in the sea bed sediment), for a source slab of uniform thickness of 1.0 m., and quartz sand content of 30% and Sp.Gr. of 2.65. By weathering and erosion, this slab ought to yield quartz laden sediment headed to the sea to the west.
Estimated sand content of this slab is (30.89 e12 Tons) 30 Trillion Tons By the way the same slab also would have an ilmenite (Sp.Gr. of 4.2 and abundance of 1.0%) content of (1.632 e12) or say 1.5 Trillion tons.
These estimates consider the land-river-sea system as a closed system (which is more or less true), uniform character for the basement rocks and expressly no rate of erosion. If we allow the entire Pleistocene to be the period of erosion, it is well over 1.8 Million years – more than what is essential for the formation of 1.0 M of soil. This exercise is carried out only to broaden the realities of the sand content of the sea bed.
Certainly post depositional sediment transport by currents generated by waves and tides would have further redistributed the sand with on the sea bed at preferred sites and forms to be discovered by mapping by appropriate tools available to marine geoscientists to day.
Unfortunately, some data or facts (and not the science per se) of geo-science are very simple to be appreciated by the non-specialist and the layman alike. Most of the time such people, become highly opinionated just for the fun of being one (?). In the case of sea sand also we face such a dilemma. Obviously, these are truly proven to be true by sea bed mapping and exploration, and then one can finally provide an alternate source for the sand starved construction industry.
--------
Introduction
The ingenuity of man always had motivated him to explore the nature to locate usable commodities for the sustenance of humanity and hence of civilization. Recent idea of gathering construction grade fine aggregate or sand from the seabed in the continental shelf is one of those. It is not at all a new idea any way. We all now know that several island nations as well as others have been gathering sand for application in the concrete or cement mortar. In this article I will examine briefly the feasibility of the proposition from a geological stand point – most often ignored point. In a very short time, the public mindset in Kerala got sharply divided into one of the two camps, viz., the protagonists and the antagonists.
Any construction using cement concrete and steel calls in what are called in industry circles, as coarse and fine aggregates. As far as the former is concerned, there is no great confusion as to the types or sources, by the sheer knowledge that natural processes of weathering of rocks and erosion and transport do not produce it. Thus, obvious and uncontroversial recourse had been and is from a rock-crushing-sizing plant. Contrary to this, the fine aggregate (= commercially designated as sand) used to be sourced and gathered from the modern and ancient river channels, shallow sea bed in the inner shelf as well as provinces away from the riverine or shelf sources, from the crusher tailings (after screening). With out a geo-scientific knowledge of origin of sea sand, its mining scenario may run into sentiment and emotion ridden realms and unrealities.
Geological background
Truly, quantities of sand sized quartz (a primary constituent of commonest surface rocks like gneisses and granite with a share of only 30% by volume and a mineral of chemical and physical neutrality to cement) is under transport in the stream channels, from the erosion rocks and soils (disaggregated by chemical weathering). Further, this sand has many temporary storages like in the channels as sand bars of various types, in the flood plains, in the abandoned channels etc.
Unfortunately not only that we exhausted the all of stream channel sand as result of the construction boom in the last decades, but ecologically and physically killed all the rivers themselves for ever (in human terms), by the continuing the sanction to gather sand to the local bodies under the three tier panchayats. River sources its sand immediately from the soil only, and majority of us do not know that a meter of soil needs at least a million years to form, and in an in situ soil, sand sized quartz is just about 20 to 30 percent. Hence the rate of sand production is an extremely slow process.
In addition, sand that reaches the sea bed is again worked by the wave and tide generated currents and gradually transported beach ward to be deposited there sometimes permanently. Like in many beaches of Kerala, sand that accumulated in the beach face is eroded and shifted massively to the inshore to be stored in the in shore as longshore submarine bars, and to be slowly re-deposited in the beach any way.
Due to the large scale fluctuations of sea level, in the Pleistocene, the shorelines of the continents including that of India stood several 10s meters ( for India 100 m.) below the present shoreline, forcing the rivers draining the continents to traverse through longer courses (along the modern continental shelf) and depositing the sand there. This scenario is unfortunately not in the knowledge base of lay citizens or the non-specialists - hence, all the hue and cry fouling the air.
Data - State of the art
. The most productive shelf region of Kerala, is rather vast and stands at 22400 Km2 (length 560 Km and width of shelf ~ 40Km) or 20,000 Km2 - to strike conservative figure. As a marine geologist, I say that there exists a considerably large quantum of reliable data with the NIO, MW of GSI and some others, indicating the earlier lower stands of sea level and hence of the past shoreline elevations. Mapping of the sandy sediment in the seabed can be taken up by shallow geophysical and geological work, in order to isolate potential areas for commercial dredging. The dredged can be primarily washed in seawater, and later on further washed in fresh water and not exactly drinking standard water. More over the special cement that would accommodate mildly salty sand will go along way in reducing the water use by this process.
We often ignore, vastness of the resources of the continental shelf - living and non-living and renewable to varying degrees (including sea bed sediment of a decameter or two in depth), which is so large in proportion to the land based resources, due to the very sheer size of the sea bed. We have been gathering large quantities of the living resources of the oceanic realm to complement our (sea) food needs. Large hue and cry is expressly unheard of about this issue, as it supports and contributes to the gastronomic needs and also to the GDP. On top of this we also believe in the ability of the species to regenerate.
I might state that the sandy-mud or the gravelly-sandy-mud (containing black minerals in certain parts off Kerala, and certain other continents) covering sea bed – a non-living resource in the conventional sense- is only forming at very low rate day, but were supplied to the seabed by the west flowing rivers - large and small draining the continental-scape – in the Quaternary or say during the last 1.8 million yr. BP. Therefore it is wise to be able to keep an inventory of all the viable sources of the raw materials useful to mankind. This is only commonsensical any way. The question of express exploitation comes only as the close second.
Numbers game
With the geological background of the sea bed, rate of soil formation and erosion and transport process, weathering of rocks, rock composition and hence nature of sediment cover, some volume estimates essential to fully appreciate the science of sea sand mining. Given a land area of 38863 Km2 for Kerala, it is possible to estimate the size of the sand content (in the sea bed sediment), for a source slab of uniform thickness of 1.0 m., and quartz sand content of 30% and Sp.Gr. of 2.65. By weathering and erosion, this slab ought to yield quartz laden sediment headed to the sea to the west.
Estimated sand content of this slab is (30.89 e12 Tons) 30 Trillion Tons By the way the same slab also would have an ilmenite (Sp.Gr. of 4.2 and abundance of 1.0%) content of (1.632 e12) or say 1.5 Trillion tons.
These estimates consider the land-river-sea system as a closed system (which is more or less true), uniform character for the basement rocks and expressly no rate of erosion. If we allow the entire Pleistocene to be the period of erosion, it is well over 1.8 Million years – more than what is essential for the formation of 1.0 M of soil. This exercise is carried out only to broaden the realities of the sand content of the sea bed.
Certainly post depositional sediment transport by currents generated by waves and tides would have further redistributed the sand with on the sea bed at preferred sites and forms to be discovered by mapping by appropriate tools available to marine geoscientists to day.
Unfortunately, some data or facts (and not the science per se) of geo-science are very simple to be appreciated by the non-specialist and the layman alike. Most of the time such people, become highly opinionated just for the fun of being one (?). In the case of sea sand also we face such a dilemma. Obviously, these are truly proven to be true by sea bed mapping and exploration, and then one can finally provide an alternate source for the sand starved construction industry.
--------
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Theraputic Yoga
Therapeutic Value of Yoga
B.Padmanabha Pillai, M.A.
Director of Yoga (Rtd.)
Trivandrum
(14—5—1983)
Normal functions of our body go on uninterrupted as long as our brain, heart, intestine etc., discharge their duties with out any defect. These are internal organs. They function by the autonomous nervous system. The subtle centers of the brain, circulatory system, respiratory system, and digestive system are working with out our knowledge as long as our health is nortmal.It is the involuntary nervous system that governs the automatic functions such as heart beat, peristaltic action of the intestine, circulation of blood, contraction and expansion of lungs, and kidneys and secretions from the endocrine glands. The above works are carried out with out the knowledge of the individual.But the presence of the organic function is noticed when the internal organs are strained due to some disease. The difficulty in the discharge of duties of the internal organs is traced as the cause of disease, when examined by an experienced physician.
Wrong habits are mostly the causes that create disease of the body. Spending sleepless nights, working without rest, inadequate food, hard labor etc., result in diseases like ulcer, asthma, gas trouble, diabetes, blood pressure and so on.There are many modern medicines newly discovered like anti-biotic pills and sulfa drugs which produce speedy action. Most people accept this treatment because it works on the molecular level, giving miraculous improvement with ib a short period.Most of the people are not patient enough to accept the old method working in the organs as it might take a long time to get a complete cure.
Though modern medicines show immediate results of improvement very few care to see that it undermines the intelligence of organs where by such diseases in the long run get immune to such medicines. It is in such cases that yoga therapy succeeds. This is because of the fact that we get in touch with higher consciousness of the body that controls the intelligence of the organs in the lower level. The secret of the functional divisions between the higher and lower centers has been found out by the sages of old. Th organic function of the lower level is controlled by prana ( the energy in the nervous system) in the higher level of consciousness.
This has been the result of the evolutionary process, of the body from the very ancient times.
By understanding the principle of the above connection, the yogis formulated a system which includes yogasanas, mudras, kriyas, bandhas, and pranayama. By these methods one can purify the body in its physical aspects, as well as develop the capacity in the higher levels, of consciousness.
Now let us examine how this relationship between the higher level of consciousness and the lower level of nervous system work as remedy to disease. It is here that the rhythmic and controlled system of breathing, otherwise known as pranayama is introduced, as a sure remedy to become immune to diseases. It helps to improve the resistance power, whereby the emotional stability of the organs, is regulated finally allowing the mind to keep the body at rest.
In preliminary stages it starts with some purification process like kapalabathy, Brahmamudra and agnimudra. Kapalabathy will purify the track, viz., nose, pharynx, larynx, tracheae and bronchi, and the alveolar duct to perform the practice of conscious breathing. easily. This purification process will open up the clogged nasal passages, and clears the sinuses of the mucus. This is a sure remedy for sinusitis early stages of tonsillitis, perpetual sneezing and perpetual cold.
By conscious breathing the nerve centers, situated in the medulla oblongata generates the stimulus that carries, the impulse to the muscles of the respiratory system, the diaphragm, and the intercostal muscles. This creates an introspective impulse originating in the cervical nerve roots. This impulse causes rhythmic contraction of the diaphragm. The chest cavity is increased to create more space with in the rib cage. This helps the elastic lungs to expand to contain more oxygen. There is saying that that every pinch oxygen will create a new molecule. This is how rejuvenation is affected in the body cells, where by the resistance power, is regained.
Agnisarakriya is an important remedy for ailments in the digestive system. The alimentary canal consists of stomach, duodenum, small and large intestines. Food passes through the track by means of a progressive contractual motion called peristalsis. The action caused by the involuntary muscular action is revitalized by the practice of agnisarakriya. Diseases like gastritis, colitis and other troubles due to ingestion of poison through food or bad diet are caused by slowing down or stopping of peristalsis in certain portions of the digestive system. Inflammation of any type can be cured by administration of medicine. But this does not necessarily reintroduce efficient peristaltic action. It is here that agnisarakriya help to revitalize the intelligence of the organ.
For normal happiness every body should follow a “yoga way of life”. For every facet of life, physical, mental and spiritual are being taken care of. The methods of achieving the well being have been explained in the writings of yogis of the past. Despite the great advancement in the fields of culture and civilization and development in the branches of science, technology and industry the welfare of the people and the consequent happiness of the individual have largely been ignored. Neglected and forfeited. Corruption, insecurity, violence and environmental abuse and economic depression have become a part of every day life. Discussions on the world problems, seminars and plans for major projects have brought only limited progress. The way and need for disciplined life have been pushed back. This has to be awakened only by a change in the consciousness in the individual. The problems of the individual and society are closely interwoven, Unless reasonable improvement is achieved, in the quality of individual life will never be happy. Living “a yoga way of life “ is the only remedy for that.
We speak of freedom. The real freedom lies in the soul. Individual soul ultimately unites with the universal The word yoga means yoke, to join. It comes from the Sanskrit word, yug – to join. This union of individual soul with the universal soul is called yoga. Good habits, physical exercises and spirit of services, faith and devotion will lead to mental and spiritual exercises which will end in the emancipation of the soul – the ultimate aim of life.
.
B.Padmanabha Pillai, M.A.
Director of Yoga (Rtd.)
Trivandrum
(14—5—1983)
Normal functions of our body go on uninterrupted as long as our brain, heart, intestine etc., discharge their duties with out any defect. These are internal organs. They function by the autonomous nervous system. The subtle centers of the brain, circulatory system, respiratory system, and digestive system are working with out our knowledge as long as our health is nortmal.It is the involuntary nervous system that governs the automatic functions such as heart beat, peristaltic action of the intestine, circulation of blood, contraction and expansion of lungs, and kidneys and secretions from the endocrine glands. The above works are carried out with out the knowledge of the individual.But the presence of the organic function is noticed when the internal organs are strained due to some disease. The difficulty in the discharge of duties of the internal organs is traced as the cause of disease, when examined by an experienced physician.
Wrong habits are mostly the causes that create disease of the body. Spending sleepless nights, working without rest, inadequate food, hard labor etc., result in diseases like ulcer, asthma, gas trouble, diabetes, blood pressure and so on.There are many modern medicines newly discovered like anti-biotic pills and sulfa drugs which produce speedy action. Most people accept this treatment because it works on the molecular level, giving miraculous improvement with ib a short period.Most of the people are not patient enough to accept the old method working in the organs as it might take a long time to get a complete cure.
Though modern medicines show immediate results of improvement very few care to see that it undermines the intelligence of organs where by such diseases in the long run get immune to such medicines. It is in such cases that yoga therapy succeeds. This is because of the fact that we get in touch with higher consciousness of the body that controls the intelligence of the organs in the lower level. The secret of the functional divisions between the higher and lower centers has been found out by the sages of old. Th organic function of the lower level is controlled by prana ( the energy in the nervous system) in the higher level of consciousness.
This has been the result of the evolutionary process, of the body from the very ancient times.
By understanding the principle of the above connection, the yogis formulated a system which includes yogasanas, mudras, kriyas, bandhas, and pranayama. By these methods one can purify the body in its physical aspects, as well as develop the capacity in the higher levels, of consciousness.
Now let us examine how this relationship between the higher level of consciousness and the lower level of nervous system work as remedy to disease. It is here that the rhythmic and controlled system of breathing, otherwise known as pranayama is introduced, as a sure remedy to become immune to diseases. It helps to improve the resistance power, whereby the emotional stability of the organs, is regulated finally allowing the mind to keep the body at rest.
In preliminary stages it starts with some purification process like kapalabathy, Brahmamudra and agnimudra. Kapalabathy will purify the track, viz., nose, pharynx, larynx, tracheae and bronchi, and the alveolar duct to perform the practice of conscious breathing. easily. This purification process will open up the clogged nasal passages, and clears the sinuses of the mucus. This is a sure remedy for sinusitis early stages of tonsillitis, perpetual sneezing and perpetual cold.
By conscious breathing the nerve centers, situated in the medulla oblongata generates the stimulus that carries, the impulse to the muscles of the respiratory system, the diaphragm, and the intercostal muscles. This creates an introspective impulse originating in the cervical nerve roots. This impulse causes rhythmic contraction of the diaphragm. The chest cavity is increased to create more space with in the rib cage. This helps the elastic lungs to expand to contain more oxygen. There is saying that that every pinch oxygen will create a new molecule. This is how rejuvenation is affected in the body cells, where by the resistance power, is regained.
Agnisarakriya is an important remedy for ailments in the digestive system. The alimentary canal consists of stomach, duodenum, small and large intestines. Food passes through the track by means of a progressive contractual motion called peristalsis. The action caused by the involuntary muscular action is revitalized by the practice of agnisarakriya. Diseases like gastritis, colitis and other troubles due to ingestion of poison through food or bad diet are caused by slowing down or stopping of peristalsis in certain portions of the digestive system. Inflammation of any type can be cured by administration of medicine. But this does not necessarily reintroduce efficient peristaltic action. It is here that agnisarakriya help to revitalize the intelligence of the organ.
For normal happiness every body should follow a “yoga way of life”. For every facet of life, physical, mental and spiritual are being taken care of. The methods of achieving the well being have been explained in the writings of yogis of the past. Despite the great advancement in the fields of culture and civilization and development in the branches of science, technology and industry the welfare of the people and the consequent happiness of the individual have largely been ignored. Neglected and forfeited. Corruption, insecurity, violence and environmental abuse and economic depression have become a part of every day life. Discussions on the world problems, seminars and plans for major projects have brought only limited progress. The way and need for disciplined life have been pushed back. This has to be awakened only by a change in the consciousness in the individual. The problems of the individual and society are closely interwoven, Unless reasonable improvement is achieved, in the quality of individual life will never be happy. Living “a yoga way of life “ is the only remedy for that.
We speak of freedom. The real freedom lies in the soul. Individual soul ultimately unites with the universal The word yoga means yoke, to join. It comes from the Sanskrit word, yug – to join. This union of individual soul with the universal soul is called yoga. Good habits, physical exercises and spirit of services, faith and devotion will lead to mental and spiritual exercises which will end in the emancipation of the soul – the ultimate aim of life.
.
COASTAL ZONE MANAGEMENT : A MAVERICK APPROCH
COASTAL ZONE MANAGEMENT : A MAVERICK APPROCH
thrivikramji@gmail.com
The question of coastal zone Management had attracted research experimentation and implementation of corrective measures not withstanding the stupendous coasts, sice the Army Core of Engineers and Beach erosion Board codified the procedures and prescriptions in a manual,. The scientific tempo and attitude of fighting with nature and conquering the natural forces to the benefit of human are very well reflected in the manual.
However, during the early part of the second half of this century, the fact that natural system are very complex and their understanding by humans are either partial or incomplete and excessive tampering with any part of the natural system would lead to irreversible damage to the components of the system and hence to the disadvantage of humans were quickly realized and appreciated by the scientific community.
Nevertheless, under coastal zone management programme, when it came to protection of coastal property, installations and populations along the coastal area, we still continue to follow the prescriptions of the pre-environmental-awareness days in that structures like seawalls and groynes are being built at very tall coasts. It is suggested that the ground rules or coastal zone management programme must reviewed and revised appropriately in the light of the new philosophy of living in harmony with nature instead of existing after the conquest of the natural processes or forces.
Based on this philosophy, a new guideline is proposed for the protection of installations, property and populations along the coastal area from the calamitous beach erosion- one of the remedies of prevention of beach erosion singularly aims at building of seawalls and grovnes at extremely exorbitant coasts, irrespective of the nature of the land capability, and of the installations needing protection,
Under the new philosophy, the protection of eroding beaches has to be rendered on two different lines, viz., the active approach property along the backshore of the beaches are protected by building seawalls and/or groyens. The value of the property will be significant like the harbours, gun batteries, industrial establishments and monuments.
Under the passive approach beach protection is one secondary importance only. Steps have to be initiated to protect the people and their property by building proper shelters in the backshore of the eroding beaches and sufficiently away from the reach of the wave attack. These shelters are to be in the style of the storm shelters built by the Government along he bay of Bengal coast of Andhra Pradesh. The beach erosion shelters are to be built by the capital that normally is utilized in the construction of seawalls/and groynes. Further creation of such permanent shelters or houses would help in the maintenance of an esplanade of the beach area free of any construction or installation.
`
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thrivikramji@gmail.com
The question of coastal zone Management had attracted research experimentation and implementation of corrective measures not withstanding the stupendous coasts, sice the Army Core of Engineers and Beach erosion Board codified the procedures and prescriptions in a manual,. The scientific tempo and attitude of fighting with nature and conquering the natural forces to the benefit of human are very well reflected in the manual.
However, during the early part of the second half of this century, the fact that natural system are very complex and their understanding by humans are either partial or incomplete and excessive tampering with any part of the natural system would lead to irreversible damage to the components of the system and hence to the disadvantage of humans were quickly realized and appreciated by the scientific community.
Nevertheless, under coastal zone management programme, when it came to protection of coastal property, installations and populations along the coastal area, we still continue to follow the prescriptions of the pre-environmental-awareness days in that structures like seawalls and groynes are being built at very tall coasts. It is suggested that the ground rules or coastal zone management programme must reviewed and revised appropriately in the light of the new philosophy of living in harmony with nature instead of existing after the conquest of the natural processes or forces.
Based on this philosophy, a new guideline is proposed for the protection of installations, property and populations along the coastal area from the calamitous beach erosion- one of the remedies of prevention of beach erosion singularly aims at building of seawalls and grovnes at extremely exorbitant coasts, irrespective of the nature of the land capability, and of the installations needing protection,
Under the new philosophy, the protection of eroding beaches has to be rendered on two different lines, viz., the active approach property along the backshore of the beaches are protected by building seawalls and/or groyens. The value of the property will be significant like the harbours, gun batteries, industrial establishments and monuments.
Under the passive approach beach protection is one secondary importance only. Steps have to be initiated to protect the people and their property by building proper shelters in the backshore of the eroding beaches and sufficiently away from the reach of the wave attack. These shelters are to be in the style of the storm shelters built by the Government along he bay of Bengal coast of Andhra Pradesh. The beach erosion shelters are to be built by the capital that normally is utilized in the construction of seawalls/and groynes. Further creation of such permanent shelters or houses would help in the maintenance of an esplanade of the beach area free of any construction or installation.
`
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Genetically modified food.-learn more
Echoing luminaries before him—from Norman Borlaug to Kofi Annan—the world's richest man, Bill Gates, called last night for a second Green Revolution focused on African farmers. That revolution won't just be in new crop varieties and higher yields but also in farmer training and infrastructure—and, perhaps most controversially, will be genetically modified.
"Three quarters of the world's poorest people get their food and income by farming small plots of land," Gates said. "So if we can make smallholder farming more productive and more profitable, we can have a massive impact on hunger and nutrition and poverty."
That's exactly what the first Green Revolution accomplished in the Latin America and Asia. "But it didn't go far enough," Gates said. "It didn't go to Africa."
"The charge is clear—we have to develop crops that can grow in a drought; that can survive in a flood; that can resist pests and disease," Gates added. "We need higher yields on the same land in harsher weather." The answer, at least in part? Sustainability paired with genetic modification.
After all, genetic modification can speed the development of drought-resistant varieties of various crops, or other traits of vital importance in improving the amount of food produced as well as farmers' ability to adapt to the challenges of climate change. To that end, Gates gave $10.4 million to the New Partnership for Africa's Development and Michigan State University to develop a center in Africa to help national governments develop appropriate regulatory systems for biotechnology.
Gates made his remarks during the awarding of the World Food Prize to Gebisa Ejeta, an Ethiopian sorghum researcher who developed drought-resistant varieties of that staple crop. In addition to the $1.4 billion Gates has already committed to agricultural development, Gates announced nine new grants totaling $120 million, ranging from $10 million for broadcasting farming tips to smallholders to $21.25 million to produce high-yield, stress-tolerant varieties of sweet potatoes. And the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) received $15 million to help create the right development policies for seeds, soil health, markets, property rights and adapting to a changing environment to help speed agricultural achievement.
"The ability of Africa's smallholder farmers to adequately feed the continent depends on a policy environment that improves access to agricultural technologies, assures market access, stabilizes food prices for the poor, protects the environment and helps farmers adapt to climate change," said AGRA Chairman Kofi Annan, former U.N. Secretary General.
Gates also called for a more environmentally focused effort this time around. "The next Green Revolution has to be greener than the first," Gates said. It "must be guided by smallholder farmers, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and the environment. The last thing anyone should do is create short-term gains for poor farmers that have long-term costs for their children." That's a tall order for a planet running out of agricultural lands and predicted to reach nine billion people by 2050.
"Poor farmers are not a problem to be solved; they are the solution—the best answer for a world that is fighting hunger and poverty, and trying to feed a growing population," Gates said. "There is no reason for so many farmers to be so hungry and so poor."
Courtesy:Scientific American
"Three quarters of the world's poorest people get their food and income by farming small plots of land," Gates said. "So if we can make smallholder farming more productive and more profitable, we can have a massive impact on hunger and nutrition and poverty."
That's exactly what the first Green Revolution accomplished in the Latin America and Asia. "But it didn't go far enough," Gates said. "It didn't go to Africa."
"The charge is clear—we have to develop crops that can grow in a drought; that can survive in a flood; that can resist pests and disease," Gates added. "We need higher yields on the same land in harsher weather." The answer, at least in part? Sustainability paired with genetic modification.
After all, genetic modification can speed the development of drought-resistant varieties of various crops, or other traits of vital importance in improving the amount of food produced as well as farmers' ability to adapt to the challenges of climate change. To that end, Gates gave $10.4 million to the New Partnership for Africa's Development and Michigan State University to develop a center in Africa to help national governments develop appropriate regulatory systems for biotechnology.
Gates made his remarks during the awarding of the World Food Prize to Gebisa Ejeta, an Ethiopian sorghum researcher who developed drought-resistant varieties of that staple crop. In addition to the $1.4 billion Gates has already committed to agricultural development, Gates announced nine new grants totaling $120 million, ranging from $10 million for broadcasting farming tips to smallholders to $21.25 million to produce high-yield, stress-tolerant varieties of sweet potatoes. And the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) received $15 million to help create the right development policies for seeds, soil health, markets, property rights and adapting to a changing environment to help speed agricultural achievement.
"The ability of Africa's smallholder farmers to adequately feed the continent depends on a policy environment that improves access to agricultural technologies, assures market access, stabilizes food prices for the poor, protects the environment and helps farmers adapt to climate change," said AGRA Chairman Kofi Annan, former U.N. Secretary General.
Gates also called for a more environmentally focused effort this time around. "The next Green Revolution has to be greener than the first," Gates said. It "must be guided by smallholder farmers, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and the environment. The last thing anyone should do is create short-term gains for poor farmers that have long-term costs for their children." That's a tall order for a planet running out of agricultural lands and predicted to reach nine billion people by 2050.
"Poor farmers are not a problem to be solved; they are the solution—the best answer for a world that is fighting hunger and poverty, and trying to feed a growing population," Gates said. "There is no reason for so many farmers to be so hungry and so poor."
Courtesy:Scientific American
With education only you win?
Hi
Yesterday Commie VS told a gathering of teachers and office workers of his party, that they should work and not always harp for their rights and dues. Unfortunately since 1957, big commie EMS taught the mortals to organize and agitate to get ones rights. But not to dutifully discharge their duties.
So the cultural seed planted in 1957 prospered so much that the office worker hardly works and hence even the governments welfare programs tool get affected and does not return the expected fruits.
The only solution will be to disorganize the office workers and make them go to office on time and not agitate for any thing.Other wise the commies will get away far and off from the base of the hear of population sitting at the pyramid. Better do it right away. Time is quickly clocking away to commies disfavour.
Yesterday Commie VS told a gathering of teachers and office workers of his party, that they should work and not always harp for their rights and dues. Unfortunately since 1957, big commie EMS taught the mortals to organize and agitate to get ones rights. But not to dutifully discharge their duties.
So the cultural seed planted in 1957 prospered so much that the office worker hardly works and hence even the governments welfare programs tool get affected and does not return the expected fruits.
The only solution will be to disorganize the office workers and make them go to office on time and not agitate for any thing.Other wise the commies will get away far and off from the base of the hear of population sitting at the pyramid. Better do it right away. Time is quickly clocking away to commies disfavour.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Elephant kill by Locos: Any solution.
Certainly there are solutions. Firstly we have to replace the embankments in the rail track with bridges of sufficient free board so that the poor creatures will walk under the track instead of over it. It may sound kind of strange for the minds who haven't been exposed to it in the first place. The blocking of the course of natural valleys by an earthen embankment has not only blocked of directed the free flow of water but harmed the elephant trails.
The only resolve in the case elephant kill in Walayar India is let the elephants walk down freely through the valleys. Or free the valleys from solid earthern barricades.Build free passages for the creatures and wait till the next accident.
The electrification of wirefences to scare the beasts will be a poor substitute.
The only resolve in the case elephant kill in Walayar India is let the elephants walk down freely through the valleys. Or free the valleys from solid earthern barricades.Build free passages for the creatures and wait till the next accident.
The electrification of wirefences to scare the beasts will be a poor substitute.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
THe Voter's list scam in Kannur
Oh dear
The Voter's list scam will surely award a negative reward to our comrades. Unfortunately the comrades are still in the 19th century. Every citizen of Kerala enjoys and needs a good life. What in the world have they done to make this desire of the BPL people materialise. In Bengal the leftists lost simply because the voter no longer belived in the lies spread by jet set politburo. enjoying fivestar comforts.
Chengara is only the straw in the wind. It is the weather cock. They too need good life with good moderate houses and a better education for their children. Others in Kerala went over to Persia toiled there for decades and made life great and livable for their family Their children got education in the aided colleges and ended up in Persia on better and more rewarding jobs.
For the Bengalis only destination was Kerala to work in the construction industry or in the hospitality sector to make more money and send a large chunk back to home so that they had a chance to see better food and clothing. They couldn't go for better education unlike the expats children over here in Kerala.
Perhaps no other place in India will see a human being pulling a cart in which another well nourished human sits comfortably. Want to see this, go to Kolkotha- capital town where our comrades ruled for 35 yr. So far the govt. could not redress the owes of rickshaw pullers. At least MGR in TN gave away cycle rickshaws to the fellows in Chennai. That too in MGR's days. Mr. Basu apparently never had time to worry about the plight of the downtrodden in the cities of villages. So is the situation with the rest of the commies. I am sure that by the next election the commies will be unseated.
You want to see women and house wifes abdicating their blouses so that the same fund could go to making a blouse for their teenager girls. Go to W.Bengal villages to see it with own eyes. Another gift of 30 yr of commie rule. The list is very long. Unfortunately no one is going around with a camera to capture the village scenes and make it public for the rest of the country to watch.
Kerala escaped this destiny as we had rightists and leftists comoing to power by taking turns. Secondly we have the real gulf to make money and to send it back to home so that people lived with good food and shelter. At last we Keralites by legal liquor every day for at least Rs. 10 crores. We have the largest number of bike s and cars running. So it will be difficult to sell the left platform any more.
The leftists election meetings are attended by youngsters who travel to the meeting spot in own motor bikes in twosomes or threesomes. Look at the paradox in Kerala.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
The outdated left platfoprm
The left platform during the bye elections in Kerala are really rusted and worn out, repeated ever soany times. They are like the US hand, hidden agenda, unemployment, food scarcity, neglect of the state, Asean treaty and of course the nucleaR DEAL WITRH AMERICA. aLL THESE SLOGAN PROVED VOID NATIONALLY in the parliament elections held 6 monthsw ago.
All the youngsters go to attend party meetings in motorcycles and ofc ourse in threesomes. No body walks inspite of the price rise, unemployment or neglect by centre. Fine what about the wages for an unskilled day worker in Kerala. It easily covers a good spirited meal inh a family restaurant at lunch time. There is prosperity in the state. Even the goos are having a wonderful time. House maids walk around 4 sovereign gold chains and snatched by goons. So comrades invent a new slogan to win the hearts and minds of the voters. Only a new policy will help you to come back to power. The NREGA FUND NEEDS TO BE SOPEND AND UTILISED SO THAT PEOPLE WILL GET WAGES AND AND WILL VOTE FOR THE PARTY RULING FROM DELHI
All the youngsters go to attend party meetings in motorcycles and ofc ourse in threesomes. No body walks inspite of the price rise, unemployment or neglect by centre. Fine what about the wages for an unskilled day worker in Kerala. It easily covers a good spirited meal inh a family restaurant at lunch time. There is prosperity in the state. Even the goos are having a wonderful time. House maids walk around 4 sovereign gold chains and snatched by goons. So comrades invent a new slogan to win the hearts and minds of the voters. Only a new policy will help you to come back to power. The NREGA FUND NEEDS TO BE SOPEND AND UTILISED SO THAT PEOPLE WILL GET WAGES AND AND WILL VOTE FOR THE PARTY RULING FROM DELHI
Why NSS should worry about politics?
The cry by the leadership of NSS on the list of UDF candidates for the byelection in Kerala earned a bit of publicity for the Assistant Secretary while the real SAecretary was looking over. By keeping equal distance as professed yesterday, NSS proved its un-clout again. I am sure that the rest of the community at Karayogam level will not worry about the stance of the leadres nor will wait for the sound of racking of whip from the HQ to reach their ears.
The leadership is playing politics of no strength or clout. The society hardly commands any respectable votebank in any one of the constituencies. That being the case the comments made yesterday will remain a far cry like always.
The leadership is playing politics of no strength or clout. The society hardly commands any respectable votebank in any one of the constituencies. That being the case the comments made yesterday will remain a far cry like always.
Monday, October 5, 2009
IMAGINING LIFE STYLE CHAGES DUE TO CC
IMAGINING LIFE STYLE CHAGES FUELED BY CLIMATE CHANGE: A KERALA SCENARIO
Thrivikramji K. P.
C/32,
Sasthamangalam,
(Formerly Professor of Geology,
Abstract
Among the Indian states, Kerala occupies a relatively high rank in respect of the benefits accruing from the Kerala Model (KM) of Development, and large content of remittances by expatriates. Kerala, one of the smaller states (area= 38,854.97 km2, pop. density =819/km2) of the Union of India, traditionally stood ahead in respect of public welfare initiatives, health care and educational opportunities at all levels. The unique physical setting, location in the west coast of
Table 1 Kerala: Salient features
| Area: 38,836 km2 ; Population: 31.8 million (Census, 2001) Size of side of support square: 34 m; Population density: 798/km Coastal land, elevation <7.5>2, (10.10%) Low coastal land: 2992 km2; 76.29% High coastal land: 930 km2; 23.71% |
Though massive industrialization is yet to catch up like certain other Indian states, Kerala enjoys certain firsts or near firsts in the production of agricultural commodities like, natural rubber, coconut, areca nut, tapioca, coffee, cardamom and tea. In
.
The manifestations of climate change (CC) projected in the rise of average temperatures to the tune of 4 deg. C by 2050, in terms of modification of patterns, chiefly like duration, intensity, seasons, and consequently the number of wet and dry days enjoyed in the state. Yield of various crops (both seasonal and perennial) in terms of production per unit area, is intensely and intimately subject to either the number of dry or wet days which in turn would affect the content of soil moisture, soil temperature, air temperature, depth to water table, moisture in the lower air column and above all the cloud cover and hence the level of insolation.
Such CC shall modify the temperature and moisture content near then ground which can be attributed to lower level of soil erosion or soil loss and hence of natural nutrients borne by them. An added advantage will be the associated lower incidence of pests. Thus, the CC will have far reaching influences on the agricultural economy and consequently both on the incomes of farmer and the farmhand and weeds that consume a large chunk of money going into the cultural practices.
This will be reflected on the life style and quality of life, quantum of disposable income and desire to pay taxes and repay loans to the banks or other lending institutions and ultimately lowering the SGDP, which would force modification of states monetary policy as well as well as other public policies in the areas of health, education and welfare
Table 2 Potential Impacts of CC on Kerala
| High land | | Coastal land |
| Natural forest: Decrease in plant species diversity-consequent fall in animal species diversity- increasing dryness – higher wind and water erosion soil loss | Agro-biodiversity: harmed due to drier soil and drier air- decreasing latex yield in rubber plantations- decreasing homestead farm production – decline in livestock farming and milk production – decrease in food crop farming and out put - | Severe erosion of beaches in LCL- shoreline migrates eastward – beach front property and homes damaged- civic facilities like coastal roads, water supply lines, waste water disposal and sanitation facilities damaged- power standards and supply system uprooted |
| Soil and nutrients: Loss of soil moisture due to extended days of drought and severe showery days – loss of soil and soil nutrients due to intense rain water erosion | Soil and nutrients: Decrease in nutrients and increase in area under eroded soils- extreme wet and dry spells tend to erode top soil and nutrients | Salinity rise in soil moisture - Water table rise damages foundation of public buildings and homes – domestic shaft well water turns brackish - quality of public water supply sources decline. |
| Agrobiodiversity: Exposure of cardamom, tea, coffee, rubber and others to long warmer spells and heavy rainy spells – both adverse for these crops. | Agro-biodiversity: Decrease in yield from rubber, coconut, arecanut farms – decrease in soil moisture and air moisture- soil microbes change due to physical changes in soil | Salinity intrusion into aquifers- inlets and coastal wetlands – wetland ecosystems including paddy fields in LCL affected- plant and machinery in the manufacturing units ruin by salinity intrusions |
| Pests and vectors: A jump in intensity of invasion- but durations may decline | Pests & vectors: Density will jump but duration of activity may decline | Wetland fauna and flora go into environmental stress - due to disruptions unable to migrate or re-establish. |
| Hydro-power: Bleak outlook- span of wet days decline and so is base flow days- decline of days reservoir staying at or near FRL – higher power demand due to rising demand for air-conditioning for extended periods; for pumping water from wells, irrigation and drinking water supply schemes. | Surface & ground water: Decline in the duration of base flow in streams- aquifers get deeper- increase in kwh per /m3 of water lifted for use in farms, industry and homes. Dissolved ion content in water may go up due to decreasing dilution and higher evaporation loss of soil moisture. | Water in wetlands (kayals) , river channels, intra-costal water ways all suffer by higher salinity- aquatic animal and plant life under duress – many may become extinct – water supply system and sources suffer- disruptions in civic life and stress due to higher temperatures may make citizens prone to anger and violence- increasing violence and anarchy in the society. |
Sizable decline of number of work days and gainful employment of working age population of the society both directly and indirectly in the agricultural and support sectors could lead to lower household incomes. This may manifest in the form of social unrest, rise in the petty crimes like thefts and even felonies. The warmer days and possibly nights and scarcity of drinking water may change the behavior of members of the community and could lead to altercations, street fights etc resulting in rise in law and order problems. Water scarcity can also result in the rise of water borne diseases and fights for drinking water especially by the women folk. The”God’s own country” may change to “The Devil’s own land”.
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