THE ongoing drought through the Murray Darling Basin is now the worst on record according to the Bureau of Meteorology.
Speaking
during a Bureau of Meteorology seminar on climate, BOM climatologist
David Jones said the drought had now exceeded the Federation Drought,
the WWII drought and the Millennium drought in terms of its severity
through the Murray Darling Basin.
"Our records only go back 120 years but in terms of the rainfall records it is the most severe," Dr Jones said.
Hydrologist
and water sector engagement lead with BOM Matthew Coulton said this had
also translated into markedly lower run-off into the system.
Dr
Jones added temperatures were as high as they have been during the
human era, saying the nearest equivalent according to paleo-climatic
data (analysing historical weather trends) was a hot period encountered
2-3 million years ago.
"We are still below that threshold of a couple of million years ago but we are starting to approach it," Dr Jones said.
And the BOM panel had tough news for those hoping for a swift resolution to the big dry.
"Our
climate forecasts for the next three months show well below average
chances of exceeding median rainfall through most of the MDB, especially
in the north," Dr Jones said.
Hundreds of homes were evacuated in a Derbyshire town on Thursday
when a dam threatened to burst after being damaged during extreme
rainfall.
Around 1,400 people in 400 houses in Whaley Bridge were told to leave
their properties with just minutes’ notice due to “an unprecedented,
fast-moving, emergency situation” caused by heavy downpours.
Actually, the rainfall that has been around that dam is not being claimed as "record", as far as I can see - but climate change makes for more extreme rainfall events so it's an example of what climate change is bringing anyway.
Nichola Mallon, a leader of the Social Democratic
and Labour Party, said she had a “very blunt meeting” with Johnson and
observed that he did not have a full grasp of the “complexities” of
Northern Ireland.
She said she told Johnson that he “must avoid a hard Brexit at all costs.”
Mallon
said she reminded the prime minister that he had responsibilities under
the Good Friday Agreement, which ended 30 years of sectarian violence,
and that he “must live up to them.”
Mallon said, “We pressed him time and time again and just got stock responses.”
A "reality star" has been criticised for promoting use of a diet product while pregnant. What a surprise that such a heavily and garishly tattooed women might not be the most sensible person to pay attention to:
A former health inspector at the City of Greater Dandenong says council
managers seemed intent on shutting down a family catering business that
was competing with another catering company part-owned by the council.
The owner of the shuttered business, I Cook Foods, even claims a council
inspector planted a slug on its premises, which was then used as
evidence the company had breached food safety regulations.....
The council has since charged I Cook Food's owner, Ian Cook, with 48
breaches of the Food Act, including one charge relating to the slug
allegedly found in the kitchen the day before it was closed.
But
Mr Cook claims the inspector — who did not use the normal body-worn
camera during the inspection — planted the slug as evidence against the
company.
The company's CCTV cameras were operating during the
inspection, but did not capture the discovery of the slug, which was
outside the camera's field of vision.
It's summer and hot and humid in Japan. This is a very unfortunate way to die, and I have to say, I did not realise that the Japanese did not really know how to avoid heatstroke in such high numbers:
A 28-year old man in a mascot costume who was training for a dance
performance died of heatstroke Monday at Hirakata Park, a theme park in
Osaka Prefecture. As of 5 p.m. the same day, the Tokyo Fire Department
said 63 people had been hospitalized for heatstroke in the capital, with
two people in their 70s and 80s in serious condition.
Last
Saturday, a 91-year-old woman died of heatstroke in Saitama Prefecture
after she was found lying in her garden at around noon. According to the
Fire and Disaster Management Agency, about 95,000 people were taken to
hospitals for heatstroke during the May-September period last year,
exceeding the previous high of 58,000 logged in 2013.
(I don't like Chrome much as a Windows browser, though. Long time Firefox user here, although some versions have developed memory hogging issues. Chrome is fine on Android, although I recently just started trying Brave as an alternative, and it seems very fast and quite good. Not entirely sure what it is wanting me to do sometimes, but I ignore that.)
I ate the left over vegetarian chilli con carne last night - yeah, the flavour was good (most spiced dishes taste better as leftovers, don't they?), but thinking about the texture of the vege mince, it did remind me again that it had a bit of a stickiness to it, unfortunately reminding me of what you get if you chew paper.
This whole texture of fake meat issue is very important to me, and watching Youtubes where they try to make vegan analogues of real meat, it's obviously a prime concern of others too.
Last night, I watched this one and was interested to see it used pea protein isolate, which I think is the main ingredient in the Beyond Burger. Given that I don't hang out in health food stores, I didn't realise that this product was a powder readily available.
So here's this guy, trying to make imitation chicken using it and one main other ingredient as a binder:
I think I have worked out why this topic appeals to me - it's a bit like watching a science experiment, and now that my kids are well past doing science experiments at home, I need a substitute.
Fake meat experimentation in my kitchen might be it.
Dubai: A customer service employee was sentenced to 10 years in jail for
stealing Dh1 million from a customer’s account, a Dubai Court of First
Instance heard.
The Egyptian defendant, 42, who is still at large, conned the customer
by using magic ink when the latter wrote his name on the cheque to
deposit the money in his account. When the name disappeared because of
the ink, the defendant put his name on the cheque, cashed the money and
escaped.
The company has warned investors that the currency, which it wants to launch next year, may not ever get off the ground.
The news: In its quarterly report,
Facebook reminded investors that the proposed currency, called Libra,
is “based on new and unproven technology," adding that the legal
environment surrounding digital currencies is “uncertain and evolving.”
That could cause Libra to be delayed or even blocked, it said.
The backstory: Facebook revealed its ambitions for Libra a month and a half ago. Since then, it has faced skepticism and backlash
from government bankers and politicians, who have criticized Facebook’s
track record on privacy and warned that its plan to launch a private
currency to billions of people could be risky.
Onward:
During Facebook’s quarterly earnings call CEO Mark Zuckerberg struck an
optimistic tone, affirming that the company will spend “however long it
takes” to earn regulators’ approval before launching.
A new study shows that conversation with oneself embodied as Dr. Sigmund
Freud works better to improve people's mood, compared to just talking
about your problems in a virtual conversation with pre-scripted
comments. Researchers claimed that the method could be used by
clinicians to help people dealing with minor personal problems.
The explanation as to why this should be is given at the link as follows:
People are often much better at giving useful advice to a friend in
trouble than they are in dealing with their own problems. Although we
typically have continuous internal dialogue, we are trapped inside our
own way of thinking with our own history and point of view, and find it
difficult to take an external perspective regarding our own problems.
However, with friends, especially someone we know well, it is much
easier to understand the bigger picture, and help them find a way
through their problems.
A research team of the University of Barcelona (UB), IDIBAPS and
Virtual BodyWorks, a spin-off of both institutions and ICREA, has used
immersive virtual reality to observe the effects of talking to
themselves as if they were another person, using virtual reality.
The technique is complicated, though:
For this technique to work out,researchers scanned the person to
obtain an 'avatar' which is a 3D-likeness of the person. In virtual
reality, when they look at themselves, at their body parts, or in a
mirror, they will see a representation of themselves. When they move
their real body, their virtual body will move in the same way and at the
same time. Seated across the table is another virtual human, in the
case of this experiment, a representation of Dr Sigmund Freud.
The participant can explain their personal problem to Dr Freud, and
then switch to being embodied as Freud. Now, embodied as Freud, when
they look down towards themselves, or in a mirror, they will see Freud's
body rather than their own, and also this body will move in synchrony
with their own movements. "They will see and hear their own likeness
explaining the problem, and they see their virtual self as if this were
another person. Now they themselves have become the 'friend' who is
listening and trying to help," said Mel Slater.
Carbon emissions from China
could peak as soon as 2021, which is nine years before the voluntary
deadline in their Paris agreement pledge, a new peer-reviewed study finds.
Why it matters:
China is by far the world's largest carbon emitter. The trajectory of
its emissions affect whether the world has any chance of meeting the
Paris temperature goals — or, more likely, how much they're overshot.
It adds to separate analyses suggesting China could see a peak well before 2030 if things break right.
Someone from the CSIRO casts a deeply sceptical eye over how much potential growth there really is in the "fake meat" industry that excites high market valuations for the companies making these new fake burgers. He notes the growth in demand for meat as nations get richer as being a major factor offsetting any reductions in livestock that an increasing market for meat substitute products would involve.
You should read the comments too, where the author expands his scepticism about lab grown meat - a topic of which I have been sceptical from day one.
In these discussions about future food, it annoys that I have not been able to track down a person who I once heard on the ABC arguing that lab grown protein derived from microbial sources could readily and cheaply feed the world. I don't think he was talking about fungus derived protein either - from which we get Quorn. But who this was, and which exact source for the protein he was talking about, I have not worked out. I think he had written a book on the topic of future food, but there are a lot of books on that topic around.
One other point: because I looked at a couple of vegan recipe videos, I keep getting this topic coming up on my Youtube feed now. It is very clear that the matter of vegans trying to make plant based food look and taste like the meat equivalent is very "hot" at the moment. There are no end of videos about how to make tofu look and taste (allegedly!) like chicken, fish, or whatever. And a guy who tried various ways to come up with something that resembles bacon - he ended up recommending strips of daikon, dried out a bit, soaked in his mix of soy and stuff, and fried. I am not at all convinced it would taste anything like bacon.
So yeah, it seems to me that a lot of people are convinced that getting people to eat more vegetarian or vegan is a matter of making the food at least look like what they like in meat. I am pretty sure that this must be annoying some more purist vegan types...
