Another way to raise greenhouse gas concentrations

Raising greenhouse gas concentrations is not something the Earth needs, but by doing something else -- fertilizing crops and lawns and plants, etc. -- then the concentrations will rise.

The problem is that excess fertilizer gets into streams and lakes and rivers, and that increases the growth of algae.  Then the algae die, and sink, and bacteria break them down, and that uses up oxygen.  This process is called eutrophication (if you haven't heard of it before).

So ... when the oxygen gets used up, other bacteria take over.  And those bacteria produce methane.  So this study projects that as a) human population increases, b) nutrients and sewage input to lakes and rivers and streams increases, and thus c) lake and ocean temperature increases, THEN eutrophication increases, methane release from these eutrophied bodies of water will increase, and since methane is a greenhouse gas, greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere increase.

Which, unfortunately, is not good.

The solution is to improve overall global water quality.  That, also unfortunately, won't be easy.


Eutrophication of lakes will significantly increase greenhouse gas emissions

Looking down in a drone photography contest

As the small number of people who read this blog know, I'm a big big fan of photography contests.  This one is intriguing -- it is for photographs taken from the aerial platform of a drone, which offers perspectives and viewpoints ground-based humans rarely achieve.


The contest is the 2018 Sky Pixel Aerial Storytelling Contest.  Go there to see videos.

The Daily Mail article is here:

Going above and beyond: The stunning winners of a prestigious drone photography competition revealed

From the contest site, this picture of the Santuario Madonna della Corona in Italy is quite impressive.

A quote from "How contagious is Trumpism"

Washington Post columnist Fred Hiatt wrote an op-ed column recently, entitled "How contagious is Trumpism?"   He made many good points in the column, but one of them made a certain large amount of sense to me.

Here's the point he made:

"If Congress modestly raised the tax on gasoline (or transitioned to a tax on vehicle-miles traveled), it could repair the nation’s roads and bridges and build new bikeways and mass transit, as Congress is forever promising and failing to do."

I have been saying that for years!  As fleet mileage increases, and as they are more hybrids and electric cars, gasoline taxes return less revenue for what they are supposed to pay for.  So the entire country (on a state-by-state basis, considering population and road/infrastructure maintenance needs) should transition to a system that is based on the miles traveled on the state's roads.  We have the technology, either GPS or toll beacons, so it's not hard to implement.  It needs to be.

Lighthouse of the Week, March 24-30, 2019: Corregidor Island, Phillippines

While looking for new lighthouses, I discovered that Switzerland has lighthouses.  Not many, as you might expect for a land-locked country with no saltwater coastline, but a couple on the larger lakes.  However, there are not enough pictures of them to make them worthwhile for LoTW.

So, I tried a new country, the Phillippines.  It has quite a few lighthouses, and several are historical (and attractive ruins).  I did do one previous lighthouse from the Phillippines, one that was right out in the middle of the ocean, but now I'll do some on the coast.

This one is on an island famous from World War II, the island of Corregidor. (Zoom out on the map to see where it is in relation to the larger Phillippines islands.)  Corregidor only has one lighthouse, right on the highest point of the island.  It was originally Spanish, and has been restored.   More from the Lighthouse Directory:

"1950 (station established 1835). Active; focal plane 193 m (633 ft); three white flashes every 20 s. 14.5 m (48 ft) octagonal cylindrical stone tower with lantern and double gallery, rising from the center of 1-story stone keeper's house.

The lighthouse was heavily damaged during the war ... This historic light station was recently restored with funds from the Spanish government, and the lantern was replaced with modern equipment by the Japanese government."

So here are four pictures (one historic) and a non-professional video.

I've been saying this for a long time!

From the Washington Post op-ed article "How Contagious is Trumpism?", this bit of logic, which I believe I've said in various ways for years:

"If Congress modestly raised the tax on gasoline (or transitioned to a tax on vehicle-miles traveled), it could repair the nation’s roads and bridges and build new bikeways and mass transit, as Congress is forever promising and failing to do."

The underlined part is what I do agree with the most.  Because of the increase in availability of higher mileage vehicles, a gas tax is inequitable -- people who use more gas pay more taxes.  All that needs to be figured out is how to measure road miles traveled.  In this era of transponders and GPS, I would think that the miles a car travels on state roads and interstates.  But the computing power to process all that data would of necessity be large, and would have to be pretty robust.

Old Highway 41 and new Highway 41

Near Dalton, Georgia, there's an interesting situation.  Officially, Highway 41 now follows a bypass around Dalton.  But it used to go right through Dalton.  I decided to do both. 

Route 3 and the South Dalton Bypass and the Admiral Mack Gaston Parkway




Whitfield County Fire Department Station 8, off the parkway




US 76, Georgia 3, and Highway 41, which gets its number back "officially" here.




I did a little sleuthing, and it turns out that while the modern route of Highway 41 follows the bypass and is co-numbered with 76 and 3 around Dalton, "Old U.S. Highway 41" went through Dalton. I somewhat suspected that a road with the name "South Dixie Road" or "South Dixie Highway" used to be Highway 41. In Dalton, the road/highway turns into South Thornton Avenue and then North Thornton Avenue.

Even though I have some pictures of the bypass, which are above and rather boring, I figured if I was really doing the trek by car or bicycle, I'd go through Dalton on what used to be Highway 41, rather than taking the bypass (less mileage, too). So here are some StreetViews in Dalton on this stretch.

The Blunt House is the house hiding behind the tree (not the house with the two flowering trees). Zoom in to locate the historical marker. https://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=44735




The creek the road is crossing here is named Drowning Bear Creek.




By the Whitfield County Superior Court.




The little blue building is "Cheesecake Heaven". No kidding.



So, if you're ever driving through Dalton: https://www.cheesecakeheavendalton.com/

Think it's raining more in the USA?

If you think that it's raining more in the United States, especially the heaviest rains, you're right, it is.

Climate Central shows where.

Here's Where Heavy Rain is Increasing the Most in U.S.

One of the states where it's increasing the most is in Iowa.  One might wish to take note of what's currently happening in Iowa and it's neighbor state to the west, Nebraska.

Did you wonder why?  Well, that's pretty easy to explain.  From the accompanying text:

"Heavier precipitation is a signature of climate change. For every 1°F of temperature increase*, the atmosphere can effectively hold 4 percent more water vapor. So as the world warms from the increase in greenhouse gases, the amount of evaporation also increases from oceans, lakes, rivers, and soils. The extra water vapor is available to produce additional rain and snow, creating an environment ripe for heavy precipitation events ... "

* Which is primarily being caused by increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, most especially CO2.


You'd think the simple and obvious would appeal to most people. But those who are in tribes that are opposed to the consideration of science as fact, they can still not see the Occamic appeal of the simple and obvious.


(Oh yeah, Occamic.  I'm not the first to coin that.)

Christian Slater knows about Hard Rain (the 1998 movie was set in Indiana, where hard rain has actually increased, but not as much as in Illinois and particularly Iowa.)