Just found this thread did not realize you were posting things about the environment on here too.

 

Yes have planted a few trees in our lifetime!

Was very surprised David has never owned a car!

Have worked from home in the garden!

What bugs a lot of folks is the do gooders that fly around the planet telling everyone that they should not fly!

I didn't fly till I was 47!

 

Calls to ban wet markets world wide

"Wet markets are found the world over, typically open-air sites selling fresh meat, seafood, and produce. The meats often are butchered and trimmed on-site. Markets in China have come in for justifiable condemnation because of the way they’ve evolved, commingling traditional livestock with a wide variety of wild animals, including exotic and endangered species. Many are quite unsanitary, with blood, entrails, excrement, and other waste creating the conditions for disease that migrates from animals to people through virus, bacteria, and other forms of transmission. Such “zoonotic diseases” that have emerged from China and other regions of the world include Ebola, HIV, bird flu, swine flu, and SARS.

Wet markets and commingling with wild animals have created much misery for the Chinese and for the world. Sixty million Americans caught the H1N1 “swine flu” virus in 2009, while the SARS outbreak killed nearly 800 people worldwide. The COVID-19 death toll is already multiples of that.

There should be permanent closure of the wet markets, given the government’s obvious inability or unwillingness to regulate them. Such a comprehensive approach would be a reversal of decades of government policy and market practice, but when we get through this crisis and the toll it will take on the world, we will owe it to the memory of those we lose that there be a global, sustained push to see these practices ended, everywhere." - THERESE SHAHEEN

SIGN THE PETITION:

http://chng.it/8PtBFjNH2z

 

I thought you would be interested in this story I found on MSN:  Georges River oyster farm at centre of global research and disease resistance under threat -

http://a.msn.com/01/en-au/BB15LJnO?ocid=se2 

 

© Provided by ABC News Oysters have been cultivated on the Georges Rivers for 150 years. Now Bob Hill is the last oyster farmer. (ABC Landline: John Gunn)

The future of disease-resistant breeding programs crucial to the $60 million oyster industry in New South Wales is in doubt and research projects of global significance are threatened because of landfill contamination in the Georges River, south of Sydney.

Transport For NSW is remediating the land-based site of the river's last remaining oyster farmer in the protected mangrove wetlands of Woolooware Bay.

Bob Hill, 62, learned of the contamination in 2017, when the department told him access to his oyster lease would be restricted to water only for 12 to 18 months, while the clean up was completed.

Work stopped at the site last July, when asbestos was discovered, and resumed this week.

The department says it is now unlikely to finish remediation work before the end of next year.

"It's been over three years now so I'm getting a bit jack of the whole thing," Mr Hill said.

The department has changed his lease conditions to month-to-month, and has waived all but a dollar a year in fees.

A department spokesman said no decisions would be made about the future of the site until the contamination was cleared.

"Please make a decision for God's sake, that's all I say, hurry up and finish your job and leave us alone," Mr Hill said.

Oyster farm a 'living laboratory'

It's not just Mr Hill who wants some certainty.

Scientists say a viable commercial oyster farm on the Georges River is essential for a range of important research projects, some with global significance.

Emeritus professor Richard Whittington from the University of Sydney's school of veterinary science said the Georges River was the birthplace of oyster farming in Australia and had been studied for 100 years.

"It reflects the incredible biodiversity of this area right on Sydney's doorstep," Professor Whittington said.

"Georges River, Cooks River, Botany Bay Container Terminal open to the sea, so all kinds of research are possible here and with the farming active and continuous, there's the interface between aquaculture and the environment.

"It's a living laboratory and it's got a tremendous record in providing data which is then extrapolated around the world."

Professor Whittington has been working with oyster farmers since 2010, when the Pacific Oyster Mortality Syndrome (POMS) wiped out production on the Georges River.

POMS had already devastated Europe's oyster industry and since its detection in Sydney,

has spread to the Hawkesbury River and to Tasmania, South Australia and New Zealand.

"All of the data that's been generated is benchmarked against the Georges River," Professor Whittington said.

"All of our understanding of the parameters that drive this viral disease has been determined here and the entire national oyster farming industry has benefitted from that."

Essential for breeding disease-resistant oysters

The NSW Department of Primary Industry's fisheries researchers say Georges River oyster production is also vital for dealing with the other main disease issue threatening the NSW industry.

Research scientist Mike Dove said the breeding program for oysters resistant to the parasite-borne QX virus was started in the Georges River in 1994, when the disease wiped out what had been one of the most productive oyster-growing estuaries in NSW.

"We know with QX disease we've got to keep basically exposing the oysters to the disease, otherwise we lose the resistance, so it's a matter of going back year after year," Dr Dove said.

He said the department could not continue the breeding program from its base at Port Stephens without a working oyster farm on the Georges River.

"Without the farmers' help, we just couldn't manage all the tray movements and they've been able to help store all of our equipment.

"With these diseases on the Georges River, we are very mindful of biosecurity. We don't want to transfer these diseases to anywhere else, so having that storage available to us meant that we weren't moving equipment to other estuaries.

"It was all remaining on site."

Mr Hill said he treated research oysters as if they were his own.

He said his current dispute with Transport For NSW made him feel like a character in the Australian movie, The Castle.

And just like the film's fictitious Kerrigan family, he believed he would win the day eventually.

"I mean, this is my castle," he said.

"It's me versus the big fellas and I'm not moving."

Watch this story on ABC TV's Landline at 12:30pm 

 

 

 

 

War in neighbouring Sudan has meant that grazing land has become less widely available increasing the sense of competition for the Suri people. Pictured: Palm leaves frame this Suri girl's intricately painted face 

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8439711/Ethiopian-tribe-wear-intricate-face-paint-don-breathtaking-floral-headpieces.html?ito=email_share_article-image-share

 

 

               

 

 

The Omo Valley is home to eight different tribes with a collective population of 200,000 people. Pictured: A Suri elder also dons face-paint

Toxic man-made mercury pollution is discovered in the deepest part of the ocean more than six miles below the surface in the Marianas Trench

 

Researchers from China and the US used submarine robots to identify mercury in the fish and crustaceans living in the deepest part of the western Pacific Ocean.

 

A 'circle of life' photo of a blackberry is currently doing the rounds on Facebook. It is reproduced below together with less commonly circulated equivalents for blueberries and strawberries.
 

I don't do facebook but found this somewhere else so thought I would share it.

The giant continent off Australia's east coast that sank into the sea 23 million years ago is revealed in unprecedented detail by new maps of the ocean floor

 

Geologists from New Zealand drew up the tectonic and bathymetric maps of the Earth's eighth continent - which spans some 1,930,511 square miles. Zealandia - confirmed as meeting the criteria for a continent in 2017 - submerged after breaking off of the Gondwanaland supercontinent over 79 million years ago.

 

 

This lady's story made a wonderful movie we really enjoyed it.

 

NASA is renaming its Washington DC headquarters in honor of the first black female engineer to work at the American space agency - the 'Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters building'

 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8456679/NASA-names-Washington-DC-headquarters-honor-Hidden-Figure-Mary-W-Jackson.html?ito=email_share_article-image-share

   

NASA is renaming its Washington DC headquarters in honor of the first black female engineer to work at the American space agency - the 'Mary W. Jackson NASA Headquarters building'

 

Will a Universal Basic Income save post-pandemic Asia?

The twin shocks of a public health crisis and economic weakness are already hitting hard in the Asia Pacific. According to the World Bank, over 20 million people in the region have been pushed into poverty as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This year the Human Development Index – measuring income, health, and education – is expected to plummet, the first decline since records began in 1990. 

The United Nations Development Programme says 80% of children in the Asia Pacific have not had access to education this year as a consequence of the pandemic. In a matter of months, the pandemic is wiping out gains in education and human development that have taken years to build.

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/dateline/will-a-universal-basic-income-save-post-pandemic-asia_1?

Huge change coming to Bunnings as hardware store bans all timber from Victorian forestry company 

Bunnings Director of Merchandise Phil Bishop announced they would be ending their contract with VicForests on Wednesday after the forestry company impacted on endangered species with their logging.

 

A massive star 75 million light years away 'vanished' and astronomers think it may be the first time they've seen one collapse into a black hole without going supernova first.

The blue variable star is in the Kinman Dwarf galaxy and its absence was spotted by astronomers using the European Southern Observatory Very Large Telescope (VLT).

It is an 'unstable' type of star that is up to 2.5 million time brighter than the Sun - it vanished from view some time between 2011 and 2019, astronomers say.  

The blue variable star is in the Kinman Dwarf galaxy and its absence was spotted by astronomers using the European Southern Observatory Very Large Telescope (VLT) 

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8474353/Giant-star-75-million-light-years-Earth-mysteriously-vanished.html?ito=email_share_article-image-share