Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member Latest Breaking News General Discussion The DU Lounge All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

Mountain Mule

Mountain Mule's Journal
Mountain Mule's Journal
October 21, 2021

Climate change is turning the cradle of civilization into a grave

No one lives here anymore. The mud-brick buildings are empty, just husks of the human life that became impossible on this land. Wind whips through bone-dry reeds. For miles, there’s no water to be seen.

Carved from an ancient land once known as Mesopotamia, Iraq is home to the cradle of civilization — the expanse between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers where the first complex human communities emerged.

But as climate change produces extreme warming and water grows scarcer around the Middle East, the land here is drying up. Across Iraq’s south, there is a sense of an ending.

Dozens of farming villages are abandoned, but for an isolated family here and there. The intrusion of saltwater is poisoning lands that have been passed for generations from fathers to sons. The United Nations recently estimated that more than 100 square miles of farmland a year are being lost to desert.

Years of below-average rainfall have left Iraqi farmers more dependent than ever on the dwindling waters of the Tigris and Euphrates. But upstream, Turkey and Iran have dammed their own waterways in the past two years, further weakening the southern flow, so a salty current from the Persian Gulf now pushes northward and into Iraq’s rivers. The salt has reached as far as the northern edge of Basra, some 85 miles inland.

In the historic marshes, meanwhile, men are clinging to what remains of life as they knew it as their buffaloes die and their wives and children scatter across nearby cities, no longer able to stand the summer heat.

Temperatures in Iraq topped a record 125 degrees this summer with aid groups warning that drought was limiting access to food, water and electricity for 12 million people here and in neighboring Syria. With Iraq warming faster than much of the globe, this is a glimpse of the world’s future.


Washington Post

And then we wonder why there is a migrant problem!
October 14, 2021

My Trump supporting landlady just informed me that she has Covid and I feel guilty

So last night my landlady called me up and she sounded just awful. What she called about was fairly trivial but then she announced that she had been diagnosed with Covid. I was stunned. I flashed back to the last time I spoke with her before this. I had mentioned to Cula that I'd just gotten my second Covid vaccination and was feeling some mild side effects.

Cula replied that she was much older than me and in good health. She saw no need to get the vaccine and was in fact worried that some national mandate might come down forcing EVERYONE to get vaccinated. I think that such a mandate might be a good idea, but I tried to calm Cula's fears and I told her that I didn't think "they" would force her to get a vaccine against her will. I wish they would have.

I worry that given Cula's age, she may not pull through. I worry that her husband Bud who is also in his 80's and has cancer will catch Covid and his compromised immune system will fold on him.

I've been thinking and then saying it aloud that the republicans deserve to catch Covid, given how destructive the republican stance on Covid has been for our nation. Let them all die so that no one will be left to support Trump sez I. But Cula doesn't deserve the death sentence just because she's so deluded that she supports Trump. The county we live in is a real right wing stronghold and you can practically count all the Democrats who live here on the fingers of your hands. Cula's farming and ranching family have been staunch republicans from the dawn of time. I can't blame her for her Trump lawn sign when her family and friends and the community at large also support that SOB.

Cula has been beyond kind to me and her life has not been an easy one. She deserves better than this. There are many Cula's out there, I think. They have been brain washed by Fox, but inherently, they are not bad people and they don't deserve to die.

I need to be more careful about what I wish for.

September 16, 2021

Not a single G20 country is in line with the Paris Agreement on climate, analysis shows

And yet we claim that we still can keep global warming at a mere 2 C:


None of the world's major economies -- including the entire G20 -- have a climate plan that meets their obligations under the 2015 Paris Agreement, according to an analysis published Wednesday, despite scientists' warning that deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions are needed now.

The watchdog Climate Action Tracker (CAT) analyzed the policies of 36 countries, as well as the 27-nation European Union, and found that all major economies were off track to contain global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The countries together make up 80% of the world's emissions.

The analysis also included some low-emissions countries, and found that the Gambia was the only nation among all 37 to be "1.5 compatible." As the study only included a few smaller emitters, it's possible there are other developing countries in the world on track as well.

Under the 2015 Paris accord, more than 190 countries agreed to limit the increase in global temperatures to well below 2 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures -- ideally to 1.5 degrees. Scientists have said 2 degrees is a critical threshold for some of the Earth's ecosystems, and is one that would also trigger more catastrophic extreme weather events.

The report comes less than two months ahead of UN-brokered international climate talks in Glasgow, known as COP26. The event's president, British MP Alok Sharma, has said he hopes to "keep 1.5 alive" as a global warming limit.


- MORE
February 20, 2021

Turning Lauren Boebert into Lorena Bobbitt - I am so tempted!

To Colorado's ever lasting shame, the voters in its Third District (where I so happen to reside) elected a gun happy (there was a pic of her posing in front of a bookcase filled with guns instead of books on another recent thread here on DU) minor criminal with a rap sheet as long as your arm. I guess my neighbors here in rural Colorado believe that we are still living in the Wild West where a Congress person can incite insurgencies and strap a six gun to her side to be properly attired for a debate on the House floor, all with no repercussions.

To my lasting disgust, someone has kept up a sign at the corner of the highway not far from my house which reads:

LAUREN BOEBERT
FREEDOM!

I have to pass by this at least once a day, and given all that has happened and is continuing to happen, my blood is coming to a slow boil. Right from the start, I noticed how similar her name is to "Lorena Bobbitt". For those of you too young to remember the case, Lorena Bobbitt cut her sleeping husband's penis off after he had raped her. Ms. Bobbitt threw her husband's manhood into a field where it was finally found after a lengthy search and reattached.

I am so tempted to go out there to the highway in the small hours of the morning and change the sign so that it reads Lorena Bobbitt instead of Lauren Boebert. It would be child's play to carry out the evil deed since the names are so close. I can just imagine the smoke pouring out of the ears of all those good ole boy Trump supporters when they finally notice the changed wording of the sign. Their private parts would probably shrivel up to become even smaller then Trump's hands as they imagined themselves meeting a similar fate at the hands of a Democrat "feminazi." The subliminal damage would take its toll and I'd bet anything that their hands would hesitate when they hovered over the ballot with the name "Lorena Bobbitt" come the next election.

My roommate (also a DU member) doesn't want me to go out and fix that sign because I would be "defacing private property." And if the election had not yet been held, I'd leave the sign alone. After all, that's freedom of speech even if I happen to loathe the candidate, I wouldn't interfere with that.

But the election is long over and Lauren Boebert has just only begun her rampage through Congress. Time to fight back, says I. I told my roomie that if the folks on DU agreed with him, I'll leave that sign alone. But if you guys agree with me... Well, pictures will be posted here soon! What say you?

February 18, 2021

I can't see Sig lines or number of user posts anymore

I have gone in to "my account" and made sure these features are turned on, but it makes no difference. What do I do?

Oh, I can't see avatars anymore, either.

Profile Information

Gender: Do not display
Hometown: Colorado Springs
Home country: Colorado
Current location: the Four Corners
Member since: Thu Dec 1, 2016, 02:27 PM
Number of posts: 1,002

About Mountain Mule

A survivor of the Great Election Day Hack Attack, so this is not my first ride at the DU rodeo. Given the events of the past year, I have resigned my US citizenship and I await notification about my request for asylum in the Navajo Nation about 20 miles south of my current location. My current country is the bright blue state of Colorado. I have dedicated myself to the destruction of the current oligarchy under which the US is now governed. Direct Democracy is true Democracy!
Latest Discussions»Mountain Mule's Journal