Cloud Seeding May Not Help Some Water-Poor Countries By Dr. Michael A. Bengwayan, Ph.D. Environmental Science Environment News Network

Cloud Seeding May Not Help Some Water-Poor Countries

By Dr. Michael A. Bengwayan, Ph.D. Environmental Science

Environment News Network

, Some 1.2 billion people or 20% of the world’s 7 billion-population, are prone to diseases due to water poverty. Anthropologists dub some of whom as “water-refugees”. This is because they don’t only lack water, but they are on the move across borders in search for water.

The assessment comes from the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and Earthscan. They produced the 2016 “Water for Food, Water for Life: An Assessment of Water Management in Agriculture”.

The continuing severity of water shortage has led Fred Pearce, author of the globally-recognized book “When the Rivers Run Dry” to conclude that, “the world water crisis has caught us unaware.”

Pearce says: “With a series of local hydrological pinch-points rapidly escalating into a global pandemic of empty rivers, dry boreholes, and wrecked wetland. There is very little we can do to reverse the situation.”

How serious is the water problem worldwide? IWMI defines water scarcity as human’s’ inability to secure and access safe and affordable water for drinking, washing, and food production that affects 1/4 of the world’s area.

Sandra Postel of the World Watch Institute warned there will be potential water wars. Using the UNFAO and UNICEF figures, the IWMI announced that in the water-starved regions, more than 1 billion people live below the one dollar a day poverty line, majority of whom are women and children.

The majority of them have no access to improved sanitation. The report added that the reason behind these is the lack of water and long absence of rain.

Rainfall Absence & Biodiversity Extinction

According to IWMI, out of the world’s more than two billion hungry people, 850 million are dependent on agriculture. Their agriculture is dependent on rain for irrigation.

In the Sub-Saharan Africa, 95 per cent of farmers rely on rain, as well as 90 per cent in Latin America, less than 70 per cent in the Near East and East Africa, in addition to 60 per cent in South Asia, while, in Southeast Asia, the picture is more mixed.

The statistics mean that some yields from crops such as tubers which is a staple crop, have decreased significantly.  People dependent on rain-fed agriculture are highly vulnerable to both short-term (2-3 weeks) and long-term (seasonal) droughts, the IWMI report explained.

But not only are humans but also biodiversity is suffering as well. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment reported that diminishing water availability has devastated many ecosystems.

It said some 500 to 1,000 vertebrate species suffer in tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests. After them comes those in grasslands and shrublands. Afterwards, those in desert and xeric shrublands, followed by the ones native to tropical and subtropical grasslands. That’s in addition to savannas and tropical and subtropical coniferous forests and mangroves.

Wanted: Magic from Sky

The absence or shortage of rainfall has been of increasing concern since the 1970s. One of the most popular weather modification discoveries is cloud seeding. This method initiates rainfall by targeting clouds. Seeding can occur from an aircraft or from the ground with as silver iodide, dry ice and salt.

But if cloud seeding works, why isn’t it implemented in many of the world’s regions that are water scarce? “Simple, there aren’t enough clouds or there is unfavorable cloud formation. Cloud seeding cannot happen without clouds”, a scientist from the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA), said.

“Artificial rainmaking, one must understand, aims to create rainfall by inducing precipitation in clouds”, he said. The use of silver iodide salts or dry ice is useless without cloud presence, he added.

Scientists from the Australian Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) said cloud composition, temperature and cloud diversion also have direct relationship to the success of artificial rainmaking.

Clouds are classified according to their appearance and height from the ground. This classification system is: 1) Cirro. 2) Alto. 3) Strato. 4) Nimbo. 5) Cumulo.

How Does It Work?

A World Meteorological Organization (WMO) primer explains that not all types of cloud favor cloud seeding. The most likely to allow artificial rainmaking are Cumulus Clouds, a cauliflower-like type of clouds.

The cloud forms from updrafts of warm, moist air into an atmosphere that is unstable. Intense daytime heating of the near-surface layer of air, or a wedge of cold air moving across the state (as a cold front), usually triggers the formation of convective clouds.

Normally, a small percentage of cumulus clouds are needed to yield an appreciable amount of rainfall. But these clouds that do produce rainwater are often inefficient.

Practical?

For all the moisture they incorporate from below, only a tiny fraction of that moisture (as cloud droplets) is ever used to grow large raindrops, which ultimately fall to the ground as rainfall.

Tiny cloud droplets must collide with neighboring droplets enough number of times to yield larger drops and eventually rainwater. Seeding, using silver iodide is placed in the upper portion of the growing convective cloud rich with supercooled droplets. The silver iodide crystal can grow rapidly by tapping that vast field of available moisture.

Because the vapor pressure gradient over ice is less than that over water, the crystal such as silver iodide will more readily attract the tiny cloud droplets. In a matter of moments, the ice crystal transform into a large raindrop which is heavy enough to fall through the cloud mass as a rain shaft.

The silver iodide particles are released from below cloud base, using the strong updraft of the cloud to transport the “seeds” high into the core of the cloud where supercooled cloud droplets are plentiful.

To seed clouds, pyrotechnics or flares consisting of silver iodide burn while mounted on the wings of an aircraft that maneuvers within the updraft field below the bottom of the cloud.

Seeding Time

At times the seeding material can be dispensed below cloud base from an aircraft that is equipped with wing-tipped generators that contain a solution of acetone mixed with seeding material.

Cloud seeding can take place above the cloud top, using an aircraft equipped with a rack containing pyrotechnics. These droppable flares are ignited as they fall from the plane’s belly into the upper region of seedable convective clouds.

Either way, from above cloud top or below cloud the base, seeding with silver iodide gives an ample number of “seeds” with which to grow rainwater: one gram of silver iodide can supply as many as ten trillion artificial ice crystals!

For now, many countries continue to conduct researches and studies on more effective methods of producing artificial rain because the demand has become greater especially for agricultural and domestic use. Others, like China, in fact claim to have done the opposite; stop rains, rather than produce some, which actually happened during the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

But meteorological science is more concerned in producing water in light of the worsening climate changes. Water productivity policies dot many countries’ national plans and these include looking at cloud seeding either as a band-aid or cure-all for their water headaches.

Breathe and Die Asbestos By Dr. Michael A. Bengwayan, Ph.D. Environmental Science Earth Times

Breathe and Die Asbestos

By Dr. Michael A. Bengwayan, Ph.D. Environmental Science

Earth Times

Subic, Philippines (January 5, 2018) ---Alfonso Tabanyag, 65 has been looking forward to the birth of his first grandson. Donning his favorite Chicago Bulls cap, he stepped out to take a taxicab to the hospital where his daughter gave birth. Suddenly he felt being choked, his lung seemed bursting and he was gasping for air holding his chest.

Brought to the emergency room not far from the ward where his grandson lay sleeping, he was told he was suffering from severe Asbestosis, a killing phenomenon for people who have long been exposed to asbestos or its components.

Tabanyag is one of more than 1,000 worker-victims of Asbestosis in this once-sprawling US military base, who worked for 25 years insulating the facilities from dreaded military attacks that could make the base erupt into an inferno.

For Tabanyag, breathing from now on will be a struggle.

There are thousands more like him, says the International Labor Organization (ILO) who reported in its September labor international updates that cancer-causing asbestos and its particles continue to maim men, women and children alike worldwide.

It is urgently pushing for the adoption of more stringent standards on industrial uses of asbestos.

Fiber-Mineral the Only Kind

Asbestos is a fibrous mineral formerly used a great deal as heat and fire-resistant insulating material. This threadlike mineral fiber has more than 2,000 uses which is why many countries have not totally junked it.

From being fire resistant to good conductor of heat and electricity, ILO said it is probably found in almost 95 percent of all houses worldwide because it is a component of cement.

It is used in housing, fireproofing, and automobile parts especially as brake lining and gaskets, theater curtains, roofing, electrical insulation, caulking, cement pipes, floor tiles, and plastics. In manufacturing firms, it is used to insulate boilers, and as filters that resist chemicals.

As a mineral, asbestos is hydrated silicates from the mineral silica and comes from metamorphic rock. It was discovered in 1774 by Abraham G. Werner, a Mineralogist. It was used till 1931 before doctors noted the ill effects it causes to people.

Russia and Canada remain the biggest producers worldwide.

Asbestosis

In its September 2016 report, the ILO said that asbestos does not only cause Asbestosis, a serious lung disease, but also Bronchial Cancer and Mesothelioma (cancer of the Pleura and Peritoneus) which are fatal.

Asbestosis is a disease that blocks the lungs with thick fibrous tissues. Besides causing difficulty and shortness of breath, it causes swollen fingers and toes.

To those directly working with it like Tabanyag, asbestos causes Bronchogenic Cancer, the cancer of the bronchial tubes.

ILO also announced that cigarette-smoking workers who are exposed to asbestos have high rick to cancer.

People exposed to asbestos such as those working in asbestos mines, industrial facilities, insulation fabrication and military installations are the most likely to develop such diseases, ILO said.

According to Dr. Tony Smith, Deputy Editor of the British Medical Journal, asbestosis causes widespread scarring of the lungs and tends to progress even when exposure to it is discontinued.

The disease causes breathlessness and a dry cough eventually leading to severe disability and death.

Victims usually start experiencing asbestosis symptoms after seven to ten years of exposure.

Smith clarified that, even today, scientists do not know how asbestos causes disease.

Medical researchers though explain that fibers longer than 5 to 10 micrometers increase the risk of illness, he said.

An extremely short period of inhaling large amounts of asbestos fibers may result in Mesethelioma, he added.

Other Asbestos-Induced Diseases

Smith explained that mesothelioma is a result of a malignant tumor of the pleura or the peritoneum.

The Pleura is a membrane that surrounds the lungs while the Peritoneum is a membrane that lines the abdominal cavity and covers the abdominal organs.

He lamented that there is no treatment for the disease which usually leads to death within one or two years.

Another disease that arises from exposure to asbestos, the ILO reported, is Bilateral Diffuse Pleural Thickening wherein the outer and inner layers of the pleura become thickened and become calcified or “bony”. This causes fluid to accumulate in between the cavities and restricts the ability of the lungs to expand resulting in shortness of breath.

The American Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons bared that asbestos is also the cause of pleural plagues.

These are thickened tissues confined to the outer layer of the pleura. While this does not cause disability, it can develop into an asbestos-related disease.

Jekyll and Hyde

Occupationally, millions are exposed to inhalation of significant amounts of asbestos dust during the ordinary workday. This is because there is still a growing world production of asbestos.

Some 5 million tons were produced last year compared to only 675,000 tons in 1940, added the ILO.

While using asbestos for insulation got abated, the mineral is still vital in production of cement and as ingredient to some 1,000 other industrial products.

No technologically alternative materials can replace asbestos today, ILO admitted as it saves millions of lives when manufactured into fire protection and brake linings. But, it is also a threat especially to the health of industrial workers, thus dubbed “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”.

The ILO recommends that governments should prescribe occupational exposure limits with corresponding testing measures, and that an international safety measure standard be adopted. Such measures must include dust control, constant monitoring of workers’ health, and the use of adequate protective clothes and masks.

Ultra Violet Radiation Now Causing World’s Amphibians to Go the Way of the Dodo By Dr. Michael A. Bengwayan, Ph. D., Environmental Science Environment News Network

Ultra Violet Radiation Now Causing  World’s Amphibians to Go the Way of the Dodo

By Dr. Michael A. Bengwayan, Ph. D., Environmental Science

Environment News Network

Baguio City, Philippines (Jan 3, 2018)—Anyone looking for a silver bullet that will explain all the amphibian deaths and declines in Asia and around the world, is going to be disappointed, scientists say.

Fourteen species of amphibians have vanished in Australia recently.  The golden toad is now extinct in Costa Rica, and five amphibians no longer exist in the United States. Amphibians are declining in Europe, Asia, South America and Africa.

Global declines of amphibians refer to the phenomenon of the population declines and even extinctions of amphibian species around the world. Assessments of the world’s amphibians  from 2004  to  2008 found that nearly a third of the known species of amphibians are globally threatened with extinction and that at least 42% of known amphibian species are experiencing population losses.

“This is an incredibly complex problem, a disturbing one and there’s no end in sight”,  scientist Vance T. Vredenburg,  of San Francisco State University, of San Francisco, California said.

It is now certain that multiple causes are contributing to the troubles of amphibians, said Vradenburg, and the lack of a single definite cause does not diminish the seriousness of this alarming ecological phenomenon.

 UV-B radiation, Pathogens Emerging Culprits

“At this point we can say that there are several causes of amphibian declines which include rising levels of UV-B radiation in sunlight, pathogens, pollutants, habitat destruction, introduced predators, pesticides, and most recently, fertilizers,” Vredenburg said.

“But the overall result is that this group of animals which has been around since the time of dinosaurs is now in serious decline around the world.  Ultra-violet rays coupled with pathogens and high nitrate levels are enough to cause amphibian deaths or deformities,” he ddded.

Vredenburg’s colleagues Kellie Whittaker, Michelle S Koo, and David B Wake of the University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA  authors of Global Declines of Amphibians said  the rapidity and extent of these declines, far more dramatic than those described for birds, mammals, or reptiles, forecast impending extinction of numerous amphibian species during the coming decades.

Increase in UV–B has been hypothesized to contribute to increased amphibian decline. Global atmospheric changes caused by anthropogenic activities are well documented and one result is a reduction of stratospheric ozone, leading to an increase in the amount of biologically damaging ultraviolet radiation (UV–B) reaching the Earth’s surface 

Unlike Vredenburg, they say however that the greatest threat is presented by a virulent fungal pathogen that is causing the infectious disease chytridiomycosis, which has decimated entire assemblages of amphibians worldwide. This pathogen, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, is responsible for what may well be the greatest disease-caused loss of biodiversity in recorded history, having caused population crashes or extinctions (often within a single year) of at least 200 species of frogs, even in relatively undisturbed, remote habitats, the  herpetologists said.

The American Association  for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) say amphibian immune defenses are being adversely being affected because of global warming and pollution. One  group of chytrid fungi that affects amphibians  is a parasite that feeds primarily on algae which often blooms in areas with excess nitrogen from farm runoff.

Extent of Amphibian Decline

The geographic extent of amphibian declines is worldwide.

The international Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) says  the areas most strongly affected are located in Central and South America, the Caribbean, the wet tropics of eastern Australia , and western North America.

 The islands of the Caribbean and Pacific have some of the highest percentages (up to 100%) of endemic species that are threatened or endangered, but have relatively few species. 

Less is known about the status of species in Africa and Asia. But some species-rich countries have alarmingly high percentages of threatened and endangered species (e.g., 70% for Sri Lanka, based on the online resource IUCN 2010).

The authors of Global Declines of Amphibians emphasized the worldwide amphibian decline is multi-pronged. Deforestation, lake and pond draining and farming in amphibian-rich habitats worldwide are worsening the amphibian die-offs, they said.

Frogs  Most Threatened

Esteemed Philippine herpetologist Dr. Angel Alcala  of Silliman University says with the current rapid extermination of animals, plants and other species  the real "sixth mass extinction",  is the amphibian branch of the tree of life that is undergoing the most drastic pruning.

Of the 107 Philippine amphibians,  26 species  are Highly Vulnerable, 48 species  are Moderately Vulnerable, 27 species  are Vulnerable, and 6 species are Least Vulnerable to climate change , Dr. Alcala said.

As of September 2016, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists 848 endangered amphibian species,  13% of all evaluated amphibian species are listed as endangered.

Frogs are the most threatened, IUCN reported climate change, habitat destruction and disease could drive more than half of all Europe's frogs, toads and newts to extinction within 40 years.

These include water frogs, robber frogs, robust frogs, shrub frogs, forest frogs, rain frogs, cryptic frogs, true frogs, fleshbelly frogs, glass frogs,  litter frogs, screeching frogs, poison dart frogs, hemiprachtids, fork-tongued frogs, narrow-mouthed frogs, hylids, puddle frogs, reed frogs and ground frogs.

Frogs are more sensitive to climate change than other  amphibians because they exhibit habitat and microhabitat specialization and  that they are significantly less vagile. Many of the effects of climate change might be indirect, involving such factors as manifestations of disease or pathogen-host dynamics, and may involve interactions with other stressors.

Saving Frogs

To save some of the world’s frogs, the Declining Amphibian Task Force of the Smithsonian Institute is using methods borrowed from ornithology—including backyard pond observations and frog call counts modeled after breeding bird surveys—to help collect data needed to devise solutions.

Although some biologists view captive breeding as a last-resort conservation action, the IUCN endorses captive breeding as a proactive conservation measure, one that should be initiated while a species is still available. IUCN, through its Amphibian Specialist Group, sponsors the Amphibian Ark, which tracks ex situ captive breeding activities for amphibians around the world. However, captive breeding is costly and involves many problems to hurdle.

But the most practical approach maybe one launched by local environmentalists of Benguet State University  (BSU)in the Philippines. Professors, teachers, students and farmers are constructing frog ponds for them to multiply and educating students on the importance of frogs.

Led by Dr. Grace T. Bengwayan, BSU’s Save the Frogs Project  has taken an interdisciplinary and integrative approach to rescue the prized amphibians. “This project has implications for how you do science”, Grace said.

“In a sense,  it is about defining the whole conceptual focus of ecology, particularly in that to understand the problem, we have to do a better job in integrating humans into ecological and evolutionary theory,” Dr. Grace said.

Learn to Respect Creation and Treat Them as Sacred by Michael A. Bengwayan

Learn to Respect Creation and Treat Them as Sacred

by Michael A. Bengwayan

The world of the 19th and 20th centuries can be considered as the time that Earth was pillaged at its worst. During those centuries, it was not a sacral world. It was a world losing its quality of enchantment because of mechanistic science and spiritless spiritualities.

The captains of the extractive industries rampaged around and inside Earth--taking by force anything that could run their industries and put money in their pockets. Tribes, communities, countries, habitats,forests, lands, lakes fell by the ways of the masters of disasters.

The powers that be and their partners in research laboratories pushed to transpose the workings of nature into precise mathematical language as if they were dealing with a complicated machine. This Cartesian-Newtonian method, domineering and disenchanting brought forth industrial development, wealth and high standards of living.

But it also resulted to grave ecological consequences.

The consequences we all now feel is increasingly hard to sustain. Worse, it is creating a graveyard for the future generations.

As our economic and environmental limitations become more obvious every day, we are obliged to shift to a new framework of thought. We must revise our assumptions about nature and the role of humankind.

We must see ourselves as part of a larger, integrated totality. A part dependent on a whole, just as a whole depends on the perfect functioning of every integral part.

So where do we fit in this whole system?

We fit in it as part of an interdependent component, which someone has planned since the beginning through a deliberate design. A design made by some infinite creative capacity and inexhaustible imagination.

There is no scientific method that can prove God's existence. And there is also no method that can deny God's existence and His presence in this design.

Because there is nothing to prove.

Even one of the great early scientific minds who denied the presence of a Maker accepted before his death-- astronomer and philosopher Sir James Jeans-- "the universe is not a machine. It is the result of a great THOUGHT by someone.

And as part of that great thought, we were created with non-humans in an environment where we are partly matter. And partly spirit.

As part matter, we are able to reach out to other humans. Either with love. Most often, hate.

As part matter, we reached out to other creation as humans. Mostly using, exploiting and destroying.

As part spirit, we are able to reach out to our Designer and Maker who is pure in spirit. Pure in being.

Next year, and as part spirit, we must now start reaching out to other creation with sacred respect and reverence.

Something we have not done so for the past 2,000 years or so when we were told to be "good stewards".

That is, if we want to preserve our vey own home. Becuase there is no other Earth. And time is running out.

For the Designer will not take it lightly to see His other creations destroyed by those He has entrusted these to be protected.