Series: Waterworld
Title: The Plains of Vileness.
In the port and industrial area of Tambon Ratsada, Amphoe Mueang, Phuket, I came across a 30m long patch of stagnant water and mud. A heavily polluted eddy of the Tha Chin creek. It’s black fetid water meandering through an area of godowns, truck mechanic workshops, spray paint depots and scruffy residences. The oily black liquid of the creek gurgled out into the nearby litter strewn bay on the Eastern flank of the island abutting Old Phuket town.
This cesspool before me, was covered in a green slime. In effect algae feeding off the rotting matter that was mulched into the sludge. There was a very strong ammonia smell rising off this toxic brew. Hmm I thought. Interesting.
I looked long and hard at this scene before me and used my powers of pareidolia and apophenia to determine that in actual fact, I was looking across a very large tract of land. Many kilometers in length. An enormous swathe seen from a high altitude vantage point. Possibly from a winged WaterWorld dragon or some other airborne contraption. As I gazed down upon this beautiful meadowland with its picture postcard hills and sparkling lakes, the sight reminded me of landscapes not unlike I had seen flying over central Vietnam or Thailand. Even Britain for that matter. We know how green England can be.
But then I came back to my senses. This was no enchanting scene at all but was in fact the notorious Plains of Vileness. A realm so toxic, so imbued with great thermals of nitrogen and hydrogen that any poor WaterWorld acolyte foolish enough to attempt a crossing, would succumb to the symptoms of burning eyes, nose, throat and respiratory tract. Resulting in blindness, lung damage and death….
Now let’s ponder for a moment what noxious gases we humans actually spew into the atmosphere on a yearly basis. Just a modest 45 billion tons. Now that is what we might call just plain foolish.
Worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide — the greenhouse gases most responsible for global warming — were on the rise again in 2017 after three years of little-to-no growth, a study released Monday found.
Global emissions from all human activities reached an all-time record 45 billion tons in 2017, following a projected 2% rise in burning fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal, the study revealed.The report by the Global Carbon Project team dashed hopes that emissions had peaked. “We hoped that we had turned the corner … We haven’t,” said study co-author Rob Jackson of Stanford University.
http://richardmarkdobson.com/landscape/waterworld/1
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