Lyle Lewis

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No shortage of stupid to feed satire.

The Global Biome Reassignment Initiative A bold new era in planetary optimization

The following announcement was issued today by the Department of Planetary Optimization.

open.substack.com/pub/lylel/p/...

As much as I can.

Idiots are never mistaken for Shakespeare. You have nothing to worry about.

Have a little problem with coming up with an original thought? Of course you do.

Marsupials previously thought extinct for millennia discovered in New Guinea The chances of finding one mammal species thought to be lost was ‘almost zero’ and finding two is ‘unprecedented’, biologist Tim Flannery says

Two new mammal species discovered in New Guinea rainforests.

Exciting and sobering news.

How many species disappeared in the last century before anyone even knew they existed?

Discovery reminds us how incomplete our knowledge of biodiversity still is.

If stupidity hurt, you’d be in constant agony.

Sorry. Communicating with a kindergartener is a talent I leave to others.

Very.

Got hit in the head with a hockey puck? Seeking rational explanations for irrationality. 🫤😊

Global sea levels have been underestimated due to poor modelling, research suggests Analysis shows average levels are 30cm higher than thought, and up to 150cm in south-east Asia and Indo-Pacific

Models didn’t underestimate sea-level rise just because of “poor modelling.”

Feedback loops, ocean dynamics, land subsidence, and heat storage interact in ways we don’t fully understand until they appear in data.

We’re in an impossible conundrum. We’ve reached a point that the only way to slow collapse is to leave nature alone, in every way possible. Alternatively, people don’t care about anything they don’t have a connection with. Overshoot provides no viable alternatives.

I’m amazed by the people who have existed over the last several centuries who are incredibly prescient. They are rare gems.

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The West has been in a 32-year drought. But it may be worse than that A drought has a beginning and an end. What's happening in the West doesn't seem to have an end, so what is it?

The Southwest isn’t just drying.

It’s holding less water.

Grazing, aquifer depletion, river control, agriculture…..centuries of hydrologic modification.

Now add warming.

Drought is temporary.
Aridification rewrites the system.

The mission to keep the borderlands wild In the rugged terrain where Mexico and the United States meet, a border wall is just the latest obstacle fragmenting habitats and disrupting migration paths. Here’s how a cadre of conservationists is trying to get animals moving.

The Sky Islands still show green arteries from above.
Much of the wildlife connectivity is already severed.
Conservation, at this stage, means keeping the remaining threads open for as long as possible.

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Very true.

Maybe yours didn’t, but my TV is a time-traveling psychopathic killer—responsible for the extinction of both birds. I live in fear every time I turn it on.

North American birds are dying off faster. It signals a human crisis, too. The accelerating decline of birds is a bellwether of far deeper biodiversity crisis — one that threatens not only beloved species but the humans who live alongside them.

This headline would have been accurate at almost any point in the last few centuries.
Bird decline didn’t begin with modern monitoring. It began with habitat destruction and commercial exploitation.
What’s new isn’t the loss.
It’s that we can finally measure it.

People simply don’t understand the physics, hydrology, or ecology behind livestock grazing effects. This is just as true of people who majored in rangeland management in college. It was probably academics that coined the phrase — rangeland improvements —-all ecosystem destroyers.

Simplifying an oversimplification.

Double down

Judge orders changes to Columbia and Snake river dam operations to help 'disappearing' salmon A federal judge in Oregon has ordered narrow changes to hydropower dam operations on the Columbia and Snake rivers in the Pacific Northwest to help salmon. U.S.

Across Republican and Democratic administrations alike, federal courts have often done more to enforce ESA protections than the agencies responsible for them.
Conservation by litigation is a symptom of structural failure.

You’re embarrassing yourself.

Alfalfa... is a low-value water-guzzling crop. So why does this rampant water usage persist?...legislative measures dating back to the 1860s essentially allow for a first-come, first-served approach to water rights. Established dairy farmers and ranchers have free rein to use vast amounts of water.

New report reveals alarming reason why the western US is running out of water: 'It is a stupid system' Vox revealed that agriculture is the top offender with livestock, in particular, dominating the issue of water usage in the Colorado River.

Livestock doesn’t just consume water through feed crops. It also alters dryland watersheds, reducing infiltration, increasing runoff, and weakening the system’s ability to store snowmelt.

You can’t stabilize a river while destabilizing the land that feeds it.

It scales……unfortunately….as you know too well.