India pollutes the oceans with plastic more than all other nations

Regarding the disposal of plastic into the oceans, India has been identified as one of the leading contributors. The nation faces significant challenges in managing plastic pollution. The accompanying image was generated by artificial intelligence, drawing inspiration from a sculpture titled 'The Giant Plastic Tap' by Canadian artist Benjamin Von Wong, which was exhibited outside the Ottawa talks building.

Click on the image to see it larger - important for smartphones.

India plays a significant role to say the least in plastic pollution in our oceans. Here are some key facts:

1. Annual Plastic Waste Dumping: In 2020, India was the worst country for plastic waste in the oceans, dumping approximately 126.5 million kg of plastic each year. To put this into perspective, that weight is equivalent to over 250 thousand bottlenose dolphins, one of the most commonly found dolphin species in the ocean.

2. Comparison with the United States: Despite the United States producing double the amount of plastic waste annually compared to India (42 billion kg), only 2.4 million kg of it ends up in our oceans. This discrepancy could be due to the fact that the U.S. exports a significant portion of its waste to countries like India, which may have less effective waste management systems.

3. Exporting Plastic Waste: In 2018, the United States exported 157 thousand shipping containers filled with plastic waste, equivalent to approximately 1.07 million kg of plastic. While some of this waste went to countries with good waste management systems, a substantial amount was shipped to countries like India, which struggle with plastic waste management.

4. Collective Impact: The top five plastic waste dumpers globally contribute an astonishing 314 million kg of plastic into the ocean each year. India’s contribution remains a critical environmental challenge.

Here’s the list of the top 10 countries based on plastic waste dumped into the oceans:

1. India: 126.5 million kg
2. China: 70.7 million kg
3. Indonesia: 56.3 million kg
4. Brazil: 38 million kg
5. Thailand: 22.8 million kg
6. Mexico: 3.5 million kg
7. Egypt: 2.5 million kg
8. United States: 2.4 million kg
9. Japan: 1.8 million kg
10. United Kingdom: 703 thousand kg¹1

Efforts to address plastic pollution are crucial to safeguard marine life and ocean ecosystems. 🌊🐬

How bad is plastic pollution in India?

India faces a significant challenge when it comes to plastic pollution. Here are some key facts:

1. Annual Plastic Waste Generation: India generates approximately 3.5 million tonnes of plastic waste each year. This staggering amount has almost doubled over the last five years, highlighting the severity of the issue.

2. Per Capita Plastic Consumption: While the per-capita plastic consumption in India is relatively low at 13.6 kg, compared to countries like the U.S. (108 kg) and China (56 kg), the impact is still substantial. Plastic pollution adversely affects our ecosystems and is also linked to air pollution.

3. Recycling and Collection: India collects only 60% of its plastic waste, with the remaining 40% directly entering the environment. This lack of proper collection exacerbates the problem.

4. Single-Use Plastics: To address this issue, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced India’s pledge to phase out single-use plastics by 2022. These single-use plastics include items like straws, cutlery, earbuds, and packaging films.

5. Recycling Challenges: Despite efforts, a large fraction of plastic waste in India still ends up in landfills or waterways, posing a significant environmental threat.

Efforts are being made through initiatives like the National Dashboard on Elimination of Single Use Plastic, Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) Portal, and more to manage plastic waste effectively and create a better future.

Sources: extensive search of the internet. India Today is one source. Another is Euro News. Many more. 

 
P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Are the cavalry horses that charged through London's streets, okay?

The story about seven cavalry horses escaping and charging through central London is reported across all the news media today. There are some unpleasant photographs of blood pouring down a gray horse. It looks quite shocking. The horses ran into traffic injuring themselves and damaging vehicles. It is fortunate that nobody was killed and the horses have survived.

This short report is about the health and welfare of the horses. An army spokesman said:

"The horses have been recovered and returned to camp. A number of personnel and horses have been injured and are receiving medical attention."

The MoD said that one soldier had been responsible for two of the horses.

Update:

All I can say is that five horses have been recovered to the army - three of those are fine, but unfortunately two of those are in quite a serious condition and we'll be continuing to monitor them," James Cartlidge, the defence procurement minister, told LBC.

Further update:

The Times reports that 2 horses have undergone operations. A horse named Quaker has been transferred to an equine hospital. The army assured the public that their horse receive the highest standard of care. Note: I have just heard that they are kept in stables 24/7 except for one hour a day. If that is true it is not the highest standards of care.

The report is that the injury to the horses were caused by glass that had been broken from vehicles which the horses had run into. If that's the case then the injuries will not be severe it would seem to me.

One witness said: "One of the horses hit the Mercedes van and the rider was on, fell back on this little middle of the road, and the other woman lost control of her horse and she managed to grab the railings. The injured soldier was lying there on the ground. He looked like he hurt himself pretty bad. It was terrible."

The horses had been spooked "as they passed some building work and concrete fell from the roof". They were being ridden at the time by the soldiers. Four of the soldiers fell and three were injured. They were taken to hospital along with an injured civilian. It is believed that the injuries are not serious.

As I said, the horses are being assessed by a veterinarian and the indications are from the story although this needs to be confirmed that they have not been seriously harmed and will recover. I will try and update this page if and when it is possible.

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Why don't humans give animals the same rights as themselves?

The first point to make is that humans decide who has rights and who doesn't. The concept of rights is a human creation. Only humans can dish out rights to humans and animals. And they are designed to protect sentient beings.

Humans don't give animals the same rights that they give humans because if they did it would severely upset businesses. Granting animals the same rights as humans would punch a seriously big hole in worldwide commerce. It would destroy many businesses and it would certainly cost the world, in terms of trade, trillions upon trillions of dollars because in this modern world, animals are still there to serve humans in the biblical fashion.

Note: these are personal views. What are yours? Please comment. Click on the image to see it larger.

The picture was created by AI and AI can't spell! 😊💕🤔

Humans still have dominion over animals as per the Bible and animals are still abused by humans in order to make billions of pounds of profit. If you introduced greatly enhanced animal rights into this equation the ramifications would be enormous. For example the illegal trade in wild animals and their body parts is worth billions of dollars annually. All illegal. Humans don't want to enforce international agreements to stop it (CITES).

The consequences of equal animal rights would reverberate around the world for decades into the future. It would increase the price of foods tremendously. This would have a seriously negative effect on the economies of many countries.

In short, it simply isn't workable to grant animals the same rights as humans under the current human society even if we wanted to and in most instances we don't because this is about survival and granting animals equal rights jeopardises the survival of humans which is dependent upon making money.

So the granting or not granting of human rights to animals is about money at a bottom line. When I asked the same question of an artificial intelligent computer they could not provide me with a good answer because AI does not have an opinion. They don't know how to philosophise.

They simply search the Internet for the ideas of others and then summarise them. So you can't go to AI for an answer to this question.

What you can say in the positive is that animal rights have improved tremendously over the past centuries and recently over the past hundred years. This is due to pressure from animal advocates like myself.

And it is due to a realisation that we have to live with animals on this planet as best began. If we destroy nature - and wild animals are obviously a part of nature - we destroy ourselves because we are dependent upon nature and the planet to survive.

We ARE in fact destroying ourselves because we are in fact destroying the planet thanks to global warming and that, too, is about making money. If you want to prevent or curb global warming you have to invest trillions of dollars and countries like China don't want to do that. 

They want to go on with a burgeoning economy rapidly increasing in size. They depend upon around 5% growth every year in order to appease the masses in China. If they don't see the economy growing the tenuous hold on power by the CCP would start to crumble.

So granting rights to animals is about money and money gives people power and power gives people improved chances of survival. The answer is all about survival at the end of the day.

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

Why humans don't have tails. Genetic basis for our tail-loss evolution.

Unlike our domestic cat companions we don't have tails. You've probably noticed! 😉😎 But we might have had tails and think how different the world would be if we had retained our tails like our primate cousins. The mind boggles. One's imagination can run riot with that image. All the chairs and all the sofas and all the seats on trains and buses would have to be changed.

Human with a tail in X-ray. Image by DALLE.

RELATED: Evolution of the blotched tabby pattern of domestic cats.

So what happened? Well, firstly, unlike Tucker Carlson, you've got to believe in evolution to believe in this scientific explanation. In fact, I hope Carlson reads this article because it might make him see sense about evolution. He believes that God created humans and animals under the creationist theory. He says there is no evidence for evolution which is wrong but he believes creationism about which there is certainly no evidence whatsoever. Tucker Carlson is irrational.

"It has long been speculated that tail loss in hominoids contributed to orthograde and bipedal locomotion, the evolutionary occurrence of which coincided with the loss of the tail" - quote from the study - see citation at base of page.

The reason

In summary, a genetic parasite altered a crucial gene related to tail development when our lineage diverged from other primates around 25 million years ago. This alteration ultimately led to the disappearance of tails in apes, including humans. Our tailless state owes its existence to this ancient genetic twist.

In some more detail: over millions of years, DNA undergoes changes that drive evolution. One intriguing element is the Alu element, a repetitive DNA sequence found exclusively in primates. These “jumping genes” can insert themselves randomly into the genome, potentially disrupting or enhancing gene function. In this case, the Alu elements reside in the TBXT gene, specifically within introns (DNA sequences flanking exons). Introns were once considered the “dark matter” of the genome, assumed to serve no purpose. However, when cells use the TBXT gene to generate RNA, the repetitive nature of Alu sequences causes them to bind together.

The researchers discovered two Alu elements in the TBXT gene, present in great apes but absent in monkeys. Remarkably, these elements reside in introns, not in the protein-coding exons. When RNA molecules are generated from the TBXT gene, the Alu sequences bind together, potentially influencing tail development.

Now, that is highly technical and I don't fully understand it but that is the current explanation as to why humans don't have tails. You can boil it down to the way evolution works and the way genetic mutations sometimes arise during evolution which leads to the creation of a different kind of animal and that animal does very well in terms of survival and therefore this alteration to the appearance and physiology sticks around and doesn't disappear.

Bo Xia, is the first author of the study (formerly a graduate student at New York University and now a principal investigator at the Broad Institute).

RELATED ARTICLE: Feline Evolution in Brief.

Study Citation

Xia, B., Zhang, W., Zhao, G. et al. On the genetic basis of tail-loss evolution in humans and apes. Nature 626, 1042–1048 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07095-8

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.

No hope in Russia. What a shit hole! Think of cats as well.

This photograph from Russia posted to Twitter/X by @nafoviking (he's a great critic of Russia) made me and a lot of other people think about what life is like in Russia. I know that in part of Russia, probably large parts of Russia, life is somewhat like this or exactly like this. As he says it looks and is utterly depressing. And very cold a lot of the time as well.

Click on the image to see it larger if you want to. This is particularly useful when reading this post on a smart phone.

Russian apartment block. The picture is believed to be in the public domain.

I would expect things to got a lot worse since Putin invaded Ukraine because he has now upped spending on armaments and the military to around 30% of Russia's GDP. NATO insists that member countries spend 2% of the GDP on the military and a lot of European countries don't achieve that.

You can see how much money Russia is putting into the war in Ukraine which means a lot of money is taken away from public services in Russia which in turn almost certainly means that they are seeing more apartment blocks like this, not maintained properly and falling to bits.

And, of course, being an animal lover and cat lover, I must think about the domestic cat companions if there are any living in this block with their owners. You have to use a little bit of imagination but not much to visualise a cat living with perhaps an elderly couple in a one-bedroom flat on the fifth floor with their long-suffering domestic cat companion.

A cat that has probably lived all their life or most of their life in this one bedroom flat; possibly or probably eating crappy Russian pet food which possibly or probably is affecting their health negatively. 

I don't want to paint an unfair picture. Although I hate what Russia is doing like millions of others and I hate the indoctrination of the Russian people by Putin and his cronies in the Kremlin into believing that he is a wonderful leader and all is well, I need to try and be even-handed and fair.

An interesting aspect of Russia is that they do like their cats although I don't think cats like to live in Russia as it is far too cold. Of course it isn't cold all the time but it is for large parts of the year.

And there are some amazing cat breeders in Russia. I don't like cat breeding but you have to admire cat breeders who do a good job. And Russia has their own couple of purebred cats namely the Russian Blue and the Siberian.

Russia breeds some of the best Maine Coon cats. But it seems to me that a large part of their population live in what we would regard as extreme poverty in the West. Their entire life is lived in this form poverty. They don't regard it as poverty but the boffins in the UK would because in the UK we have a distorted sense of what poverty is.

We don't know we are born in the UK. We are so mollycoddled and given so much money by the government which the government can't afford.

When the electricity and gas bills went up immediately after the Covid-19, this UK government dished out a lot of grants to help pay the very high heating bills. During that period, I am sure that I made a profit because the government gave me more money than I was spending on heating. They were that generous. Overly generous, spending money that the UK does not have.

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins.