Environment News – Why Living By The Sea Is Best! | Meteors This Month | Lightning More Dangerous to Animals
Some bite-sized pieces of news from the environment this week.
09 October, 2019
News snippets
Did you know that animals are much more at risk from a lightning strike than humans? This is a fascinating piece of useless information that I’ve just come across. Lightning, it seems, LOOKS like it hits a point, but it actually radiates out as ground current – and it’s deadly. We humans have 2 points of contact with the earth – our legs. So, if we get struck by lightning, electricity travels up one leg, possibly jolts the heart, and then runs down the other leg. That can be fatal, but it isn’t always. But animals have 4 points of contact, and in a large animal, they’re far apart. So the energy finds a leg, travels up it, and then finds more legs, and so the charge intensifies. The charge goes all the way through the body including through all the vital organs. And that’s frequently fatal.
The Orionids meteor shower will peak in the pre-dawn hours of Oct. 21, but you might see some early evening too. Look for Orion in the night sky as most of the meteors will come from there – but in fact you’ll probably be able to see them all over. Grab a blanket, get comfortable and look up. Chances are, you’ll quickly find yourself with a glut of wishes.
more below……
more snippets
A large group of economists has announced that, after doing some hairy calculations, we should act on climate change now, not later. (How long have environmentalists been saying that?). They say we need to make up for lost time. Even the economists were shocked at how quickly the cost of delay increases over time. If we don’t act – for example by putting a large carbon tax on polluters – for another year, the damages from climate change would climb an additional $1 trillion. Waiting 10 years would put the price tag at $100 trillion. In other words, the time to act was yesterday. We didn’t – so we need to act now.
You already know (because I keep mentioning it! 🙂 that spending time with Nature is good for us. Go to a forest for example and your pulse rate and blood pressure decrease, your immune system strengthens and you sleep better. Even going to a city park makes you happier and helps reduce stress. And water is especially beneficial. Now a new study shows that living near the ocean brings huge well-being benefits including reduced stress and less depression. especially among people in lower income groups. Interesting!
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Warm regards,
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