Tuesday 21 August 2007

Forbidden Going Out

I think that more than one woud have to be at home, it should be forbidden for them to go out. Some people are as Atila's horse, where it steps on... the grass never grows. The difference is that Atila didn't threw any plastic bottles, wrappers, aluminium cans and cigarette butts among other things. In September 2006 I was in the Albufera, a lake near the city of Valencia. We got a boat ride and I could see some bottles floating in the water. The worst thing was that the bottles were among nesting places. Furthermore, it does exist a little track to access the lake by walking. In the point you reach the shore everywhere is plenty of trash. Regrettable.

The same thing I could see in Arañuel some time later. Arañuel is a little village which stands next to the Mijares river. It wasn't difficult to find a bier can and different products of plastic floating in the water or along the shore. But the worst thing for me is tourism in Antarctica, where's our limit for travelling? Are we going mad? I think travel agencies don't matter the subject, they only want one thing: money. It's really a pity, but in our last sanctuary, someone has already said that sometimes is possible to see trash bags or butts "dancing" among whales and penguins.

Not every body is prepared for visiting any place.

Saturday 11 August 2007

Have you ever wondered....

.......... why the trees attract rain? Saying the truth, I have been a long time wondering if that issue was true or only and idiom from the people without any scientific basis. Reading a magazin one sunday evening I came across the answer. In the magazine you could find an interview to a physicist who answered my question.

The process works as follows. Sun heats the seas and as consequence of it water steam holds over the sea surface, waiting for a current of air which drags it to land. As the land is normally colder than sea, the steam condenses when reaches the coast, up to the point that very early some mornings we can see little drops of water everywhere. In this point forests come into play, but forests no gardens (some people try to convice another that a forest is a little green spot, but that's not true). And why forests come into play? Because they "breath", and as a consequence they release more water steam that joins the one which comes from the sea. In that moment, the density is so high that atmosphere can't hold the water and that becomes rain. This is what happens more or less.

We have deforested the Mediterramean Sea in Spain. My opinion is that individual interests have prevaled over public ones. The consequence is that we have less rain. We have no enough forests to stop the rain and it scapes to nothern parts, increasing the volume and becoming into floods. The water is not realised litte by little but suddenly.

Now we have another problem, climate change is generating a hotter Mediterraneran Sea. Last year we got a record on temperatures and that supposes that the temperature diffrences between land and sea is minor, so is harder for steam to condense and become rain. Now the problem is not only scaping to the north, the problem is to generate the lovely rain.


Have a nice week.