Monday, May 19, 2008

Reforest Mother Earth to Live!

Water, droughts, and floods on the Indian subcontinent:

The naturalecologies solution.
http://practicethevedas.blogspot.com/
R.Ashok Kumar, B.E.,M.E., Negentropist, Bombay Sarvodaya Mandal,299,Tardeo Road, Nana Chowk,Mumbai-400007. Tel: 022-23872061. e-mail:ramaswami.ashokkumar@gmail.com 
Copyright © 2014 Ramaswami Ashok Kumar

Invocation 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YkyLB2uXTTg&list=RDMM31vQFHBhJoQ&index=18


The conventional approach and its fallacy


MS Menon,in his piece "Raining down on a good idea"(Indian Express August 16,2004) sets forth the conventional way of handling the issues regarding droughts and floods. Like all the rest who have written on the problem of water availability in India created by men in the first place, he specialises in the neglect of biology, the central problem of our times. Modern civilisation, created by specialists will, in the words of the prophet Mahatma Gandhi destroy itself given sufficient time. What is required today is the utter selfless cooperation of the Menons and his ilk with the biologists who are ecologists, who have 'despecialised their vision'. The arm-chair theorists and the pseudo-environmentalists occupy almost all the positions of policy making, the media and the commercial enterprises -they had in the past and are doing so today- and are assuring destruction. They have debunked the Sardar Sarovar report commissioned by the World Bank and are now seeing the overtopping of the Sardar Sarovar dam. They have remained silent and smiling when forests after forests, the true temples of all time India- were destroyed-when dam after dam remained incomplete-and went to the next dam to mint money. Go speak to the sages-they will tell you the truth.

Shri MS Menon commits a demonstrable error in reasoning when he states: 'The Indian land mass receives an average annual precipitation of 4,000 billion cubic metres (BCM), 75 per cent of it in the three-month monsoon period. But the available resource is only about 1,950 BCM, the rest being lost to immediate evaporation and soil moisture. However, due to topographical and geological constraints, the utilisable quantum of water is estimated as only about 1,100 BCM (700 BCM from surface flows and 400 BCM from groundwater). Understandably, even this is not uniformly distributed within the country as the rainfall varies from 11,000 mm in the North-East to 100 mm in the western regions.'

First, he has his data incorrect-in the West we also have 11000mm to 5000 mm adjacent to the rain shadows! Second, his audit is a typical dam builder's flaw because he ignores the contribution of trees in forests. From fundamental physiological principles of plants it can be shown that when India is reforested to 20 kg/sq.m dry biomass density on a third of its area throughout its area, it transpires 1000 Sardar Sarovars live storage(SSLS) or 5800 billion cubic meters (BCM) out of a rainfall of 84 cm annual rains(June to September)on its area of 3.286 million square kilometers or 2761 BCM (500 SSLS).This is so because of the characteristic of the trees acting as giant pumps-rain machines- in using the water again and again through transpiration. This property of the trees enables automatic river-interlinking through the medium of equitable groundwater recharging via the atmospheric network of transpiration enabled by the sun and the osmotic property of the roots(a multiple of the gravitational pull on the groundwaters). That’s why once you destroy the forests, you resort to the harsh measure of the dam. The Menons and his tribe of specialists who think of river interlinking only as a set of artificial canal/dam schemes are doomed to fail. Only if they cooperate with a set of -subcontinent wide and even beyond -people's cooperatives, where living is on the basis of income from the multiple products of the forests, will the floods and droughts be sufficiently buffered. The engineers and the policy makers must stop this reckless neglect of harnessing the ecological, living properties of nature. There is nothing more tragic than ignorance in action. 'There is no pure reason for the non-harmonised/Nor for the non-harmonised is there concentration/For one without concentration there is no peace/And for the unpeaceful how can there be happiness?'-The Gita. Don’t you see how mercilessly they are watching the people being driven out of their lands like rats when the Sardar Sarovar dam overtopped(design basis accident?). And how the Chinese and our executives are anxiously awaiting the Goedelian outcome of the Pareechi 'dam' proceedings? What if all the glaciers melt at an extraordinary pace as is almost the case now? And how the Tunga-Bhadra and the Hirakud dams have had their capacity drastically reduced by siltation? Or when the dams run dry because of no rains? Yes Mahatma Gandhi, given enough time modern civilisation will destroy itself. Unless they....





Harness the concentration of nature




Buffering the effects of droughts and floods can only come about by harnessing the concentration of nature. Not by fragmenting it into pieces of resources unsustainable and giving them temporary virtual values for sale in the market, neglecting our living communities-including men, women and the remarkable power of animals available at 1000 megawatts per square kilometer of power flow for kindly use. The dams constructed for electricity only like the Bodhghat and Koyna deforest the forest floor of 1000 MW/sq.km power flow to produce electricity at most at 7-10 MW per sq.km; Wind-farms instead of forests do even worse at 0.6 to 1 MW per sq.km land use.

The forests use the soil on which they stand, use the solar energy which drenches them and the rain falling on them and create winds. The contraptions of man use the water only or the wind only by destroying it or the sun's rays only to produce only one useful output, wasting all the other inputs: diluting the power of nature and contributing to human misery, fertile lands wasted in a subcontinent where every piece of land is priceless.



The Consequences of Artificial Fragmentation of Nature
The specialists neatly divided the solution-the forests into several problems-dams, borewells, silting up of the rivers, canals and reservoirs, by rampant deforestation and poaching, floods, droughts, displacement and homelessness and undesirable effects on sustainable living in harmony with the life giving nature. The arm-chair theorists are those who are merrily paving away our rich soils into wastelands -the so-called quadrilateral, without ever winking to see an ecologically sustainable coastline transport system of barges and shipping using even sails and a little fossil and nature- friendly(full of marshes and mangroves!) ports. The specialists must come to terms- yea- become ecology literate- sustainability literate, must use the present dams to create forests, so ultimately but quickly, the walls will give way-yea- the Chinese are not excluded from this cooperative effort nor the institutions like the IMF and the World Bank but with their primitive industrial hardwired mindset thrown overboard- and continually metamorphose like the institutionalised innovators that USA represents... What are you talking Menon? River Inter-linking ? Yes but the method to be adopted must definitely not be that recommended by you and the other ecologically/sustainability illiterate specialists- but must spring forth from the concept of -people's cooperatives oriented- ecologically compatible reforestation- self regenerating- producing income from its products and not displacing people but certainly reducing the number of indiscriminately built matchboxes and multiple highways which reduce the life breath of life-soil, air , water and forests to unbreathable concrete and the litter of enormous number of automobiles and ramshackle lorries working at ten percent efficiency-burning ninety percent of the resources into flames and greenhouses.



Reverdure is the trumpet call for survival
I call on the journalists of courage and the so called engineers and scientists to look beyond their noses into the fundamental physiological principles of plants- rain machines and allow them to be reproduced automatically-and allow the automatic intrinsic control of atmospheric equitable distribution of rainfall by vegetation with the help of Surya... but the hard work is the effective, farsighted teaming up of people into well-knit units of co-operation and the build up once again of sufficient density of diverse vegetation in the form of forests up to a level which can assure wholesome living for a long time to come. We have no time to start but now...



An example of Reforestation Vs a Dam


Assume that we are in a context where the whole of the subcontinent is optimally reforested so that automatic recharging of groundwaters is assured so that groundwater levels are controlled by forests.

AN ENERGY AUDIT OF THE BODGHAT DAM



The dam project clearly brings out , in the engineer's own language, how unacceptable the project is. The dam impounds water and generates 107 megawatts of energy-capacity according to the plan. To do this it would submerge or has already has, 14000 hectares (ha) of the most fertile land, including 6000 ha of forests. Standard calculations using the universal energy equivalent of transpiration from trees show that the forest around Bodhghat generates an energy (-capacity)equivalent of 18300 MW besides providing water, fertile soil and fresh air.(The dam is thus 171 times a net consumer of power/energy. After it silts up, you create another contraption at another fertile location, displacing people). We are committing cultural ethnocide when we destroy the very balance of nature and its immense genetic variability. Far from being useful to the people, the Bodhghat dam project buries rich land and in effect deprives the people of an immense source of power.

WE are repeating the folly in the fertile Nimad plains on the banks of the Narmada by building the Maheshwar dam which the people and aware scientists reject as modern fundamentalism.

Eight years ago ,in 1992,the Independent Review-The Morse Committee Report, stunned the World Bank into withdrawing funding for the Sardar Sarovar projects. The disastrous financial consequences of large dams are irreversible as we can derive from the invincible data furnished by the independent review: Large dams constructed since independence are equivalent to a live storage capacity of 47.5 Sardar Sarovars(SSLS). Live storage capacity of 22 Sardar Sarovars -i.e., 22 SSLS have already silted up in just 50 years. The remaining large dam capacity of 25 to 26 SSLS will be silted up in another 65 years. Already the heights of many are to be raised and some have already been! Bankers and FIIs should realise that since independence the 22 SSLS silting up represents an NAV erosion of Rs100,000 Cr at current prices! Probably to make good the eroded NAV, the dam lobby would not like to foreclose the loony large dam!



THE POWER OF CONCENTRATION OF NATURE



The annual summer monsoon rainfall in India is 84 cm or 500 Sardar sarovars live storage(SSLS). The annual freshwater withdrawal is 115 SSLS. Involving everyone concerned like the tribals and other locals affected (people’s cooperatives like Amul), if we allow regeneration of forests ecologically at 20 kg per sq. meter dry biomass density and more(in hilly areas, etc) throughout India over a third of its area, then in a decade or two, we will progressively improve the utilisation of rainwaters by nature to the extent of 1000 Sarsdar Sarovars live storage. Since rainwaters are only 500 SSLS, how come we can use 1000? This is because of the magic of transpiration by the trees. The trees transpire 1000 SSLS, in successive cycles of precipitation and transpiration, utilising only two percent for their growth and production of multiple outputs -the GNP or The Gross Nature Product! Of the remaining 98%, 50% or so is transpired into the skies distributing nutritious groundwaters throughout India equitably in proportion to the density of the vegetation. The remaining is run off and evaporation. These the trees perform by acting as giant pumps working at 100 to 500 atmospheres pressure. This is enabled through the medium of natural nuclear fusion power in the sun safely 150 million kms away ! Reverdure then, is alternative, infinitely superior to the dam and its costly appurtenances. Forests regenerated will enable the people to preserve energy in cycles of use, live on income and not erode capital, have the fruitcake and eat it too. The people can innovate in the enjoyment of the use of living energy, including their own muscle power (some 100000 MW) and make the earth a better place to live for the coming generations. And not oscillate in sensex vibrations subject to human fallibility, ignorance and greed, stage-managed by a few arabpathys(an arab is a 100 crore) of globalised fancy.This is "Natural Capitalism" the Indian way. Read for example the Vedanta-the Bhagavadgita for the algorithm.

The government of India must be guided by us to divert the insane misuse of funds via artificial nuclear power of the fission type (or any other artificial nuke power) and large dams(including for their cooling) and other forms of manipulative capitalism to ecological regeneration of forests involving the people as leaders within Amul like or better cooperatives.





References:

1.Plant Physiology Online, www.plantphys.net :a companion to Plant Physiology, Third Edition by Lincoln Taiz and Eduardo Zeiger, published by Sinauer

2. Mines,S.H.1971. The Last Days of Mankind:Ecological Survival or Extinction. Simon & Schuster,New York.

3. Ashok Kumar, R. May 1986.Modern Civilisation and Normal Civilisation: The Need for Small Self-Sufficient Communities. GANDHI MARG. pp70-92. Gandhi Peace Foundation New Delhi.

4 Tiwari, K.M.1984. Indian Forest Records(New Series). Forest Influences. Vol. 3,No.1. Measures to Control Floods in the Ganga Basin. FRI Press. Forest Research Institute and Colleges. Dehra Dun. Controller of Publications . New Delhi.

5. Ashok Kumar, R. 2004. The Power of Natural Nuclear: Trees and Wind Farms. See http://o3.indiatimes.com/thepoweroflivingenergy

The author has worked in the engineering and training departments of a premier conventional power company in India. Reverdure is his signature!



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8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your ideas make sense. I like them. I have been planting trees for years.Mostly by the easy way, acorns and fruit seeds.

Ramaswami Ashok Kumar said...

The American Fly Pandemic and various other viruses created by dams is enveloping the world and the latest is Wuhan Carona. Realise and take part in Reverdure by recognising the interconnectedness of living beings evolutionarily made robust. World dam dynamics is consuming all life. Realise the infinite superiority of Nature by trying to enumerate species in a forest. Some species are dominant, some are less common and many are rare. Realise this truth as you try your hand at reforestation ecologically. Dams must be drained and we must reverdure. See the infinite superiority of living species to deadly modern civilization and its dammned dams.

Ramaswami Ashok Kumar said...

Re:
https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/preserve-conserve-indias-biodiversity-says-pm-modi-in-mann-ki-baat/article30894453.ece?homepage=true#comments_30894453
Here you are exhorting on conserving biodiversity and you have your once jailed Yeddi applying for reduction of Bannerghatta National Park to 100 km^2 from 270 km^2? You must increase the area of the park by another 100 km^2 not reduce it if all life and abiota have to survive. Such CMs must step down immediately for survival of all life NOW.

Ramaswami Ashok Kumar said...

Re: https://www.deccanherald.com/state/karnataka-districts/owners-oppose-property-tax-hike -demand-mysuru-city-corporation-to-withdraw-decision-968023.html
Taxing Residents to Death: Open Space Tax
The Karnataka government is playing with the health of all life by taxing open space of our houses. Plant life today is rare in Mysuru,with open spaces built up into concrete monstrosities with multiple stories. Pollution is preventing us from breathing. Water is polluted. Sewage rivers in Mysuru is the stinking norm. MCC has lost civic sense and is acting as a livery implementing the retrograde tax orders issued thoughtlessly by a government which is bent upon ruining the health of nature itself. The government is causing the pandemics to be more aggressive by destroying the immune system with filthy air, water and soil. A tree transpires its own weight of water in a day. Thus a tree recharges the groundwaters to the extent of Rs 4 lacs per year. When our gardens recharge the wells, the level of water is maintained. We can then have drinking water for our families produced by our gardens. When houses have gardens, they give us health. Instead of taxing us to death, the government should give credit. There is a big precedent for this. It is not as if the governments have been heartless in the matter. When the Tatas at their Mithapur chemical plant saved some 50 percent of the fossil fuel way back in the fifties and sixties, and applied to the government for credit for such saving, the government duly recognized their feat and are giving them credit for fuel saved, not taxing them for saving so much mining and waste of precious forests! Rescind your order now and follow the ways of good governance that you yourself have set as precedent. Contribute to the mitigation of climate change. Give us credit for open space,not tax them. This way the government will ensure the health of mother earth. Instead of adding fuel to the fire of covid 19, ensure our health by doing your Karma truthfully. Your Karma is clear: You return the service we are rendering to mother earth by trees in our properties by giving us credit for doing our Karma which, as the Gita says, is by being the genesis and support of all life.

Ramaswami Ashok Kumar said...

https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/agriculture/guidelines-for-non-transgenic-gene-editing-techniques-pending-since-january-2020/article37113370.ece?homepage=true

There is a long way to go before such tinkering with nature is proved through Goedel's set finding and the sacred Gita's lesson on true knowledge. Remember that the human and other beings are the evolutionary products rigidly interconnected.
We must changeover from the modern to the normal way of life. Because the modern is khudkushi(suicide). We must depecialize our vision and create over and above all specializations a research and applications centre(rac) in each and every ecological setting typified by a village. Muse over this: Not just an iari but a rac. And use public interest science(pis) and not vested interest science (vis). And the survival mantra is nature is development: See

Modern and Normal Civilizations

Reproduced from GANDHI MARG. May 1986. Pp 70-92 with updates:

Ashok Kumar R. 1986. Modern Civilization and Normal Civilization: The Need for Small Self-Sufficient Communities. GANDHI MARG. Vol. 8. No.2. May 1986. Pp 70-92.

Date of issue of the web version: 1 September 2006

The quote from the article is worth a thought:
In its helplessness, modern civilization has laid bare the seeds of a new civilization. In India modern civilization has destroyed many of our small communities and built over them unwieldy big cities. The flow of life-giving energy and materials became invisible in this macro world. Trying desperately to make visible the causes of its ills, modern science is busy traversing the micro world only to succeed in showing large gaps in vitally needed information on flow of vital substances. Thus modern civilization is synonymous with blindly groping forward only to be stumped or bowled neck and crop. By choosing the macro- the big city- when it should have improved upon small communities, that is, the micro-it showed its greed. Now by choosing the micro- the synthesis of soil by artificial means, the chemical fertilizers, the trace elements, the destruction of micro-organisms, after exhausting the topsoil by conveying it through the food via the supermarket to the sewer and thence to the seas, it has again proved its inadequacy in the building up of wholesome food by technological means. Here instead of choosing the micro- it should have chosen the macro-keeping the fertility of the soil intact and whole by recirculating the domestic wastes back to the soil in small self-sufficient communities- a long- term sufficiency in a healthy wholeness and convivial symbiosis. The macro here is the small self-sufficient community which takes care of security by designing around our ignorance of the micro-details of life processes. Thus the modern civilization has characteristically broken the small self-sufficient community neatly into two insolvable problems-the sprawling big city at the macro level and ignorance of the fate of essential life-giving substances at the micro level. They can only be solved by falling back on a post modern concept- the village of Mahatma Gandhi. The sooner we adopt our traditional culture with a new knowledge of the imminent demise of modern civilization, so much to the better for the health of all life for a long time to come.

Ramaswami Ashok Kumar said...

Re: https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/climate-protester-mashed-potatoes-monet-b2208864.html?__vfz=medium%3Dcomment_share%7Csharer_uuid%3D00000000-0000-4000-8000-0a012d966953#vf-208692c4-b547-4382-aa08-6d0c79c87f86

Only 8% of Climate change is due to GHGs and 92% is due to the dynamics of the World's dams. See Ramaswami Ashok Kumar.2022. PERFECT DESIGNS: INDIAN SW MONSOON INTRA-SEASONAL VARIABILITY IS CAUSED BY THE WORLD'S DAMS. blogspot. A huge ecological transformation is due: 1. Reverdure with proper ecological proportions of deserts, pastures, analogous plants and trees involving the people in cooperatives keeping the perspective in mind: diversity and harmony of and with nature. 2. Demolish the dams so that normal living is maintained satisfactorily. Otherwise the humans will be relegated to the fossil records.

Ramaswami Ashok Kumar said...

Re:

https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/energy-and-environment/explained-why-are-talks-on-15c-at-a-cliff-edge-at-cop27/article66129522.ece

What has been written here may have been written elsewhere, but what has not been written here is to be found now here at Ramaswami Ashok Kumar.2022. PERFECT DESIGNS.INDIAN SW MONSOON INTRA-SEASONAL VARIABILITY IS CAUSED BY THE WORLD'S DAMS.blogspot.

92 percent of climate change is due to the dams of the world, China why are you like the others so uncaring of life itself?

Ramaswami Ashok Kumar said...

See the latest tragedy wrought by the dams at the link:
https://predictingquakes.blogspot.com/2023/02/the-turkey-earthquake-of-78-mm.html
The false narratives of the specialists is exposed.