4w ago

NOAA forecasts an average summer 'dead zone' in Gulf of Mexico

NOAA forecasts an average summer 'dead zone' in Gulf of America

I find the verbage of "average sized dead zone" to be an interesting gauge of how normalized environmental destruction is becoming. As if a massive section of hypoxic oceaniss to be expected.

4 comments

The Gulf of Mexico?
- I just pulled the title from the headline, but I've made the change because you're right. It shouldn't be normalized.
  
  I'm just being irritable. Every time I see that stupid name change it irritate angers me, and I feel obligated to correct it.
  It's not you; it's my pet peeve.
  And, technically, every country is allowed to use their own names for anything, so the US can change what the US calls it. We could call Israel "Genociderland" if we wanted to, and news outlets would have to use it. I just object to the change.
I don't have an answer. Look at the map, the Mississippi is one hell of a watershed. How do we keep the farmland fertilizers out of it?
I studied horticulture, first time I understood what the quadratic equation was really for was when tasked with optimizing fertilizer spread. Farmers aren't slinging that shit around for fun.
Best I got is cracking on animal waste. Oklahoma was suing Arkansas for all the poultry waste coming down and destroying the Arkansas River. No idea what became of all that, couple of decades since I've been there.