Why are children not allowed to vote? ● What is the connection between snow storms and global warming? ● Stop skiing, you’re wasting water!

Why are children not allowed to vote?

As silly as this question may seem, if you sit down to analyze the pros and cons of people on The Conversation, you may be in for some logical surprises. The idea is that a UN report released in 2020 claimed that, at least in the UK, children’s voices are not being heard and their needs are being ignored, especially in the context of the Covid pandemic.

Based on this idea, the main reasons why children are not allowed to vote were taken into account. For example, the first on the list, their ignorance. Good argument! This little guy can’t know what’s going on in management. So! But does an adult know? In Great Britain, as noted, 35% of voters do not know who their local representative is. As for Americans, 59% don’t know who the governor is in their state, and 44% can’t even name the branch of government. Which puts them in the same league as juniors.

Another argument would be that underage voting would lead to political chaos. Now, given the current geopolitical situation, it seems that you want to see how it would be with Om Nom the frog behind the wheel or Thomas the train. There would probably be less conflict. I told you, I didn’t give boiling water!

The third motivation is a lack of insight and an inability to connect cause and effect. In particular, a person must first of all have the right to marry, join the army, consume alcohol or tobacco. Of course, but it is assumed that at the age when they would have these rights, they would also have the ability to distinguish between right and wrong. Theoretically yes! Practically, how many adults are aware of their actions and the consequences they cause?

Now, given that the debate is much broader and that the arguments can be both “for” and “against”, we also say that since 2011, Austria has become the first European country to lower the legal voting age to 16. Scotland did the same in 2014. And they are not the only ones. Indeed, a list of countries by voting age can be found here.

What is the connection between recent snow storms and global warming?

Against the background of snow storms that recently swept the United States, or record snowfall in Russia, many would probably hug Donald Trump and say that global warming is just a myth. Teeth chatter among the Trojans, and the scientific world keeps it close with warm-ups and other brazenness. To avoid such situations, climatologists from the University of Pennsylvania came up with an explanation. For example, there is the so-called “varnish effect”.

What does it mean? This means that a body of water, such as the Great Lakes or the ocean, is at a higher temperature than usual and is in contact with cold air moving from the arctic zone. In short, the warmer the water, the more moisture in the air, that is, the more snow will fall on the heads of Americans, Canadians, Russians and others. Simple, right? Therefore, massive snowfalls will still be observed in the north for some time.

Another reason may be the so-called polar vortex, which has been talked about lately. This vortex is a large mass of cold air in the stratosphere, which makes its way over the North Pole. When it stops doing its job that we talked about, that is, it starts to lose weight, starts to take on irregular egg-like shapes, and then gives way to warm air masses from the south, cold air moves accordingly. towards the southern regions.

And this is explained by what you see today on TV and in the press, what is happening in the United States, with those storms, when archaeologists find you like mammoths in permafrost. Obviously, the phenomena are complex, they have many aspects, and researchers are trying to figure them out because they don’t know them all yet. The idea was not to look like Donald Trump!

Stop skiing, you’re wasting water!

If some have snow on their head, and if not on their head, then it still falls on their head, look at the example of Russians and Americans, others complain that they have to give up ski slopes, given the acute lack of snow. Climatologists told you it was chaos, but you… no and no!

In this case, we are talking about the Swiss. In the end, they invested millions of Swiss francs in facilities for the production of artificial snow, so as not to turn the slopes into pastures. For your edification, researchers at the University of Basel studied this problem, and here’s what they found on paper.

Considering the increase in temperature in the winter of the last period, in order to guarantee at least a 100-day skiing season in the Swiss Alps, the owners of the slopes in this region have to resort more and more often to the mentioned installations to make artificial snow. And this means a huge consumption of water.

how much water Well, in the coming years, consumption is estimated to increase by about 80%. More precisely, from the 300 million liters currently consumed to 540 million liters. How long? Like 30 years ago.

The fact is that currently the Swiss can afford to spend about 200 million liters a year. The rest must be collected from other sources. And from the middle of the century, and this, by the way, is not so far away, it will be possible to go to the beach in the Alps, instead of skiing, because there will be no place for so much debauchery and extravagance there. .

Oh, and there was something else. In this case, if you are still going to do it yourself and ski in Switzerland, you see that the prices increase exponentially with the water consumption, that he will not lose the Swiss investor on the grounds that you are beautiful, lively, from Romania.

Photo source: Dreamstime.com