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shepard-ram · 3 years

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Hello again this is Ender-anon with the next chapter of this story as we move on to Wilbur. p.s the poem will be at the bottom.

The most important day of your life so far.

Everything was chaos, as people rushed back and forth getting everything ready for you coronation the next day, dignitaries from other countrys ariving with gifts, the kichens had to order food from abroad inorder to fully cater the event. You however were nervous for a different reasion between going over the speechs with Enciodes and practicing the holy vows you would undertake tomorrow with the current Saintess Anya Silverash ( Enciodes and Ensia's sister), the Arctic Empires delegates had yet to arrive you knew thanks to Tommys latest letter ( and hadn't that been a surprise learning that you friend was the third prince, but you had assured him that it would change nothing between you he was still Tommy to you) his brother prince Wilbur second in line to the throne would be arriving with them since Tommy father had said that Tommy couldn't go. Which is why when the Arctic Empire arrived (with so many gifts Tommy really had gone overboard you though) without the prince saying that he had gone on ahead of the main group a wave of panic sweeped through those in attendance. The wilds were dangerous for outsiders at night the beasts of the land wouldn't attack your citizens ( ancient magic prevented them from doing so a spell cast by an allie of your venerated ancestor) but a lone prince was a different deal. Jumping into action you asked the nobility in attendance the Silverash,Rostova,Schwire and Nearl to search their grounds as they were the few nobles with manors outside to capital and on the way to get your winter coat discretely ordered a hidden member of the Armourless Union to imform the three Obsidians that finding the prince was their new hightest priority and to sent everyone Platinum, the two Lapis Lazuil and to track what woodlands hadn't been searched yet. Rushing out of the capital, lanturn in hand rushed into the nearby woods, woods that you had explored as far back as you could remember, woods you knew like the back of your hand as such when you heard the wolves howling in the distance you knew the quickest route to take after all those seconds could be the difference between finding the prince or finding a corpse.

Leaping over a ridge you found yourself between a terrified Wilbur and a pack of 5 wolves both pausing with your entrance. Wilbur snaped out it first yelling " Kid get out of here, I can distract the wolves RUN" you instead turn towards the wolves and told them to leave as they do you grab the stuperfied princes hand and lead him back towards the capital where you hand him off to his countrys dignitaries while you returned to the palace to get some sleep ready for your coronation tommorow. You looked at your reflection now dressed in your ceremonial outfit based on you ancestors outfit minus the black helmet of course looking over at your soon to be ex-regent Enciodes who looked at you with pride in his eyes, after gathering your nerves you follow him knights flanking you to the second biggest building in the capital after the palace, the temple to the Karlan Goddess. Kneeling before Anya at the goddesses alter you swore to protect your people, your nation and to uphold you nations values rising after Anya placed neatherite crown upon your head. Turning to look at those in attendance you saw Enciodes with tears in his eyes, Buldrokkas'tee with his daughter Yelena holding her up so she could see and curiously prince Wilbur looking at you with a weird look in his eyes that was a strange combination of pity and longing all while clutching a piece of paper close to his chest. During the after coronation celebrations you did manage to start a conversation with him by talking about Tommy of all thinks but he was what you two had in common you both cared about him a great deal before you left you handed him a letter to give to Tommy once he got back to the empire, he staired at it for a moment before handing over the piece of paper you saw him holding earlier you looked at it to see a poem on it "Its my gift to you, as thanks for saving me" he proclaimed after reading it you saw the themes of close bonds and friendship ( at least thats how it looked to you) and as such you thanked him for such a thoughtful poem giving him a hug " I must admit I can most certainly see why my baby brother is so attached to you" and with that he turned and left with the other delegates back to the Arctic Empire.

The most important encounter of his life

Wilbur was pretty sure even before meeting this ruler that he would hate them even though he hadn't met them yet. Why you may ask? First they charm his precious baby brother into letting them call him Tommy something that he only allowed family to do but he wouldn't stop carrying that doll dressed in black claiming that it was a gift from you, then whenever post would arive he would all but tear the poor messenger apart just on the chance you sent him a letter he remembered after he sent the letter informing you of his status he was sure that that would end this farce and he would have his adorable little brothers attention again but nooo you sent a letter telling him that it didn't matter Tommy was still your friend and that reguardless of his title he you wouldn't treat him any differently and to your credit you didn't. But thats nothing compared to what he's currently going through no since Tommy is to young he has to be the representative of the royal family to your coronation (despite Tommy throwing the biggest tantrum he had ever seen), so now he's walking along a poorly constructed road with a the other delegates with the mountain of gifts that his brother has bought you using every coin he had. Tired and just completely done with this day he told the others that he would be walking on ahead and they would meet back up at the palace, that was the plan at least he thinks to himself as he runs before he had strayed from the dirt path and stumbled upon a wolf pack that was now chasing him so his day has gotten even worse great. As he hits a dead end he turns to face the wolves looking around for a way to clime up the ridge above him as the wolves closed in, only for a kid in a winter coat holding a lanturn to jump down inbetween him and the wolves startling them both thankfully he snaped out of it first and yelled at you to run he wasn't about let a kid only a few years older than his baby brother get torn apart by these wolves but instead of fleeing you gave him a reassuring smile before turning to the wolves " He is no enemy of our nation, leave now" you commaned and to his surprise they obeyed his mind going blank trying to process what he just witnessed as you lead him out of the woods. It wasn't till he was in his room in the newly built embassy that he realised he never learned his saviors name after interrorgating the delegates he learns to his suprise that his savior was the person that took his place in his brothers heart.

Maybe he misjudged you he thinks as he spends the time before your cononation collecting information about you pretending that he was merely a curious tourist and when he returned to get dressed into his formal wear he thought about what he had learned, the most dishearting information was how alone you were you had no surviving family no cousins,no siblings and no parents but you still found reasions to smile, to try you best to be the ruler you nation would need despite the fact that said nation in his humble opinion was undeserving.How he had missjudge you so much, of course his brother would try and give you family that you never had he couldn't even think of a world without his little brother, his twin or his dad but you had to endure a world where that was the norm for you, and now he though bitterly this nation would be your burden to carry alone without family to turn to for help. He of course need to thank you and in his own way apologize for his incorrect image of you, he didn't bring his guitar so a poem would have to do, perhaps he could put an offer of family in it so you knew that you wouldn't be alone, yes that sounded good. As he stood with the others of importance during you coronation he couldn't help but think how small you looked in that all black outfit dispite knowing you were older that Tommy in this moment you didn't look it to him as you made vows that in the eyes of your nation, in the eyes of your goddess would forever bind you to a nation undeserving of you, a nation that had caused you to grow up alone surrounded by advisers and (if his brothers rants were anything to go by) a schemeing regent. He truly pitied you and wanted to take you away from this back to the empire where you could be a child for once not be forced to be a ruler, Tommy would be happy if he wisked you away and he realised as they placed a neatherite crown on your head he wouldn't mind having being your big brother. To his surprise you can over to talk to him during the after party, as the subject of conersation shifted to Tommy he saw your eyes light up as you trades stories back and forth acting less like royals from different countrys and more like siblings talking about their younger brother. Its only when you press a quickly written letter into his hands and asked for him to hand it to Tommy that he remembered his poem as such he handed the poem over to you and exsplaned that it was a thank you gift for rescuing him (and for him being so wrong about you) he searched your face as you read seeing if you got his hidden message before you thanked him for it and gave him a hug , hun he could in this moment certainly see why his baby brother was so attached to them oh if the look on your face was anything to go by he just said that aloud time to leave he thinks.On the plane ride home he can't help but read the letter you wrote for his baby brother only for his eyes to widen as you ask Tommy whats its like having a big brother like Wilbur or what its like having a big brother in general but a infuriated look fills his face as you say you think your starting to see Enciodas ( the scheming regent his brain supplied )and his sisters as your big siblings as your family,oh that seals it he thinks he is going to be big brother and save you from you misguided loyaltys at least he count on Tommy to help rescue their future sibling from themself.

Wilburs poem

It's hard to put into words, what I want to say.

But I want you to know your thought of, in a very special way.

Though the distance in between us, keeps us continents apart.

There will always be a place, for our bond within my heart.

Poems are strange arn't they, two people could read the same poem but come away with comletely different ideas as to what it means... Ender-anon

Okay I might stop talking all together on this entire FICS but this- yes absolutely very good

#ask #ender anon #tw. yandere #c: wilbur #c: tommy

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kathleenseiber · 4 years

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What tipping points are telling us

By Andrew Bernier, Arizona State University

Lately, you may have heard someone say that we have reached a “tipping point.” This year alone, with the economic downturn caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and the sustained civil unrest sparked by the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, we have witnessed dramatic shifts in our social and economic states of being.

These events may even have resulted in you or someone you know reaching a personal tipping point, such as the loss of a job or a large rift in a family regarding social perspectives. Big or small, these shifts — spurred by disruptions — indicate that in some way a point between the way things were in the past and the way they’ll be in the future has been met and passed.

Ecosystems are also subject to disturbances and major shifts. A wildfire clears a forest, creating conditions for new tree species. Agricultural runoff pollutes local waters, depleting the oxygen fish need to thrive.

Sometimes the change that is taking place is relatively small and reversible. But sometimes the change is large and extremely difficult, if not impossible, to reverse. It’s as though the entire system has taken a plunge over the edge of a precipice to a new place. That, in essence, is what a tipping point is.

Being aware of when systems are headed toward this kind of change is the first step to being able to avoid undesirable plunges, encourage desirable ones or nudge systems that are in an undesirable state toward a desirable one.

Visualising Tipping Points

In Resilience Thinking: Sustaining Ecosystems and People in a Changing World, Brian Walker, a resilience researcher with Australian National University and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Organisation, and science writer David Salt offer a mental picture to help visualise a tipping point: They describe a system’s state of being as a ball rolling around in a basin where the depth and diameter is constantly changing and the ball is adjusting its movements accordingly.

The basin is a regime, a set of patterns and occurrences. The edge of the basin is the tipping point — the point at which the ball can leave the basin entirely and enters an entirely new state. The deeper and wider the basin, the more likely the ball will stay in it, even though it’s in constant motion.

Runoff, particuarly from agriculture can pollute local waters. Credit: Tamara Caldwell / Getty Images

A basin’s width and depth are always changing due to variables such as events (such as demonstrations), levels of something (such as greenhouse gases in the atmosphere) or public sentiment (such as attitudes toward wearing masks). These variables interact with feedback loops, in which the effects of a change in a system themselves affect the system.

Feedback loops come in two types. Balancing feedback loops help temper the rate of change in a system. Reinforcing feedback loops speed up the change. If reinforcing loops outweigh balancing loops, the system may flip over the edge of the basin and into a new regime.

Planetary Points

In 2009, Johan Rockström, executive director of the Stockholm Resilience Centre at Stockholm University, and colleagues introduced nine “planetary boundaries” — identifying what they call the “safe operating space for humanity” in areas of climate change, biogeochemical nitrogen and stratospheric ozone, among other critical ecological systems humans depend on. The team assigned specific boundaries for seven of these.

Originally they wrote that we had passed three of them (nitrogen biochemical flows, biodiversity loss and climate change) and were approaching others at an increasing pace. In a 2015 update, they included land-system change and phosphorus biochemical flows boundaries among those being passed. While they don’t say we’ve gone over any tipping points, exceeding these boundaries weakens balancing feedback loops and could indicate that the system is headed toward the edge of the basin.

Focusing on climate change, there is some temperature at which ecosystems reach tipping points. Estimates of what that is change as scientists collect more data. Last year in the scientific journal Nature, Timothy Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter and colleagues provided evidence that myriad ecological systems will undergo regime shifts if planetary warming exceeds the tipping point of 1.5 °C (2.7 °F). This number is lower than goals set to limit warming at 2 °C and current projections of 3 °C.

“In our view, the evidence from tipping points alone suggests that we are in a state of planetary emergency: both the risk and urgency of the situation are acute,” they wrote. Although acquiescing that we already may be past the point of no return on climate-related regime changes, they observe the reinforcing feedback loops can still be slowed, reducing planetary harm. They call for international action, noting that “the rate at which damage accumulates from tipping — and hence the risk posed — could still be under our control to some extent.”

Why Think About Tipping Points?

Thinking in terms of tipping points is a worthy endeavor because it provides a clear picture of variables and risks that decision makers can use to craft policies.

To start, decision makers need to decide whether we should stay in a particular situation or flip the system into a new basin and adopt a new regime. In the case of climate change, wanting things to stay the same would involve heeding identified greenhouse gas thresholds.

Once that decision is made, the next step is to figure out how to achieve the goal set in the first step. As policy makers debate how to mitigate climate change, options include reducing reinforcing feedback loops (for example, by reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced) or increasing balancing feedback loops (for example, by reducing deforestation and actively restoring carbon sinks).

Bleached coral on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Credit: Brett Monroe Garner

With limited resources to do both, Donella Meadows, in her landmark work Thinking in Systems,says the more effective decision is to reduce reinforcing feedback loops before increasing balancing feedback loops.

Lenton and his colleagues, for their part, suggested that it might be possible to avoid the regime shifts they describe by stabilising the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere within 30 years. At the same time, they admitted that there’s a chance we may have already gone over the edge.

One example of wanting to flip to a new regime is currently unfolding, as seen in the global protests in response to police killing unarmed black people. It could be said the killing of George Floyd was the tipping point, though his killing is one of many in a long succession.

Right now we appear to be in the cascading effects of entering a new regime, be it protests, social media discord or city council resolutions regarding police funding. Crafting law and policies that foster social justice, along with reforms to police budgeting, would keep the system in this new regime of racial equality. If not enacted, the system can flip back to the old regime.

Once we cross a tipping point, the new basin may be too large to escape. And even if we want to go back, the original basin may now be so altered that the regime we once knew, with its familiar patterns and behaviors, is no more.

In the age of Covid-19 and talk about when things will go back to “normal,” those who argue we cannot go back to what once was for various reasons — be it ecological harm, economic inequality and/or social injustice — may be right simply because what was normal may no longer exist. Time will tell what visiting restaurants, salons and movie theaters will be like a year from now — but there’s good chance it won’t be like a year ago.

Ecologically, we see this when a forest recovers after a fire. Vegetation returns, but it’s mostly new tree species better suited for damaged soil.

Similarly, as our planet warms, efforts to return to the world we knew before climate change may be beyond our capacity. To the extent this is the case, our job becomes, not avoiding change — which may be impossible — but figuring out and adapting to the new circumstances.

Andrew Bernier is a Faculty Associate and Senior Sustainability Fellow at Arizona State University, US, where he teaches systems thinking and circular economy.

This article was originally published on Ensia and is republished here with permission under the terms of a Creative Commons’ Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported licence. View the original article here.

What tipping points are telling us published first on https://triviaqaweb.weebly.com/

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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It’s no secret that too many of the plastic products we use end up in the ocean. But you might not be aware of one major source of that pollution: our clothes.

Polyester, nylon, acrylic, and other synthetic fibers — all of which are forms of plastic — are now about 60 percent of the material that makes up our clothes worldwide. Synthetic plastic fibers are cheap and extremely versatile, providing for stretch and breathability in athleisure, and warmth and sturdiness in winter clothes.

These fibers contribute to ocean plastic pollution in a subtle but pervasive way: The fabrics they make — along with synthetic-natural blends — leech into the environment just by being washed. Estimates vary, but it’s possible that a single load of laundry could release hundreds of thousands of fibers from our clothes into the water supply.

And these tiny fibers — less than 5 millimeters in length, with diameters measured in micrometers (one-thousandth of a millimeter) — can eventually reach the ocean. There, they’re adding to the microplastic pollution that’s accumulating in the food chain and being ingested by all sorts of marine wildlife, and even us. Most of the plastic that’s in the ocean is not in the form of whole products like cups or straws, but in the form of broken-down shreds of plastic.

“Think about how many people are washing their clothes on a daily basis, and how many clothes we all have,” says Imogen Napper, a marine scientist at the University of Plymouth who co-authored a 2016 study on the plastic fibers that shed from our clothing. “Even when we’re walking around, not washing our clothes, tiny fibers are falling off. It’s everywhere.”

Worldwide, there are now vigorous efforts to reduce the use of some of the products that end up in the oceans, like plastic cups and shopping bags. (Perhaps you’ve heard of plastic straw bans.) As we seek solutions to the overall issue of plastic pollution, we need to recognize that our clothing is a major part of the problem and will need to be part of the solution as well.

Consider the lint you collect in the dryer. That lint is tiny bits of thread from your clothing that have become dislodged and caught by a mesh screen.

Similarly, synthetic fibers come off in the wash — but they’re so small, and there’s no filter inside the machines to catch them. Instead, these tiny plastic fibers pass through to sewage treatment plants, which often don’t have filters fine enough to catch them. (And if they do, the fibers may end up in another sewage byproduct: fertilizer.) Treated wastewater is then often dumped into rivers or the sea, carrying plastic clothing fibers with it, as a 2011 study found.

In 2016, Napper and a colleague designed a test to see how many of these fibers could be shed in the wash. They fitted a Whirlpool front-loading washing machine with a special filter to collect tiny fibers. They tested swatches of three types of fabric: a polyester-cotton blend T-shirt, a polyester hoodie, and an acrylic sweater. After a few washes (all garments shed more when they are brand new), the acrylic fabric shed the most, followed by the polyester, and then the poly-cotton blend.

Christina Animashaun/Vox

“We found that in a typical wash, 700,000 fibers could come off,” Napper said. Other studies have come up with different estimates. One 2011 paper found 1,900 fibers could be released from a single synthetic garment in a wash; another effort estimated 1 million fibers could be released from washing polyester fleece.

It’s hard to pin down the exact amount of plastic pollution per load because there are so many variables that may contribute to fibers shedding or not: garment construction, materials used, water temperature, detergent type, fabric softener, how full the machine is, etc. One study found that top-loading washing machines releases seven times the amount of microfibers as front loaders.

Christina Animashaun/Vox

And even if the amount of plastic shed per load is small, measured in milligrams, it adds up. A paper in Environmental Science and Technology estimated that “a population of 100,000 people would produce approximately 1.02 kilograms of fibers each day.” That’s 793 pounds per year of individual, teeny tiny plastic shards.

And some of it will reach the ocean. “A large proportion will get caught by the sewage treatment works, [but] even that small proportion that does fall through is going to accumulate,” Napper says. And once plastics are in the ocean environment, “there’s no effective way to remove them.”

These tiny plastic particles can find their ways into the diets of marine life and accumulate throughout the food chain.

Microplastics can be toxic to wildlife on their own, but they can also act like sponges, soaking up other toxins in the water. Worse, they can be ingested by all sorts of marine wildlife and accumulate in the food chain. A recent study found around 73 percent of fish caught in at mid-ocean depths in the Northwest Atlantic had microplastic in their stomachs.

“We know very little about the impacts of microfibers on the health of nonhuman animals and people,” Mary Catherine O’Connor, a reporter with Ensia, recently explained in an excellent series on microfiber plastic pollution. “But what we do know suggests a need for additional research.”

Seemingly, wherever scientists look, they’re finding plastic fibers contaminating the environment. Often, plastic textile fibers are the dominant source of plastic pollution found in surveys. Plastic fibers have been found in the sediment surrounding beaches, in mangrove groves, and in Arctic ice — even in products we eat and drink. “The average person ingests over 5,800 particles of synthetic debris” a year a recent paper in PLOS finds. And most of those particles are plastic fibers.

A 2017 study of microplastic pollution along the shores of the Hudson River in New York State found that river transports around 150 plastic million microfibers into the Atlantic ocean every day. It’s hard to say if these fibers entered the river from wastewater treatment plants, stormwater runoff, or just floated down from the air, but, as Napper says, “It’s everywhere.”

It’s hard to say how much microplastics from textiles contributes to the overall plastic pollution problem in the ocean.

Because microplastics are so tiny — and much of them end up deep in the ocean, or on the ocean floor — it’s hard to get an accurate census of them. That said, a 2017 International Union for Conservation of Nature report estimated about 35 percent of the microplastics that enter the ocean, come via the synthetic textiles. It also underscored how this is a global problem: Synthetic textiles are more common in developing nations, which often don’t have robust wastewater treatment facilities to filter them out.

Regardless of the exact proportion, “undoubtedly,” Flavia Salvador Cesa, a micro-plastics researcher at the University of São Paulo, writes in an email, “fibers are an important contributor to plastic pollution.”

And remember: Plastic can take hundreds of years, possibly millennia, to degrade. The plastic we throw into the ocean now will remain for generations.

It might seem like there’s an easy solution to the problem of our clothes shedding plastic: Just buy natural fibers, or fewer clothes overall.

But it shouldn’t be a luxury to be environmentally conscious. Often, synthetic clothing is affordable clothing.

For a solution to be workable, it “needs to be accessible for everyone,” Napper says. Too often, an environmentally conscious consumer is an affluent consumer. We can’t expect everyone to go out and purchase stainless steel straws or all-glass water bottles. It’s a similarly class-deaf message to insist everyone need to be wearing all organic cotton, wool, or hemp clothes (and natural fabrics can strain the environment in other ways, like requiring huge amounts of water to produce).

Christina Animashaun/Vox

The solutions need to be more systemic. And they can start with our washing machines.

“Washing machines need to be designed to reduce emissions of fibers to the environment; at the moment they are not,” says Mark Browne, a environmental scientist at University College Dublin who has found evidence of microfiber pollution coming from wastewater treatment plants. Currently, Napper is working on a project looking into whether fiber filters for washing machines are a feasible solution.

Textile manufactures could also design fabrics that shed less, clothing companies could utilize them, and consumers could be more mindful.

We still know little about how to minimize the environmental impacts of washing our clothes,” Cesa says. But there are two overall recommendations for consumers: Buy fewer clothes, and “wash only when necessary.”

Original Source -> More than ever, our clothes are made of plastic. Just washing them can pollute the oceans.

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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