All I want for Christmas is sand

The title sounds weird, I know. As a geologist, it could be a nice personal gift, but I really believe, that I won´t be the only one asking for sand. I live in a coastal area, specifically in the bay of Biscay, and year-to-year missing sand on beaches is becoming a more common problem, due to the strong storms hitting these areas during winter. But it´s not just a matter of the area, or the season, the lack of sediment in beaches is a global problem. Sea level rise is a reallity, and it is causing changes of different processes at coastal areas, increasing the erosion rate of the coast at most of the places. These erosion processes at coastal areas, of course, act on the beachy sediment, removing it or depositing at the inner parts. Which solutions should we take? How could we protect these coastal areas?

Historically, protection of coastal areas has been a common problem for engineers, and different solutions where taken. Mainly temporal solutions. Coastal areas are always related to tourism, tourism is money. All is about money, of course. So, these temporal solutions, as the name says, are just short term solutions that could be destroyed after some months of activity. The most clear example is the nourishmet of a eroded beach by dredging sand from an aquatic zone (an estuary, river, etc.) and depositing it at the beach. Once we have more sand at the beach, more useful the beach becomes for the society (in terms of tourism or accesibility of the beach).  But, how the waves and currents will be working with these sand is a completely different story, changing the morphology of the beach (slope), pushing it back to different depths, or changing the "quality" of the water due to the suspended sediment.

Is it fair to change the dynamic of the coast, of the earth in general, for our own benefits? How could affect the solutions we take locally, in another part of the ocean or coast? How could we work in order to avoid to destroy the coast? How do we have to act due to the sea level rise? Soft engineering has become a solution in many cases, as the use of seagrass fields or artifitial coral reefs. What it is clear is that we need proper solutions to protect our coast, we are running out of time, and depends who could be running out of money quite soon... a rise of few cm-s will be affecting directly to all the life around the coast.

COP 21,20,19...0

James Hansen, former Nasa scientist and one of the most famous investigator global awareness of climate change, claimed against the useless decissions were taken in Paris during December 2015. The article, by The Guardian can be readen here: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/12/james-hansen-climate-change-paris-talks-fraud

Mr. Hansen called these talks a fraud. I couldn´t agree more. I don´t trust them, and I do not believe in their intentions. Private interests were the winners these last weeks. How could we try to define future carbon limits if we are not able to control what we have already done? How are we going to stop the "global warming" if the the consequences are not going to be affectng the social life directly? How can not be reliable to pay fines? How can we measure our self destruction if it is not by money?

As it can be readen in the article above, a really dark future is painted by Hansen and his colleges, mainly in coastal areas due to the ice melting in North Atlantic Areas. Is the 2 degree limit enough? This limit is another clue of what this meetings are about, how we just care about our self, how the earth dynamic and the nature are being slighted due to our economical interests. Hansen is saying the true, is describing the reallity of what´s going on between different nations. No decissions where taken. Just a nice photo with ugly politicians. Just promises. No actions.

The hunger games

The Fracking activity is becoming a reallity in Europe and almost all the EU countries will be accepting it, sooner than late, probably by the end of 2016. Society do care about the environment, that´s why many protest are going on in every country, but as normally happens, coins are above words. Many times have been said by different polititians and other "important" people that a change of minds have to be done in order to save the plantet, to avoid climate change, and their most clever decission have been to support the drilling of every single part of the contintent. Fracking is NOT healthy solution. Is a purely economical solution. A solution taken by these big private or national bussinesses, that have to earn billions per year in order to rise the economy of these "really green" nation, ie the European Union. They do run out of time, out of oil, out of ideas. Their solution in order to get easy and fast money is to drill every resource that could be available, does not matter how, does not matter where. It doesn´t matter if it is a natural park, if driking water is passing throught, if a farmer family is living at. Bills are stronger than everything, even the respect to the society. Change in our minds is needed, change in our politicians, change in our habbits. But mainly a change in our preferences.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d7EbtLb8ok