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"You are looking at retreat," says Prof Colin Thorne, a flooding expert at the University of Nottingham. "It is the only sensible policy - it makes no sense to defend the indefensible." This assessment of how the UK will have to adapt to its increasing flood risk is stark, but is shared by virtually all those who work on the issue.Centuries of draining wetlands, reclaiming salt marshes and walling in rivers is being put into reverse by climate change, which is bringing fiercer storms, more intense downpours and is pushing up sea levels. Sea walls are now being deliberately allowed to be breached, with new defences built further back, and fields turned into lakes to slow the rush of the water, as flood management turns back towards natural methods.Thorne says the strategy of once more "making space for water" has been around for a decade, but the urgency of implementing it has increased sharply. "We thought then we were talking about the 2030s, but it is all happening a heck of a lot quicker." Large parts of southern England had their wettest January ever recorded, the Met Office announced on Thursday, and the Somerset Levels, much of which is below sea level, have been inundated for weeks. "I have enormous sympathy for these people," says Thorne. But he thinks the 1,000-year history of keeping the sea out of the area is coming to the end. "Can the Somerset Levels be defended between now and the end of the century? No," he says. Hannah Cloke, a flooding expert at the University of Reading, agrees: "We could make the choice to protect the Levels forever, but that is going to take a lot of resources. My gut feeling is that you are going to have to let that be a marshland in the end. But people live there and have their livelihoods there, so it is very tricky." Cloke says greatest priority across the country is giving people the help they need to adjust to more frequent floods, from warnings and emergency planning down to home-level protection, such as water-absorbing

Source: http://blog.crowncapitalmngt.com/flooding-experts-say-britain-will-have-to-adapt-to-climate-change-and-fast/ "You are looking at retreat," says Prof Colin Thorne, a flooding expert at the University of Nottingham. "It is the only sensible policy - it makes no sense to defend the indefensible." This assessment of how the UK will have to adapt to its increasing flood risk is stark, but is shared by virtually all those who work on the issue.Centuries of draining wetlands, reclaiming salt marshes and walling in rivers is being put into reverse by climate change, which is bringing fiercer storms, more intense downpours and is pushing up sea levels. Sea walls are now being deliberately allowed to be breached, with new defences built further back, and fields turned into lakes to slow the rush of the water, as flood management turns back towards natural methods.Thorne says the strategy of once more "making space for water" has been around for a decade, but the urgency of implementing it has increased sharply. "We thought then we were talking about the 2030s, but it is all happening a heck of a lot quicker." Large parts of southern England had their wettest January ever recorded, the Met Office announced on Thursday, and the Somerset Levels, much of which is below sea level, have been inundated for weeks. "I have enormous sympathy for these people," says Thorne. But he thinks the 1,000-year history of keeping the sea out of the area is coming to the end. "Can the Somerset Levels be defended between now and the end of the century? No," he says. http://bit.ly/1cWF58F http://bit.ly/1nbYkMH

"You are looking at retreat," says Prof Colin Thorne, a flooding expert at the University of Nottingham. "It is the only sensible policy - it makes no sense to defend the indefensible." This assessment of how the UK will have to adapt to its increasing flood risk is stark, but is shared by virtually all those who work on the issue.Centuries of draining wetlands, reclaiming salt marshes and walling in rivers is being put into reverse by climate change, which is bringing fiercer storms, more intense downpours and is pushing up sea levels. Sea walls are now being deliberately allowed to be breached, with new defences built further back, and fields turned into lakes to slow the rush of the water, as flood management turns back towards natural methods.Thorne says the strategy of once more "making space for water" has been around for a decade, but the urgency of implementing it has increased sharply. "We thought then we were talking about the 2030s, but it is all happening a heck of a lot quicker." Large parts of southern England had their wettest January ever recorded, the Met Office announced on Thursday, and the Somerset Levels, much of which is below sea level, have been inundated for weeks. "I have enormous sympathy for these people," says Thorne. But he thinks the 1,000-year history of keeping the sea out of the area is coming to the end. "Can the Somerset Levels be defended between now and the end of the century? No," he says. Hannah Cloke, a flooding expert at the University of Reading, agrees: "We could make the choice to protect the Levels forever, but that is going to take a lot of resources. My gut feeling is that you are going to have to let that be a marshland in the end. But people live there and have their livelihoods there, so it is very tricky." Cloke says greatest priority across the country is giving people the help they need to adjust to more frequent floods, from warnings and emergency planning down to home-level prote

With emerging renewable energy alternatives today, it is highly important that they be given enough attention even early on their developmental stages. Such technologies might not be ready for commercial uses yet but their potential should be amply tested and funded. Society's modern lifestyle is in serious need of energy that can be generated and consumed and yet, not compromise the future state for generations to come; to have no anxiety that it would cause damage to the environment. Green energy could come from such sources available in our environment that are naturally replenished and efficient like tides, wind, sunlight and geothermal heat. It is very different from low-carbon energy as the former does not add to the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at all, thus, coming with minimal environmental harm and greenhouse gas. Concerns in climate change and increasing oil prices are some of the contributing factors in drawing the spotlight to renewable energy and its potential for commercialization. Green energy can effectively replace our conventional fuel of today in all its main uses, which are in heating, vehicle fuel and electricity generation sectors. In fact, 19% of the electricity generated around the world today comes from renewable sources. Furthermore, since the emergence of biofuels in the United States 6 years ago, consumption of conventional oil has decreased significantly. For a green energy resource or technology to be sustainable, it has to give the maximum environmental advantage while still serving its purpose.

A national disaster warning: in up to five million years, this is the first time that the concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is approximately to reach 400 parts per million (ppm). Monday on The guardian reports, former NASA scientist James Hansen warned that levels over 350ppm would destabilize the earth's climate, but now we have far exceeded that figure with a record-breaking weekly average of 398.5ppm recorded. While in May 2013, researchers at the Earth Systems Research Laboratory in Hawaii expect we will hit the 400ppm milestone. Aside from many other issues like global fraud for example there are many else the government should give attention to. According to The Guardian, the US government has been monitoring atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at the Mauna Loa station located at an elevation of 11,115 feet since 1958. During the time when it was first ascertained, CO2 levels stayed at a manageable 316ppm, but in the past five decades population expansion coupled with the growth of industrialized nations hooked on fossil fuels and meat has saturated the atmosphere with heat-trapping gases. "I wish it weren't true but it looks like the world is going to blow through the 400ppm level without losing a beat. At this pace we'll hit 450ppm within a few decades," Ralph Keeling, a geologist with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography which operates the Hawaiian observatory, told The Guardian. It is as if it was a national disaster warning. This "sobering milestone" should be a wake up call for governments to support clean energy and slash emissions, said Tim Lueker, an oceanographer and carbon cycle researcher with Scripps CO2 Group.

Although it is common for companies to push sustainability results by establishing definite, time-bound goals, attaining them is a distinct process for every enterprise. Innovation, investment and operational savvy all play a part in achieving success; but the most significant factor is formulating a vigorous culture of sustainability that incorporates this approach into every facet of the business. Recently, our company announced that over the past three years we have made noteworthy improvements in our environmental performance. This included reduction of our energy usage by 12%, our greenhouse gas emissions by 15.7%, and attaining a leading-edge level of 3.5 hectoliters of water used for every hectoliter of beer made, posting an 18.6% reduction. These efficiency improvements were all achieved mainly without any major investment in new, sophisticated technology. Like any global company reach, our worldwide operations face various local conditions. Challenges ranging from the capabilities and age of equipment to the diversity in quality and availability of raw materials mean that choosing a "one-size-fits-all" approach is often impossible. The main approach that can steer a company toward environmental maturity is to develop a culture of environmental conservation and awareness into all aspects of every employee's tasks on a daily basis. This idea has been around for a while; however, it is also something that is not often observed in reality. For us, ascertaining that we provide incentives and challenges to our 118,000 fellow workers to make gradual changes in the work environment - big or small, within our more than 140 breweries and soft drink facilities - was the best method to attain our three-year goals. Along the way, we discovered some essential factors in establishing such a culture of sustainability: 1.Elevate sustainability initiatives to the same level as other business-critical functions Having employees scattered worldwide

The thought could be scary, knowing how much toxins you inhale everyday. Through the help of technology European researchers are gearing up to monitor thousands of people. Smartphones are given away to record the chemicals to which they are exposed every day. Exposome, the term used by European Commission to study the effects of environmental exposures to human health. It was then hope that the four-year studies will benefit public health in ways that genome research so far has not. Exposone could reveal a warning or warnings of environmental health issues for use. "There's been too much emphasis on genetic factors, which contribute relatively little to disease compared with environmental factors," says Martyn Smith, a toxicologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who is participating in the newly funded Exposomics project. Paolo Vineis, an environmental epi¬demiologist at Imperial College London, leads the €8.7-million project. Some studies do not always succeed like the Genome-wide association studies, in which scientists search for genetic variants linked to disease. They have failed to fully explain why some people are more susceptible than others to chronic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes. The new study will work this way, subjects will carry smartphones equipped with sensors to measure exposures, and their blood will be analyzed to monitor molecular changes. The majority of the participants are already concerned in other long-term health studies. In order to understand the triggers for conditions such as heart disease, asthma and lung cancer, goal is to look for biomarker differences between people walking through areas with low air pollution and those exposed to urban fumes. The idea is to differentiate the difference the toxins will cause the human health basing on their environment. Vineis's exposomics approach has already exposed gene-expression signatures that connect people's leukaemia risk with their exposure to heavy me

A world becoming warmer and experiencing more droughts and other climate-connected disasters is apt to bring about a considerable upsurge in fierce conflicts between individuals as well as whole societies, a major study has revealed.An analysis of 61 in-depth cases of violence has shown that personal clashes and wider civil conflicts grow considerably in number with significant changes to weather patterns, such as rising temperature and lack of rain, scientists said.Even fairly modest shifts away from the average lead to noticeable rise in the occurrence of violence, according to the study which theorized that the expected rise of in average world temperatures this century could result in a 50 per cent growth in major violent conflicts such as civil wars. The scientists suggest that climate shifts, especially rising temperatures, are bound to cause more frequent conflicts over progressively declining natural resources, on top of the physiological impact on people due to hotter weather. "We need to be cautious here. We do not mean that it is inevitable that further warming in the future will produce more conflict. We are saying that previous changes in climate -- especially, past temperature increase -- are connected with increasing personal and group disputes," said Marshall Burke of the University of California, Berkeley. "It is certainly possible that future communities will be more able to deal with severe temperatures than we do today; but we believe that it is risky to just presume that this will be so," said Mr. Burke, one of the authors of the study published in the journal Science. The study was based on an investigation of the scholastic literature for historical narratives of violent disputes, from individual aggression, such as murder and assaults to greater conflicts such as riots, racial tensions, civil war and even primary declines of civilisations that existed thousands of years back. Disputes between groups rather than between persons exhibited

TWITTER came up with a business that allows people send out information quickly. The micro-blogging service sent out just one tweet on September 12th informing the world it had filed the required IPO papers confidentially with America's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) when it came to its initial public offering (IPO) but then there was silence. Normally it is mandatory to all companies to publish information regarding them right after they have submitted their initial IPO documents to the SEC. However Twitter took benefit from provision in America's Jumpstart Our Business Start-ups Act-or JOBS Act for short-that permits "emerging growth companies" to kick off the IPO process confidentially. They should be able to publish the IPO earlier than three weeks before they proceed on investor road shows to advertize shares. The act characterizes promising growth firms as ones with less than $1 billion of yearly revenue. The JOBS Act became law in April 2012. It is by giving some companies the option of filing for an IPO in secret that aims to encourage more flotation. According to the SEC, by the end of June 2013 roughly 250 companies in America had filed IPO documents confidentially. For many reason this approach appeals to Twitter. The firm anticipates that by maintaining its financial performance confidential for a while, and then heading fast to a listing, it can keep away from the kind of hype that surrounded Facebook's IPO in 2012. Although Twitter must reveal its correspondence with the regulator when it finally publishes its IPO documents it can also address any concerns the SEC has about its submission in private. It is hopeful to shun the fortune of Groupon, which exposed particulars of its finances immediately after it filed for an IPO in 2011. Several of the firm's accounting rules were openly questioned by the SEC, which frightened investors. There are other advantages too. If it wishes to, Twitter must only publish two years of audited f