Group items tagged

"Floods and drought highlight summer of climate truth Published: 31/07/2012 at 01:46 AMNewspaper section: News For years, climate scientists have been warning the world that the heavy use of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) threatens the world with human-induced climate change. The rising atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning fossil fuels, would warm the planet and change rainfall and storm patterns and raise sea levels. Now those changes are hitting in every direction, even as powerful corporate lobbies and media propagandists like Rupert Murdoch try to deny the truth. In recent weeks, the United States has entered its worst drought in modern times. The Midwest and the Plains states, the country's breadbasket, are baking under a massive heat wave, with more than half of the country under a drought emergency and little relief in sight. Halfway around the world, Beijing has been hit by the worst rains on record, with floods killing many people. Japan is similarly facing record-breaking torrential rains. Two of Africa's impoverished drylands _ the Horn of Africa in the East and the Sahel in the West _ have experienced devastating droughts and famines in the past two years: the rains never came, causing many thousands to perish, while millions face life-threatening hunger. Scientists have given a name to our era, the Anthropocene, a term built on ancient Greek roots to mean "the Human-dominated epoch" _ a new period of earth's history in which humanity has become the cause of global-scale environmental change. Humanity affects not only the earth's climate, but also ocean chemistry, the land and marine habitats of millions of species, the quality of air and water, and the cycles of water, nitrogen, phosphorus, and other essential components that underpin life on the planet. For many years, the risk of climate change was widely regarded as something far in the future, a risk perhaps facing our children or their children. That

"Major Ocean Currents Aislinn Reilly "

"Siam Square: Bangkok's most expensive land price BANGKOK, Oct 25 - A real estate company estimating land prices in the Thai capital indicates that the most expensive plots of land in the country would reach Bt1.5 million/square wah (2 sq metres) in Bangkok's Siam Square, a prime shopping area, this year.   An agency for Real Estate Affairs recently conducted research on changes of land prices in Bangkok. The prime areas are at Siam Paragon department store, Siam Square, and areas near Chidlom and Ploenchit BTS stations. The company said already high prices would increase this year from currently Bt1.4 million per square wah. The second prime areas are land around Wireless Rd and Silom Rd at Bt1.1 million per square wah. Prices of land along BTS skytrain stations have continously increased, particularly at Siam Square and Ploenchit stations, by 16.7 percent in the past year, while prices of land along MRT underground stations have increased by 14.4 percent. The company said price estimates will continue to rise over the next five years."

"Beyond Food Miles Posted Mar 9, 2011 by Michael Bomford NOTE: The following article is concerned strictly with the energy equation of the food sytem and is intended to stimulate questions about how best to grow, transport, store and prepare (ideally local) foods. There are many reasons to favor local food, including supporting local economies and building local food security.      "There is nothing as deceptive as an obvious fact" -Sherlock Holmes   A locavore is "a person who endeavors to eat only locally produced food."[1] What better diet could there be for an energy constrained world? After all, feeding Americans accounts for about 15% of US energy use,[2] and the average food item travels more than 5,000 miles from farm to fork.[3] It seems obvious that eating locally will go a long way to reducing food system energy use.   Yet cracking the case of America's energy-intensive food system demands that we look beyond the obvious. A local diet can reduce energy use somewhat, but there are even more effective ways to tackle the problem. Single-minded pursuit of local food, without consideration of the bigger picture, can actually make things worse from an energy perspective.[4]   If you realize you're spending too much money, the first thing to do is figure out where it's going. Cutting back on pizza won't make much difference if you're spending most of your money on beer. Similarly, the first step in reducing food system energy use is to figure out where all the energy is going. That's what a team of economists working for the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) did last year, in a report called Energy Use in the US Food System.     Where the energy goes: Energy used in the food system as a proportion of total energy used in the US in 2002.[5]     The report contains some surprises. Transportation is the smallest piece of the food system energy pie. Even farming isn't a particularly big contributor. The big energy users t

"The most stunning aspect of the interactive is its detail. You can change the altitude to look at winds in different layers of the atmosphere. Clicking on the "Earth" button will present a feast of options for showing different map projections or data overlays. In addition to wind, you can look at ocean currents, temperature, humidity, air density and more."

"The charity's research, published on Monday, shows that the share of the world's wealth owned by the best-off 1% has increased from 44% in 2009 to 48% in 2014, while the least well-off 80% currently own just 5.5%."

"One of the best current paths to reduce the globe's carbon emissions goes through tropical forests. They serve as a sink to sequester human emissions, but deforestation risks sending those assets up in smoke. A recent report argues that to avoid that outcome, indigenous communities should be involved in forest management."