China in particular has long argued that it is too poor to afford the Western luxury of environmental awareness.
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Green Countries - 0 views
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China ranks last among 15 nations in its income group (the fifth decile), behind Vietnam. If Colombia, the group's leader, can afford environmental concern, why can't China?
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China fares slightly better in protecting its habitat but much worse in measures of industrial ills.
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One conclusion to be drawn from the Yale-Columbia project is the need for better data, which requires funds.
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Experiences like the recent biofuels surge, which is driving up food prices, show how treacherous even well-intentioned decisions about the environment can be when they're uninformed.
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The same holds for consumers, who sometimes think paying somebody to plant a few trees will compensate for flying around the world in airplanes.
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For such decisions, data are essential. If we're going to avoid squandering our natural resources, the quicker we begin to rely more on facts and less on assumptions, the better.
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(While there are good comparative data on ozone, smog also includes nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxides and other components that are poorly tracked in most nations.) Among the best industrial countries were Malaysia, the United Kingdom and all of Eastern Europe (a legacy of the Soviet nuclear program).
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Brazil is a vast land blessed with an abundance of water, which yields energy relatively cheaply with no carbon emissions
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By contrast, Belgium and the Netherlands, which share much in terms of population and geography with their neighbors, suffer from neglect of the environment—particularly in protecting native habitats.
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Thoughts on Global Warming: Top 5 Worst Effects of Global Warming - 0 views
thoughtsonglobalwarming.blogspot.com/...effects-of-global-warming.html
worst consequences global warming top 5
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1. Polar ice caps meltingThe ice caps melting is a four-pronged danger.First, it will raise sea levels. There is 5,773,000 cubic miles of water in ice caps, glaciers, and permanent snow. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, if all glaciers melted today the seas would rise about 230 feet. Luckily, that’s not going to happen. But sea levels will rise.Second, melting ice caps will screw up the global ecosystem. The ice caps are fresh water, and when they melt into the ocean, they make it less salty, or desalinize the ocean. The desalinization of the gulf current will screw up, to put it simply, the current. It will cool the area around north-east America and Western Europe. Luckily, that will slow some of the other effects of global warming in that area. But with the stream shutdown, the whole Atlantic ecosystem could be warped.Third, all the animals in the Arctic will be in danger because of a changing habitat.Fourth, global warming will accelerate with the ice caps gone. Ice caps are white, and reflect sunlight. Some of that sunlight is reflected back into space, further cooling Earth. If the ice caps are melted, only the dark-colored ocean will be there. Darker colors absorb sunlight, further warming the Earth.
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beaches in the U.S - 0 views
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Pollution at the nation’s 3,500 ocean, lake and bay beaches resulted in more than 25,000 closing or swimming advisory days last year, 28 percent more than in 2005, and the highest number in the 17 years that records have been kept, according to a new federal report released Tuesday.
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“Exposure to bacteria, viruses and parasites in contaminated beach water can cause a wide range of diseases, including ear, nose and eye infections; gastroenteritis; hepatitis; encephalitis; skin rashes; and respiratory illnesses,”
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Most at risk are small children, pregnant women, cancer patients and others whose immune systems are weak or compromised.
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“Children under the age of 9 had more reports of diarrhea and vomiting from exposure to waterborne parasites than any other age group,”
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“found that more than 10 percent of swimmers report contracting gastroenteritis or respiratory infections after swimming. Based on those results and beach attendance numbers, nearly 300 people could expect to contract a respiratory illness after swimming in Lake Michigan in Chicago on a summer weekend.
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“The study found skin rash and diarrhea to be consistently significantly elevated in swimmers compared to non-swimmers.
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an estimated 27 cases per 1,000 among children with any water contact, 32 cases among those with facial contact with the water, and 59 cases among those who swallowed water,
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“Aging and poorly-designed sewage and storm water systems hold much of the blame for beach water pollution. The problem was compounded by record rainfall, which added to the strain on already overloaded infrastructure.
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HowStuffWorks "The Top 10 Worst Effects of Global Warming" - 0 views
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Global warming is the long-term, cumulative effect that greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide and methane, have on Earth's temperature when they build up in the atmosphere and trap the sun's heat. It's also a hotly debated topic. Some wonder if it's really happening and, if it's real, is it the fault of human actions, natural causes or both?
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Oil Remains - 0 views
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However, in 1993 the EVOS Trustee Council funded an additional survey that estimated 7 km of shoreline were still contaminated with subsurface oil.
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Because a significant survey of Prince William Sound had not been conducted since 1993 and the cumulative extent of the remaining oil was unknown, concerns were generated by the public and scientific communities about the oil’s possible continuing effects on humans and fauna potentially exposed to the oil directly or indirectly.
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Without an accurate assessment of the extent of the remaining oil, subsistence food-gatherers, consumers of commercial fish products from the area, and tourists have used mostly anecdotal evidence as the basis for economic decisions regarding resource utilization in the affected area.
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Consequently, the Auke Bay Laboratory (ABL) with funding from the EVOS Trustee Council, took on the task of assessing the remaining oil along the shorelines of Prince William Sound during the summer of 2001
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The primary objective of the project was to measure the amount of oil remaining in the intertidal zone of Prince William Sound. Secondary objectives include determining the rate of decline of oil on these beaches, estimating the persistence of the remaining oil, and correlating the remaining oil with geomorphological features.
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The 2001 survey adopted a stratified random/adaptive sampling (SRAS) design. Two random pits were excavated to a depth of 0.5 m (1.6 feet) in every stratified block (0.5-m verticle drop in tide height) within a grid system established at each site. If subsurface oil was discovered in any of the randomly stratified origin pits, then additional adaptive pits were excavated above, below, to the right, and to the left of the origin pit until the extent of the oil patch was determined.
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Subsurface oil can remain dormant for many years before being dispersed and is more liquid, still toxic, and may become biologically available.
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A disturbance event such as burrowing animals or a severe storm reworks the beach and can reintroduce unweathered oil into the water.
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The toxic components of this type of surface oil are not as readily available to biota, although some softer forms do cause sheens in tide pools.
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1) Surface oil was determined to be not a good indicator of subsurface oil. 2) Twenty subsurface pits were classified as heavily oiled. Oil saturated all of the interstitial spaces and was extremely repugnant. These “worst case” pits exhibited an oil mixture that resembled oil encountered in 1989 a few weeks after the spill - highly odiferous, lightly weathered, and very fluid. 3) Subsurface oil was also found at a lower tide height than expected (between 0 and 6 feet), in contrast to the surface oil, which was found mostly at the highest levels of the beach (Table 3). This is significant, because the pits with the most oil were found low in the intertidal zone, closest to the zone of biological production, and indicate that our estimates are conservative at best.
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The possibility of continuing low level chronic effects of the Exxon Valdez oil spill seem very real now, although measurable population effects would be very difficult to detect in wild populations.
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The last beach assessment was completed in September 2001. Supporting chemical analyses will be completed in fall 2002, and a final report with statistical analyses and conclusions will be completed by April 2002.
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Bad, Terrible & Pathetic Songs - Poll - 0 views
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24% Ricky Martin - She Bangs 18% Vanilla Ice - Ice Ice Baby 11% Limp Bizkit - Rollin' 10% Eddie Murphy - Party All The Time 8% New Kids On The Block - Hangin' Tough 8% Wang Chung - Everybody Have Fun Tonight 8% Starship - We Built This City 7% Bobby McFerrin - Don't Worry, Be Happy 4% Deep Blue Something - Breakfast At Tiffany's 2% Huey Lewis - The Heart Of Rock & Roll
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Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 0 views
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More has been published about the extinction of dinosaurs at the K-T boundary than any other group of organisms. Excluding a few controversial claims, it is agreed that all non-avian dinosaurs went extinct at the K-T boundary. The dinosaur fossil record has been interpreted to show both a decline in diversity and no decline in diversity during the last few million years of the Cretaceous, and it may be that the quality of the dinosaur fossil record is simply not good enough to permit researchers to distinguish between the choices.[54] Since there is no evidence that late Maastrichtian nonavian dinosaurs could burrow, swim or dive, they were unable to shelter themselves from the worst parts of any environmental stress that occurred at the K-T boundary. It is possible that small dinosaurs (other than birds) did survive, but they would have been deprived of food as both herbivorous dinosaurs would have found plant material scarce, and carnivores would have quickly found prey to be in short supply.[35] The growing consensus about the endothermy of dinosaurs (see dinosaur physiology) helps to understand their full extinction in contrast with their close relatives, the crocodilians. Cold-blooded crocodiles have very limited needs of food (they can survive several months without eating) while warm-blooded animals of similar size need much more food in order to sustain their faster metabolism. Thus, under the circumstancies of food chain disruption above mentioned, non-avian dinosaurs died [55] while some crocodiles survived. In this context, the survival of other endothermic animals, such as some birds and mammals, could be due, among other
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Japan: History, Geography, Government, & Culture - Infoplease.com - 0 views
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The Ryukyu chain to the southwest was U.S.-occupied from 1945 to 1972, when it reverted to Japanese control, and the Kurils to the northeast are Russian-occupied.
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Through the 700s Japan was much influenced by China, and the Yamato clan set up an imperial court similar to that of China.
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For the following 700 years, shoguns from a succession of clans ruled in Japan, while the imperial court existed in relative obscurity.
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Suspicious of Christianity and of Portuguese support of a local Japanese revolt, the shoguns of the Tokugawa period (1603–1867) prohibited all trade with foreign countries; only a Dutch trading post at Nagasaki was permitted.
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At the Washington Conference of 1921–1922, Japan agreed to respect Chinese national integrity, but, in 1931, it invaded Manchuria.
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The dropping of atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 by the United States finally brought the government to admit defeat. Japan surrendered formally on Sept. 2, 1945, aboard the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
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The U.S. and Japan signed a security treaty in 1951, allowing for U.S. troops to be stationed in Japan. In 1952, Japan regained full sovereignty, and, in 1972, the U.S. returned to Japan the Ryuku Islands, including Okinawa.
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A shrewd trade policy gave Japan larger shares in many Western markets, an imbalance that caused some tensions with the U.S.
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During the 1990s, Japan suffered an economic downturn prompted by scandals involving government officials, bankers, and leaders of industry. Japan succumbed to the Asian economic crisis in 1998, experiencing its worst recession since World War II.
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The embattled Mori resigned in April 2001 and was replaced by Liberal Democrat Junichiro Koizumi—the country's 11th prime minister in 13 years.
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Koizumi was overwhelmingly reelected in Sept. 2003 and promised to push ahead with tough economic reforms.
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In April 2005, China protested the publication of Japanese textbooks that whitewashed the atrocities committed by Japan during World War II.
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The child's birth spares Japan a controversial debate over whether women should be allowed to ascend to the throne.
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He suffered a stunning blow in July 2007 parliamentary elections, however, when his Liberal Democratic Party lost control of the upper house to the opposition Democratic Party.
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A 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck in northwest Japan in July 2007, killing 10 people and injuring more than 900. The tremor caused skyscrapers in Tokyo to sway for almost a minute, buckled roads and bridges, and damaged a nuclear power plant. About 315 gallons of radioactive water leaked into the Sea of Japan.
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he move followed a string of scandals and the stunning defeat of his Liberal Democratic Party in July's parliamentary elections
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In June 2008, the upper house of Parliament, which is controlled by the opposition, censured Fukuda, citing his management of domestic issues.
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The opposition Democratic Party of Japan, which won control of the upper house of Parliament in 2007, poses a viable threat to the Liberal Democrats who have been in control for more than 50 years.