Threats of sea-level rise acknowledged, ignored - Haku Mo‘olelo by Edwin Tanji. Club de rome. Aral Sea 90% Dry. Active Fire Mapping Program. Tens Of People Arrested In East & West Azarbaijan Protesting The Drying Up Of Lake Uromieh « persianbanoo. May 22, 2012 Under increased heavy security atmosphere in East and West Azarbaijan, tens of people were arrested by police and Intelligence Ministry in the last two days.
Yesterday in Tabriz, during scattered demonstrations protesting drying up of Lake Uromieh, Esrafil Omidi a post graduate student at Shahid Beheshti university in Uromieh and activists Mostafa Avazpour and Ghader Norouzi were arrested. Also yesterday morning, former secretary of the Azerbaijani Association of Tabriz University, Afsaneh Toughi was arrested inside the university by Intelligence Ministry forces.
Akbar Mohajeri, Hassan Mirzakhani and Mohamad Eskandarzadeh were among those arrested in Tabriz yesterday. Their detention location is still unknown. Security forces arrested the majority of these people by going to their homes without a warrant, performing a search of the home and confiscating personal belongings. Source: HRANA. We must set planetary boundaries wisely. As pressure on resources increases, pollution accumulates and humanity's impact on Earth escalates, global-scale governance of the environment is increasingly necessary.
In June, the United Nations' Rio+20 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, will grapple with these difficult political issues. Up for discussion is a relatively new scientific concept: planetary boundaries. Cancelled project spurs debate over geoengineering patents. Paul Burns/Getty Images The future's not bright: can geoengineers create a sunshade for Earth?
Technologies to keep Earth cool could one day provide a radical fix for climate change — and, in a world struggling to control its greenhouse-gas emissions, could also prove highly lucrative for inventors. Bird-flu research: The biosecurity oversight. The packages that started arriving by FedEx on 12 October last year came with strict instructions: protect the information within and destroy it after review.
Inside were two manuscripts showing how the deadly H5N1 avian influenza virus could be made to transmit between mammals. Can Geoengineering Solve Global Warming? Late in the afternoon on April 2, 1991, Mt.
Pinatubo, a volcano on the Philippine island of Luzon, began to rumble with a series of the powerful steam explosions that typically precede an eruption. Pinatubo had been dormant for more than four centuries, and in the volcanological world the mountain had become little more than a footnote. The tremors continued in a steady crescendo for the next two months, until June 15th, when the mountain exploded with enough force to expel molten lava at the speed of six hundred miles an hour. The lava flooded a two-hundred-and-fifty-square-mile area, requiring the evacuation of two hundred thousand people. Within hours, the plume of gas and ash had penetrated the stratosphere, eventually reaching an altitude of twenty-one miles.
Methane Emissions from the Arctic Ocean. Record Number of Fish Stocks ‘Rebuilt’ in 2011, NOAA Study Says. EU threatens China, India over airline emissions. A Research Strategy for Environmental, Health, and Safety Aspects of Engineered Nanomaterials. Overview Authors Committee to Develop a Research Strategy for Environmental, Health, and Safety Aspects of Engineered Nanomaterials; National Research Council Description.
Wildlife in the tropics plummets by over 60 percent. Devastated rainforest in Indonesian Borneo.
Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. In 48 years wildlife populations in the tropics, the region that holds the bulk of the world's biodiversity, have fallen by an alarming 61 percent, according to the most recent update to the Living Planet Index. Produced by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), the index currently tracks almost 10,000 populations of 2,688 vertebrate species (including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish) in both the tropics and temperate regions. As the Clock Ticks, Trees Fall in Brazil’s Amazon. As Brazil braces for president Dilma Rousseff’s forthcoming decision on whether to sign or veto recent legislation that would alter the country’s Forest Code, rights groups are decrying a surge in illegal land grabs that is wrecking environmental havoc and threatening vulnerable tribal populations.
Measuring CO<sub>2</sub> to fight global warming, enforce future treaty. If the world's nations ever sign a treaty to limit emissions of climate-warming carbon dioxide gas, there may be a way to help verify compliance: a new method developed by scientists from the University of Utah and Harvard.
Using measurements from only three carbon-dioxide (CO2) monitoring stations in the Salt Lake Valley, the method could reliably detect changes in CO2 emissions of 15 percent or more, the researchers report in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences for the week of May 14, 2012. The method is a proof-of-concept first step even though it is less precise than the 5 percent accuracy recommended by a National Academy of Sciences panel in 2010. The study's authors say satellite monitoring of carbon dioxide levels ultimately may be more accurate than the ground-based method developed in the new study. Nearly one-tenth of hemisphere's mammals unlikely to outrun climate change. A safe haven could be out of reach for 9 percent of the Western Hemisphere's mammals, and as much as 40 percent in certain regions, because the animals just won't move swiftly enough to outpace climate change.
For the past decade scientists have outlined new areas suitable for mammals likely to be displaced as climate change first makes their current habitat inhospitable, then unlivable. Canada News: Tim Harper: Alberta Premier Alison Redford holds the key to environmental peace. Zoom There is mounting evidence that Stephen Harper’s determination to make Canada a resource-based economic power may have awakened a sleeping giant. The environment is back on the Canadian political radar, at least for the moment. At the very least, the prime minister’s decision to turn back the clock on environmental assessment in this country has crystallized the huge gulf between his vision for this nation and that of NDP Leader Tom Mulcair, a former provincial environment minister. But, for the moment, Harper and Mulcair can step aside.
The most important voice on this issue in Canada today belongs to Alison Redford. April was 5th warmest month globally on record - Weather. WASHINGTON — Unseasonable weather pushed last month to the fifth warmest April on record worldwide, federal weather statistics show. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center calculated that April's average temperature of 57.9 degrees (14.4 degrees Celsius) was nearly 1.2 degrees (0.7 degrees Celsius) above the 20th Century normal.
Two years ago was the hottest April since recordkeeping started in 1880. Last month was the third hottest April in the United States and unusually warm in Russia, but cooler than normal in parts of western Europe. This is despite a now ended La Nina which generally lowers global temperatures. Temperatures that would have once been considered unusually hot and record breaking now aren't even in the top two or three, said Michael Oppenheimer, a Princeton University climate scientist. Corporations Are Tackling the Risks Associated with Climate Change.
Credit: Chuck Simmins, CC BY 2.0 Companies are accustomed to managing risks such as legal liabilities, accidents, natural disasters, credit and finance risks and security threats. But what about risk arising from climate change, such as its potential effect on production and business operations, regulatory and litigation risks or reputational risks?
Processes and policies around climate risk — the risk profile of a company’s exposure to climate change — are still evolving, but companies are addressing climate change in ways that cross over between traditional risk management and corporate sustainability efforts. The specter of climate change worries corporate decision makers, investors and insurers: How might the enterprise be disrupted and impacted financially by a changing climate? Corporate sustainability and social responsibility tend to be the functions that address greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions — their monitoring, reporting and reduction. Wildfires in Colorado and Arizona growing; firefighters struggle. The Hewlett fire in Colorado has grown to 7,673 acres, prompting officials Friday to declare an emergency.
Australia's greenhouse gas emissions rise 0.6 pct in 2011. SINGAPORE, April 17 (Reuters) - Australia's greenhouse gas emissions rose 0.6 percent in 2011 from a year earlier, the government said on Tuesday, boosted by growth in pollution from transport, waste and an increase in black coal mining. Total 2011 emissions, excluding land use, land use change and forestry, were 546.3 million tonnes, or about 24.3 tonnes per capita, among the highest in the developed world and higher than the United States. The 2011 rise comes after emissions increased 0.5 percent in 2010. On Monday, the U.S. government said emissions rose 3.2 percent for 2010 from the previous year amid economic growth and higher electricity demand from high summer temperatures.
Carbon pollution from electricity generation comprises more than a third of Australia's total emissions because of the heavy use of black and brown coal in power stations. 7.0 - eastern New Guinea region, Papua New Guinea. USGS Prompt Assessment of Global Earthquakes for Response Information: "2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years" Launch in Rotterdam (NL) PART I. Brazil set to cut forest protection.
E. Martino/Panos. Japanese Tsunami Debris Is Increasingly Washing Ashore in Alaska. Heartland – the beginning of the end for climate denial? UN Launches Biodiversity Platform for Science and Policy. UN Launches Biodiversity Platform for Science and Policy. Demographics, Pandemics, Epidemics and Health. Oceans. Ecosystem Services: Charting a Path to Sustainability. Overview Authors Interdisciplinary Research Team Summaries; Conference, Arnold and Mabel Beckman Center, Irvine, California, November 10-11, 2011; The National Academies Keck Futures Initiative Description. Arctic generals agree on closer ties. Earthquakes - Earthquake today - Latest Earthquakes in the World - EMSC.