UK Parliament becomes first in the world to pass motion declaring a
‘climate emergency’. In a symbolic move, the House of Commons had declared
a climate emergency, admitting the need for a cross-party approach that
would enable the UK to set a world-leading standard on climate action.
Edie 1st May 2019
https://www.edie.net/news/9/UK-Parliament-becomes-first-in-the-world-to-declare-a–climate-emergency-/
May 4, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
General News |
Leave a comment
Nuclear material transfer from Scotland to US completed, BBC News, 3 May 20
May 4, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
General News |
Leave a comment
Particles From Cold War Nuclear Bomb Tests Found in Deepest Parts of the Ocean
Crustaceans in the Mariana Trench and other underwater canyons feed on food from the surface laced with carbon-14 from Cold War bomb tests, By Christopher Crockett, smithsonian.com , May 1, 2019
Crustaceans in the Mariana Trench and other underwater canyons feed on food from the surface laced with carbon-14 from Cold War bomb tests
The first test of a thermonuclear weapon, or a hydrogen bomb, codenamed Ivy Mike and conducted by the United States in 1952 over the island of Elugelab in Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. (Public Domain)
……… Crustaceans in the Mariana Trench and other underwater canyons feed on food from the surface laced with carbon-14 from Cold War bomb tests
No place on Earth is free from human influence—not even the bottom of the deepest trenches in the ocean.
Shrimp-like critters from three West Pacific ocean trenches were found to munch on food that sinks down from the surface, leaving a unique chemical signature from decades-old nuclear bomb tests in the bodies of the deep-sea crustaceans. The findings, published recently in Geophysical Research Letters, not only help marine scientists figure out how these bottom dwellers survive, but also underscore the depths to which humanity’s influence can penetrate………
In those dark depths, one of the most common critters is the shrimp-like amphipod, a family of crustaceans that scavenge the ocean floor for food. Where that food comes from is a matter of debate. Potential sources include morsels that percolate up from Earth’s interior, nutrient-rich sediment that slides down steep trench walls, or tasty detritus that wafts down from the surface.
A recent haul of deep-sea amphipods offered Sun and colleagues a chance to solve this marine mystery. Using baited traps, two Chinese research vessels in 2017 harvested amphipods from three trenches in the West Pacific, including the famous Mariana Trench. Sun’s team chemically analyzed the amphipods’ muscle tissue and gut contents and found elevated levels of carbon-14, a heavy variant of carbon. The levels closely matched abundances found near the surface of the ocean, where the amount of carbon-14 is higher than usual thanks to nuclear bomb tests conducted more than half a century ago.
Carbon comes in a few different varieties based on how many neutrons are stuffed into its atomic nucleus. About one out of every trillion carbon atoms on Earth has two extra neutrons. This form, known as carbon-14, occurs naturally thanks to high-speed atomic particles from deep space whacking into nitrogen atoms. But in the middle of the 20th century, humans doubled the amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, from 1945 to 1963 the United States and the Soviet Union (with a little help from the United Kingdom and France) detonated nearly 500 nuclear bombs, 379 of which exploded in the atmosphere. These tests dramatically increased the amount of carbon-14 on our planet. The Test Ban Treaty of 1963 put a stop to most atmospheric and underwater tests, and carbon-14 levels in the atmosphere started a slow return to normal—though they are still higher than pre-nuclear levels—as ocean waters and land-based life absorbed carbon from the air.
………While the nuclear bomb signature has been recorded a couple miles down in the West Atlantic, no one has seen it as these depths before. “This is just interesting as all get out,” says Robert Key, a Princeton oceanographer who was not involved with this study. He points out that starting about a mile below the surface of the North Pacific, carbon-14 levels closely match what the atmosphere looked like before the bomb tests. “The high carbon-14 [in the amphipods] could only come from food that’s come down from the top,” he says.
The abundance of material created in nuclear bomb tests high in the sky found in the bodies of deep-dwelling amphipods underscores a very intimate connection between human activity and the most isolated reaches of the sea…………. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/particles-cold-war-nuclear-bomb-testing-found-amphipods-mariana-trench-180972078/
May 2, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
General News |
Leave a comment
The Last Time There Was This Much CO2, Trees Grew at the South Pole, Dahr Jamail, Truthout , 29 April 19, “……… Water
As usual, there continue to be ample examples of the impacts of climate disruption in the watery realms of the planet.
In oceans, most of the sea turtles now being born are female; a crisis in sea turtle sex that is borne from climate disruption. This is due to the dramatically warmer sand temperatures where the eggs are buried. At a current ratio of 116/1 female/male, clearly this trend cannot continue indefinitely if sea turtles are to survive.
An alarming study showed recently that the number of new corals on the Great Barrier Reef has crashed by 89 percent after the mass bleaching events of 2016 and 2017. With coral bleaching events happening nearly annually now across many of the world’s reefs, such as the Great Barrier, we must remember that it takes an average of a decade for them to recover from a bleaching event. This is why some scientists in Australia believe the Great Barrier Reef to be in its “terminal stage.”
The UN recently sounded the alarm that urgent action is needed if Arab states are to avoid a water emergency. Water scarcity and desertification are afflicting the Middle East and North Africa more than any other region on Earth, hence the need for countries there to improve water management. However, the per capita share of fresh water availability there is already just 10 percent of the global average, with agriculture consuming 85 percent of it.
Another recent study has linked shrinking Arctic sea ice to less rain in Central America, adding to the water woes in that region as well.
In Alaska, warming continues apace. The Nenana Ice Classic, a competition where people guess when a tripod atop the frozen Nenana River breaks through the ice each spring, has resulted in a record this year of the earliest river ice breakup. It broke the previous record by nearly one full week.
Meanwhile, the pace of warming and the ensuing change across the Bering Sea is startling scientists there. Phenomena like floods during the winter and record low sea ice are generating great concern among scientists as well as Indigenous populations living there. “The projections were saying we would’ve hit situations similar to what we saw last year, but not for another 40 or 50 years,” Seth Danielson, a physical oceanographer at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, told The Associated Press of the diminishing sea ice.
In fact, people in the northernmost community of the Canadian Yukon, the village of Old Crow, are declaring a climate disruption State of Emergency. The chief of the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation in the Yukon, Chief Dana Tizya-Tramm, has stated that his community’s traditional way of life is at stake, including thawing permafrost and rivers and lakes that no longer freeze deeply enough to walk across in the winter, making hunting and fishing difficult and dangerous. He said that declaring the climate emergency is his community’s responsibility to the rest of the planet.
Other signs of the dramatic warming across the Arctic abound. On Denali, North America’s highest mountain (20,310 feet), more than 66 tons of frozen feces left by climbers on the mountain are expected to begin thawing out of the glaciers there as early as this coming summer.
Another study found that tall ice cliffs around Greenland and the Antarctic are beginning to “slump,” behaving like soil and rock in sediment do before they break apart from the land and slide down a slope. Scientists believe the slumping ice cliffs may well be an ominous sign that could lead to more acceleration in global sea level rise, as far more ice is now poised to melt into the seas than previously believed.
In New Zealand, following the third hottest summer on record there, glaciers have been described by scientists as “sad and dirty,” with many of them having disappeared forever. Snow on a glacier protects the ice underneath it from melting, so this is another way scientists measure how rapidly a glacier can melt — if the snow is gone and the blue ice underneath it is directly exposed to the sun, it’s highly prone to melting. “Last year, the vast majority of glaciers had snowlines that were off the top of the mountain, and this year, we had some where we could see snowlines on, but they were very high,” NIWA Environmental Science Institute climate scientist Drew Lorrey told the New Zealand Herald. “On the first day of our survey, we observed 28 of them, and only about six of them had what I would call a snowline.”
Lastly in this section, another study warned that if emissions continue to increase at their current rate, ice will have all but vanished from European Alpine valleys by 2100. The study showed that half of the ice in the Alps’ 4,000 glaciers will be gone by 2050 with only the warming that is already baked into the system from past emissions. The study warned that even if we ceased all emissions at this moment, two-thirds of the ice will still have melted by 2100……… https://truthout.org/articles/the-last-time-there-was-this-much-co2-trees-grew-at-the-south-pole/
April 30, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
General News |
Leave a comment
Norway’s last nuclear research reactor to close permanently https://www.reuters.com/article/norway-nuclear/norways-last-nuclear-research-reactor-to-close-permanently-idUSL5N22789V, OSLO, April 25 (Reuters) – Norway’s last nuclear research reactor will shut permanently and be decommissioned after more than 50 years of operations, the country’s Institute for Energy Technology (IFE) said on Thursday.
The JEEP II research reactor at Kjeller near Oslo has been shut for scheduled maintenance since last December and corrosion was found on several important safety components during an inspection.
The institute said it would be too costly to repair the reactor.
“The board of directors has decided, based on an overall assessment, that the reactor will not be restarted. IFE will consequently initiate work to prepare the decommissioning of the reactor,” the institute said in a statement.
Nuclear fuel and heavy water have been already removed, meaning that the reactor poses no danger to the environment, it added.
The rector, some 20 kilometres away from Oslo, has been used by researchers in physics, materials, cancer medicine, renewable energy and nuclear disarmament since starting operations in 1967, the IFE said.
In June 2018, Norway’s research reactor in Halden was shut down after 60 years of operation.
“Both Norwegian nuclear reactors are now closed and Norway will enter into a new era with decommissioning of the national nuclear programme which was started in 1948,” the IFE said.
Norway has no commercial nuclear reactors, and generates more than 90 percent of its electricity at hydropower plants. (Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis. Editing by Jane Merriman)
April 30, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
General News |
Leave a comment
Japan needs thousands of foreign workers to decommission Fukushima plant, prompting backlash from anti-nuke campaigners and rights activists, SCMP Julian Ryall , 26 Apr, 2019
Activists are not convinced working at the site is safe for anyone and they fear foreign workers will feel ‘pressured’ to ignore risks if jobs are at risk
Towns and villages around the plant are still out of bounds because radiation levels are dangerously high
Anti-nuclear campaigners have teamed up with human rights activists in Japan to condemn plans by the operator of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant to hire foreign workers to help decommission the facility.
Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) has announced it will take advantage of the government’s new working visa scheme, which was introduced on April 1 and permits thousands of foreign workers to come to Japan to meet soaring demand for labourers. The company has informed subcontractors overseas nationals will be eligible to work cleaning up the site and providing food services.
About 4,000 people work at the plant each day as experts attempt to decommission three reactors that melted down in the aftermath of the March 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and the huge tsunami it triggered. Towns and villages around the plant are still out of bounds because radiation levels are dangerously high.
TEPCO has stated foreign workers employed at the site must have Japanese language skills sufficient for them to understand instructions and the risks they face. Workers will also be required to carry dosimeters to monitor their exposure to radiation.
Activists are far from convinced working at the site is safe for anyone and they fear foreign workers will feel “pressured” to ignore the risks if their jobs are at risk.
“We are strongly opposed to the plan because we have already seen that workers at the plant are being exposed to high levels of radiation and there have been numerous breaches of labour standards regulations,” said Hajime Matsukubo, secretary general of the Tokyo-based Citizens’ Nuclear Information Centre. “Conditions for foreign workers at many companies across Japan are already bad but it will almost certainly be worse if they are required to work decontaminating a nuclear accident site.”
Companies are desperately short of labourers, in part because of the construction work connected to Tokyo hosting the 2020 Olympic Games, while TEPCO is further hampered because any worker who has been exposed to 50 millisieverts of radiation in a single year or 100 millisieverts over five years is not permitted to remain at the plant. Those limits mean the company must find labourers from a shrinking pool.
In February, the Tokyo branch of Human Rights Now submitted a statement to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva demanding action be taken to help and protect people with homes near the plant and workers at the site.
“It has been reported that vulnerable people have been illegally deceived by decontamination contractors into conducting decontamination work without their informed consent, threatening their lives, including asylum seekers under false promises and homeless people working below minimum wage,” the statement said. “Much clean-up depends on inexperienced subcontractors with little scrutiny as the government rushes decontamination for the Olympic Games.”
Cade Moseley, an official of the organisation, said there are “very clear, very definite concerns”.
April 30, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
General News |
Leave a comment
Japan’s nuclear horror relived as people return to Fukushima’s ghost towns,
It is eight years since a devastating tsunami caused three reactors to meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station on the north-east coast of Japan Mirror UK, Emily RetterSenior Feature Writer, Mirror UK, 29 Apr19
 Wide streets still lie empty, scavenging boar and monkeys the only signs of life.
Only wild animals, and the 6ft weeds, which have rampaged through deserted homes and businesses, suffocating once-chatty barbers shops and bustling grocery stores; strangling playgrounds and their rusting rides which lie empty and eerily still.
Laundry hangs where it was pegged out to dry, clock faces are frozen in time, traffic lights flash through their colours to empty roads, meals laid out on tables in family homes, remain uneaten.
Once unextraordinary, mundane symbols of everyday lives have taken on the appearance of a horror film set in these areas closest to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station on the coast of north-east Japan, eight years after the devastating tsunami which caused a meltdown at three of the plant’s reactors, forcing tens of thousands to flee.
The earthquake on March 11, 2011, claimed 19,000 lives, and triggered the world’s largest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
Radiation leaking in fatal quantities forced 160,000 people to evacuate immediately, and most to this day have not returned to their toxic towns and villages…….
The official mandatory evacuation order was lifted, and while reports reveal just 367 residents of Okuma’s original population of 10,341 have so far made the decision to return, and most of the town remains off-limits, the Japanese government is keen this be seen as a positive start to re-building this devastated area…….
The Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, visited to mark the milestone.
 The government is particularly keen to show progress before the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo.
Six Olympic softball games and a baseball game will be staged in Fukushima, the capital of this prefecture, which is free of radiation.
The torch relay will even begin at J Village, which was once the base for the crisis response team. Hearteningly, it is now back to its original function, a football training centre.
But the truth is, it is mainly older residents who have decided to return to their homes.
Seimei Sasaki, 93, explained his family have roots here stretching back 500 years.
His neighbourhood in Odaka district now only contains 23 of its original 230.
“I can’t imagine what this village’s future looks like,” he admitted.
Young families are few and far between – these areas are still a terrifying prospect for parents.
But the re-built schools are slowly filling a handful of classroom seats.
Namie Sosei primary and middle school, less then three miles from the plant, has seven pupils.
One teacher said: “The most frustrating thing for them is that they can’t play team sports.”
A sad irony as the Olympics approach.
And with so many residents still fearful, so the deadly clean-up operation continues.
Work to make the rest of Okuma safe is predicted to take until 2022. The area which was its centre is still a no-go zone.
In the years following the disaster, 70,000 workers removed topsoil, tree branches, grass and other contaminated material from areas near homes, schools and public buildings.
 A staggering £21billion has been spent in order to make homes safe.
Millions of cubic metres of radioactive soil has been packed into bags.
By 2021 it is predicted 14million cubic metres will have been generated.
The mass scale operation uses thousands of workers. Drivers are making 1,600 return trips a day.
But residents understandably want it moved out of Fukushima for good.
As yet, no permanent location has agreed to take it, but the government has pledged it will be gone by 2045.
At Daiichi itself, the decontamination teams are battling with the build up of 1m tonnes of radioactive water. …..https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/japans-nuclear-horror-relived-people-14420671
|
|
|
April 30, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
General News |
Leave a comment
Thorium nuclear power? go Green instead https://www.westerntelegraph.co.uk/news/17600300.letter-thorium-nuclear-power-go-green-instead/ By Bruce Sinclair Reporter,Western Telegraph April 17, CHRISTOPHER JESSOP, F Harbud wrote: “With all the letters on green energy appearing in the press, I wonder why there is no mention of the thorium reactors under development?”
When I was reading for my Energy Studies degree at University College Swansea in the late 1970s, the consensus within the nuclear power industry was that the thorium cycle could prove of interest, but a lot of investment would be required to develop a competitive and safe reactor design.
Forty years later, the nuclear power industry appears to be still saying this.
Meanwhile, onshore wind and solar PV are the cheapest means of generating electricity, and they are available NOW.
The climate emergency is so severe, we can’t wait for the future promise of any ‘long-haul’ energy technology, and that includes fusion: when I was a student, fusion was 50 years away from commercialisation, and more than 40 years later it is still 50 years away from commercialisation!
April 30, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
General News |
Leave a comment
Uranium waste in NM puts lie to ‘carbon free’, Albuquerque Journal, BY DUANE CHILI YAZZIE / SHIPROCK CHAPTER PRESIDENT, NAVAJO NATION, April 26th, 2019 “……..We must understand that abuse of seemingly inanimate matter has consequence. The extraction of uranium and the exploitation of it causes compounded waste and resultant compounded consequence. We have created mountains of radioactive waste; because we have limited knowledge and capacity to conclusively, effectually and permanently deal with this waste, we bury it. Out of sight, out of mind does not ease our minds because we know it is there. My community of Shiprock has one of the largest uranium waste disposal cells in the country sitting in the middle of our community. People who naively exalt science and technology may simultaneously inebriate themselves from the consequence of the devastating reality.The natural law of cause and effect predicates all. With my Navajo people, we have suffered the deaths of hundreds of our uranium miners, millers, transporters and affected family members due to health complications caused by exposure to uranium. In 1979 a United Nuclear Corp. holding pond burst, releasing 94 million gallons of radioactive waste that cascaded through Gallup and on downstream. Women and children who waded in the contaminated Rio Puerco, burning their feet, were told that the radioactive water was a figment of their imagination. … Our lives continue to be at stake. The radioactive levels remain, and we, the contaminated people, continue to develop uranium-related health issues. We die a slow death. The world of science and technology has damaged us and the natural world.
The Public Service Company of New Mexico, which has made an incredible indelible scar of industrial consequence on New Mexico and the Earth, now wants to add more nuclear to its portfolio. By doing so, PNM will only amplify this consequence. Some say that nuclear-generated electricity should be allowed because it is “carbon-free.” From a life-cycle perspective, it is not carbon-free. The semantics are irrelevant; what matters is the eventual and permanent negative impact and consequence to the land, the people and our planet Earth.
(In honor of) this Earth Day, it is imperative we acknowledge the damage done to the integrity of the life of Earth. The seemingly insurmountable effect from the cause of the extractive industry demands our attention. We have a climate crisis that is ebbing the life of our planet. The delicate balance of the equilibrium of the Earth and its life systems have been dangerously upset. We cannot further aggravate this great dilemma with more uranium exploitation and continue to destroy the sanctity of our Earth Mother and all life upon and within her.https://www.abqjournal.com/1307342/uranium-waste-in-nm-puts-lie-to-carbon-free.html
April 30, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
General News |
Leave a comment
The Last Time There Was This Much CO2, Trees Grew at the South Pole, Dahr Jamail, Truthout , 29 April 19,
“……… Earth
The impact of runaway emissions is already upon us. Several cities in the northern U.S., such as Buffalo, Cincinnati and Duluth, are already preparing to receive migrants from states like Florida, where residents are beset with increasing flooding, brutal heat waves, more severe and frequent hurricanes, sea level rise, and a worse allergy season. City planners in the aforementioned cities are already preparing by trying to figure out how to create jobs and housing for an influx of new residents.
Indications of the climate disruption refugee crisis are even more glaring in some other countries.
Large numbers of Guatemalan farmers already have to leave their landdue to drought, flooding, and increasingly severe extreme weather events.
In low-lying Bangladesh, hundreds of thousands of people are already in the process of being displaced from coastal homes, and are moving into poverty-stricken areas of cities that are already unprepared to receive the influx of people. Given that 80 percent of the population of the country already lives in a flood plain, the crisis can only escalate with time as sea level rise continues to accelerate.
Meanwhile, diseases spread by mosquitoes are also set to worsen in our increasingly warm world. A recently published study on the issue shows that over the next three decades, half a billion more people could be at risk of mosquito-delivered diseases.
Other migrations are occurring as well. In Canada’s Yukon, Indigenous elders told the CBC that caribou and moose are moving further north than ever before in order to escape the impacts of climate disruption like warmer summers, lakes and rivers that don’t freeze, and adjusting their migrations to find more food. This has deep impacts on the survival and culture of the area’s Indigenous residents.
In economic news, a researcher for the Federal Reserve Bank recently penned a letter urging central banks to note the financial risks, and possibly an impending financial crisis, brought about by climate disruption. “Without substantial and sustained global mitigation and regional adaptation efforts,” read the letter, “climate change is expected to cause growing losses to American infrastructure and property and impede the rate of economic growth over this century.”
Another report showed that climate disruption is already negatively impacting fruit breeders, and consumers will soon feel the pain of higher prices. “We are seeing industries that may not survive if we don’t find a solution, and we are only just seeing the consequences of climate change,” Thomas Gradziel, of the University of California at Davis, told The Washington Post.
Underscoring all of this, the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway, known as the “Doomsday Vault,” has already been altered by climate disruption impacts. The primary impacts thus far have been floodingaround the vault, given how warm temperatures have become across the Arctic. The Doomsday Vault holds nearly one million seeds from around the globe, and functions as a backup in case climate disruption, war, famine, or disease wipes out certain crops. In other words, it’s a backup plan to backup plans. A recent report showed that climate change’s impacts on the seed vault could get worse as snow season shortens, heavier and more frequent rainfalls escalate, and avalanches and mudslides near the vault become more common.
Lastly in this section, researchers recently warned that the Arctic has now entered an “unprecedented state” that is literally threatening the stability of the entire global climate system. Their paper, “Key Indicators of Arctic Climate Change: 1971–2017,” with both American and European climate scientists contributing, warned starkly that changes in the Arctic will continue to have massive and negative impacts around the globe.
“Because the Arctic atmosphere is warming faster than the rest of the world, weather patterns across Europe, North America, and Asia are becoming more persistent, leading to extreme weather conditions,” Jason Box, the lead author of the paper said. ……….. https://truthout.org/articles/the-last-time-there-was-this-much-co2-trees-grew-at-the-south-pole/
April 30, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
General News |
Leave a comment
Dahr Jamail, Truthout , 29 April 19, It is palpable now. Even the most ardent deniers of human-caused climate disruption can feel the convulsions wracking the planet…..
This anxiety that increases by the day, this curious dread of what our climate-disrupted future will bring, is difficult to bear. Even those who have not already lost homes or loved ones to climate disruption-fueled extreme weather events have to live with the burden of this daily tension.
The signs of our overheated planet abound, and another collection of recent reports and studies shows things are only continuing to accelerate as human-caused climate disruption progresses.
A recently published study showed that Earth’s glaciers are now melting five times more rapidly than they were in the 1960s.“The glaciers shrinking fastest are in central Europe, the Caucasus region, western Canada, the U.S. Lower 48 states, New Zealand and near the tropics,” lead author Michael Zemp, director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service at the University of Zurich told Time Magazine. Glaciers in those places are losing an average of more than 1 percent of their mass each year, according to the study. “In these regions, at the current glacier loss rate, the glaciers will not survive the century,” added Zemp.
Meanwhile, the World Meteorological Organization announced that extreme weather events impacted 62 million people across the world last year. In 2018, 35 million people were struck by flooding, and Hurricanes Florence and Michael were just two of 14 “billion-dollar disasters” in 2018 in the U.S. More than 1,600 deaths were linked to heat waves and wildfires in Europe, Japan and the U.S. The report also noted the last four years were the warmest on record.As an example of this last statistic, another report revealed that Canada is warming at twice the global rate. “We are already seeing the effects of widespread warming in Canada,” Elizabeth Bush, a climate science adviser at Environment Canada, told The Guardian. “It’s clear, the science supports the fact that adapting to climate change is an imperative.”
Another recent report showed that the last time there was this much CO2 in the atmosphere (412 ppm), in the Pliocene Epoch 5.3 to 2.6 million years ago, sea levels were 20 meters higher than they are right now, trees were growing at the South Pole, and average global temperatures were 3 to 4 degrees Centigrade (3°-4° C) warmer, and even 10°C warmer in some areas. NASA echoed the report’s findings.
And if business as usual continues, emissions will only accelerate. The International Energy Agency announced that global carbon emissions set a record in 2018, rising 1.7 percent to a record 33.1 billion tons……….. https://truthout.org/articles/the-last-time-there-was-this-much-co2-trees-grew-at-the-south-pole/
April 30, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
General News |
Leave a comment
Extinction Rebellion supporters around the world have held a series of mass die-ins to highlight the risk of the human race becoming extinct asa result of climate change.
Protesters in France, Australia,
New Zealand, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Italy, The Netherlands, the UK and other countries lay across the ground on Saturday at transport hubs, cultural centres and shopping centres to demand drastic action to avert environmental collapse.
At the Kelvingrove art gallery and museum in Glasgow, about 300 activists lay down beneath Dippy, the famous copy of a diplodocus skeleton which is currently touring the UK, for 20 minutes on the sound of a violin.
Many held handwritten signs with the question “Are we next?”, while children held pictures they had drawn of their favourite at-risk animals as part of the event organised by Wee Rebellion, a climate-change protest group for young people in Glasgow associated with Extinction Rebellion.
Twelve-year-old Lida said: “We want to raise awareness about climate change. If we keep carrying on the way we are humans may become extinct, like Dippy.” Aoibhìn, 7, said: “Lots of animals are dying out because of climate change.”
Organisers of the die-in said Wee Rebellion would continue to hold protests until local and central governments committed to zero greenhouse gas emissions within 11 years and established climate citizens assemblies to oversee the changes.
The group said industrial agriculture, overfishing and deforestation could lead to food shortages in the UK and serious flooding in parts of Glasgow.
In Lund, a number of people took to the cobbled streets of the southern Swedish city in the rain, urging people to take greater notice of what they called a looming climate catastrophe.
Meanwhile, in Oslo, about 30 people occupied the floor of a shopping centre. Extinction Rebellion Norway tweeted: “Full stoppage at Oslo City while we campaigned against the clothing industry’s wild environmental degradation. It is the world’s second largest polluter after the oil industry.”
Earlier, in Melbourne, protesters held placards saying, “You are never too small to make a difference” and “Species go extinct every day” as they lay on the pavement outside Flinders Street station.
The actions were part of worldwide celebration at 12.05pm called by Extinction Rebellion Berlin following the protests that began in London in November 2018, which have since spawned a mass movement.
A spokesperson for the group said in a statement: “Our ecosystem is threatened by collapse, which will not only lead to mass extinction of countless species, the loss of soil fertility and more extreme weather but will also bring with it the social crises of famine, war and migration.
“The small efforts we are doing each and every day, [such as] using less packaging, buying organic food and clothes, stopping drinking with plastic straws are clearly not enough. We need our governments to take their responsibilities seriously in order to ensure a future worth living to the inhabitants of our world.”
April 29, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
General News |
Leave a comment
Michelle Drummond – I feel the important thing about this article is the fact that the AUSTRALIAN RADIATION PROTECTION AND NUCLEAR SAFETY AGENCY raised a warning about the dangers associated with radiation and getting too close to uranium and thorium in jewellery, however, they argue there are no dangers associated with mining, processing, using uranium and thorium in the production nuclear power, let alone storing the waste for thousands of years.
I also find it concerning that individuals are unable to connect the dots.
|
Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency warns over wearing ’scalar energy’ jewellery, Adelaide Now , Tory Shepherd, State Editor, Sunday Mail (SA), April 28, 2019 Radioactive jewellery being sold in Australia can expose wearers to uranium and thorium, the radiation watchdog has warned.
Sellers claim the mystical “scalar energy” jewellery uses embedded holograms to help with balance, building muscle, sleep, pain relief, giving a “youthful glow” and, ironically, blocking electromagnetic radiation.
The Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) says the products, also called “quantum energy” or “quantum science” products, not only risked exposing the wearer, but did not work.
The agency said it had confirmed the presence of radioactive material in scalar pendants, and while it could not test all products, anything “scalar” might contain radioactive particles.
A US probe also found volcanic rock or sand in the products contained radioactive traces.
ARPANSA spokesman Ken Karipidis said the health claims were “not consistent with current scientific knowledge and it is difficult, if not impossible, to verify any benefits”……. https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/australian-radiation-protection-and-nuclear-safety-agency-warns-over-wearing-scalar-energy-jewellery/news-story/4f01a9201287e8826ec84af88ae27084
|
|
April 29, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
General News |
Leave a comment
Desmog, By Mat Hope • Wednesday, April 24, 2019, A secretive fossil fuel lobby group undertook a decades-long campaign to undermine mainstream climate science while spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to try and influence major scientific reports, a tranche of newly released documents shows.The
Global Climate Coalition (GCC) was a fossil-fuel backed lobby group active in the mid-90s and early 2000s. A collection of briefings, meeting minutes, notes, and correspondence from the group,
released by the Climate Investigations Centre in collaboration with DeSmog and Climate Liability News, show how the
GCC tried to manipulate the
UN’s official scientific advisory body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (
IPCC).
The lobby group focused its efforts on trying to constrain the strength of the IPCC’s statements about human causes of climate change in the run up to the UN’s annual climate meeting in Kyoto in 1997, where world leaders agreed to the world’s first global climate change treaty. Officials from President George W. Bush’s administration would later credit the GCC for influencing his decision to abandon the landmark Kyoto treaty.
Despite sophisticated coordination, connections to the highest political echelons, and huge resources, the GCC had limited success at influencing the UN’s main scientific body. The group was disbanded in 2002 after many members left, citing reputational risks around the groups’ peddling of climate science denial as the reason for their departure.
The documents show the GCC:
- Spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on an ‘IPCC Tracker Fund’ to monitor and lobby the UN’s climate science advisory body in the three years leading up to world leaders signing the Kyoto Protocol;
- Attacked the IPCC’s peer-review process, while also using the body’s status as a well-respected scientific institution to bolster its climate science denial claims;
- Targeted specific scientists responsible for establishing human activities caused climate change, using adverts and op-eds in the mainstream media to attack the scientists’ credibility……..
Industry efforts to quash inconvenient scientific conclusions continue, according to Robert Brulle, a Professor of Sociology at Drexel University. He told DeSmog the “efforts of the GCC continue to live on in the ongoing efforts of many conservative think tanks to dispute the findings of climate science, and to attack climate scientists.”
“One key component of this effort was to manipulate climate science as summarized in the IPCC reports. Not unlike other industries, such as asbestos, tobacco, or lead, scientific findings pose a major threat to fossil fuel corporations’ bottom line. Hence one key part of their strategy has been, and continues to be to minimize the anthropogenic factor driving climate change.”
“This is still a common talking point among politicians.” ndustry efforts to quash inconvenient scientific conclusions continue, according to Robert Brulle, a Professor of Sociology at Drexel University. He told DeSmog the “efforts of the GCC continue to live on in the ongoing efforts of many conservative think tanks to dispute the findings of climate science, and to attack climate scientists.”
“One key component of this effort was to manipulate climate science as summarized in the IPCC reports. Not unlike other industries, such as asbestos, tobacco, or lead, scientific findings pose a major threat to fossil fuel corporations’ bottom line. Hence one key part of their strategy has been, and continues to be to minimize the anthropogenic factor driving climate change.”
“This is still a common talking point among politicians.” https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/04/24/how-big-oil-tried-failed-capture-un-intergovernmental-panel-climate-change?utm_source=dsb%20subscriber%20newsletter
April 29, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
General News |
Leave a comment
|
In degrading Nature humanity harms itself, UN report warns, https://www.france24.com/en/20190425-degrading-nature-humanity-harms-itself-un-report-warns Diplomats and scientists from 130 nations gather in Paris next week to vet and validate the first UN global assessment of the state of Nature in more than a decade, and the news is not good.A quarter of 100,000 species already assessed are on a path to extinction, and the total number facing a forced exit from the world stage is closer to a million, according to an executive summary, obtained by AFP, of a 1,800-page scientific report three years in the making.
A score of 10-year targets adopted in 2010 under the UN’s biodiversity treaty — to expand protected areas, slow species and forest loss, and reduce pollution impact — will almost all fail, the draft Summary for Policy Makers reports.
But the focus of the five-day meet is not just pangolins, pandas, polar bears and the multitude of less “charismatic” lifeforms that humanity is eating, crowding or poisoning into oblivion.
Rather, the spotlight is on the one species that has so ravaged Earth’s natural systems as to imperil its own existence as well.
That, of course, would be us: homo sapiens.
The accelerating loss of clean air, drinkable water, healthy soil, pollinating insects, protein-rich fish and storm-blocking mangroves — to name but a few of the dwindling services rendered by Nature — poses no less of a threat to humanity than climate change, according to the report, set to be unveiled May 6.
“Up to now, we have talked about the importance of biodiversity mostly from an environmental perspective,” said Robert Watson, chair of the UN-mandated body that compiled the report, told AFP.
“Now we are saying that Nature is crucial for food production, for pure water, for medicines and even social cohesion.”
And to fight climate change, he added.
Forests and oceans, for example, soak up half of the planet-warming greenhouse gases we spew into the atmosphere. If they didn’t, Earth might already be locked into an unliveable future of runaway global warming.
And yet, an area of tropical forest five times the size of England has been destroyed since 2014, mainly to service the growing global demand for beef, biofuels, soy beans and palm oil.
It would be like setting fire to a lifeboat while lost at sea in order to cook the fish one just caught.
– Hidden impacts –
“We need to recognise that climate change and loss of Nature are equally important, not just for the environment, but as development and economic issues as well,” Watson said.
The way we produce our food and energy is undermining the regulating services that we get from Nature.”
Set up in 2012, the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) synthesises published science for policymakers in the same way the IPCC does for climate.
Both advisory bodies are tied to UN treaties.
But the Convention on Biological Diversity has always been a poor stepchild compared to its climate counterpart, and the IPBES — unlike the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — was added two decades later as an afterthought, making its authority harder to establish.
For the public, “biodiversity” remains an abstract concept, and its impacts harder to see: species loss is invisible and remote compared to deadly heatwaves, superstorms and sea-level rise.
“There is no question that the climate convention is stronger,” Watson said.
“But our goal is to make sure that governments and the private sector really start to take biodiversity as seriously as they do climate.”
– Species disappearing –
One major finding of the report to be reviewed next week that might help do that is “an imminent rapid acceleration in the global rate of species extinction.”
The pace of loss “is already tens to hundreds of times higher than it has been, on average, over the last 10 million years,” it notes.
“Half-a-million to a million species are projected to be threatened with extinction, many within decades.”
Experts on biodiversity are also trying to engineer a “Paris moment,” something equivalent to the 2015 climate treaty that set a hard target for capping global warming at under two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit).
That could come next year in China at the next full meeting of the Convention on Biodiversity, they say.
But the plan to save Nature — and humanity along with it — must be every bit as “transformative” as the changes proposed to avert a climate-addled future of human misery, said Watson.
“The way we produce and use energy, with way we produce and waste food — all of that has to be looked at,” he said.
“The global report will make the case that biodiversity is essential to a sustainable world and human well-being.”
|
|
April 27, 2019
Posted by Christina Macpherson |
General News |
Leave a comment
Antinuclear 