The A register – Analysis Extremist green campaigning group WWF – endorsed by no less a body than the European Space Agency – has stated that economic growth should be abandoned, that citizens of the world’s wealthy nations should prepare for poverty and that all the human race’s energy should be produced as renewable electricity within 38 years from now. Most astonishingly of all, the green hardliners demand that the enormous numbers of wind farms, tidal barriers and solar powerplants required under their plans should somehow be built while at the same time severely rationing supplies of concrete, steel, copper and glass. Read article
Bloomberg – France had its fifth-wettest month of April since 1959, after a dry March, weather forecaster Meteo- France said. Nationally, rain in April was 70 percent above normal, the Saint Mande, France-based forecaster wrote in a monthly report on its website today [May 8]. Read article
Register – The WWF – endorsed by no less a body than the European Space Agency – has stated that economic growth should be abandoned, that citizens of the world’s wealthy nations should prepare for poverty and that all the human race’s energy should be produced as renewable electricity within 38 years from now.Most astonishingly of all, the green hardliners demand that the enormous numbers of wind farms, tidal barriers and solar powerplants required under their plans should somehow be built while at the same time severely rationing supplies of concrete, steel, copper and glass. The WWF presents these demands in its just-issued Living Planet Report for 2012. It’s a remarkable document, not least for the fact that it is formally endorsed for the first time by the European Space Agency (ESA) – an organisation which would cease to exist in any meaningful form if the document’s recommendations were to be carried out. Read Article
National Science Foundation – Changes in the speed that ice travels in more than 200 outlet glaciers indicates that Greenland’s contribution to rising sea level in the 21st century could be significantly less than the upper limits some scientists thought possible. The finding comes from a paper funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA and published in today’s journal Science.
While the study indicates that a melting Greenland’s contributions to rising sea levels could be less than expected, researchers concede that more work needs to be done before any definitive trend can be identified. Studies like this one are designed to examine more closely and in greater detail what is actually happening with the ice sheets, often using newer and more precise tools and thereby better defining the parameters that scientists use to make predictions, such as the upper limits of sea-level rise. Read Article
The Independent – April’s record rainfall has brought much of England out of drought status, the Environment Agency announced today. The heaviest “April showers” since records began in 1910, combined with a similarly sodden beginning to May, have allowed official drought status to be lifted for 19 counties in the South-west, the Midlands and Yorkshire, the agency said. Read article
Nature – About one-quarter of seafood sold as ‘sustainable’ is not meeting that goal, according to an analysis taking aim at the two leading bodies that grant this valuable label to fisheries. In an online paper in Marine Policy1 and at a conference this week in Edinburgh, UK, fisheries biologist Rainer Froese of the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research in Kiel, Germany, launched a stinging attack on the schemes by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) and the marine-conservation organization Friend of the Sea (FOS) to certify fisheries as sustainable. Read article
ABC – A report ranking the world’s biggest polluters puts Australia in seventh place.
Conservation group World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which compiled the report, says the spiralling global population and over-consumption are threatening the future health of the planet. Read article
AFP – Severe drought gripping northeastern Brazil — the worst in a half-century — is taking its toll on more than 1,100 towns, even triggering fighting in rural areas, local media reported Sunday. An average of one person a day is being killed in “water wars” in rural areas, while scores of animals are wasting away before perishing, the O Globo newspaper reported over the weekend. Read article
While the Earth’s Polar Regions are similar in many ways, the North and South Poles also display stark differences, with the arctic being far more hospitable in many ways to its polar opposite. The Antarctic has no record of primitive humans and no native groups and the first crossing occurred in 1773 by James Cook. The Arctic on the other hand has been crossed from prehistoric times and is home to natives with a long cultural record. The annual mean temperature at the South Pole is -58F whilst at the North Pole it’s a comfortable 0F. For a comprehensive view of world news about the Arctic and Antarctica; its people, politics and environment read our news archive of 177 articles CLICK HERE
The global average lower tropospheric temperature anomaly increased again in April, 2012, to +0.30°C., with warming in both Northern and Southern Hemispheres, but slightly cool conditions persisting in the tropics.
The corresponding April anomaly from RSS, using a common baseline period of 1981-2010, is considerably cooler at +0.21°C.
The Australian – Most of the scientists advising the federal government on coal-seam gas pollution have financial links with the mining industry. Four of the six members of the interim independent expert scientific committee on coal-seam gas and coalmining have a financial connection with mining companies, the Environment Department has revealed. Read Article
The Australian – CLAIMS that some of Australia’s leading climate change scientists were subjected to death threats as part of a vicious and unrelenting email campaign have been debunked by the Privacy Commissioner. Timothy Pilgrim was called in to adjudicate on a Freedom of Information application in relation to Fairfax and ABC reports last June alleging that Australian National University climate change researchers were facing the ongoing campaign and had been moved to “more secure buildings” following explicit threats. Read Article
The Australian – TEMPERATURES in Sydney’s western suburbs are rising faster than in the city’s ritzy eastern suburbs, leading to a prediction hospital admissions will skyrocket by 40 per cent by 2030. A report to be released today by the Climate Commission on the impacts of climate change on NSW directly links climate change to increases in the number of heatwave days in Australia’s biggest metropolitan area, and claims that residents of western Sydney would experience more days above 35C and that this would occur at a faster rate than in the eastern suburbs. However, sea-level rises could spark storm-surge problems for coastal areas, with the report citing research that predicts a 50cm rise in sea level could spark flooding events – currently seen as one-in-100-year phenomena – every few months. Chief climate commissioner Tim Flannery said the report was based on the latest science and had been released before a series of meetings in western Sydney this week. However, Professor Hughes, the head of the Department of Biological Sciences at Macquarie University, said the difference could well be a combination of climate change and the fact that a lack of a sea breeze, heat-trapping roads, dark roofs and carparks, and increased temperature had made the areas into a “heat island”. Read Article
Editorial Comment – Tim Flannery is Australia’s leading climate alarmist (and is paid $180,000 a year by the Australian taxpayer to do so) and frequently warns about rising sea levels. That did stop him recently buying a very nice waterside property in Sydney. Clearly he’s not that worried about sea-level rises after-all.
Biology & Nature – Groupers, a family of fishes often found in coral reefs and prized for their quality of flesh, are facing critical threats to their survival. As part of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commission, a team of scientists has spent the past ten years assessing the status of 163 grouper species worldwide. They report that 20 species (12%) are at risk of extinction if current overfishing trends continue, and an additional 22 species (13%) are Near Threatened. These findings were published online on April 28 in the journal Fish and Fisheries.Read article
CTV — An industry-funded program that offers high school teachers a six-day trip to Fort McMurray to “experience Alberta’s oilsands” is being expanded across the country. While the operators of Inside Education say they work hard to ensure their programming offers plenty of balance, others say informing educators about controversial developments shouldn’t be left to those with most to gain from them. Read article
Huffington Post – Bees are making headlines these days, and not in a positive way. Colony collapse disorder has cut through honeybee populations, with some beekeepers reportedly losing up to 90 percent of their stock in recent years. European bee populations are also declining, and so are some species of North American bumblebee. That data is often interpreted to mean that all of the world’s 20,000 bee species are in danger, and that we may be in the midst of a “global pollinator crisis.” But there’s little data to back up those claims, scientists say. Read article
The Telegraph – Common chemicals found in household products may be causing a range of medical problems such as cancer, reduced fertility and obesity, Europe’s environmental watchdog has warned. The European Environment Agency (EEA) warned other items such as cosmetics and medicines which contain endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) could be harmful to humans. The agency said the link between some diseases and these disrupter chemicals was now fully accepted. Read article
Open your eyes for there is a brave new world upon us! Aldous Huxley’s 5thnovel prophetically anticipates developments in reproductive technology, drug use, education and psychoanalysis that combine to change society. Watch our brave new world come into focus before your very eyes by reading our news archive on the subject. CLICK HERE
Guardian – Lord Mandelson has been recruited to advise a multinational company accused of illegally chopping down endangered rainforest. The Labour peer and his staff in the political consultancy that he set up after leaving government have been meeting officials on behalf of Asia Pulp and Paper. For more than a decade, APP, one of the world’s largest pulp and paper companies, has been accused by environmental groups such as Greenpeace of destroying thousands of hectares of Indonesian rainforest and endangering some of the world’s rarest animals. A growing number of firms have boycotted APP. The disclosure comes as Mandelson and other peers are expected to face pressure from the House of Lords authorities to declare their clients. Read article
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