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After Disaster, Governor Faced with Challenge of Keeping Jakarta Dry

Sat, 2013-02-23 23:02 — Kathy Gilbeaux

      

Since last month, when the worst flooding in six years hit Jakarta, occupancy at Marunda public housing complex north of Jakarta has jumped.

nytimes.com - by Sara Schonhardt - February 20, 2013

JAKARTA, Indonesia — At the Marunda housing projects in North Jakarta, weeds push up through cracks in concrete foundations and grimy facades beg for paint. The rent-subsidized apartments have little access to public transportation, and drainage ditches that ring each building smell of sewage.

It seems unlikely that people would line up to live here.

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The Limits to the Shale Oil Boom

Thu, 2013-02-21 19:06 — admin

The cleanest form of petrochemical energy is clearly past its peak and is causing significant damage to ecosystems all over the planet.  That is why risky and incredibly expensive resource extraction, such as Deep Water Horizon, is becoming the new reality of oil production.  The impacts of climate change are now escalating rapidly.  But the bigger problem lies in the extents to which the largest and most profitable businesses in the world in the petrochemical industry are willing to go to continue their profitability against all rationality in terms of the  mass extinction and the impact on health and human security. 

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Global Drought Monitor

Sun, 2013-01-27 14:14 — Maeryn Obley

An working example of the Global Drought Monitor, focusing on Eurasia and Africa.

Image: An working example of the Global Drought Monitor, focusing on Eurasia and Africa.

drought.mssl.ucl.ac.uk - Benjamin Lloyd-Hughes and Mark Saunders

The Global Drought Monitor  is a free internet application which monitors the severity of drought worldwide on an ongoing basis. The product will aid humanitarian relief by assisting warnings of potential food, water and health problems. The Global Drought Monitor  will also benefit the general public, government and industry by improving awareness of droughts and their impacts.

(VIEW WEBSITE)

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The battle against Big Energy's rush to ruin our planet

Fri, 2012-11-02 19:30 — Maeryn Obley

One plume of oil from BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon well blowout produced a slick 22 miles long and a mile wide. Photograph: Ted Jackson/Times Picayune/AP

Image: One plume of oil from BP's 2010 Deepwater Horizon well blowout produced a slick 22 miles long and a mile wide. Photograph: Ted Jackson/Times Picayune/AP

guardian.co.uk - October 31st, 2012 - Daryl Hannah

Extreme killer superstorms, historic drought, vanishing sea ice, an increase in ocean acidity by 30%, the hottest decade on record and mega forest fires have increasingly become our new reality.

"That's all happened when you raise the temperature of the earth one degree," says author Bill McKibben, "[t]he temperature will go up four degrees, maybe five, unless we get off coal and gas and oil very quickly." Additional temperature rises could compromise our safety and cause incalculable damage from a large number of billion-dollar disasters in coming years – if we don't address our emissions, insist upon an appropriate climate policy and curtail the rogue fossil fuel industry.

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The Bicyclean Uses Pedal Power to Safely Recycle E-Waste

Mon, 2012-10-08 00:26 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by Samuel Bendett

              

inhabitat.com - by Morgana Matus - September 28, 2012

The Unites States generates more electronic waste than any other nation on earth.  According to the EPA, more than 4.6 million tons entered domestic landfills in 2000, and 50-80% of our total e-waste is exported to developing nations where defunct electronics wind up in dumps, polluting the environment, and littering neighborhoods. That’s why 22-year-old engineering graduate Rachel Field has invented the Bicyclean – a pedal-powered grinder and e-waste separation system.

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The Great Barrier Reef Has Lost Half of its Coral in the Last 27 Years

Thu, 2012-10-04 17:12 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Barnards after cyclone Larry. Image: AIMS Long-term Monitoring Team.

Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS)
October 2, 2012

Can we save the Reef by controlling crown of thorns starfish?

(ABSTRACT AND LINK TO STUDY - BELOW)

The Great Barrier Reef has lost half its coral cover in the last 27 years. The loss was due to storm damage (48%), crown of thorns starfish (42%), and bleaching (10%) according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences today by researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) in Townsville and the University of Wollongong.

"We can't stop the storms but, perhaps we can stop the starfish. If we can, then the Reef will have more opportunity to adapt to the challenges of rising sea temperatures and ocean acidification", says John Gunn, CEO of AIMS.

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Ocean-Based Food Security Threatened in a High CO2 World

Tue, 2012-10-02 22:57 — Kathy Gilbeaux

oceana.org - September 24, 2012

Emissions from human activities are changing the ocean’s chemistry and temperature in ways that threaten the livelihoods of those who depend on fish and seafood for all or part of their diets. The changes may reduce the amount of wild caught seafood that can be supplied by the oceans and also redistribute species, changing the locations at which seafood can be caught and creating instability for ocean-based food security, or seafood security. This report ranks nations based on the seafood security hardships they may experience by the middle of this century due to changing ocean conditions from climate change and ocean acidification. This is done by combining each nation’s exposure to climate change and ocean acidification, its dependence on and consumption of fish and seafood and its level of adaptive capacity based on several socioeconomic factors. Country rankings are developed for risks from climate change and ocean acidification independently, as well as from both problems combined.

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Climate Change Takes a Bite Out of Global Food Supply

Tue, 2012-10-02 00:21 — Kathy Gilbeaux

      

A Pakistani fisherman talks with young boys. Rising ocean temperatures are pushing many fish away from the tropics towards the poles where waters are cooler. (Credit: Akbar Baloch/IPS)

commondreams.org - by Stephen Leahy - September 29, 2012

Humanity’s ability to feed itself is in serious doubt as climate change takes hold on land in the form of droughts and extreme weather, as well as on the world’s oceans.

Less well known to many is the fact that emissions from burning oil, coal and gas are both heating up the oceans and making them more acidic. That is combining to reduce the amount of seafood that can be caught, according to a new report released here.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

(SEE ADDITIONAL INFORMATION HERE - Ocean-Based Food Security Threatened in a High CO2 World)
http://resiliencesystem.org/ocean-based-food-security-threatened-high-co2-world

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No Base in Paradise

Tue, 2012-09-04 13:42 — Maeryn Obley

Actor, filmmaker and environmental advocate Robert Redford. (photo: Contour/Getty Images) go to original article

Image: Actor, filmmaker and environmental advocate Robert Redford. (photo: Contour/Getty Images)

readersupportednews.org - Robert Redford - September 3rd, 2012

From September 6-15, some 10,000 environmentalists will converge on Jeju Island to attend the World Conservation Congress (WCC), organized by the oldest environmental organization, the International Union of the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The IUCN's slogan is that it promotes "a just world that values and conserves nature." If recent actions are any indication, nothing could be further from the truth.

The WCC will take place only a few minutes away from Gangjeong, where the construction of a naval base is threatening one of the planet's most spectacular soft coral forests and other coastal treasures, assaulting numerous endangered species and destroying a 400-year-old sustainable community of local farmers and fishers.

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Antarctic Methane Could Escape, Worsen Warming

Tue, 2012-09-04 13:08 — Maeryn Obley

A cutaway view of Antarctica shows its southern ice sheet. (Map from National Geographic)

Image: A cutaway view of Antarctica shows its southern ice sheet. (Map from National Geographic)

news.nationalgeographic.com - Rob Kunzig - August 31st, 2012

Swamp gas trapped under miles of Antarctic ice, a chemical souvenir of that continent's warmer days, may someday escape to warm the planet again, an international team of researchers report in Nature this week.

The researchers suggest that microbes isolated from the rest of the world since the ice closed over them, some 35 million years ago, have kept busy digesting organic matter and making methane—a much more effective greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

If global warming causes the ice sheets to retreat in the coming decades or centuries, the researchers warn, some of the methane could belch into the atmosphere, amplifying the warming.

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