Situation Report
Patuca Reserve Resilience Network
Honduras' ecosystems are being destroyed at an incredible rate, taking with it the rich natural heritage of biodiversity that has required million of years to evolve. In 20 years, human populations in Honduras will be be threatend from ecosystem collapses that are likely to create abect misery and population collapses at an extraordinatry level. Already population crashes are happening in small scale collapses due to the degradation of social ecology.
There is a need to build a Patuca Reserve Resilience Network to help preserve the remaining 30% of the Patuca Reserve that has not been destroyed by deforestation and gold mining in the rivers. Association Patuca and Dr. Perinjaquet are working on introducing Resilience Capacity Zone Assessments and Mapping in order to identify solution sets local communities would embrace for preserving their environments and livelihoods, considering that they are squating within a national preserve that to date has had no environmental enforcement.
Video - Scrap Fuel Subsidies and Price CO2, Urges World Bank
Reuters - trust.org - May 6, 2013
LONDON, May 6 (Reuters Point Carbon) – The world’s nations must scrap fossil fuel subsidies and put a price on emitting carbon dioxide if the planet is to avoid dangerous climate change, according to the president of the World Bank. The two measures are part of a five-point plan that the bank urged the world’s environment ministers to take, including building low carbon cities, improving agricultural practices and sharing new technology that will save energy.
“We need a global response equal to the scale of the climate problem.
Petersberg Climate Dialogue IV
http://www.bmu.de/en/topics/climate-energy/climate/international-climate-policy/petersberg-climate-dialogue/
FAS - Regulating Japanese Nuclear Power in the Wake of the Fukushima Daiichi Accident
Federation of American Scientists - fas.org - by Katie Colten
May 13, 2013
The 2011 accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was preventable. The Great East Japan earthquake and the tsunami that followed it were unprecedented events in recent history, but they were not altogether unforeseeable. Stronger regulation across the nuclear power industry could have prevented many of the worst outcomes at Fukushima Daiichi and will be needed to prevent future accidents.
In a new FAS issue brief, Dr. Charles Ferguson and Mr. Mark Jansson review some of the major problems leading up to the accident including the lack of regulation of the nuclear power industry and slow updates to safety requirements, such as using probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) methods to improve accident management plans.
Heat-Trapping Gas Passes Milestone, Raising Fears
The average carbon dioxide reading surpassed 400 parts per million at the research facility atop the Mauna Loa volcano on the island of Hawaii for the 24 hours that ended at 8 p.m. on Thursday. Chris Stewart/Associated Press
nytimes.com - by Justin Gillis - May 10, 2013
The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, scientists reported Friday, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years.
Scientific instruments showed that the gas had reached an average daily level above 400 parts per million — just an odometer moment in one sense, but also a sobering reminder that decades of efforts to bring human-produced emissions under control are faltering.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) monitoring program
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/weekly.html
Chinese Researchers Pinpoint Origins Of H7N9 Avian Flu
Chinese researchers have identified the origins of the novel H7N9 influenza virus
asianscientist.com - April 29, 2013
In March 2013, a novel H7N9 influenza virus was identified in China as the source of a flu-like disease in humans. A group of scientists, led by Professor Chen Hualan of the National Avian Influenza Reference Laboratory at the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute, investigated the origins of this novel H7N9 influenza virus.
“We suggest that strong measures, such as continued surveillance of avian and human hosts, control of animal movement, shutdown of live poultry markets, and culling of poultry in affected areas, should be taken during this initial stage of virus prevalence to prevent a possible pandemic. Additionally, it is also imperative to evaluate the pathogenicity and transmissibility of these H7N9 viruses, and to develop effective vaccines and antiviral drugs against so as to reduce their adverse effects upon human health,” say the authors.
Video - TIME, GOOGLE AND NASA: Timelapse of the Earth Over the Last 30 Years
world.time.com - by Jeffrey Kluger
Spacecraft and telescopes are not built by people interested in what’s going on at home. Rockets fly in one direction: up. Telescopes point in one direction: out. Of all the cosmic bodies studied in the long history of astronomy and space travel, the one that got the least attention was the one that ought to matter most to us—Earth.
That changed when NASA created the Landsat program, a series of satellites that would perpetually orbit our planet, looking not out but down. Surveillance spacecraft had done that before, of course, but they paid attention only to military or tactical sites. Landsat was a notable exception, built not for spycraft but for public monitoring of how the human species was altering the surface of the planet. Two generations, eight satellites and millions of pictures later, the space agency, along with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), has accumulated a stunning catalog of images that, when riffled through and stitched together, create a high-definition slide show of our rapidly changing Earth. TIME is proud to host the public unveiling of these images from orbit, which for the first time date all the way back to 1984.
Global Warming Over Land Is Real: CU-Boulder, NOAA Study
huffingtonpost.com - by Charlie Brennan - April 12, 2013
(SEE LINK TO STUDY BELOW)
The thermometers got it right. The Earth is warming, another study is reporting.
Climate scientists recognize that changes in weather observation stations' immediate surroundings -- such as neighboring trees being replaced by heat-absorbing concrete -- can eventually throw data from such stations into question.
But now, a new study directed by a researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that recreates climate history without the use of land-based observation systems shows the same thing that thermometers have been reporting.
"This shows that global warming over land is real," said Gilbert Compo, a scientist at NOAA's Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado.
GRL - Independent confirmation of global land warming without the use of station temperatures
The Key to Running the World on Solar and Wind Power
Image: Chart of energy density per energy type
energytrendsinsider.com - April 30th, 2013 - Robert Rapier
Perhaps the biggest shortcoming of solar and wind power is their intermittency. In locations like Hawaii, where I live, wind and solar power are already competitive on price. My fossil-fuel supplied electricity typically costs above 40 cents a kilowatt-hour, and wind and solar power can compete with that. But since they can’t supply power that is available on demand (firm power) they must be backed up by power sources that can provide power when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.
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Millions Face Starvation as World Warms, Say Scientists
Corn in the hands of a farmworker in South Africa. Photograph: Greatstock Photographic Library/Alamy
guardian.co.uk - by John Vidal - April 13, 2013
Millions of people could become destitute in Africa and Asia as staple foods more than double in price by 2050 as a result of extreme temperatures, floods and droughts that will transform the way the world farms.
As food experts gather at two major conferences to discuss how to feed the nine billion people expected to be alive in 2050, leading scientists have told the Observer that food insecurity risks turning parts of Africa into permanent disaster areas. Rising temperatures will also have a drastic effect on access to basic foodstuffs, with potentially dire consequences for the poor.
US National Climate Assessment
http://assessment.globalchange.gov/what-we-do/assessment/draft-report-information
Dennis Meadows on 'The Limits to Growth and the Future of Humanity'
Image: Dennis Meadows
carsoncenter.uni-muenchen.de - December 4th, 2012
2012 marks the 40th anniversary of the publication of The Limits to Growth. Not only has this book been translated into more than 30 languages, it has also sold more than 30 million copies, thus making it the highest selling environmental book in world history. The Limits to Growth unleashed a debate that has yet to end.
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(VIEW PDF OF PRESENTATION)
