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Many US food companies are joining up to beat Prop. 37, a bill which requires labels on food identifying GM ingredients. August 22, 2012 - via Reader Supported News Big Ag companies have a vested interest in GMO seeds, and the pesticides and herbicides they use in tandem. GMO cotton, soy, sugar beets and corn, which are manipulated to make sweeteners and fats along with other additives like high-fructose corn syrup and soy lecithin, are in ready-made food, snacks, condiments, juice, soda and cereal. Many companies pushing these products into the marketplace prefer to hold profits high and keep consumers in the dark. Labeling these products would affect close to 80% of processed, non-organic food in the US.... http://www.readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/13062-a-list-of-food-companies-that-hide-gmos
Via pdjmoo
LONDON (Reuters) - STATE OF THE PLANET -- Under current models, greenhouse gas emissions could double over the next 50 years, leading to a rise in global temperature of 3 degrees Celsius or more by the end of the century. Losses to agriculture, damage from extreme weather events and increased health costs will eat into global GDP. The Asia-Pacific region will contribute around 45 per cent of global energy-related CO2 emissions by 2030 and an estimated 60 per cent of global emissions by 2100 under a business-as-usual scenario. China, India and South Korea are promoting renewable energy and energy efficiency and agreed voluntary emissions reduction goals, in a positive turn towards greener power. -- Around 20 per cent of vertebrate species are under threat. Extinction risk is increasing faster for corals than for any other group of living organisms, with the condition of coral reefs declining by 38 per cent since 1980. Rapid contraction is projected by 2050. -- Fish stocks have declined at an unprecedented rate over the past two decades. Catches more than quadrupled from the early 1950s to the mid-1990s and have stabilized or diminished since then. -- More than 600 million people are expected to lack access to safe drinking water by 2015, while more than 2.5 billion people will lack access to basic sanitation. Since 2000, groundwater supplies have deteriorated further, while global water withdrawals have tripled over the past 50 years. The report identified West Asia among the regions of greatest concern for water scarcity and water-use efficiency. Even as demand for water grows, per-capita renewable water resources in the region will decline by more than half by 2025, suggesting more energy-intensive desalination plants will be needed. -- The number of coastal dead zones has increased dramatically in recent years. Out of the 169 coastal dead zones worldwide, only 13 are recovering. -- Annual forest loss fell from 16 million hectares in the 1990s to about 13 million hectares between 2000 and 2010. That's an area about the size of England being cut down annually. -- Europe and North America are consuming the planet's resources at unsustainable levels. Consumption has also soared in the Asia-Pacific region, which has overtaken the rest of the world to become the single largest user of natural resources. A separate U.N. study found the region's use of materials more than doubled from 17.4 billion metric tons (19.18 billion tons) in 1992 to over 37 billion metric tons in 2008.
Climate scientists think a perfect storm of climate "flips" could cause massive upheavals in a matter of years...The true gloomsters are scientists who look at climate through the lens of "dynamical systems," a mathematics that describes things that tend to change suddenly and are difficult to predict. It is the mathematics of the tipping point—the moment at which a "system" that has been changing slowly and predictably will suddenly "flip." The colloquial example is the straw that breaks that camel's back. Or you can also think of it as a ship that is stable until it tips too far in one direction and then capsizes. In this view, Earth's climate is, or could soon be, ready to capsize, causing sudden, perhaps catastrophic, changes. And once it capsizes, it could be next to impossible to right it again.
Earth took 10 myr to recover from most extreme extinction period... The event is considered the period in which the Earth's most severe known extinction occurred, with up to 96% of all marine species and 70% of all terrestrial vertebrate species becoming extinct. The two researchers further state within their paper, “The crisis was triggered by a number of physical environmental shocks (global warming, acid rain, ocean acidification and ocean anoxia), and some of these were repeated over the next 5–6 Myr.” And, Dr.Benton adds: "Life seemed to be getting back to normal when another crisis hit and set it back again. The carbon crises were repeated many times, and then finally conditions became normal again after five million years or so." And, he further states: "We often see mass extinctions as entirely negative but in this most devastating case, life did recover, after many millions of years, and new groups emerged. The event had re-set evolution. However, the causes of the killing -- global warming, acid rain, ocean acidification -- sound eerily familiar to us today."
However, unless principles and standards for production are developed and implemented, certain biofuels will cause severe environmental impacts and reduce biodiversity – the very opposite of what is desired.
Several of Greenpeace’s friends recently filed a lawsuit to challenge a decision by the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) allowing oil company Apache Alaska Corporation to kill up to 30 Cook Inlet Beluga Whales. The NMFS decision to issue a deceptively bland-sounding “incidental take authorisation” will allow Apache to kill up to 30 whales every year as part of its three-year seismic surveying programme for possible oil and gas reserves. It has been estimated that there are less than 300 Beluga whales left in the inlet, so the decision effectively means that no action will be taken against Apache even if up to 1-in-10 of the local beluga population is killed as a result of the seismic testing it will carry out over 160 days in the area.
The investor's guide to the next decade. #18 RISING DEMAND FOR WATER Citi Water. It's the most basic need for every form of life on our planet. It permeates every aspect of daily life. We drink it when we are thirsty. We use it to cook and clean. It's used to generate energy to power industrial processes and to grow foods that feed the human race. The world's population is growing rapidly. Indeed, this theme is integral to many of the G20 investment ideas that will shape the next decade. In developed nations, most water demand is derived from non-agricultural sectors. As the global population swells and developing economies urbanize, they too will spur massive water demand for municipal and industrial uses.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-global-20-2012-5#18-rising-demand-for-water-47#ixzz1w36hzD8l
The investor's guide to the next decade. #10 THE COMMODITY RUSH Scott Barber/Reuters The past several years have been characterized by a general increase in the price of commodities, including oil and gold. One of the driving forces has been ever-rising demand from emerging markets, particularly China, and a fear that we're beginning to run out of fossil fuels. Global tightening of oil supplies could have an outsize effect on the global economy. In years past, Saudi Arabia could start pumping at just about any time to meet shortfalls. Spare capacity has been declining for years, and demand has outpaced discovery of new reserves. Techniques for extracting "tight oil" from shales and sands will help, but we're still looking at a future of increasing volatility in oil prices. Energy price shocks have historically had large effects on equities and the U.S. economy.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-global-20-2012-5#10-the-commodity-rush-26#ixzz1w35Nc6O9
The investor's guide to the next decade. #3 A LIMITED FOOD SUPPLY FAO - United Nations Just last year we saw the geopolitical and market impact of food scarcity and rising prices. There were many causes of the "Arab Spring" but one catalyst was a ramp up in food prices beginning in 2009, part of larger trend interrupted only by 2008's global recession. The U.N.'s FAO Food Price Index reached its highest ever level in 2011. The Middle East and North Africa import more than 50 percent of their food, leaving them particularly sensitive to food price shocks. Global trends in food supply and demand mean that food scarcity will be a greater problem in the future.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-global-20-2012-5#3-a-limited-food-supply-7#ixzz1w34BY3zd
Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have discovered pollution makes storm clouds larger. Because storm clouds trap heat in the.
Mobile optimized, offering syndicated columnists, blogs and news stories with moderated comments (13 Threatened #Animals Of The #Ocean http://t.co/YWO8HNFD #photos...)...
In February, the Obama Administration announced the 2012 Asian Carp Control Strategy Framework that includes a series of new measures to protect the Great Lakes from Asian carp. This plan builds on the unprecedented and successful plan the Administration established in 2010 keep Asian carp from developing self-sustaining populations in the Great Lakes. The 2012 Framework adds new measures such as expanding eDNA sampling to additional areas in the Great Lakes region, deploying new nets and other technologies to enhance Asian carp capture rates, and developing cutting-edge biological controls and monitoring technology.
One of the oldest lakes in the world, Clear Lake in northern California has deep sediments that contain a record of the climate and local plants and animals going back perhaps 500,000 years.
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"Philanthrocapitalism" "Private Foundations" pay almost no taxes. In exchange for their expansive tax breaks, they are required to distribute 5 percent of their assets every year.With wealth consolidating ever upward in America, private foundations are growing like topsy. More than 120,000 such groups controlled around $583 billion in 2010. Rich philanthropists are almost invariably described in the press as generous, visionary benefactors; it seems indecorous to complain about a rich man who is apparently trying to give his money away to help people. But the new model of foundation giving comes with a host of hidden costs that bear closer scrutiny....http://www.theawl.com/2012/06/our-billionaire-philanthropists
Via pdjmoo
At a certain threshold, the environment behaves in unpredictable ways. Writing Wednesday (June 6) in the journal Nature, the researchers warn that the world is headed toward a tipping point marked by extinctions and unpredictable changes on a scale not seen since the glaciers retreated 12,000 years ago. "There is a very high possibility that by the end of the century, the Earth is going to be a very different place," study researcher Anthony Barnosky told LiveScience. Barnosky, a professor of integrative biology from the University of California, Berkeley, joined a group of 17 other scientists to warn that this new planet might not be a pleasant place to live.
Using a comprehensive data set of thermal tolerance limits, latitudinal range boundaries and latitudinal range shifts of cold-blooded animals, this study explores the likely consequences of climate change for the geographical redistribution of...The redistribution of life on Earth has emerged as one of the most significant biological responses to anthropogenic climate warming. Despite being one of the most long-standing puzzles in ecology, we still have little understanding of how temperature sets geographic range boundaries. Here we show that marine and terrestrial ectotherms differ in the degree to which they fill their potential latitudinal ranges, as predicted from their thermal tolerance limits.
Jagran PostResearchers conclude that climate change led to collapse of ancient Indus ...Phys.OrgA new study combining the latest archaeological evidence with state-of-the-art geoscience technologies provides evidence that climate change was a key ...
Safeguarding the bounty of the Seven Seas for future generations. More than half the people on Earth live within 120 miles (193 kilometers) of the ocean, but even those who live nowhere near the sea are dependent on the massive saltwater ecosystem that covers nearly three-fourths of our planet. The ocean helps create and regulate weather around the globe and produces many of life's essentials, including water, food, and even the oxygen we breathe every day. But scientists warn that the sea is changing rapidly and that our many uses of its bounty must be managed far more sustainably.
Activists, theorists, organizations and ordinary citizens are rebuilding the American political-economic system from the ground up. The Rise of the New Economy Movement Activists, theorists, organizations and ordinary citizens are rebuilding the American political-economic system from the ground up. May 20, 2012 | As our political system sputters, a wave of innovative thinking and bold experimentation is quietly sweeping away outmoded economic models. In 'New Economic Visions', a special five-part AlterNet series edited by Economics Editor Lynn Parramore in partnership with political economist Gar Alperovitz of the Democracy Collaborative, creative thinkers come together to explore the exciting ideas and projects that are shaping the philosophical and political vision of the movement that could take our economy back.
The investor's guide to the next decade. #15 AMERICA GETS OLDER U.S. Census Bureau The U.S. is getting older and a sea of baby boomers are setting their sights on retirement. That is presenting a host of problems that the country will have to face over the next decade, including the ever-increasing life expectancy rates' impact on healthcare costs and social security funding. In a report out at the end of last year, the U.S. Census Bureau announced that "people 90 and older now comprise 4.7 percent of the older population (age 65 and older), as compared with only 2.8 percent in 1980. By 2050, this share is likely to reach 10 percent."
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-global-20-2012-5#15-america-gets-older-39#ixzz1w35ujU63
The investor's guide to the next decade. #7 CHINA AGES Harvard Initiative For Global Health Bolstered by strong demographic shifts, a young population, and little regulation, China was able to grow its manufacturing base into a powerhouse. But that young population is now rapidly aging—by 2030 the median age is expected to increase to 42.5, up from 34.5 today—and is forecast to peak in 2025, nearing 1.4 billion. This will lead to a steadily declining workforce beginning in 2015. Starting that year, China will lose some 36 million people from its workforce over the next decade and a half.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-global-20-2012-5#7-china-ages-17#ixzz1w34qpUx7
A day after more than 1 million people urged President Barack Obama to reject plans to drill in the Arctic Ocean this summer, a coalition of groups today filed a lawsuit in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals challenging the U.S.
Paul is a researcher on a study published last year that describes disparities in air quality around the U.S. By pairing census data with air pollution levels from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's monitoring network, ...
Chinese officials added an extra 50,000 carp to the waters of Poyang Lake this week to help feed the endangered Yangtze finless porpoises (Neophocaena phocaenoides asiaeorientalis) ...
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![Climate Armageddon: How the World's Weather Could Quickly Run Amok [Excerpt]: Scientific American | World On the Edge | Scoop.it](/resources/img/white.gif)
