Biology
Breach
December 8, 2009, from Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Beijing - Plagued by recalls of toxic toys, poison pet food and other products, and facing rising trade barriers for its exports, China is taking a page from the American corporate playbook. It has hired a Madison Avenue ad agency to help burnish its image.
In what is believed to be Beijing's first global ad campaign, a television commercial now airing on CNN in the U.S., Asia and Europe portrays satisfied consumers enjoying Chinese-made goods. It also touts the notion that China's manufacturing prowess benefits nations around the globe.
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Climate
Chaos
December 8, 2014, from Climate Central
Climate change and falling crude oil prices coalesce at the gas pump.
Filling the gas tank of a Hummer for $2.18 per gallon in Texas or $2.39 per gallon in New Jersey when a year ago those prices were as much as 75 cents higher means that it's likely people will drive more, burning more gasoline and spewing more CO2 into the atmosphere, experts say.... But since the cost of gasoline fell as crude oil prices began falling earlier this year, gasoline consumption has increased by about 15 percent since January, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
December 8, 2014, from New York Times
...Attorneys general in at least a dozen states are working with energy companies and other corporate interests, which in turn are providing them with record amounts of money for their political campaigns, including at least $16 million this year.
They share a common philosophy about the reach of the federal government, but the companies also have billions of dollars at stake. And the collaboration is likely to grow: For the first time in modern American history, Republicans in January will control a majority -- 27 -- of attorneys general's offices.
December 8, 2013, from InsideClimate News
As environmentalists began ratcheting up pressure against Canada's tar sands three years ago, one of the world's biggest strategic consulting firms was tapped to help the North American oil industry figure out how to handle the mounting activism. The resulting document, published online by WikiLeaks, offers another window into how oil and gas companies have been scrambling to deal with unrelenting opposition to their growth plans.
The document identifies nearly two-dozen environmental organizations leading the anti-oil sands movement and puts them into four categories: radicals, idealists, realists and opportunists -- with how-to's for managing each. It also reveals that the worst-case scenario presented to industry about the movement's growing influence seems to have come to life.
December 8, 2011, from Scientific American
DURBAN, South Africa-- By 2020, human activity could produce some 55 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases per year, up from roughly 36 billion metric tons currently. All the accumulating gas is enough to raise the global average temperatures by more than 3 degrees Celsius by century's end -- more than triple the amount of warming that has already occurred.... The latest science suggests that international negotiations are proceeding far too slowly to have any significant impact on global warming and may well dawdle too long to prevent catastrophic climate change.
December 8, 2011, from Reality TV Magazine
Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar, star of TLC's 19 Kids and Counting, announced today that Michelle has suffered a miscarriage. During a routine doctor's visit to find out the sex of her 20th child, the doctor did not detect a heartbeat and concluded that a miscarriage had occurred.
Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar announced that they were expecting their 20th child in November. Thrilled and excited, Michelle Duggar thought her days of being pregnant had come to an end.
Their reality show underwent a name change in 2009 with the arrival of the Duggar's 19th child, Josie.
December 8, 2009, from London Guardian
The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN's role in all future climate change negotiations.
The document is also being interpreted by developing countries as setting unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050; meaning that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals....The document was described last night by one senior diplomat as "a very dangerous document for developing countries. It is a fundamental reworking of the UN balance of obligations. It is to be superimposed without discussion on the talks".
December 8, 2009, from The Providence Journal
A marine ecologist who has studied some of the most pristine and untouched coral reefs in the world says there is a way to fight back against devastating deaths of coral reefs caused by climate change and warming oceans.
Enric Sala, a former professor at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and now a National Geographic Fellow, said damaged coral will grow back if it is in a healthy environment with lots of predator fish.
A healthy fish population will graze on algae that kills coral. Filter feeders, such as giant clams, remove harmful microbes from the water.
December 8, 2009, from London Guardian
The Copenhagen deal may turn into the worst kind of disaster capitalism, Naomi Klein said last night. In her speech to Klimaforum09, the "people's summit" she told the thousand or so campaigners and activists that this was a chance to carry on building the new convergence, the movement of movements that began "all those years ago in Seattle, fighting against the privatisation of life itself". Here was an opportunity to "continue the conversation that was so rudely interrupted by 9/11".
"Down the road at the Bella Centre [where delegates are meeting] there is the worst case of disaster capitalism that we have ever witnessed. We know that what is being proposed in the Bella Centre doesn't even come close to the deal that is needed. We know the paltry emissions cuts that Obama has proposed; they're insulting. We're the ones who created this crisis... on the basic historical principle of polluters pays, we should pay."
December 8, 2009, from London Guardian
Today 56 newspapers in 45 countries take the unprecedented step of speaking with one voice through a common editorial. We do so because humanity faces a profound emergency.
Unless we combine to take decisive action, climate change will ravage our planet, and with it our prosperity and security. The dangers have been becoming apparent for a generation. Now the facts have started to speak: 11 of the past 14 years have been the warmest on record, the Arctic ice-cap is melting and last year's inflamed oil and food prices provide a foretaste of future havoc. In scientific journals the question is no longer whether humans are to blame, but how little time we have got left to limit the damage. Yet so far the world's response has been feeble and half-hearted... We call on the representatives of the 192 countries gathered in Copenhagen not to hesitate, not to fall into dispute, not to blame each other but to seize opportunity from the greatest modern failure of politics.
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Resource
Depletion
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Recovery
December 8, 2013, from AFP
Australian researchers said Thursday they had established the existence of vast freshwater reserves trapped beneath the ocean floor which could sustain future generations as current sources dwindle.
Lead author Vincent Post, from Australia's Flinders University, said that an estimated 500,000 cubic kilometres (120,000 cubic miles) of low-salinity water had been found buried beneath the seabed on continental shelves off Australia, China, North America and South Africa....
The deposits were formed over hundreds of thousands of years in the past, when the sea level was much lower and areas now under the ocean were exposed to rainfall which was absorbed into the underlying water table.
When the polar icecaps started melting about 20,000 years ago these coastlines disappeared under water, but their aquifers remain intact -- protected by layers of clay and sediment.
Post said the deposits were comparable with the bore basins currently relied upon by much of the world for drinking water and would cost much less than seawater to desalinate.
Drilling for the water would be expensive, and Post said great care would have to be taken not to contaminate the aquifers.
December 8, 2009, from Associated Press
The United States delivered a welcome boost Monday to a pivotal climate conference by saying greenhouse gases blamed for global warming should be regulated as a health hazard... Such regulation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would supplement the cap on carbon dioxide emissions being considered in the U.S. Congress, effectively raising the U.S. offer on emissions reductions in two weeks of hard bargaining in Copenhagen.
"The executive branch is showing what it can do, even while legislation is pending," Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the U.N. scientific network on climate change, said of the EPA action. "It also sends a powerful signal to Congress. It shows a degree of resolve on the part of the president."
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