It is one of the most important – and terrifying – papers I have read in some time. Not only will it make you an expert on the various schemes for engineering the climate and their prospects for impact on climate trends, but it will help you understand the level of arrogance going into planning global climate engineering using such schemes as spraying sulphur dioxide gas into the stratosphere to create sulphate aerosol particles to reflect solar radiation. This idea is being pursued by wealthy individuals and possibly governments as actions they could take unilaterally without input from the world’s people or the other nations of the world, in order to allow continued escalation of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. The paper also gives a look into some of the sources of funding for such schemes. Some of the players are among the major climate deniers. Many thanks to Eric Rimmer for sending the paper to me. Read the rest of this entry »
Global prices of food could climb by as much as 40 percent in the coming decade, as the global population continues to surge, a new United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report released today says.
The Agriculture Outlook 2010-19 anticipates that wheat and coarse grain prices could jump to levels of between 15 and 40 percent higher than they were between 1997 and 2006, while vegetable oil and dairy prices are also projected to rise by more than 40 percent.
Spikes in livestock prices are not expected to be as marked, even in the face of rising global demand for meat which is set to outpace demand for other commodities as some segments of the population in emerging economies alter their dietary habits due to increased wealth.
Nearly 60 million people living around the Himalayas will suffer food shortages in the coming decades as glaciers shrink and the water sources for crops dry up, a study said Thursday.
But Dutch scientists writing in the journal Science concluded the impact would be much less than previously estimated a few years ago by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The U.N. report in 2007 warned that hundred of millions of people were at risk from disappearing glaciers.
The reason for the discrepancy, scientists said, is that some basins surrounding the Himalayas depend more on rainfall than melting glaciers for their water sources.
Below is a chapter on PMC’s program in the Philippines, Sa Pagsikat Ng Araw, that appeared in the book The Interrelationship of Business and Communication. The Participatory Assessment of was written by Arvind Singhal, Elizabeth Rattine-Flaherty and Molly A. Mayer.
Below is an article from Investigacion y Desarrollo featuring a participatory assessment of PMC’s program in Sudan, Ahreat Al Amal. The participatory assessment was written by Karen Greiner, Arvind Singhal and Sarah Hurlburt.
The growing world population affects food and water supplies, ecological balance and the overall quality of life for everyone. This animation presents a variety of facts and projected statistics to reveal the severity of our growing population.
To very little fanfare, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released its Draft FY 2011-2015 Strategic Plan (PDF) (57pp, 282K) for public review and comment. Thanks to Joyce Tarnow for alerting me to the public comment period, which ends this Friday, July 30th. As of now, there are very few public remarks, so it will be advantageous even at this late date for as many people as possible to comment.
Thanks to the NPG Journal for drawing my attention to this article from AOL News.
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In 1823, a government surveyor named Stephen Long was working to map out the Great Plains, an expanse of land acquired along with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. He was unimpressed by what he saw. As his geographer wrote in the report that accompanied the expedition: I do not hesitate in giving the opinion that it is almost wholly unfit for cultivation, and of course, uninhabitable by a people depending upon agriculture for their subsistence.
Long would have been shocked to see what the region looks like today — not merely fit for cultivation, but in fact one of the most fertile and productive areas of the world. Since World War II, dramatic leaps in technology have allowed farmers to pump groundwater for irrigation and extend America’s breadbasket through the entire Great Plains, transforming what Long called “The Great American Desert” into an expanse of green circles defined by the reach of central pivot irrigation systems.
Thanks to the Post Carbon Institute for this article.
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We all need to pause for a minute and consider the possible implications of the droughts that are engulfing China. One of these is in the north — Inner Mongolia, and the second more serious one covers most of southwestern China.
If the weather patterns revert to normal and the May monsoons come on schedule in the next month or so, then all should be well and we, along with 60 million or so Chinese farmers, can stop worrying. But these are not normal times and even the disappearance of the El Niño in the central Pacific may not bring enough rain to mitigate the situation. Then, there could be serious trouble not only for the Chinese and southeast Asian peoples, but for the rest of us as well.
Major economies are pushing for substantial increases in the price of water around the world as concern mounts about dwindling supplies and rising population.
With official UN figures showing that 1 billion people lack access to clean drinking water and more than double that number do not have proper sanitation, increases in prices will be – and in some countries are already proving to be – hugely controversial.
However experts argue that as long as most countries provide huge subsidies for water it will not be possible to change the wasteful habits of consumers, farmers and industry, nor to raise the investment needed to repair old supply systems and build new ones. And price rises can be managed so that they do not penalise the poorest.
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