The 20th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change treaty ran over by a couple of days as delegates from over 190 countries “negotiated” the language of resolutions to control carbon emissions. Rich countries don’t want to pay for past emissions; emerging economies don’t want their opportunity for …
Continue reading COP out? Yes! Sadly as expected, but what else could happen …
Author:astraea
What we need to do if we’re to have a future.
Future Earth, a global initiative bringing together scientists across different disciplines, has launched its strategy to identify key priorities for sustainability. The eight objectives are: Deliver water, energy and food for all Decarbonise socio-economic systems Safeguard the terrestrial, freshwater and marine natural assets Building healthy, resilient and productive cities Promote sustainable rural futures Improve human …
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Ignorance, bigotry, Islam, Christianity – a wasteful formula of terror, pain and suffering that we don’t need.
CNN pushed an interview with Reza Aslan which helped show how ignorant the media treatment of culture is. His commendably calm response to the interview’s thoughtlessness elucidated many of the issues that raise political tensions needlessly. Here’s an extract: Female Genital Mutilation is NOT a “Muslim” problem – its a central African problem. Eritrea has …
Continue reading Ignorance, bigotry, Islam, Christianity – a wasteful formula of terror, pain and suffering that we don’t need.
How to speak money.
From The School of Life blog by the author of How To Speak Money, here are a couple of useful definitions: interest rates and real and nominal amounts (also related to interest rates). Helpful and funny too … interest rates If I had to pick one term which summed up my reason for wanting to …
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Someone’s watching you. And it’s not just Big Brother.
A Russian website is offering thousands of feeds from private webcams around the world. If you have a webcam with remote access enabled (did you check?) it could be on their list of feeds. The site has accessed feeds by using default passwords which are often left unchanged by their owners when they enable remote …
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5 feet of snow and zero degrees in every US state. “I’m not a scientist”, but that’s not normal.
Freezing temperatures were recorded across all 50 US states, including Florida and Hawaii, and a massive snowstorm dumped 5 feet of snow in the Buffalo area (North East US). It’s pretty. But deadly. So far 7 people are dead. Three had heart attacks while shovelling snow – which is a sad commentary on health, diets …
Continue reading 5 feet of snow and zero degrees in every US state. “I’m not a scientist”, but that’s not normal.
More rain in a few days than normally expected in a year. That’s climate change.
The report on deadly mudslides in Switzerland and Italy squeezed that little tidbit of information between a couple of great photos of flooding in the region. I can be quite sanguine about death because individually we are so insignificant. But clearly as a species we have wrought awesome changes on this planet, including upsetting the …
Continue reading More rain in a few days than normally expected in a year. That’s climate change.
Interpol now targetting individuals for trading endangered species.
Interpol is now asking for assistance from the public in tracking down nine key suspects. This is the first time that individuals have been targeted. The trade in wildlife crime is said to be worth around $213bn per annum, according to the UN. The move has been welcomed by Convention on the International Trade in …
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We’re ALL living next to slaves. 36 million of them.
Walk Free published the 2014 Global Slavery Index which makes for sad reading. 167 countries have them, including some which really shouldn’t: Japan 240 thousand South Africa 110 thousand Singapore 5 thousand USA 60 thousand Italy 11 thousand Germany 11 thousand France 9 thousand UK 8 thousand Ireland 300 The report defines slaves as people …
Continue reading We’re ALL living next to slaves. 36 million of them.
Omnivore’s Dilemma – Meat is sooo good but it’s killing the planet.
I love meat. But I don’t eat it any more. My parents still make fun of me for being vegetarian and might still think I should see a shrink. Ha ha. Why would a meat and potatoes guy who liked steak for breakfast quit meat? There were reasons and the most important is that I …
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