All that lovely packaging that we demand from the supermarket and all the disposable toys and modern conveniences are winding up in our food chain. It was measureable 40 years ago. Now its clogging the guts of the food web. I hope you can handle a bit of microplastic in your fish fingers. BBC: Big …
Continue reading More plastic in our food … yummy!
Category:5 Environment
Growth is not the answer …
The new World Bank boss has initiated his tenure with a hearty rendition of the fat cats’ mantra: “growth is good”. Or is that “greed is good”? The trouble is that growth is the cause of all the problems. It starts with the politicians rule: “more people voting for me is good”, and the commercial …
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Climate volatility brings summer in winter!
It’s not just about climate change or global warming – trends whihc can not be confirmed or denied till it’s too late – it’s also about climate volatility. This is already empirically demonstrated. There are high fluctuations in temperature, precipitation, wind and cloud cover. Sometimes it’s wonderful for us because we can enjoy warm sunny …
Continue reading Climate volatility brings summer in winter!
No justice for trees.
Forests are being raped and pillaged. Every second one hectare of forest is felled. They do not regenerate because the soil and microclimate are damaged. Instead weeds prosper. We allow it. Governments benefit from it through logging rights. Politicians and police benefit from kickbacks. We benefit from cheap wood. But nature is a closed system …
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Humanity’s ready for a heart attack.
“Current patterns of consumption are not sustainable.” No, really!??! The High-level Panel on Global Sustainability report “Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing“. http://www.un.org/gsp/report
Micro-plastic, from clothes, is entering the food chain.
Microscopic plastic debris from washing clothes is accumulating in the marine environment and could be entering the food chain, a study has warned. The findings appeared in the journal Environmental Science and Technology. Dr Browne, a member of the US-based research network National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, said the tiny plastic was a …
Continue reading Micro-plastic, from clothes, is entering the food chain.
The arctic ice is gone.
Well, nearly. The latest models indicate ice-free summers in the arctic this decade. We won’t have to wait 100 years for the effects of climate volatility. They are here now. BBC: New warning on arctic ice melt
20% of plants risk extinction.
If that doesn’t sound bad, then its worse. No plants = no animals. Normally we migt be shocked to hear that 20% of mammals face extinction, even though they tend to be less resilient than plants. Hearing that 20% of plants are at risk is a loud warning – that kind of hole in the …
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Banking, Budgets, Inflation, Food prices
Four degrees of separation? I just browsed through three links that interested me and suddenly noticed that they drew the banking crisis and the food crisis (which is barely on many people’s radar) together. Here it is: US banking system ‘open to abuse’ One of the US’s top fraud investigators is warning that America’s policing …
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A cold winter snap, but not long enough.
Another sign of climate change and weather volatility. Although winter was very cold, the dip in temperatures was brief and not long enough for ice and snow cover to accumulate. From Earth Observatory: Winter 2009-2010 was much colder than normal for the United States, and it delivered a string of record-breaking snowstorms that began on …
Continue reading A cold winter snap, but not long enough.