To be Jedi is to face the truth, and choose. Give off light, or darkness, Padawan. Be a candle, or the night.

–YODA, Dark Rendezvous

China's Urban Air Kills Rural Plants

As people in Beijing and northern China struggle with severe air pollution this winter, the toxic air is also making life hard for plants and even food crops of China, say researchers who have been looking at how China's plants are affected by air pollution.

Beijing's extreme smog event this week has made headlines, with the American Embassy calling the pollution levels “hazardous” and Beijing writer Zheng Yuanjie blogging that “the air smells like sulfur perfume, as the capital city currently looks like a poisonous huge gas can,” according to a report on Al Jazeera.
BLOG: 7 of 10 Most Air-Polluted Cities Are in China

“In the last 50 years there has been a 16-fold increase in ozone pollution” in the Beijing area, said Hanqin Tian of Auburn University in Alabama, who studies the effects of China's pollution and climate change on plants. He said the soup of pollutants, including harmful sulfur and nitrogen compounds “is definitely expanding into new areas; into the countryside.”

Read full article.

Continue reading “Yoda: China — A Focal Point”

2013/01/132013/01/13

SchwartzReport: Mercury Poisoning Going Critical

03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, 07 Health, 11 Society

Mercury poisoning is a growing global menace we have to address

As the US knows to its cost, coal-fired power is a major cause of mercury pollution. The world needs a treaty tough on emissions

Robert F Kennedy Jr and Marc A Yaggi

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 10 January 20

Next week, diplomats from around the world will gather in Geneva to negotiate a treaty on global emissions of mercury – a lethal neurotoxin that includes, among an inventory of grim effects, brain damage and the loss of IQ points in unborn children, injuries to kidneys and heart, and results in tens of billions of dollars in healthcare costs every year in the US alone. The Geneva conference is the final of five meetings, with a treaty expected soon thereafter.

While global mercury emissions are on the rise, negotiators, unfortunately, appear to be leaning towards a treaty with soft measures unlikely to prevent continued catastrophic impacts from this deadly and debilitating poison. Ironically, signatories propose to ink their treaty in Minamata, Japan, a town that famously suffered widespread mercury poisoning.

Health experts first described mercury poisoning, then called “Minamata disease”, in Minamata city, in Japan, in 1956. Mercury discharges from the Chisso chemical plant contaminated finfish and shellfish, devastating the community's human and animal population for decades. Many of the region's citizens died and tens of thousands of people suffered mercury-related illnesses.

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Mercury Poisoning Going Critical”

2012/12/062012/12/06

Dolphin: Climate Change Meme Project

03 Environmental Degradation, Crowd-Sourcing

Sort of nice, but will it scale?

Climate Meme Project

The Climate Meme Project is a crowd funded, open collaboration initiative to reveal the meme landscape for climate action.

“Our one-day elementary school project, Climate Change is Elementary, bypasses the usual negative discourse by assuming that every educated person agrees that it is a scientific “fact” that the climate is changing and that man is largely to blame. We do not confront the deniers and skeptics, we circumvent them by taking the school family directly to a vision of a clean and green future. We also focus on working with the innovators, the early adopters, and the early majority, who tend to agree with us. We ignore the late majority and the laggards, or deniers, who will only hold our program back.”

– Dave Finnigan, Founding Director

Visit web site.

Continue reading “Dolphin: Climate Change Meme Project”

2012/11/29

SchwartzReport: Sea Levels Rising Faster Than Anticipated, US Coastal Cities at Risk

03 Environmental Degradation, 12 Water, Communities of Practice, Earth Intelligence

US coastal cities in danger as sea levels rise faster than expected, study warns

Satellite measurements show flooding from storms like Sandy will put low-lying population centres at risk sooner than projected

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 27 November 2012

Sea-level rise is occurring much faster than scientists expected – exposing millions more Americans to the destructive floods produced by future Sandy-like storms, new research suggests.

Satellite measurements over the last two decades found global sea levels rising 60% faster than the computer projections issued only a few years ago by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The faster sea-level rise means the authorities will have to take even more ambitious measures to protect low-lying population centres – such as New York City, Los Angeles or Jacksonville, Florida – or risk exposing millions more people to a destructive combination of storm surges on top of sea-level rise, scientists said.

Scientists earlier this year found sea-level rise had already doubled the annual risk of historic flooding across a widespread area of the United States.

Continue reading “SchwartzReport: Sea Levels Rising Faster Than Anticipated, US Coastal Cities at Risk”

2012/11/172012/11/17

Berto Jongman: Western-Imperial Violence — Detailed Dismantling of Steven Pinker’s Apologetics

01 Poverty, 02 Infectious Disease, 03 Environmental Degradation, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Proliferation, 09 Terrorism, 10 Transnational Crime, Cultural Intelligence, IO Deeds of War, Peace Intelligence

Reality Denial : Steven Pinker's Apologetics for Western-Imperial Volence

By Edward S Herman and David Peterson

ZNET, Wednesday, 25 July 2012

It is amusing to see how eagerly the establishment media have welcomed Steven Pinker’s 2011 tome, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined,[1] which explains not only that “violence has been in decline for long stretches of time,” but that “we may be living in the most peaceful era in our species' existence.”[2] A professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University since 2002 and a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist in the general nonfiction category,[3] Pinker’s lovable theme coincides with the Nobel Peace Laureate’s current engagement in wars on at least four separate continents (Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America); his regretful partial withdrawal from invaded and occupied Iraq; his victorious termination of the 2011 war in Libya; his buildup and threats to engage in even larger wars with Syria and Iran, both already underway with aggressive sanctions and an array of covert actions;[4] his semi-secret and ever-widening use of remote-controlled aerial gunships and death squads in global killing operations;[5] and his declaration of the right to kill any person anywhere for “national security” reasons—officially making the entire world a U.S. free-fire-zone.[6] The Barack Obama regime, and before it the Bush-Cheney regime, have also supported and protected Israel’s escalated ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and the hostile U.S. actions and threats involving Iran and Syria are closely geared with those of Israel.

Read full article with detailed notes.

2012/11/052012/11/05

Dolphin: Sandy Dislocates 40,000 (Katrina was 700,000)

03 Environmental Degradation

To put Sandy in perspective, the number of mid- to long-term dislocated is 40,000, as compared to 700,000 for Katrina.

NYC Needs Housing for 40,000 as New Storms Bear Down

Damage from Hurricane Sandy means New York may need to find shelter or new homes for as many as 40,000 people, at least half of whom live in public housing, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

That total, a worst-case scenario, may get reduced by half as power is restored, he said at a news conference.

Read full article.

Phi Beta Iota: Meanwhile, Haiti appears for help after Sandy, and there has been no accounting from the Red Cross for all the money it collected, ostensibly for Haiti, the last time around….roughly $248 million is the amount not accounted for, our of $354 million donated.