Tag Archives: herald

Hurricane Matthew swept away the bank accounts of 2.1 million Haitians.

by DuanePascal951 Posted on October 14, 2016

Ravaging crops, drowning goats, and wrecking fishing boats, the Category 4 storm devastated the financial mainstays of an already impoverished people, the Miami Herald reports.

While experts struggle to calculate Matthew’s long-term economic toll, Haitian farmers can see their losses in front of them, in fields littered with rotting fruit and fallen palms. Half the livestock and almost all crops in the nation’s fertile Grand-Anse region were destroyed. Although vegetables can be replanted, it will take years for new trees to bear fruit again. “This was our livelihood,” Marie-Lucienne Duvert told the Herald, of her coconut and breadfuit plantation. “Now it’s all gone, destroyed.”

The farmers, who have yet to receive any relief, are facing threats from famine and contaminated water. Matthew has already caused at least 200 cases of cholera, which could mark the beginning of an outbreak like the one following 2010’s crippling earthquake that claimed 316,000 lives and left 1.5 million homeless.

The death toll from the storm is over 1,000 in the Caribbean, a number that will likely continue to rise as Haitians struggle to find food.

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Hurricane Matthew swept away the bank accounts of 2.1 million Haitians.

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A top environmental activist isn’t so sure about the Green Party presidential candidate’s green cred.

by lemuelpleasant6 Posted on September 9, 2016

Australian architect James Gardiner wants to use 3D-printing technology to build structures for coral to grow on in places where reefs are decimated by disease, pollution, dredging, and other maladies (looking at you, crown o’ thorns).

Right now, artificial reefs are built out of uniform, blocky assemblages of concrete or steel. Those are cheap and easy to make, but don’t look or work like the real thing — for starters, because “the marine life that colonizes these reef surfaces can sometimes fall off,” one biologist told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Gardiner worked with David Lennon of Reef Design Lab to design new shapes with textured surfaces and built-in tunnels and shelters. The computer models are turned into wax molds with the world’s largest 3D printer, and then cast with, essentially, sand. It’s a cheap and low-carbon way to manufacture custom, modular pieces of reef.

Reef Design Lab installed the first 3D-printed reef in Bahrain in 2012 — and, eight months later, it was covered with algae, sponges, and fish.

Mandatory disclaimer: Rebuilding all of the world’s coral reefs by hand is impossible, and climate change is still the biggest threat facing coral reefs, so let’s not forget to save the ones we’ve got.

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A top environmental activist isn’t so sure about the Green Party presidential candidate’s green cred.

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Way too many Americans have to worry about feeding themselves.

by HesterChewning Posted on September 8, 2016

Australian architect James Gardiner wants to use 3D-printing technology to build structures for coral to grow on in places where reefs are decimated by disease, pollution, dredging, and other maladies (looking at you, crown o’ thorns).

Right now, artificial reefs are built out of uniform, blocky assemblages of concrete or steel. Those are cheap and easy to make, but don’t look or work like the real thing — for starters, because “the marine life that colonizes these reef surfaces can sometimes fall off,” one biologist told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Gardiner worked with David Lennon of Reef Design Lab to design new shapes with textured surfaces and built-in tunnels and shelters. The computer models are turned into wax molds with the world’s largest 3D printer, and then cast with, essentially, sand. It’s a cheap and low-carbon way to manufacture custom, modular pieces of reef.

Reef Design Lab installed the first 3D-printed reef in Bahrain in 2012 — and, eight months later, it was covered with algae, sponges, and fish.

Mandatory disclaimer: Rebuilding all of the world’s coral reefs by hand is impossible, and climate change is still the biggest threat facing coral reefs, so let’s not forget to save the ones we’ve got.

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Way too many Americans have to worry about feeding themselves.

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Donald Trump Made a Chart, and It’s Totally Wrong

by KatriceDickey Posted on August 15, 2016

Mother Jones

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The world is getting really hot. The first six months of 2016 was the warmest January-to-June on record, according to NASA. Last year was the hottest year on record. This year will almost certainly be hotter. Eighteen of the 20 warmest years on record have occurred in the past two decades. “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia,” writes the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—a UN-affiliated body that includes the world’s leading climate scientists. These scientists are 95 percent certain that humans are the “dominant” cause of the warming.

Here’s a NASA chart showing what all of this looks like:

But Donald Trump has a chart of his own (sort of). The real estate mogul was in South Florida last week, and a Miami Herald reporter asked him about one of the greatest threats facing the region: sea level rise. “I’m not a big believer in man-made climate change,” Trump responded. “There could be some impact, but I don’t believe it’s devastating impact.”

The world’s temperature, Trump insisted, isn’t doing anything unusual. “No, I would say that it goes up, it goes down,” he said, moving his hand up and down like a wave. “I think it’s very much like this over the years.”

It’s worth taking a moment to watch him do this in the video above. Think of Trump’s hand-waving as an attempt to chart historical temperature data. Now compare that to NASA’s chart, which shows what the climate is actually doing.

Trump, of course, is fully aware of the scientific consensus on global warming. He just thinks it’s all part of a grand conspiracy of lying scientists:

Trump returned to his completely wrong argument moments later. “You’ve had a change in weather patterns, and you’ve had it for many years,” he said. “You know, many years ago—I believe it was in the 1920s—they talked about the phenomenon of global cooling. They thought the planet was getting cooler. Now they think the planet is getting warmer.”

“I have a feeling, it’s sort of this,” added Trump, making the wave motion with his hand once more. “But nobody knows for sure.”

You can watch the full Miami Herald interview with Trump below:

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Donald Trump Made a Chart, and It’s Totally Wrong

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Nebraska Conservatives Take On GOP Governor Over Death Penalty

by AlphonsVarnum Posted on April 16, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

A group of conservative legislators in Nebraska are gearing up for what could be a multi-day battle to end the state’s death penalty. The fight pits the right-wing anti-death penalty crusaders against their fellow conservatives and the state’s Republican governor. Here’s the Omaha World-Herald:

Nine conservative lawmakers have signed on as co-sponsors of a repeal measure the Nebraska Legislature will begin debating Thursday. One of their key platforms: Repealing the death penalty makes good fiscal sense.

“If capital punishment were any other program that was so inefficient and so costly to the taxpayer, we would have gotten rid of it a long time ago,” said Sen. Colby Coash of Lincoln.

The bill is unlikely to become law. There are currently enough votes for passage, but advocates warn that anything could happen when the bill comes up for a final vote. Death penalty advocates could mount a filibuster to block the legislature from even voting on the measure. If they don’t, Gov. Pete Ricketts, a Republican, has vowed to block the legislation, and it’s unclear that there are enough votes to override his veto.

Still, the upcoming debate and vote on the bill marks a victory for a small conservative group working on a state-by-state basis to end the death penalty and replace it with life in prison without the possibility of parole. This group, Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, argues that capital punishment violates core conservative beliefs about the sanctity of life, small government, and fiscal responsibility.

The Nebraska chapter of the group held a press conference Wednesday in advance of today’s floor debate on the bill. “I may be old-fashioned, but I believe God should be the only one who decides when it is time to call a person home,” said state Sen. Tommy Garrett, a conservative who supports repeal. “The state has no business playing God.”

Nebraska has not carried out an execution since 1997, when the state was still using the electric chair, but that might change, according to the World-Herald:

Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson said this week that his staff is working to restore the viability of a lethal injection protocol. He did not, however, predict when executions could resume.

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Nebraska Conservatives Take On GOP Governor Over Death Penalty

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U.N. climate report was censored

by EzequielQXI Posted on April 15, 2014

U.N. climate report was censored

By

Shutterstock

Keep walking past the earthly conflagration, folks. There’s nothing to see here.

When the latest installment of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report landed over the weekend, only a 33-page summary was published. The full report, which details the radical steps we need to take to reduce greenhouse gas pollution if we are to succeed in capping warming at 2 degrees Celsius, wasn’t published until this morning. So that summary was the basis for hundreds of media reports beamed and printed all around the world.

And it turns out the summary was watered down — diluted from an acid reflux–inducing stew of unpalatable science into a more appetizing consommé of half-truth. The Sydney Morning Herald has the details:

A major climate report presented to the world was censored by the very governments who requested it, frustrating and angering some of its lead authors. …

[E]ntire paragraphs, plus graphs showing where carbon emissions have been increasing the fastest, were deleted from the summary during a week’s debate prior to its release. Other sections had their meaning and purpose significantly diluted. They were victims of a bruising skirmish between governments in the developed and developing world over who should shoulder the blame for, and the responsibility for fixing, climate change.

One report author joked that he felt like a “pawn” who had been sacrificed in a game. Several others told Fairfax [Media Limited] the rancour was much greater than in previous IPCC meetings.

The encounter was a prelude to what promises to be a bitter battle in Paris next year, where countries are intended to sign a new binding treaty on radical action against global warming. Countries including — but not limited to — the United States, Brazil, China and Saudi Arabia fought to ensure the summary could not be used as a weapon against them in pre-Paris negotiations.

This sad story has precedence. The previous installment of the report, which dealt with climate adaptation, stated that poor countries need $100 billion a year to help them cope with climatic changes – but that dollar figure was yanked from the report’s summary by rich governments at the last moment.


Source
IPCC report summary censored by governments around the world, The Sydney Morning Herald

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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U.N. climate report was censored

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Low-lying islands are going to drown, so should we even bother trying to save their ecosystems?

by LannyRosensteng Posted on March 1, 2014

Low-lying islands are going to drown, so should we even bother trying to save their ecosystems?

By

Shutterstock

Islands are hot spots of biodiversity, often home to rich and unique ecosystems. Despite covering just 5 percent of the Earth’s land, the planet’s 180,000-odd islands contain a fifth of its plant and animal species. Around half of recorded extinctions have occurred on islands.

Unfortunately, many islands have been infested in recent centuries with ecosystem-wrecking rats and other invasive species. So scientists the world over have clamored to remove the destructive pests and protect the original inhabitants. More than 900 islands have been cleansed of rats and other animal invaders so far, often through the controversial use of poisoned baits.

But a new paper published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution asks an unsettling question: When it comes to low-lying islands that will eventually be swallowed by sea-level rise, why bother?

The authors of the paper studied 604 islands where animal pests were removed and concluded that 26 would be completely inundated with one meter of sea-level rise, which is expected within this century. An estimated 6 to 19 percent of the 4,500 islands in biodiversity hot spots studied are expected to eventually drown.

“It may be that eventually we will be faced with some tough decisions about whether we move species in order to save them or whether we do nothing and let them go extinct,” University of Auckland’s James Russell, one of the authors, told The New Zealand Herald.

The authors stop well short of calling on island conservationists to abandon their efforts. But they say much more consideration needs to be given to climate change when planning restoration projects.

“Despite clear and imminent risks, the consequences of sea-level rise for island biodiversity remain one of the least studied of all climate-change issues, both locally and globally,” the scientists write.


Source
Climate change, sea-level rise, and conservation: keeping island biodiversity afloat, Trends in Ecology and Evolution
Island sanctuaries could be swallowed by sea level rise – study, The New Zealand Herald

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Low-lying islands are going to drown, so should we even bother trying to save their ecosystems?

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Australian Open heat was a climate-change preview, but at least nobody died

by KetaHeadraf Posted on January 29, 2014

Australian Open heat was a climate-change preview, but at least nobody died

By

Alpha

41 degrees Celsius is 106 Fahrenheit

The Australian Open ended in Melbourne on Sunday, when a Swiss man wearing a sweat-drenched shirt with yellow and red stripes won in four sets. It was bloody hot, and his nose burned red as he smooched a silver trophy.

In fact, the sweltering heat captivated the world’s media and arguably stole the show. One player burned her bum when she sat down on a chair; another’s plastic water bottle melted on the court’s artificial surface. Athletes collapsed left and right, and one of them hallucinated. Emergency rules designed to help players survive the scorching heat slowed down play.

January is Melbourne’s hottest month, where temperatures routinely break triple digits. And summertime temperatures in this capital of the southeastern state of Victoria will only keep rising as the globe keeps warming. “In Melbourne we are seeing an increase in the amount of extreme heat,” one scientist told The Guardian. Victoria’s profile as a fire-whipped example of the global climate crisis can only go up from here. The following chart, produced by the country’s nonprofit Climate Council, shows that the number of extreme heat days per year (defined as exceeding 35 C, or 95 F) is rising:

Climate Council

Extreme heat days per year. Click to embiggen.

Professional tennis players are in their athletic prime and have access to top-notch medical care when the heat gets crazy. Millions of regular Victorians might not cope as well. Unprecedented bushfires linked to climate change killed 173 Victorians in 2009. “With populations at the rural–urban interface growing and the impact of climate change, the risks associated with bushfire are likely to increase,” a team of experts working for the state government concluded in a report. Meanwhile, hundreds more in the state died during that same summer because of heat exposure. Hot and fiery conditions in southeastern Australia this summer have mirrored those of 2009 — and such conditions are forecast to become more common.

Yet even in Victoria, where global warming’s toll is so visible, doctors say the conservative state government is failing to adapt. The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

Doctors and public health experts are calling for the Victorian government to urgently review its management of heatwaves as the death toll from this month’s record-breaking period appears to climb.

The Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine, which works with the State Coroner to investigate reportable deaths, said that as of Friday it had recorded 139 deaths in excess of the average expected between Monday, January 13, and Thursday, January 23.

Dr Liz Hanna, a fellow at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at ANU, said it was ‘”unfathomable” that Victoria had not learnt enough from the catastrophic 2009 heatwave, when 374 lives were lost, and the Victorian Greens are demanding a formal inquiry into what they call the state’s ‘”clear lack of preparation” for periods of extreme heat.

While Institute of Forensic Medicine director Stephen Cordner said he could not be sure the deaths were due to the heat, most of the deceased were elderly people and those with chronic and mental illnesses, who are known to be vulnerable in extreme heat.

As somebody who spent countless parched days at Australian Open games during a childhood in Melbourne, I always felt that the city had no business hosting the Grand Slam event in January. Now I’m sure of it: It seems inevitable that the competition dates will eventually change, or that another city will need to take over.

In the scope of climate disasters with growing body counts, a too-hot tennis tournament seems a trifling matter. But it has helped broadcast Melbourne’s weather woes to the world — and if that’s what it takes to get people to rally, then it does us good service.


Source
Heatwave ‘one of the most significant’ on record, says Bureau of Meteorology, Sydney Morning Herald
Anger over spike in deaths during record Victorian heatwave, Sydney Morning Herald
Is the Australian Open tennis feeling the heat of climate change?, The Guardian

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Australian Open heat was a climate-change preview, but at least nobody died

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