2012info.ca Earth Watch

3.57 – 117.3 miles N of Galena

October 31, 2008 on 10:06 pm | In Earthquakes | Comments Off

Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 17:44:55 UTC
Lat/Lon: 66.4075/-157.594
Depth: 8.266

6 – BISMARCK SEA

October 31, 2008 on 9:34 pm | In Earthquakes | Comments Off

Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2008 01:13:10 UTC
Lat/Lon: -3.3954/148.543
Depth: 10

4.29 – 95.0 miles ESE of Adak

October 31, 2008 on 8:04 pm | In Earthquakes | Comments Off

Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2008 23:26:40 UTC
Lat/Lon: 51.5152/-174.515
Depth: 14.3739

New Model Predicts A Glacier’s Life

October 31, 2008 on 8:00 pm | In Climate Change | Comments Off Researchers have developed a numerical model that can re-create the state of Switzerland's Rh

Toward a greener economy

October 31, 2008 on 3:24 pm | In Earth | Comments Off

The Christian Science Monitor:

Scientists seek a more sustainable model for growth.

Market bubbles occur when goods are traded at prices that greatly exceed real value. They burst when they grow so bloated that they become unstable. The current economic turmoil, widely viewed as the worst since 1929, is one example of what can happen when the difference between market value and actual value becomes too great.

Environmentally minded economists have long warned that equally burstable ecological bubbles can occur if humanity lives beyond earth’s capacity to regenerate. The problem, they say, is that we’re addicted to economic growth. Mainstream economics assumes that the economy, the engine of modern civilization, can grow perpetually.

But if growth means ever-increasing consumption of natural resources (and it has, since the start of the Industrial Revolution 250 years ago), then it can’t continue indefinitely. Earth and its resources are finite.

Herman Daly, an economist at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy in College Park, says that humanity is already at or beyond the point where economic growth is counterproductive, where the environmental and social costs more than cancel the gains.

“So-called ‘economic’ growth already has become uneconomic,” Professor Daly stated in a talk last spring. “The growth economy is failing.”

For some time, Daly and others have called for a rethinking and restructuring of our economy before nature restructures it for us. The notion of perpetual economic growth warrants scrutiny before it drives us over a cliff, they argue. The science of economics must be overhauled to better account for earth’s physical realities. Civilization won’t have to stop in its tracks, just shift emphasis, says Daly. The “steady state economy” he foresees emphasizes qualitative development over quantitative growth. “Growth is more of the same stuff,” he says. “Development is the same amount of better stuff.”

In his 2000 book, “Something New Under the Sun,” John McNeill, professor of environmental history at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., tells how unprecedented the past two centuries of human history have been.

“Most economists are under the impression that 2 to 6 percent annual growth is a normal condition for human society,” says Professor McNeill. “A longer historical view would tell you such growth is a peculiar period in human society.”

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Special report: How our economy is killing the Earth

October 31, 2008 on 3:24 pm | In Earth | Comments Off

News Scientist: The graphs climbing across these pages (explore graph in more detail) are a stark reminder of the crisis facing our planet. Consumption of resources is rising rapidly, biodiversity is plummeting and just about every measure shows humans affecting Earth on a vast scale. Most of us accept the need for a more sustainable way to live, by reducing carbon emissions, developing renewable technology and increasing energy efficiency.

But are these efforts to save the planet doomed? A growing band of experts are looking at figures like these and arguing that personal carbon virtue and collective environmentalism are futile as long as our economic system is built on the assumption of growth. The science tells us that if we are serious about saving Earth, we must reshape our economy.

This, of course, is economic heresy. Growth to most economists is as essential as the air we breathe: it is, they claim, the only force capable of lifting the poor out of poverty, feeding the world’s growing population, meeting the costs of rising public spending and stimulating technological development - not to mention funding increasingly expensive lifestyles. They see no limits to that growth, ever.

In recent weeks it has become clear just how terrified governments are of anything that threatens growth, as they pour billions of public money into a failing financial system. Amid the confusion, any challenge to the growth dogma needs to be looked at very carefully. This one is built on a long-standing question: how do we square Earth’s finite resources with the fact that as the economy grows, the amount of natural resources needed to sustain that activity must grow too? It has taken all of human history for the economy to reach its current size. On current form it will take just two decades to double.

In this special issue, New Scientist brings together key thinkers from politics, economics and philosophy who profoundly disagree with the growth dogma but agree with the scientists monitoring our fragile biosphere. The father of ecological economics, Herman Daly, explains why our economy is blind to the environmental costs of growth (”The World Bank’s blind spot”), while Tim Jackson, adviser to the UK government on sustainable development, crunches numbers to show that technological fixes won’t compensate for the hair-raising speed at which the economy is expanding (”Why politicians dare not limit economic growth”).

Gus Speth, one-time environment adviser to President Jimmy Carter, explains why after four decades working at the highest levels of US policy-making he believes green values have no chance against today’s capitalism (”Champion for green growth”), followed by Susan George, a leading thinker of the political left, who argues that only a global government-led effort can shift the destructive course we are on (”We must think big to fight environmental disaster”).

For Andrew Simms, policy director of the London-based New Economics Foundation, it is crucial to demolish one of the main justifications for unbridled growth: that it can pull the poor out of poverty (”The poverty myth”). And the broadcaster and activist David Suzuki explains how he inspires business leaders and politicians to change their thinking (”Interview with an environmental activist”).

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Leading economists prescribe infrastructure projects, renewable energy for battling recession

October 31, 2008 on 3:24 pm | In Earth | Comments Off

By Nathanial Gronewold

Greenwire: NEW YORK — The next administration will have to undertake massive public works spending projects, including funding for renewable energy, new electric transmission, environmental cleanup and rebuilding the United States’ crumbling infrastructure in order to stave off a devastating recession next year, three leading economists agreed yesterday.

Still, the United States can expect to see rising unemployment, weak consumer and corporate confidence, and an economy that shrinks by about 2 to 3 percent in 2009, regardless of what course the country takes, they said.

The situation could become even worse if problems spread throughout the world, especially in emerging markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Speaking in front of a packed audience at the New York Public Library last night at an event moderated by public television personality Charlie Rose, former investment banking wizard Felix Rohatyn, Columbia University scholar Jeffrey Sachs, and New York University economics professor Nouriel Roubini discussed in grim tones how the country got into its current predicament.

Even grimmer were their predictions for where the nation’s economy is now headed unless a new president and Congress lead the United States in a 180-degree shift away from the market ideology first popularized by the Reagan administration.

“We will be in recession in 2009, and it will hurt,” said professor Sachs.

That dour mood dominated much of the evening — event organizers jokingly played Chopin’s “Funeral March” as the panel rose to the stage. None of them predicted a repeat of the Great Depression, when bread lines and 25 percent unemployment were common. But all said the nation was in for a painful economic retraction.

Roubini went even further, suggesting that we are now witnessing the decline of the United States as the leading power in the world, akin to the United Kingdom’s fall from grace after World War II. “It’s really a radical change in global economic power,” he said.

All three agreed on what caused the current situation.

They pointed to lax government oversight of the economy fed by a free-market dogma that encouraged boom-and-bust cycles in the markets. Moves by the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates and pour money into the economy to fight previous recessions encouraged excessive debt spending, inflated asset values and finally led to the housing bubble, the largest speculative buildup in world history, they said.

Wall Street responded by inventing new financial instruments it did not understand at a rate faster than the government could keep track of them, building up steam for a market collapse even bigger than the one experienced after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“Leverage was way out of control,” said Rohatyn, who helped steer New York City from the brink of bankruptcy in the 1970s. By the time Lehman Brothers had collapsed, it was far too late for the government to get a handle on the problem and prevent the market meltdown, he said.

Sachs called the current state of affairs a “self-fulfilling panic.” The roller coaster ride in the stock markets is a sign that investors cannot gauge which sectors are relatively safe and which will be the next to fall. “It becomes rational to panic when everybody is panicking,” he said.

The economy continues to struggle because banks are afraid to lend money to anyone and consumers and businesses are afraid to spend. And the markets have no confidence in the Bush administration’s ability to fix matters. Thus, the United States is locked in a leadership vacuum until the next president takes office in mid-January.

New public projects, funded with higher taxes

The economists’ suggested course of action for the next administration? Nothing less than what Rohatyn referred to as “a major, massive public rebuilding,” meaning huge amounts of government debt spending on projects that create a maximum of employment opportunities and put money into consumers’ pockets.

Rohatyn said the government should view such large capital projects as investments rather than spending. Public money should be poured into fixing roads and bridges, expanding public transportation and building up those industrial sectors with the best chances for long-term success, especially renewable energy infrastructure and clean technology, he said.

The bulk of this new capital will likely have to come from new debt, most of it from Asia.

But the economists also said the new presidential administration, Republican or Democrat, would also have to raise taxes on almost everyone to help fund a new stimulus package.

That seems counterintuitive, they said, but a low-tax, low-regulation philosophy is what brought the nation to its current dire straits. The next leadership will have to be bold enough to steer the country in the opposite direction, meaning higher taxes; more public spending on education, infrastructure and social safety nets; and more government intervention in the economy.

Despite the panelists’ depressing overview of the economy, they managed to end on an optimistic note. The U.S. economy is still far from becoming a lost cause, and the nation can bounce back and even thrive in the years beyond 2009, if provided the right leadership and policies, they said.

“The United States is still by far the most flexible, technologically innovative economy in the world,” Sachs said. “We invented hybrid technology. Japan capitalized on it.”

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Bruce Power mulls new Ontario nuclear station

October 31, 2008 on 3:22 pm | In Climate Change | Comments Off Reuters - Bruce Power LP said Friday it was considering building a new nuclear station in Nanticoke, Ontario, to meet a looming power shortage in the province -- drawing swift environmental pushback and a lukewarm reaction from government.

Vehicle Accident – North-America – USA

October 31, 2008 on 2:39 pm | In Disasters | Comments Off
EDIS Number: VI-20081031-19053-USA
Date / time: 31/10/2008 18:38:07
Event: Vehicle Accident
Area: North-America
Country: USA
State/County: State of Florida
City: Miami Beach
Number of Deads: 2 persons
Number of Injured:27 persons
Damage level: Minor

Description:
At least two people are dead and 27 others had to be rescued after a boat ran aground in waters off Miami Beach. The Coast Guard says the boat ran into trouble early Friday morning. It wasn't immediately clear where the boat was coming from, but authorities say they believe at least some of the passengers are migrants. Search and rescue crews are combing the waters to make sure no one was missed.

‘Human fingerprints’ evident as Arctic, Antarctic warm

October 31, 2008 on 2:10 pm | In Earth | Comments Off

By Lauren Morello

Climatewire: Human activities are driving temperature shifts at both of Earth’s poles, according to a new study.

“We’re able, for the first time, to directly attribute warming in the Arctic and Antarctica to human influences on climate,” said lead author Nathan Gillett of Environment Canada.

Scientists had documented rising temperatures at both poles in recent decades, but until now, no study had attempted to formally determine the human role in those changes.

The new results are especially striking for Antarctica, experts said.

The Arctic has warmed twice as fast as the global average in recent decades, bringing about dramatic changes like a record-low level of summer sea ice in 2007 — and a near-record low last summer.

But the picture hasn’t been as clear at the South Pole. There, the Antarctic Peninsula has warmed, but there is much less data available to document temperatures in eastern Antarctica. Last year’s report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that Antarctica was the only continent where it was unclear whether human activities were influencing the climate.

“The warming in the Arctic is particularly marked, about 2 degrees [Celsius] over the last 50 years,” Gillett said. “In Antarctica, we’re seeing a warming trend that’s smaller — but still statistically significant.”

The results emphasize the need to improve predictions of how climate will affect the poles, said Andrew Monaghan, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., who was not involved in the new study. The melting of Arctic sea ice and the Greenland ice sheet, for example, will have a major impact on how quickly sea levels rise around the world.

A wide climate variability and mixed trends

“The polar regions exhibit the largest climatic variability on Earth,” Monaghan said. “So detecting and attributing climate change there has been more difficult than elsewhere.”

The new study made the link by comparing air temperature data gathered at observation stations at both poles with climate simulations produced by four computer models run two ways.

When scientists ran the models using data on greenhouse gas emissions produced by human activities, they were able to replicate the temperatures observed in the Arctic and Antarctic over the last century. When they ran the models without that information, using only natural factors known to influence climate — like volcanic eruptions — they could not match the recorded temperatures.

That proves that humans are influencing polar conditions, said study author Peter Stott of the U.K. Meteorological Office.

“What came out from that was a clear detection in both the Arctic and Antarctic regions of a human influence on climate,” Stott said. “We showed we detected the human fingerprint in both the Arctic and Antarctic regions.”

Stott and his colleagues said they are confident their method overcomes one limitation faced by researchers attempting to understand climate change at the poles: a lack of data. There are about 100 weather stations collecting air temperature data in the Arctic, and fewer than 20 in Antarctica.

“It’s certainly true that trends are mixed in Antarctica,” Gillett said. “We see that in our study. At the South Pole, particularly, we are seeing a cooling that may well be associated with stratospheric ozone depletion. Nevertheless, the coastal areas and peninsula are warming. … I don’t think we have any reason to distrust the models here.”

The study was published yesterday in Nature Geoscience.

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