It was shot at the historic Torrey Pines Glider Port and Blossom Valley in San Diego County. Thanks to Mike Douso
Tag: Environment
Latin America’s blind love with China may be over
Barbosa, who served as ambassador to Washington during the Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva government and now heads the foreign trade council of Brazil’s powerful FIESP industrialists federation, said Brazilian executives working for Chinese firms are also complaining about “long work days, frequent overtime, teleconferences in the wee hours, and production goals that are unrealistic and non-negotiable.”
As a result, 42 percent of Brazilian executives working for Chinese firms quit their jobs in their first year, he said, quoting a story in the daily Folha de Sao Paulo. Barbosa concluded that China’s business practices “should be followed with attention” by government authorities, labor unions and business associations.
Almost simultaneously, a new study by the United Nations Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), “Overview of Latin America’s insertion in the world economy,” shows that 87 percent of Latin America’s exports to Asia — mainly China — are raw materials, while only 13 percent are manufactured goods.
By comparison, 60 percent of Latin America’s exports to the United States are manufactured goods, and the remaining 40 percent raw materials, the study says.
Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/07/2395293/latin-americas-blind-love-with.html#ixzz1XT8lszI6
Citing an article in The Economist on China’s investments in Africa, Barbosa says that China “is destroying parks and forests in search of mineral and agricultural resources, and routinely violates the most elementary labor laws. Roads and Hospitals built by the Chinese are badly finished, among other things because their construction companies pay bribes to local officials.”
via Latin America’s blind love with China may be over – Andres Oppenheimer – MiamiHerald.com.
Ice Island Breaks off Greenland; Bigger Than Manhattan
No this video isn’t of this arctic event, but shows the force unleashed just by a large chunk. One piece flew off and broke womans leg – you can see a piece of ice whistle by the cameraman.
An ice chunk four times the size of Manhattan has broken off of Greenland’s Petermann glacier—possibly the biggest glacier collapse in recorded history, scientists announced Friday.(Greenland map).
via Ice Island Breaks off Greenland; Bigger Than Manhattan.
Big Rare Earth Discovery in Nebraska
China has emerged as the world’s predominant supplier, controlling 97 percent of the global market for rare earths. In recent years, lawmakers have expressed concerns about China’s “rare earth” dominance, and these concerns were heightened when Beijing temporarily halted exports to Japan last year during a territorial dispute. Despite having such obscure names as praseodymium, promethium and samarium – no copper or zinc here – they are necessary for such routine contemporary technologies as magnets, laser pointers and miniature electronics, such as iPods.
Quantum acquired a circular piece of land – a bit more than 4 miles in diameter – near Elk Creek late last year. The land, which the U.S. Geological Survey projects may have one of the world’s largest deposits of niobium and rare earths, has since been poked, prodded and drilled to determine whether it held any niobium, which has never been mined in the U.S., or rare earths, which the U.S. has not mined in almost 10 years
via Neb. mine find to challenge China’s dominance of vital rare minerals – Washington Times.
Arctic ‘tipping point’ Unlikely Soon
Danish researchers analyzed ancient pieces of driftwood in north Greenland which they say is an accurate way to measure the extent of ancient ice loss. Writing in the journal Science, the team found evidence that ice levels were about 50% lower 5,000 years ago. They say changes to wind systems can slow down the rate of melting. They argue, therefore, that a tipping point under current scenarios is unlikely.
A Danish team believes it has found an indirect method that gives a clear picture of the ice loss dating back 11,000 years.Dr Svend Funder from the Natural History Museum of Denmark led several expeditions to inhospitable regions of Northern Greenland. On these frozen shores the Danish team noticed several pieces of ancient driftwood. They concluded that it could be an important method of unlocking the secrets of the ancient ice.
“Driftwood cannot float across the water, it has to be ferried across the ocean on ice, and this voyage takes several years, which means that driftwood is actually a signal of multi-year sea ice in the ocean and it is this ice that is at risk at the moment” said Dr Funder.
Carbon dating was used to determine the age of the wood. And figuring out its origins also yielded important information.
“It’s so lovely that drift wood from Siberia is mainly larch and from North America is mainly spruce. So if we see there was more larch or spruce we can see that the wind system had changed and in some periods there was little spruce and in other periods there was lots,” he said.
China’s Burning Coal Has Cooled the Climate
In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, concludes that smog from the extra coal acted to mask greenhouse warming. China’s coal use doubled 2002-2007, according to US government figures.
Although burning the coal produced more warming carbon dioxide, it also put more tiny sulphate aerosol particles into the atmosphere which cool the planet by reflecting solar energy back into space.
Piers Forster from the UK’s Leeds University, who led the IPCC chapter analysing factors affecting global temperatures, said the new study was “interesting and worthwhile”.”The masking of CO2-induced global warming by short term sulphur emissions is well known – it’s believed that the flattening off of global mean temperatures in the 1950s was due to European and US coal burning, and just such a mechanism could be operating today from Chinese coal,” he told BBC News.
via BBC News – Global warming lull down to China’s coal growth.
Our Sick Oceans
Life on Earth has gone through five “mass extinction events” caused by events such as asteroid impacts; and it is often said that humanity’s combined impact is causing a sixth such event. The IPSO report concludes that it is too early to say definitively. But the trends are such that it is likely to happen, they say – and far faster than any of the previous five.
“What we’re seeing at the moment is unprecedented in the fossil record – the environmental changes are much more rapid,” Professor Rogers told BBC News. “We’ve still got most of the world’s biodiversity, but the actual rate of extinction is much higher [than in past events] – and what we face is certainly a globally significant extinction event.”
The report also notes that previous mass extinction events have been associated with trends being observed now – disturbances of the carbon cycle, and acidification and hypoxia (depletion of oxygen) of seawater. Levels of CO2 being absorbed by the oceans are already far greater than during the great extinction of marine species 55 million years ago (during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum), it concludes.
Mini Ice Age within a Decade?
What may be the science story of the century is breaking this evening, as heavyweight US solar physicists announce that the Sun appears to be headed into a lengthy spell of low activity, which could mean that the Earth – far from facing a global warming problem – is actually headed into a mini Ice Age.
As NASA notes:
Early records of sunspots indicate that the Sun went through a period of inactivity in the late 17th century. Very few sunspots were seen on the Sun from about 1645 to 1715. Although the observations were not as extensive as in later years, the Sun was in fact well observed during this time and this lack of sunspots is well documented. This period of solar inactivity also corresponds to a climatic period called the “Little Ice Age” when rivers that are normally ice-free froze and snow fields remained year-round at lower altitudes. There is evidence that the Sun has had similar periods of inactivity in the more distant past.
via Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade • The Register.
Garbage is USA’s Most Containerized Export
America Chung Nam, the sister company and supplier of wastepaper to China’s largest containerboard manufacturer, was the largest American exporter of containerized goods by volume in 2010 for the 10th year in a row, according to the latest Journal of Commerce Top 100 Importers and Exporters annual rankings.
The California-based company shipped a total of 300,800 20-foot equivalent units from the U.S. in 2010. The volume was 16 percent ahead of the 259,300 TEUs America Chung Nam exported in 2009.
America Chung Nam, founded in 1990, sends recycled paper goods to Chinese paper mills, which are then converted into fiberboard, cardboard, and packaging. The company has their customer base in the U.S., Asia and Europe. In addition to containerboard, they also exports plastic recyclables.
Recycling paper, plastics and scrap metal is good not only for the environment but also for reducing the U.S. foreign trade deficit. Then, it comes back to us, as Wal-Mart remained the No. 1 importer of containerized ocean cargo, increasing its shipping volume into the United States 1.8 percent in 2010. The world’s largest retailer imported 696,000 20-foot equivalent units last year, up from 684,000 TEUs in 2009. The company also was No. 39 on the Top Exporters 2010 list with 28,000 TEUs shipped out of the U.S.
via Wastepaper Giant ACN Was Top US Exporter | Journal of Commerce.
The Great Disruption Has Arrived
Why didn’t more of us see it coming? After all, the signals have been clear enough – signals that the ecological system that supports human society is hitting its limits, groaning under the strain of an economy simply too big for the planet. But we didn’t and, as a result, the time to act preventatively has past.Now we must brace for impact. Now comes The Great Disruption.It is true that the coming years won’t be pleasant, as our society and economy hits the wall and then realigns around what was always an obvious reality: You cannot have infinite growth on a finite planet. Not ‘should not’, or ‘better not’, but cannot. We can, however, get through what’s ahead – if we prepare. Continue reading “The Great Disruption Has Arrived”