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Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7738798.stm
Thursday 20 November, 2008 (Environmental breakdown)
The population of house sparrows in Britain has fallen by 68% in the past three decades, according to the RSPB.
A report by the charity said the paving over of front gardens and removal of trees had caused a big decline in insects that the birds eat.
It suggests sparrows are now disappearing altogether from cities such as London, Bristol and Edinburgh.
Dr Will Peach, from the RSPB, said many gardens had become "no-go areas for once-common British birds".
Starving chicks
Scientists from the RSPB joined forces with De Montfort University and Natural England to investigate the decline of the house sparrow.
They studied numbers in Leicester over a three-year period and found that they fell by more than two thirds.
Dr Peach said every pair of house sparrows must raise at least five chicks a year to maintain the population, but many were starving to death in their nests or were too weak to live long after fledging.
The study did find that chick survival was higher in areas where insects, such as aphids, were more abundant.
[Gardeners can help by] being lazy, doing nothing and allowing the garden to be a little bit scruffy
Dr Will Peach, RSPB
Dr Peach said: "Peanuts and seeds are great for birds for most of the year, but sparrows need insects in summer - and lots of them - to feed their hungry young.
"Honeysuckle, wild roses, hawthorn or fruit trees are perfect for insects and therefore house sparrows.
"The trend towards paving of front gardens and laying decking in the back, and the popularity of ornamental plants from other parts of the world, has made many gardens no-go areas for once common British birds."
He said gardeners could help sparrows by "being lazy, doing nothing and allowing the garden to be a little bit scruffy".
The study, published in the journal Animal Conservation, concluded that the decline in house sparrows in Britain began in the mid-1980s.
In London, numbers fell by 60% between 1994 and 2004.
The house sparrow has been added to the list of species identified by the UK Biodiversity Action Plan as in need of greater protection.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2008/nov/12/eu-food-veg-cucumber
Monday 17 November, 2008 (Waste)
Regulations that attracted the ire of Eurosceptics are to be scrapped in response to the food crisis.
The US may have Barack Obama but the EU has Mariann Fischer Boel.
"This marks a new dawn for the curvy cucumber and the knobbly carrot," said the European agriculture commissioner today, referring to the imminent decision to scrap EU laws banning imperfect-looking fruit and vegetables.
Marketing standards for 26 fruit and vegetables, which led to a lot of less-than-perfect items being thrown away, are to be repealed.
One man likely to be happy is Jamie Oliver. He recently said he had "nothing nice to say about the EU at all".
"You remember when the cucumber came in? If it's over that much of a bend, then we can't sell it. How dare they? How dare they?"
However, the change in thinking in Europe was prompted not by an acknowledgment that the rules should never have been introduced but by a belated decision that they were inappropriate during a food crisis. Those who point the finger at alleged EU bureaucracy note that the ban will remain in place until July next year.
Harry Haddock, on the Nation of Shopkeepers blog, writes:
In the meantime, to protect you from the horror of anarchist carrots refusing to grow down the straight and narrow EU path, we will continue to sacrifice 20% of all that is grown, and continue to pay a 40% premium for the privilege. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the fact of the matter. The EU is an undemocratic, corrupt, bureaucratic organisation that makes life worse for everyone in the UK.
The rules have, of course, supplied Eurosceptics with valuable ammunition in their campaign to highlight the perceived excessive interference of the EU. Regulations that say cucumbers "must be reasonably well shaped and practically straight (maximum height of the arc: 10mm per 10cm of the length of cucumber)" do not exactly tally with most people's everyday concerns.
And stories such as Sainsbury's decision last month to drop plans for a healthy-eating Halloween campaign featuring "zombie brain" cauliflowers, "witch's fingers" carrots and "ogre's toenail" cucumbers, for fear staff might be prosecuted, did not exactly help.
It is rare that the UK Independence party is right about something, but in this case, the comments of its leader, MEP Nigel Farage, are difficult to argue with: "This is a rare moment of sense in an otherwise mad world."
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7669152.stm
Tuesday 14 October, 2008 (World Issues)
Twelve Indian states have "alarming" levels of hunger while the situation is "extremely alarming" in the state of Madhya Pradesh, says a new report.
- Submitted bySource: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7655678.stm
Tuesday 7 October, 2008 (Climate change)
The UK government's official climate change advisers have raised the bar on ambitions to cut emissions.
- Submitted bySource: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7651981.stm
Monday 6 October, 2008 (Environmental breakdown)
At least 25% of the world's mammal species are at risk of extinction, according to the first assessment of their status for a decade.
The Red List of Threatened Species says populations of more than half of mammalian species are falling, with Asian primates particularly at risk.
The biggest threat to mammals is loss of habitat, including deforestation.
But there is good news for the African elephant, whose recovery leads to removal from the high-risk list.
This year's Red List looks at 5,487 mammals, and concludes that 1,141 are currently on the path towards disappearance.
Within our lifetime, hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions
Julia Marton-Lefevre, IUCN
This may be an under-estimate, the authors caution, as there is not enough data to make an assessment in more than 800 cases. The true figure could be nearer to one- third.
"Within our lifetime, hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions, a frightening sign of what is happening to the ecosystems where they live," said Julia Marton-Lefevre, director-general of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) which publishes the Red List.
"We must now set clear targets for the future to reverse this trend, to ensure that our enduring legacy is not to wipe out many of our closest relatives."
The report's authors said the current concern with financial matters must not be allowed to obstruct the decline in the Earth's natural systems.
"The financial crisis is nothing compared with the environmental crisis," the deputy head of IUCN's species programme, Jean-Christophe Vie, told BBC News.
"It's going to affect a few people, whereas the biodiversity crisis is going to affect the entire world. So there is a risk that because of the financial crisis, people are going to say 'yeah, the environment is not that urgent'; it is really urgent."
Species richness map (IUCN)
About 40% of mammal species are compromised because human expansion is putting a squeeze on their habitat.
This is especially important across the tropics, the regions with the highest diversity of land-based mammals.
South and Southeast Asia are identified as regions where extinctions are especially likely in coming years, as that is where the size and living standards of the human population are rising fastest.
Demise of the devils and other mammals under threat
In pictures
The second biggest threat on land is identified as hunting, for food or medicines.
However, where hunting has been controlled and conservation programmes implemented, as with southern and eastern populations of the African elephant, populations and entire species can recover.
The elephant's risk status is lowered from Vulnerable to Near Threatened.
Some species are included for very specific reasons, such as the Tasmanian devil which has been decimated by a viral cancer.
In the seas, bycatch - entanglement in fishing nets, which is usually although not always accidental - emerges as the biggest factor behind current declines, affecting a staggering 79% of marine mammals.
The assessment - which is also published in the journal Science - warns that lack of data about marine mammals may be masking a bigger decline.
"Whales, dolphins, porpoises, and sirenians (manatees and dugong) are so difficult to survey that declines that should result in a Vulnerable listing would go undetected at least 70% of the time," the authors write.
Threatened species map (IUCN)
Outside the mammal arena, the Indian tarantula enters the Red List for the first time, a consequence of over-harvesting for the pet trade.
A further 366 amphibians have been added to the list. This is the most threatened animal group of all, with about one-third on the high-risk list.
A new assessment of climate impacts on the natural world suggests that many species not currently on the danger list will enter it as temperatures rise, particularly in East Africa and parts of South America.
RED LIST DEFINITIONS
Extinct - Surveys suggest last known individual has died
Critically Endangered - Extreme high risk of extinction. Some Critically Endangered species are also tagged Possibly Extinct
Endangered - Species at very high risk of extinction
Vulnerable - Species at high risk of extinction
Near Threatened - May soon move into above categories
Least Concern - Species is widespread and abundant
Data Deficient - not enough data to assess
The Red List is published approximately once every year. Although designed as the definitive global list of threatened species, in practice the rankings come from assessments covering different types of plants and animals, and some areas of the list will be more up to date than others.
An assessment of sharks, originally slated for inclusion this year, was delayed and will probably be released later in the year.
In an attempt to make species assessments more certain, the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) is developing what they colloquially term a "Dow Jones index" for biodiversity.
The idea is to take a random sample of all the world's species, which will be representative of the whole, and revisit it regularly - perhaps once every five years - to gain a better idea of global trends.
"We are now emerging from the dark ages of conservation knowledge, when we relied on data from a highly restricted subset of species," said Jonathan Baillie, ZSL's director of conservation programmes.
The first group to be assessed this way is the land-dwelling vertebrates, but the project will eventually encompass insect, fungi, plants, and various types of marine creatures.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/lt_meltdown_pointing_fingers
Wednesday 1 October, 2008 (Anti-capitalism)
SAO PAULO, Brazil - Astounded by the U.S. government's failure to resolve the financial crisis threatening the foundations of the global free market, fingers of blame are pointing at America from around the planet.
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Latin American leaders say the U.S. must quickly fix the financial crisis it created before the rest of the world's hard-won economic gains are lost.
"The managers of big business took huge risks out of greed," said President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica, whose economy is highly dependent on U.S. trade. "What happens in the United States will affect the entire world and, above all, small countries like ours."
In Europe, where some blame a phenomenon of "casino capitalism" that has become deeply engrained from New York to London to Moscow, there is more of a sense of shared responsibility. But Europeans also blame the U.S. government for letting things get out of hand.
Amid harsh criticism is a growing consensus that stricter financial regulation is needed to prevent unfettered capitalism from destroying economies around the globe.
And leaders of developing nations that kept spending tight and opened their economies in response to American demands are warning of other consequences — a loss of U.S. influence globally and the likelihood that the world's poor will suffer the most from greed by the biggest players in global finance.
"They spent the last three decades saying we needed to do our chores. They didn't," a grim-faced Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Tuesday.
Even staunch U.S. allies like Colombian President Alvaro Uribe blasted the world's most powerful country for egging on uncontrolled financial speculation that he compared to a wild horse with no reins.
"The whole world has financed the United States, and I believe that they have a reciprocal debt with the planet," he said.
It's harder for European leaders to point the finger directly at the United States since many of their financiers participated in the recklessness. London was home to the division of failed insurer AIG that racked up huge losses on credit-default swaps, and many reputable European banks disregarded risk to load up on higher yielding subprime assets.
But the House's rejection Monday of the U.S. bank bailout proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson provoked a sharper tone and warnings that America must act. Though global markets on Tuesday recovered some of the ground they lost in a worldwide slide the day before, politicians from Europe to South America insisted the risk of a further plunge remains high.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel called on U.S. lawmakers to pass a package this week, saying it was the "precondition for creating new confidence on the markets — and that is of incredibly great significance."
In an unusually blunt statement from the 27-country European Union, EU Commission spokesman Johannes Laitenberger said: "The United States must take its responsibility in this situation, must show statesmanship for the sake of their own country, and for the sake of the world."
The crisis also has strengthened voices in France and Germany calling for EU regulations to eliminate highly deregulated financial markets, despite objections from Britain, which along with the U.S. is considered by some to practice a freer form of "Anglo-Saxon" capitalism.
"This crisis underlines the excesses and uncertainties of a casino capitalism that has only one logic — lining your pockets," said German lawmaker Martin Schulz, chairman of the Socialists in the EU assembly. "It also shows the bankruptcy of 'law of the jungle' capitalism that no longer invests in companies and job creation, but instead makes money out of money in a totally uncontrolled way."
The U.S. government's failure to apply rules that might have prevented the crisis is seen as a betrayal in many developing countries that faced intense U.S. pressures to liberalize their economies. In some developing nations, state enterprises were privatized, currencies were allowed to float against the U.S. dollar and painful measures were taken to bring down debts.
These advances are at risk now that credit is drying up. Countries with commodities-based economies are particularly vulnerable since more industrialized nations could reduce their demand for everything from soy to iron ore.
"It doesn't seem fair to me that those of us who endured so much hunger in the 20th century, who began to improve in the 21st century, should have to suffer due to the international financial system," Silva said. "There are going to be a lot of people going hungry in the world."
Just before meeting with Silva on Tuesday, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez said he believes a new economic order is in store for the planet.
"What's to blame? Imperialism, the United States, the irresponsibility of the United States government," said the self-avowed socialist and frequent U.S. critic. "From this crisis, a new world has to emerge, and it's a multi-polar world."
China's influence in the outcome of all this could be profound because it is a huge investor in U.S. debt. It is already calling for strict new international regulatory systems to apply to globalized financial markets.
Liu Mingkang, chairman of the Chinese Banking Regulatory Commission, said Saturday before a weeklong bank holiday in China that debt in the United States and elsewhere has risen to dangerous and indefensible levels.
The rest of the world is taking notice. Many newspapers made references Tuesday to China's increasing importance in global finance. In Algeria, a large cartoon on the front page of the newspaper El-Watan showed Uncle Sam at prayer: "Save us!" he says, kneeling before a portrait of China's Mao Zedong.
In London, Jane Ayerson, a 20-year-old Irish exchange student, said Europeans share the blame.
"The problem started with America, but banks here have been greedy, too," she said.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7634488.stm
Thursday 25 September, 2008 (Waste)
Delays in setting up large waste incinerators could lead to English councils missing EU targets, the Audit Commission has warned.
- Submitted bySource: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/exclusive-the-methane-time-bomb-938932.html
Tuesday 23 September, 2008 (Climate change)
Arctic scientists discover new global warming threat as melting permafrost releases millions of tons of a gas 20 times more damaging than carbon dioxide
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
Preliminary findings suggest that massive deposits of subsea methane are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats
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Preliminary findings suggest that massive deposits of subsea methane are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats
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The first evidence that millions of tons of a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide is being released into the atmosphere from beneath the Arctic seabed has been discovered by scientists.
The Independent has been passed details of preliminary findings suggesting that massive deposits of sub-sea methane are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats.
Underground stores of methane are important because scientists believe their sudden release has in the past been responsible for rapid increases in global temperatures, dramatic changes to the climate, and even the mass extinction of species. Scientists aboard a research ship that has sailed the entire length of Russia's northern coast have discovered intense concentrations of methane – sometimes at up to 100 times background levels – over several areas covering thousands of square miles of the Siberian continental shelf.
In the past few days, the researchers have seen areas of sea foaming with gas bubbling up through "methane chimneys" rising from the sea floor. They believe that the sub-sea layer of permafrost, which has acted like a "lid" to prevent the gas from escaping, has melted away to allow methane to rise from underground deposits formed before the last ice age.
They have warned that this is likely to be linked with the rapid warming that the region has experienced in recent years.
Methane is about 20 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and many scientists fear that its release could accelerate global warming in a giant positive feedback where more atmospheric methane causes higher temperatures, leading to further permafrost melting and the release of yet more methane.
The amount of methane stored beneath the Arctic is calculated to be greater than the total amount of carbon locked up in global coal reserves so there is intense interest in the stability of these deposits as the region warms at a faster rate than other places on earth.
Orjan Gustafsson of Stockholm University in Sweden, one of the leaders of the expedition, described the scale of the methane emissions in an email exchange sent from the Russian research ship Jacob Smirnitskyi.
"We had a hectic finishing of the sampling programme yesterday and this past night," said Dr Gustafsson. "An extensive area of intense methane release was found. At earlier sites we had found elevated levels of dissolved methane. Yesterday, for the first time, we documented a field where the release was so intense that the methane did not have time to dissolve into the seawater but was rising as methane bubbles to the sea surface. These 'methane chimneys' were documented on echo sounder and with seismic [instruments]."
At some locations, methane concentrations reached 100 times background levels. These anomalies have been seen in the East Siberian Sea and the Laptev Sea, covering several tens of thousands of square kilometres, amounting to millions of tons of methane, said Dr Gustafsson. "This may be of the same magnitude as presently estimated from the global ocean," he said. "Nobody knows how many more such areas exist on the extensive East Siberian continental shelves.
"The conventional thought has been that the permafrost 'lid' on the sub-sea sediments on the Siberian shelf should cap and hold the massive reservoirs of shallow methane deposits in place. The growing evidence for release of methane in this inaccessible region may suggest that the permafrost lid is starting to get perforated and thus leak methane... The permafrost now has small holes. We have found elevated levels of methane above the water surface and even more in the water just below. It is obvious that the source is the seabed."
The preliminary findings of the International Siberian Shelf Study 2008, being prepared for publication by the American Geophysical Union, are being overseen by Igor Semiletov of the Far-Eastern branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Since 1994, he has led about 10 expeditions in the Laptev Sea but during the 1990s he did not detect any elevated levels of methane. However, since 2003 he reported a rising number of methane "hotspots", which have now been confirmed using more sensitive instruments on board the Jacob Smirnitskyi.
Dr Semiletov has suggested several possible reasons why methane is now being released from the Arctic, including the rising volume of relatively warmer water being discharged from Siberia's rivers due to the melting of the permafrost on the land.
The Arctic region as a whole has seen a 4C rise in average temperatures over recent decades and a dramatic decline in the area of the Arctic Ocean covered by summer sea ice. Many scientists fear that the loss of sea ice could accelerate the warming trend because open ocean soaks up more heat from the sun than the reflective surface of an ice-covered sea.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7626562.stm
Saturday 20 September, 2008 (Climate change)
Nearly 17 million people in the Horn of Africa are in urgent need of food and other aid - almost twice as many as earlier this year, the UN has said.
Some $700m (£382m) in emergency aid is needed to prevent the region descending into full-scale famine, it said.
Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/money/article4687192.ece
Thursday 11 September, 2008 (Freeganism in General)
A teacher from Bristol has proved that you don't need to be a millionaire to survive the credit crunch: Kath Kelly has written a book called How I Lived a Year on Just a Pound a Day, after she did just that.
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