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Indonesia is burning. So why is the world looking away?

Indonesia is burning. So why is the world looking away?
I’ve often wondered how the media would respond when eco-apocalypse struck. I pictured the news programmes producing brief, sensational reports, while failing to explain why it was happening or how it might be stopped. Then they would ask their financial correspondents how the disaster affected share prices, before turning to the sport. As you can probably tell, I don’t have an ocean of faith in the industry for which I work. What I did not expect was that they would ignore it. A great tract of Earth is on fire. And the media? What I’m discussing is a barbecue on a different scale. But that doesn’t really capture it. One of the burning provinces is West Papua, a nation that has been illegally occupied by Indonesia since 1963. Nor do the greenhouse gas emissions capture the impact on the people of these lands. It’s not just the trees that are burning. Why is this happening? The president, Joko Widodo, is – or wants to be – a democrat. Related:  Our Environment and its DegradationHazards

fredrik ausinsch imagines collector drone for algae abundance in the baltic sea nov 09, 2015 fredrik ausinsch imagines collector drone for algae abundance in the baltic sea fredrik ausinsch imagines collector drone for algae abundance in the baltic sea all images courtesy of fredrik ausinsch transportation design masters student fredrik ausinsch at umea institute of design, proposed a drone to tackle the eruption of algae in the baltic sea. the algae sea collector would systematically remove the surface blooms which would result in a drastic reduction of toxins in the water, as well as prevent the spread anoxic sediments that would improve reproduction of local fish. schematic of the collector drone the drone collector’s route unmanned, the concept would use hydrogen fuel cell technology the drone would travel one to four knots collecting the algae the wings would adjust to accommodate the depth of the algae sketches of the concept the scale of the drone piotr boruslawski I designboom

Why the Philippines is Being Battered By Yet Another Fearsome Typhoon Updated Monday at 11 a.m. ET For storms like hurricanes and typhoons, as in real estate, it's all about location, location, location. Koppu made landfall early Sunday morning local time as a strong category 3 with winds nearing 124 miles (200 kilometers) per hour. Evaporation of warm water fuels these disastrous storms, which are alternately known as hurricanes, typhoons, and cyclones. The Philippines sits in what scientists call the "warm pool" in the Western Pacific, with nothing between the country and open water. Those warm sea surface temperatures mean more water evaporating into the atmosphere, loading a hurricane with more energy, said Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at MIT in an earlier interview. Forecasters predict the storm will stick around until Wednesday of this week before turning north towards Taiwan. What Makes Koppu Special The fact that Koppu is such a slow storm means it has more time to power up. That's why Koppu didn't strengthen until recently.

From suicidal shrimp to spiked tap water: where unused medications end up — Hopes&Fears — flow "Wellness" For many years, the widely accepted approach for disposing of pharmaceuticals was to "just flush ‘em." That advice changed with studies like the 1999 and 2000 U.S. Geological Surveys, which identified traces of pharmaceuticals in 80% of the streams and rivers sampled. Although recent legislation such as the EPA’s proposed rule to ban healthcare facilities from flushing pharmaceutical waste down the toilet or drain is a step in the right direction, people are still flushing unused pharmaceuticals purposefully or inadvertently through waste. Although wastewater is treated before being released into the environment, most treatment plants and septic systems are neither equipped nor required to filter out pharmaceuticals. Nowadays, the most popular method of disposing pharmaceuticals, according to a 2015 survey by Western University of Health Sciences, is to put them in the trash. Source

Shutting the flood gates Shutting the flood gates 19 October 2015 In 1953, more than 300 people died in the UK alone when heavy storms swept a high spring tide over sea defences and across coastal towns in north-east England and Scotland. One in six properties in England is at risk of flooding - maybe yours is one of them. Extreme weather and flood events are becoming ever-more frequent and severe. But even though winter 2013 saw the UK's highest storm surge since the 1953 disaster, only around 6,000 properties were flooded – a tragedy for those affected, but only a fraction of the homes and businesses wrecked in far less severe flooding a few years before. The big pictureFinding a way to live with floods in the long term means understanding all the factors that combine to cause them. Then there's the effect of our changing weather and climate. One of the news items you'll read in this edition of Planet Earth describes how river flow data were being sought for NERC's new Flood Studies programme. Interesting?

Chilling Photos Show Coral Bleaching Across the Globe Corals are dying across the planet. The culprit? Ever-increasing temperatures are stressing out corals' colorful partners called zooxanthellae. The result? Before and after This before-and-after image shows the corals in American Samoa, in the South Pacific Ocean, before (image taken in December 2014) and after the bleaching event (image taken in February 2015). Seeing white Alice Lawrence, a marine biologist, assesses the bleaching at Airport Reef in American Samoa in February 2015. Coral graveyard A researcher with the XL Catlin Seaview Survey photographs a severely bleached coral in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, in October 2014. Hawaii event During the first mass-bleaching event in the main islands of Hawaii, a researcher with the XL Catlin Seaview Survey assesses the level of bleaching in October 2014. Stark staghorn Bleached staghorn coral seen in this close-up image taken in February 2015 in American Samoa. Fire's out A scientist records a bleached fire coral in Bermuda. Orange and white

Beijing Issues First-Ever 'Red Alert' Over Air Pollution At site of world's worst nuclear disaster, the animals have returned In 1986, after a fire and explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant released radioactive particles into the air, thousands of people left the area, never to return. Now, researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on October 5 have found that the Chernobyl site looks less like a disaster zone and more like a nature preserve, teeming with elk, roe deer, red deer, wild boar, and wolves. The findings are a reminder of the resilience of wildlife. They may also hold important lessons for understanding the potential long-term impact of the more recent Fukushima disaster in Japan. "It's very likely that wildlife numbers at Chernobyl are much higher than they were before the accident," says Jim Smith of the University of Portsmouth in the UK. Earlier studies in the 4,200 km2 Chernobyl Exclusion Zone showed major radiation effects and pronounced reductions in wildlife populations. The inputs of J.T. Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert!

September | 2013 | CGF3M-Physical Geography The Family who Inspired “The Impossible” Click on the link to read the news story about the family who inspired the movie you will finish today, “The Impossible”. I would love to hear your thoughts and comments. Today you will watch The Impossible, a movie based on true events from the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004. Tsunami animation – click here Seismic (Earthquake) Waves- surface waves vs. body waves- click here How a seismograph works- click here Mt. Types of Volcanoes- click here Plate Boundaries- click here Formation of Pangaea- click here Once you have viewed the animations, answer the question on today’s worksheet. Today we explored the phenomenon that happens due to an underwater earthquake- Tsunamis. Did you see the news recently about the 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Pakistan that created a mud island 400 km from the epicentre of the quake?! The mud island that rose off the coast of Pakistan as a result of an earthquake 400 km away. Inside a volcano. What are 2 things that you learned?

There are now 3.04 trillion trees on earth A new study has calculated the total number of trees on the planet: 3.04 trillion. But they also estimate that it’s falling quickly. (Photo: Colourbox) It is a simple question: how many trees are there on earth? Perhaps surprisingly, until now, no one really knew the answer. But a new study has come up with a figure. This is much higher than previous estimates of around 400 billion. According to the scientists behind the research, their findings have prompted ‘Plant for the Planet’--a global youth initiative, which leads the United Nations Environment Programme’s “Billion Tree Campaign”-- to up their target to planting a trillion trees. “The changing scale of these estimates has big implications for reforestation projects and re-greening projects,” says lead author Dr Thomas Crowther during a press conference. “Now that [Plant for the Planet] know there are 3 trillion trees on earth […] they’re massively stepping up their effort and now anything is possible. Dr.

untitled WHEN they spoke in the past of the growing irrelevance of international borders, this is not what the leaders of India and Pakistan had in mind. They meant the march of globalisation. But their countries have always been linked by far more primordial forces. It was in Kashmir and northern Pakistan, however, that it wrought devastation. The actual number of dead was likely to be much higher. Mr Aziz clung to the hope that, because many people lived in flimsy mud-and corrugated-iron shacks, they might have survived their collapse. It was only on October 11th that the army had begun to fan out beyond the towns. Already, in higher areas, snow has fallen. India and Pakistan are young countries, and many of the dead were children, who made up perhaps half the population of the worst-affected areas. There was also anger with what was seen as the slowness of the government's response to the disaster. And now winter to face In Muzaffarabad, anger was sharpened by Kashmiris' sense of alienation.

Study looks at long-term impact of farming Human use of land for crops and herds has completely altered the world's landscapes. A new field of research called experimental socio-ecology looks to the past to predict the consequences of this type of human activity in the future. Researchers at Arizona State University have spent the last 10 years studying the effects that small-scale farmers have had on land in the Mediterranean, and now they have released a report with the findings of the project. The team focused on small-holder farmers and herders, who account for more than 70 percent of the world's food production and can dramatically transform the landscape over long stretches of time. The team combined computer modeling with field research to gain insight into how human activity and natural phenomena began to interact to create so-called "socio-ecological landscapes," such as the terraced fields, orchards and pastures found in the Mediterranean region. The consequences of those impacts in past eras were also simulated.

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