2012 // Current TV

Fluoride & the Pineal Gland

Up until the 1990s, no research had ever been conducted to determine the impact of... more

jkw077
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The Divine Power We Wield

Melbourne, Australia (31 December 2007) Shortly after delivering a five-hour shaktipat... more

zimmaron
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Surviving 2012 and Planet X - Part 1 of 5: The Threat

Part 1 of 5 shows how the approach of Planet X is already changing our world. Produced... more

Bahai144
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Ice melting across globe at accelerating rate, NASA says - CNN.com

The acceleration of "The Great Change" has already begun. This image... more

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Chilean Volcano Eruption Drives Evacuation Of Town

Chile is pushing for a full evacuation of the area surrounding Chaiten volcano, which... more

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Applying the three stages of truth to the 2012 prophecies: Stage 1 – Ridicule

It has been said that truth passes through three stages: ridicule, violent opposition,... more

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NJ MINI-QUAKES SHOULD SHAKE NY AWAKE: EXPERTS

The Big Apple is due for the Big One. The trio of earthquakes that surprised New... more

gooma2
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Los Angeles near water rationing

I knew it would come to this sooner or later. And unfortunately, it is needed.

JanforGore
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3 years ago
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Mass relocation planned for Indonesian islands due to sea level rise

The government is preparing to relocate people living on islands considered vulnerable to rising sea levels over the next three decades.

Sea levels are expected to surge drastically between 2030 and 2040 because of global warming. Experts and the government fear that about 2,000 islands across the country will sink.

"We have formed a technical team who will identify the islands which could sink," Maritime and Fisheries Minister Freddy Numberi told the International Roundtable Meeting of World Ocean Conference here Thursday.

"The government has prepared a contingency plan, which includes relocation of residents off the islands."

Freddy said the islands were located in Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi and Papua.

He asked the regional governments to keep an eye on the islands.

Indonesia, Freddy said, called on the international community to join forces in anticipating the disaster that would affect the whole world.

"Indonesia will only see small islands disappear, but there will be a country that is at risk of completely sinking due to the rising sea levels. Therefore, all countries must take this issue seriously."

Indonesia has lost about 60 islands in the western part of Sumatra following the tsunami in December 2004, not to mention several others due to mining activities.

Riau Governor Ismeth Abdullah said the sea level increases were the result of global warming and would affect uninhabited islands in the province in the long run. Local fisherman are already feeling the pinch from climate change, he added.

"Climate change has cut the fishermen's income because many fish are now gone," Ismeth said. His administration has promoted mangrove reforestation to deal with the increasing sea levels.
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In my view we have at mininum one year and maximum five years left to do anything constructive to urgently cut GHG emissions in rich countries and work with developing countries looking for economic prosperity to turn to more sustainable methods to achieve that goal before the tipping point comes. Indonesia is heading beyond the mitgation stage at this point and into the adaptation stage. Nations of the world are supposed to meet in Copenhagen in less than six months to try and forge a new climate treaty that addresses this most urgent crisis. Mitigation while still crucial will have to give way to global plans for adaptation and plans to provide for climate rerfugees should progress on mitigation remain slow with little real action from politicians.

I suspect we are not even close to an effective way to relocate massive numbers of people or have an effective way of providing for their safety and sustinence. Barack Obama in an interview with CNN yesterday stated his number one priority was the financial markets. Well, personally, the climate crisis should be the number one priority because the repercussions of it not being primary will be more to deal with than a crash on Wall Street. There is nothing more important than the sustainability of the planet and the life support systems that keep it turning. Without them we have nothing else. Perhaps when politicians realize this we will have progress, but I doubt that is going to happen anytime before the ice in the Arctic completely melts. I truly hope I am wrong.The government is preparing to relocate people living on islands considered vulnerable... more

JanforGore
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For the first time in human history, the North Pole can be circumnavigated

Melting ice opens up North-west and North-east passages simultaneously. Scientists warn Arctic icecap is entering a 'death spiral'

Open water now stretches all the way round the Arctic, making it possible for the first time in human history to circumnavigate the North Pole, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. New satellite images, taken only two days ago, show that melting ice last week opened up both the fabled North-west and North-east passages, in the most important geographical landmark to date to signal the unexpectedly rapid progress of global warming.

Last night Professor Mark Serreze, a sea ice specialist at the official US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), hailed the publication of the images – on an obscure website by scientists at the University of Bremen, Germany – as "a historic event", and said that it provided further evidence that the Arctic icecap may now have entered a "death spiral". Some scientists predict that it could vanish altogether in summer within five years, a process that would, in itself, greatly accelerate.

But Sarah Palin, John McCain's new running mate, holds that the scientific consensus that global warming is melting Arctic ice is unreliable.

The opening of the passages – eagerly awaited by shipping companies who hope to cut thousands of miles off their routes by sailing round the north of Canada and Russia – is only the greatest of a host of ominous signs this month of a gathering crisis in the Arctic. Early last week the NSDIC warned that, over the next few weeks, the total extent of sea ice in the Arctic may shrink to below the record low reached last year – itself a massive 200,000 square miles less than the previous worst year, 2005.

Four weeks ago, tourists had to be evacuated from Baffin Island's Auyuittuq National Park because of flooding from thawing glaciers. Auyuittuq means "land that never melts".

Two weeks later, in an unprecedented sighting, nine stranded polar bears were seen off Alaska trying to swim 400 miles north to the retreating icecap edge. Ten days ago massive cracking was reported in the Petermann glacier in the far north of Greenland, an area apparently previously unaffected by global warming.

But it is the simultaneous opening – for the first time in at least 125,000 years – of the North-west passage around Canada and the North-east passage around Russia that promises to deliver much the greatest shock. Until recently both had been blocked by ice since the beginning of the last Ice Age.

In 2005, the North-east passage opened, while the western one remained closed, and last year their positions were reversed. But the images, gathered by Nasa using microwave sensors that penetrate clouds, show that the North-west passage opened last weekend and that the last blockage on the north- eastern one – a tongue of ice stretching down to Russia across Siberia's Laptev Sea – dissolved a few days later.

"The passages are open," said Professor Serreze, though he cautioned that official bodies would be reluctant to confirm this for fear of lawsuits if ships encountered ice after being encouraged to enter them. "It's a historic event. We are going to see this more and more as the years go by."

Shipping companies are already getting ready to exploit the new routes. The Bremen-based Beluga Group says it will send the first ship through the North-east passage – cutting 4,000 nautical miles off the voyage from Germany to Japan – next year. And Canada's Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, last week announced that all foreign ships entering the North-west passage should report to his government – a move bound to be resisted by the US, which regards it as an international waterway.

(continued)

By Geoffrey LeanMelting ice opens up North-west and North-east passages simultaneously. Scientists... more

love_is_my_religion
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Insect Population Growth Likely Accelerated By Warmer Climate

It appears that insect species that adapt to warmer climates also will increase their... more

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Environmental Justice: Coca-Cola in India

"We need to see more of it in the coming year to hold corporations like Coca... more

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Lake Tuz, Turkey's 2nd largest lake disappearing

Lake Tuz, located in central Anatolia and known as the second-largest lake of Turkey, can no longer carry that title as it has shrunk by 85 percent over the last 90 years due to global warming, drought and the over usage of its water for irrigation purposes.

Aksaray University department of engineering, geodesy and photogrammetry engineering instructor Semih Ekercin spoke with the Anatolia news agency on Tuesday and said he examined the changes to the coastlines of Lake Tuz, second in size only to Lake Van, located in eastern Anatolia, and Beyşehir Lake, located in the western part of central Anatolia.

Ekercin said he even received support from NASA during the course of his study, adding that after examining satellite maps of Turkey provided by the US, Japan and France, he found there was a serious shrinkage of Turkey's lakes.

Ekercin said Lake Tuz covered 216,400 hectares in 1915. "Lake Tuz has shrunk at an alarming rate from then on. The water surface area of Lake Tuz decreased to 92,600 hectares in 1987," Ekercin said. "I clearly detected from the satellite images that the area of Lake Tuz decreased to 32,600 hectares in 2005. Drought, the over usage of water in the lake basin for irrigation and global warming have led to the loss of water in the lake.

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Ekercin said there is a need for urgent and radical measures to protect Lake Tuz. "If the necessary measures are not taken, by 2015 Lake Tuz will no longer exist."
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Radical measures indeed. The World Water Forum is taking place this week in Stockholm... but like every other year, what "radical" plans will come from it? Every year there are meetings, forums, dinners, and talks. And every year we see scenarios like Lake Tuz in Turkey continuing to play out before our eyes. We talk, and yet while talking still continue to perpetuate the climate change/global warming that is dropping levels in waterways worldwide. We talk, and yet continue to pollute our waterways until they are of no use to us or other species and cause the death of many rivers worldwide. We talk, and yet we still do not have a sufficient global plan to deal with the affects of climate change/drought that are slowly and silently creeping to all corners of this world as we continue to waste water with inefficient agricultural practices, infrastructure, and greed.

Those who know of and remember the tragedy of the Aral Sea in Russia see a hauntingly familiar and frightening pattern here. People care more for their own selfish sustainment than for only using what they need, which is considerably less than what they want. How many lakes and rivers will we run dry before we realize that we are running out of time to fight for the sustainability of this planet? Where is the plan? Where are the politicians? The World Bank doesn't have that plan. The IMF doesn't have that plan. The G8 doesn't have that plan. Will the World Water Forum in Stockholm have that plan?

The loss of Lake Tuz like so many other waterways, the Murray River in Australia as a starker example is a harbinger to us that something is terribly wrong.

Why aren't we listening?

WHAT WILL IT TAKE?

How many more?Lake Tuz, located in central Anatolia and known as the second-largest lake of Turkey,... more

JanforGore
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Canada's oil sands declared "Most destructive project on earth" as eco disaster looms

A report issued by the nonprofit organization Environmental Defense has declared... more

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Rising sea buries village in Ghana

The old shore road to Totope is now under the sea. Developers began carving out... more

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Oceanic dead zones continue to spread

"More bad news for the world's oceans: Dead zones—areas of bottom waters too oxygen depleted to support most ocean life—are spreading, dotting nearly the entire east and south coasts of the U.S. as well as several west coast river outlets.

According to a new study in Science, the rest of the world fares no better—there are now 405 identified dead zones worldwide, up from 49 in the 1960s—and the world's largest dead zone remains the Baltic Sea, whose bottom waters now lack oxygen year-round.

This is no small economic matter. A single low-oxygen event (known scientifically as hypoxia) off the coasts of New York State and New Jersey in 1976 covering a mere 385 square miles (1,000 square kilometers) of seabed ended up costing commercial and recreational fisheries in the region more than $500 million. As it stands, roughly 83,000 tons (75,000 metric tons) of fish and other ocean life are lost to the Chesapeake Bay dead zone each year—enough to feed half the commercial crab catch for a year.

Fertilizer contains large amounts of nitrogen, and it runs off of agricultural fields in water and into rivers, and eventually into oceans.

This fertilizer runoff, instead of contributing to more corn or wheat, feeds massive algae blooms in the coastal oceans. This algae, in turn, dies and sinks to the bottom where it is consumed by microbes, which consume oxygen in the process. More algae means more oxygen-burning, and thereby less oxygen in the water, resulting in a massive flight by those fish, crustaceans and other ocean-dwellers able to relocate as well as the mass death of immobile creatures, such as clams or other bottom-dwellers. And that's when the microbes that thrive in oxygen-free environments take over, forming vast bacterial mats that produce hydrogen sulfide, a toxic gas.

"The primary culprit in marine environments is nitrogen and, nowadays, the biggest contributor of nitrogen to marine systems is agriculture. It's the same scenario all over the world," Diaz says. "Farmers are not doing it on purpose. They'd prefer to have it stick on the land."

In addition to fertilizers, the other primary culprit is the consumption of fossil fuels. Burning gasoline and diesel results in smog-forming nitrogen oxides, which subsequently clear when rain washes the nitrogen out of the sky and, ultimately, into the ocean."

Much more at link!"More bad news for the world's oceans: Dead zones—areas of bottom... more

DeliaTheArtist
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'Unprecedented' melt sinks hope for Arctic ice recovery

The Arctic Ocean ice cover, which appeared earlier this summer to be headed for a moderate recovery after last year's record-setting retreat, has begun disintegrating so rapidly in recent weeks that experts now say the ice loss by mid-September could exceed even 2007's history-making meltdown.

The Canadian Ice Service is reporting an "unprecedented" opening of waters in the Beaufort Sea north of the Yukon-Alaska border, where expected increases in ship traffic have just prompted the U.S. Coast Guard to establish two new outposts on Alaska's north coast to strengthen its vessel-monitoring and search-and-rescue capabilities.

Last year, 14 million square kilometres of Arctic Ocean ice shrank to just over four million between March and September. The minimum is typically reached in mid-September.

It's now a "neck-and-neck race between 2007 and this year over the issue of ice loss," Mark Serreze, a senior climate researcher at the U.S. ice data centre told Britian's Guardian newspaper yesterday. "We thought Arctic ice cover might recover after last year's unprecedented melting -- and indeed the picture didn't look too bad last month."

But recent storms in the Beaufort region "triggered steep ice losses," he said, "and it now looks as if it will be a very close call indeed whether 2007 or 2008 is the worst year on record for ice cover over the Arctic."

The Canadian government's chief observers of Arctic ice conditions are expressing amazement at the state of the Beaufort Sea.

"We've never seen any kind of opening like this in history," senior ice forecaster Luc Desjardins said of the Beaufort's exceptional loss of ice this summer. "It is not only record-setting, it's unprecedented. It doesn't resemble anything that we've observed before."

Last year's record melt is chiefly responsible for this year's accelerating retreat of sea ice. So much of the thicker, multi-year ice in the Arctic was lost in 2007 that -- despite a relatively cold winter -- much more of the polar cap at the start of this year's melt season consisted of thinner, weaker first-year ice that didn't stand a chance of surviving the summer.

"It takes less solar energy to dissipate and melt that ice," says Mr. Desjardins. "So we potentially could reach a new minimum. Time will tell if we are going to be approaching the 2007 sea-ice retreat -- there still five weeks (of melting) to go."

The Arctic Ocean ice cover, which appeared earlier this summer to be headed for a... more

jefftego
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Half of all primate species face extinction

A new study warns that 48% of the world's primates species face extinction.... more

JanaPokana
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Lines Between Human, Machine will Blur by 2012

Justin Rattner , CTO and a senior fellow at Intel, told Computerworld that perhaps as early as 2012 we will see the lines between human and machine intelligence begin to blur. Nanoscale chips or machines will move through our bodies, fixing deteriorating organs or unclogging arteries. Sensors will float around our internal systems monitoring blood sugar levels and heart rates, and alerting doctors to potential health problems.

Virtual worlds will become increasingly realistic, while robots will develop enough intelligence and human-like characteristics that they'll become companions , not merely vacuum cleaners and toys.

Most aspects of our lives, in fact, will be very different as we close in on the year 2050. Computing will be less about launching applications and more about living lives in which computers are inextricably woven into our daily activities.

"What we think of as a computer and what we think of as IT, in general, is likely to change," said Rattner , who has been at Intel for 35 of the companys 40 years. "The intelligent systems will move from being information systems to intelligent systems that will carry out a whole variety of tasks that we just won't think of as computing tasks... The technology will find its way into so many things we do and we won't even think about it. The explicit way we've done computing in the past will be there, but it will be a very small subset of what we'll be doing."

Intel hit its 40th anniversary last Friday. The company launched its first microprocessor in 1971, developed a processor with more than 1 million transistors in 1989, and late in 2007 packed 820 million transistors onto a single chip.

While chip advancements will continue throughout the semiconductor industry, technology advancements in general will start to change, according to Rattner.

"When you think back on where we were [decades ago]... Computers were still things that largely sat in big rooms behind big windows and were attended to by computing gurus or priests," he added. "In the 40 years, we've just completely changed the way people think about computers and computing. It's gone from a very expensive, very exclusive kind of technology to something that is unquestionably ubiquitous -- from the computers on our desks to the computers in our cell phones."

In the next 40 years, computer chips will extend beyond our computers and phones, as people want to become more entrenched in virtual worlds and computers learn to react to our motions and thoughts.

"When you see how intense the reaction is to things like the iPhone , with its use of touch and its sensitivity to motion, you begin to get a sense of, Gee, if machines understand the physical world and were capable of reacting to our voices, to our movements and gestures and touch, how much closer would we feel to them?"," asked Rattner. "At the same time, of course, we would like the ability to become more a part of these artificial or virtual worlds that are created entirely within the machine. We're starting to see, with things like Second Life and now Lively from Google , the ability of these machines to create these worlds that are much more comfortable for us to experience and be a part of."

As machine learning and computer perception progresses, machines will take on more and more human-like characteristics, he added. Recently, scientists have been putting electrodes into living neurons in living brains , but some researchers are working on ways to transfer brain waves and organic information without the electrodes, which wouldnt be physically intrusive.

"You can imagine a future where, in fact, not just our very senses will be engaged, but our thoughts will drive machine behavior," said Rattner. "You can see how that boundary starts to soften and begins to blur... There is no question in my mind that the technology will bring these two unique and distinct forms of intelligence together."Justin Rattner , CTO and a senior fellow at Intel, told Computerworld that perhaps as... more

shadowtrekker
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The world will not end in 2012

Science or science fiction?

pjacobs51
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