Crop pollination exposes honey bees to pesticides, altering their susceptibility to pathogens

I'd like to say: "No shit?" but it'd be premature. Instead: hm... further research is obivously needed (har, before a billions-of-dollars industry can be put to question & 'blame').

Crop Pollination Exposes Honey Bees to Pesticides Which Alters Their Susceptibility to the Gut Pathogen Nosema ceranae. Link to PlosONE.

From the research article's abstract: "We detected 35 different pesticides in the sampled pollen, and found high fungicide loads. The insecticides esfenvalerate and phosmet were at a concentration higher than their median lethal dose in at least one pollen sample." (Pettis et al, 2013)

And the original source where I got the link from: here.

"Highlight":

'The pollen was contaminated on average with nine different pesticides and fungicides though scientists discovered 21 agricultural chemicals in one sample. Scientists identified eight ag chemicals associated with increased risk of infection by the parasite called Nosema ceranae.' (here)

 

Glaciers flooding nearby towns

Never thought of this particular consequence of global climate change and warming, to be honest:

 

"Starting in July 2011, and each year since, sudden torrents of water shooting out from beneath the glacier have become a new facet of Juneau's brief, shimmering high summer season. In that first, and so far biggest, measured flood burst, an estimated 10 billion gallons gushed out in three days, threatening homes and property along the Mendenhall River that winds through part of the city. There have been at least two smaller bursts this year."

 

From: July 23 News: Melting Glaciers Across The Globe Experiencing 'Jokulhlaup,' Icelandic For 'Glacier Leap' (link)

 

 

Climate change is threatening Bangladesh's Millennium Development Goals two years before the goals' 2015 deadline. [Reuters] (Ibidem)

 

'Costs of Arctic methane release could approach value of global economy' (link)

Funny, food, de-re-forestation, desertification, floods, draughts, acidification do not even enter the title.
See, this is sort of what I talk about when I say value of Climate Change costs (from damages, adaptation or mitigation) might (harhar) end up higher than the money 'we have' as the world.

In relation to the news and the above, this comes to mind.

Obama's Climate Care

Some stuff changes. Some doesn't. China's role in the world is. USA's dealing with climate change isn't ... at least not as fast. 

Read below. It is encouraging, however, that a (black) US president is saying stuff like climate change being affected by human behaviour and climate emissions.

 

'President Barack Obama has stumbled on an unusual partner in his quest to combat climate change: China.' Josh Lederman |21.7.2013|
(1) http://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2013/07/21/environment/obama-finds-unlikely-ally-in-climate-change-battle-china/

I have to say: how is carbon capture going to help us, in the long term? Besides prolonging the age of the fossil fuel consumption, how is having a time-bomb stored underground in an - if it leaks - atmosphere-accessible way, going to help us?
Seriously, people.
"They also agreed to team up on large-scale experiments with "carbon capture" — a technology that isolates carbon dioxide from power plant emissions so it can be safely stored." (Ibidem)

Some time ago (Nov, 2012, (1)) and less time ago (3), president Obama was making some big-ass statements. With little actual work.
'Obama Talks Climate Change During His First Post-Election Press Conference', Stephen Lacey |Nov 14, 2012|
"Obama's response in today's press conference shows that broad action on climate probably isn't very high up on the priority list at the moment. While he did say he wanted to do more on climate in his second term, Obama gave few specifics about what a plan might look like."
From source (2): http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/11/14/1191841/obama-talks-climate-change-during-his-first-post-election-press-conference/

Pic from the same source (2).

Whitehouse gave us a nice jpeg file online, after Obama's speech (5) on climate. 'President Obama's Plan to Fight Climate Change' (Tuesday, June 25, 2013)
(3): http://www.whitehouse.gov/share/climate-action-plan

And now, for something (not) completely different:
'Billions spent in Obama climate plan may be virtually useless, study suggests' (July 18, 2013)
  Though I must say that you know, in theory, getting together paying 12 people to do some research for you should not be too hard in climate-sceptic abundant US&A. To me, it seems a bit like
this news is launched by the Big Oil. But then again, I offer no proof and it's just a minor feeling.
It would be worthy to see who pays and owns Fox news. Just saying.
Additionally, it has been shown in economics (though, I must say and point out, I cannot cite the source (!) at this time, as I forgot where it was that I read it)
that taxes work less well than monetary incentives for businesses and households. (One is negatively and the other one, positively charged and perceived.)

Highlights: biofuels VS gasoline, 'fracking' seems to be supported or at least not contradicted, 'more research needed to attribute the GHG reductions with government's actions', US army going green (see below), possibly more nuclear ("investment in a range of energy technologies, from advanced biofuels to nuclear mini-reactors") and others.

"The Defense Department is committing to deploy about 3 gigawatts of solar, wind, biomass and geothermal energy on military installations by 2025. Federal agencies intend to install 100 megawatts of additional renewable capacity in federally subsidized housing by 2020."

(4) Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/07/18/billions-spent-in-obama-climate-plan-may-be-virtually-useless-study-suggests/#ixzz2ZmR5XXDe

(5) President Obama's Climate Change Speech: Full Text: http://ens-newswire.com/2013/06/25/president-obamas-climate-change-speech-full-text/

"The Green Island" - 'The eco resort that's 'greener' than most'

We originally put in 96 solar panels and last year we put in 32 more. The first 96 were 205 watts per panel and cost $2000 each; the ones I put in last year are 245 watts per panel and cost me $900 each. Now I can get 255 watts per panel and they're about $400 so it's getting more and more economical.

http://2degreesproject.com.au/Story/green-eco-resort

President Obama’s 2nd-Term Plan To Address Climate Change

Well, this is interesting.

President Obama's Second-Term Plan To Address Climate Change

 

"The plan, according to senior administration officials, has three pillars: cutting carbon pollution in America, leading international efforts to cut global emissions, and preparing the U.S. for the costly impacts of climate change. President Obama will frame action as a moral obligation to do what we can for "the world we leave our children."

 

"Increasing renewables: Set a goal to double electricity fueled by renewable energy by 2020 nationally. This will be kickstarted by a goal of 10 gigawatts' worth of permits for renewable energy projects on public lands by 2020. Another Presidential Memorandum streamlines electric grid transmission projects across the country. Increase the federal government renewable target from the current 7.5 percent to 20 percent by 2020.
Get smarter: Conduct the first-ever Quadrennial Energy Review, focusing on infrastructure and investment. Aggregate energy data from federal facilities using the "Green Button" standard. Launch a Climate Data Initiative, which makes federal climate-related data available to the public, encouraging innovation and climate preparedness.
Fuel efficiency: The administration will develop post-2018 fuel economy standards for heavy-duty vehicles, building upon 2011′s first-ever such standards.
Appliances and buildings: Establish goal that current efficiency standards for appliances and federal buildings will reduce carbon pollution by more than 3 billion metric tons by 2030.
Efficient housing: Try innovative approaches to developing cost-effective energy delivery to multifamily housing. Federally subsidized housing stock will strive toward a goal of 100 megawatts of installed renewable capacity by 2020 as well. Find options to factor energy efficiency into the mortgage process. Expand Better Buildings Challenge to make multifamily housing more efficient.

On paper, the plan, if implemented quickly and decisively (which means also supported by a robust legal and public defense against the certain fusillade from Republican and industry groups), could be fairly consequential given the realities of current congressional dysfunction. Whether or not Keystone XL is approved, the U.S. needs to cut emissions a great deal, and there are things in the plan that could kickstart that process. To roll back carbon pollution with the intent of avoiding catastrophic global warming will require more."

High environmental costs if 2050 world population be fed

... Well, it depends how, as always.
Below, an excerpt from Bloomberg BusinessWeek's report:

“Current growth in global crop yields will be insufficient to feed the world in 2050,” according to the University of Minnesota. 

 But, if we are nice to each other, we may make it:

More efficient use of arable lands and increasing yield growth rates by sharing best-management practices may help lift production, the study authors wrote. Changing to more plant-based diets and reducing food waste could reduce the large expected growth in demand, according to the researchers. 

With the BAU, Business As Usual, it may not look so good:

Environmental Costs

“A portion of the production shortfall could also be met by expanding croplands, but at a high environmental cost to biodiversity and carbon emissions,” the authors said. 

Source: link.

Wind power: NIMBY-ism (Not In My Backyard) VS. WARYDU rhetoric (We Are Right; You Don't Understand)

Because it reads so nice, I am just going to copy-paste this paragraph from the "Acoustic Ecology Institute" (don't ask me what it is, I've never before heard of it) (Source: this here link):

 

From another page: link.

Modern wind turbines are massive structures, hundreds of feet tall, and often constructed in large wind farms that in effect industrialize rural landscapes, from the rolling grassy hills of California, to the vast rangeland of Texas, to ancient ridgelines in the Appalachians, to the commons in rural England. While the trade-offs may be worth it in some areas, the downsides have become more apparent. Resistance to wind farms is often belittled as NIMBY-ism (Not In My Backyard); but at the same time, proponents often slip into oversimplifeid WARYDU rhetoric (We Are Right; You Don't Understand). In most cases, industrial wind farms are complying with local noise limits; the issue has become whether these noise limits are sufficient to protect rural residents from irrevocable changes in the soundscapes of their homes and farms. If we are to forge a reliable energy future that is respectful of both the environment and the rights of neighbors, we'll need to move past knee-jerk reactions on both sides, and develop best practices that can ensure that the landscape and local residents don't become long-term casualties of today's "Klondike Wind Rush."

 

 

 
This caption is from the first site as well <link>:
How big are modern wind turbines? The ones on the left are 60m and 125m; the one on the right is 95m, with blades sweeping an area the size of a 747.
 

EU ETS update - 2 billion surplus allowances. Whoops.

 

EU ETS: continuing decline in emissions but growing surplus of allowances in 2012

Allowance surplus doubled in 2012

The surplus of emission allowances almost doubled from around 950 million at the end of 2011. A combination of the use of international credits, auctioned phase 2 allowances and remaining allowances in the new entrant reserve, sales of phase 3 allowances to generate funds for the NER300 programme and early auctioning of phase 3 allowances resulted in a cumulative surplus of almost two billion allowances by the end of 2012.

Connie Hedegaard, European Commissioner for Climate Action, said: "The good news is that emissions declined again in 2012. The bad news is that the supply-demand imbalance has further worsened in large part due to a record use of international credits. At the start of phase 3, we see a surplus of almost two billion allowances. These facts underline the need for the European Parliament and Council to act swiftly on back-loading."

From: http://ec.europa.eu/clima/news/articles/news_2013051601_en.htm

Big companies and UN on Environmental reporting

Big companies should report their impact on the environment in addition to their earnings under a U.N. plan to boost economic growth and ease poverty by 2030, according to recommendations by a panel of world leaders released on Thursday.

 

This is from a UN report. Title of the news item is UN Recommends Big Companies Report Environmental Impacts As Well As Profits. <link here>

 

More from the same source:

 

And aparently, they actually said: "Without environmental sustainability, we cannot end poverty; the poor are too deeply affected by natural disasters and too dependent on deteriorating oceans, forests and soils."

 

Snippets:

 

Australia is on track to generate 22 percent of its energy from renewable resources. [CleanTechnica]

 

The Canadian government refused to detail how $16 million in taxpayer funds was spent to promote oil, gas, and other resources. [Vancouver Sun]

 

André Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard, the pilots of Solar Impulse – the first 100% solar-powered plane that flies day and night without fuel –  Read more at http://cleantechnica.com/2013/05/30/solar-plane-reddit-ask-me-anything-may-31-100pm-et/#dEmmsE0Ic5L1CBKO.99

 

New Jersey is set to increase spending on solar energy by nearly half a billion dollars, meaning almost a hundred more megawatts of new capacity. [Solar Love]

A new special report from USA Today on the impacts of climate change spotlights how increased carbon dioxide creates more pollen, making allergy sufferers miserable. [USA Today]

Former Iowa lawmaker Ed Fallon is organizing a 1,000-person climate march across the country next year, spanning 8 months, thousands of miles, and lots of public curiosity. [Des Moines Register]

 

 

Assessing dangerous climate change through an update of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) “reasons for concern”

From their abstract (I deposit it here for later use):

we describe revisions of the sensitivities of the RFCs to increases in GMT and a more thorough understanding of the concept of vulnerability that has evolved over the past 8 years. This is based on our expert judgment about new findings in the growing literature since the publication of the TAR in 2001, including literature that was assessed in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), as well as additional research published since AR4. Compared with results reported in the TAR, smaller increases in GMT are now estimated to lead to significant or substantial consequences in the framework of the 5 “reasons for concern.”

From:

Smith, J. B., Schneider, S. H., Oppenheimer, M., Yohe, G. W., Hare, W., Mastrandrea, M. D., ... & Van Ypersele, J. P. (2009). Assessing dangerous climate change through an update of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)“reasons for concern”. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(11), 4133-4137. Link: http://ateson.com/ws/r/www.pnas.org/content/106/11/4133.full

The FED, Too Big to Fail, Carbon Bubble and pension funds

From: If Alan Greenspan Wants To 'End The Fed', Times Must Be Changing (Forbes, 3/14/2013)
Edward Griffin's The Creature from Jekyll Island is an excellent account of how the Fed came into being. The fact that this 1994 book is, today, the #2 bestselling book in Amazon.com's Banks and Banking category, the #2 bestselling book in the Economic Policy and Development category, and the #4 bestselling book in the Economic Policy category, shows why crowds start chanting "End the Fed" wherever Ron Paul turns up, with no prompting from him.

In recent years, any attentive watcher has noticed that the Fed has been working rather closely with certain "Too Big to Fail" banks, in ways that are not necessarily in the public's best interest. The fact that the Fed is likely heavily influenced by a certain well-known European banking family — a criticism that president Andrew Jackson applied to its predecessor the Second Bank of the United States, just before he killed it — is all the more reason to eliminate its influence in U.S. affairs.

As a member of the "keep the Fed" camp in prior years, it seems to me now that we will most likely come to that point, in not too many years, where replacing the Fed will be the best and even the easiest path.
We are not there yet.

 

Carbon bubble will plunge the world into another financial crisis – report (The Guardian.uk, 19.04.2013)

"Analysts say you should ride the train until just before it goes off the cliff. Each thinks they are smart enough to get off in time, but not everyone can get out of the door at the same time. That is why you get bubbles and crashes."

'The world's governments have agreed to restrict the global temperature rise to 2C, beyond which the impacts become severe and unpredictable. But Stern said the investors clearly did not believe action to curb climate change was going to be taken. "They can't believe that and also believe that the markets are sensibly valued now." '

 

"This report makes it clear that 'business as usual' is not a viable option for the fossil fuel industry in the long term. [The market] is assuming it will get early warning, but my worry is that things often happen suddenly in the oil and gas sector."

 

I find this next one remarkably important:
The report calculates that the world's currently indicated fossil fuel reserves equate to 2,860bn tonnes of carbon dioxide, but that just 31% could be burned for an 80% chance of keeping below a 2C temperature rise. For a 50% chance of 2C or less, just 38% could be burned.

Carbon capture and storage technology, which buries emissions underground, can play a role in the future, but even an optimistic scenario which sees 3,800 commercial projects worldwide would allow only an extra 4% of fossil fuel reserves to be burned. There are currently no commercial projects up and running. The normally conservative International Energy Agency has also concluded that a major part of fossil fuel reserves is unburnable.

Oh, and the pension funds, you ask?
Pension funds are also concerned. "Every pension fund manager needs to ask themselves have we incorporated climate change and carbon risk into our investment strategy? If the answer is no, they need to start to now," said Howard Pearce, head of pension fund management at the Environment Agency, which holds £2bn in assets.

 

I think this guy [Jeremy Grantham, a billionaire fund manager who oversees $106bn of assets] speaks sense, when he "said his company was on the verge of pulling out of all coal and unconventional fossil fuels, such as oil from tar sands. "The probability of them running into trouble is too high for me to take that risk as an investor."" 

 

What if it's all a big hoax, climate cover-up and Kunt Vonnegut

What if we create a better world for nothing?

 An interesting read has been brought to my attention recently: Climate Cover-Up by James Hoggan.

"Climate Cover-Up names names, identifying bogus experts who are actually paid lobbyists and flaks. The authors reveal the pr techniques used to misinform, to mangle the language, and to intimidate the media into maintaining a phony climate change debate."...
 

 It is amazing, how many people continue to argue about it. I for one think it does not matter - we can just dispense with the climate change talk ... and try to deal with the rest of the shit. Inequality, corruption and environmental degradation, with a topping of species loss per day and riots because of too few owning too much. Well, but we've been there, haven't we? We did squat. Sooo, luckily for the planet and ALL its species (including us, humans), we'll face a crisis bigger than anything we've seen before. And then, we'll act. Loosing some billion human lives on the way, but we'll act. And I hope we then truly manage the world in a sustainable, custodian-guardian kind of way. Sigh.

I got the Big Hoax picture from the internet search (type in the text in the speech bouble and you will get it), but one for example is this one [the animated cartoon I don't really get in whole, I'm afraid].

Additionally, "what’s so radical about wanting to protect life-sustaining biosystems? About wanting to only consume as much energy and resources as is sustainable? And about wanting to build an economic system that is equitable?
And ‘equitable’ means equitable for all, including future generations."

From a great Blog post that is designed to 'lift your spirits':
Was Kurt Vonnegut right (and if so, Now What?), by Mike Targett.