Washington - Human activity such as driving and powering air conditioners is responsible for up to 60 percent of changes contributing to dwindling water supplies in the arid and growing West, a new study finds.
President Rafael Correa on Thursday declared a state of emergency as Ecuador was lashed by its worst rainy season in a decade, which has sparked widespread flooding and destruction of crops.
Eurasian reed warblers captured during their spring migrations and released after being flown 1,000 kilometers to the east can correct their travel routes and head for their original destinations, researchers report online on January 31st in Current Biology, a publication of Cell Press.
The new evidence suggests that the birds have true navigation, meaning that they can identify at least two coordinates that roughly correspond to geographic latitude and longitude.
The findings challenge the notion held by some that birds might be limited to navigation in the north-south direction. But scientists still don't know how they do it.
Carlos Quiroga and Hilary Burke Reuters Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:14 UTC
LA PAZ - Flooding and torrential rains have killed 40 people in Bolivia since November, wrecking highways, crops and thousands of homes in the impoverished country, officials said on Wednesday.
Nearly 400,000 people living in the Andean city of La Paz have been forced to ration their drinking water after mudslides damaged water pipes last week, and the mayor said the shortages could last until March.
A frozen peat bog covering the entire sub-Arctic area of Western Siberia, the size of France and Germany, contains billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas that is melting for the first time since since it was sequestered more than 11,000 years ago before the end of the last ice age.
When Alexander Cockburn, author of the forthcoming book A Short History of Fear, dared to question the climate change consensus, he was punished by a tsunami of self-righteous fury. It is time for a free and open 'battle of ideas', he says.
"We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction."
~ US State Department, 1948
- George Kennan
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His best bet is to step down, but his greed won't allow it. [Link]