Glenshee Ski Centre offers the UK's most extensive skiing and snowboarding facilities - we hope you will enjoy our mountains of adventure.Glenshee's impressive 20 lifts and 36 runs offer an amazing diversity of natural terrain for all standards of skiers and snowboarders.
There are lots of options to choose from - you can join a class, go private, hire an instructor for your group, get into race training or simply take advantage of one of our great value package deals.
Data base that can be interrogated.
INSTRUCTIONS :
1. Cause of Death Column to the left is in World Rank Order.
2. Select a Country from the list on the right, click on it to place it in the Grid. You can place up to 7 countries into the Grid at one time.
3. Once the Country is in the Grid you can change the Cause of Death Column from the World Order to the Individual Country order by clicking on the Abbreviation beneath the Flag. Sorting the Data in this way enables you to compare one Country to another and against the World at the same time.
4. To remove an Individual Country from the Grid, return to the Country List on the right and Click to remove. You can then replace it with another Country or click the orange "Clear" button located at the top of the List to remove all Countries at once.
5. To assist you in finding Countries you may use the control above the list to alphabetise them. You'll also notice each time you select a country to be placed in the Grid it will change color and move to the top of the list making it easy to find to remove it. This feature also assists you in knowing which countries are in the Grid for review.
There are now 46,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometre of the world's oceans, killing a million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals each year. Worse still, there seems to be nothing we can do to clean it up. So how do we turn the tide?
Drowning in plastic: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is twice the size of France - Telegraph
The UK government has given a massive boost to world ambitions to develop clean-coal technology. It announced a decision that will herald a new generation of coal-fired power stations in the UK - but all of them will have to have their CO2 emissions partially captured by cutting-edge technology.
This map shows the change in run-off inferred from streamflow records worldwide between 1948 and 2004, with bluish colors indicating more streamflow and reddish colors less. Graphic: Journal of Climate, modified by UCAR
Some of the mightiest rivers on the planet, including the Ganges, the Niger, and the Yellow river in China, are drying up because of climate change, a study of global waterways warned yesterday.
Climate change threatens Ganges, Niger and other mighty rivers | Environment | The Guardian
The latest set of aerial photographs of the London 2012 olympic show just how far the building works have come along. Compare this aerial view of the Olympic Village site in April 2007...
London 2012 aerial pictures show Olympic Park's changing skyline - Telegraph
Water levels in some of the world's most important rivers have declined significantly over the past 50 years, US researchers say.
BBC NEWS | World | Americas | World's major rivers 'drying up'
The central Italy region ravaged by an earthquake more than a week ago will need at least euro12 billion (about $16 billion) for rebuilding, the country's interior minister said.
RELEASE DATE: Friday 24th April
Werner Herzog journeys to Antarctica's McMurdo Station to find out what it is that drives its 1,000 inhabitants to want to live and work in this remotest of glacial landscapes
Countries with ties to Antarctica have adopted US proposals to limit tourism in the region, in a bid to protect the fragile ecosystem of the continent.Parties to the Antarctic Treaty agreed to limit the size of cruise ships and the number of tourists taken ashore at a meeting in the US city of Baltimore. Limiting tourism has taken on urgency due to a surge in visits and a number of cruise ship accidents. Antarctic visits have risen from 6,700 in 1992-93 to over 45,000 last season.
BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | New limits to Antarctic tourism
Researchers believe the drought that struck parts of Northern Africa in the 1970s and 1980s, killing hundreds of thousands and displacing millions more, may have been the result of a natural climate cycle. In the past, many scientists thought the drought in the Sahel zone – a band that runs just below the Sahara – was caused by humans overusing natural resources in the region.
But a new study in the journal Science shows that they are a natural part of weather pattern of the area for the last 3,000 years.
If anything the droughts were less severe than those seen historically, with previous periods without rain lasting more than a century.
Catastrophic droughts in Africa are the norm, claim scientists - Telegraph
The annual Social Trends study published by the Office for National Statistics presents a revealing portrait of the way we live now.
Nearly two million men aged between 20 and 34 still live with their parents, almost twice the number of women of the same age. The proportion of young adults who are reluctant or unable to leave home has increased by about 300,000 since 2001. Far more are continuing with their studies, while others are unemployed. The lack of affordable housing is the chief deciding factor in living with parents. The proportion of single-person households has doubled since 1971, from 6 per cent to 12 per cent, while the number of marriages in England and Wales – 237,000 in 2006 – was the lowest for more than a century. The average age at which people tie the knot is 31.8 for men and 29.7 for women. In the past 10 years, the number of women under 25 giving birth has overtaken the number marrying by that age.
EDUCATION LAW and ORDER EMPLOYMENT POPULATION
LIFE STYLE WEALTH HEALTH HOUSING TRAVEL ENVIRONMENT
and SOCIETY
Britain is living beyond its environmental means and is increasingly dependent on the rest of the world for its natural resources, a thinktank study has revealed.The recession may have slowed consumption but the New Economics Foundation (Nef) says we are now drawing deep on the cropland, pasture, forests and fisheries of other countries. The research also shows that by tomorrow the country will have used the levels of resources it should consume in an entire year if it were to be ecologically self-sufficient.
UK goes into ecological debt on Easter Sunday | Environment | The Guardian
THE overthrow of Madagascar’s president in mid-March was partly caused by water problems—in South Korea. Worried by the difficulties of increasing food supplies in its water-stressed homeland, Daewoo, a South Korean conglomerate, signed a deal to lease no less than half Madagascar’s arable land to grow grain for South Koreans. Widespread anger at the terms of the deal (the island’s people would have received practically nothing) contributed to the president’s unpopularity. One of the new leader’s first acts was to scrap the agreement.
Three weeks before that, on the other side of the world, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California declared a state of emergency. Not for the first time, he threatened water rationing in the state. “It is clear,” says a recent report by the United Nations World Water Assessment Programme, “that urgent action is needed if we are to avoid a global water crisis.”
The government has released a list of 11 sites in England and Wales where new nuclear power stations could be built.The locations were nominated by companies interested in building the stations, and the government has given its initial approval to the sites.
BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | New nuclear site options unveiled
ROME, April 9 (Xinhua) -- The death toll from the earthquake in central Italy's Abruzzo region rose to 287 on Thursday, Italian media reported. Days after the 5.8 magnitude earthquake on Monday, aftershocks continued to jolt the region, with 71 seismic events recorded Wednesday night, Abruzzo Governor Gianni Chiodi said. There had been a total of 1,000 aftershocks since the quake struck the region on Monday, he said.
Premier Silvio Berlusconi said earlier on Thursday it was still too early to estimate the costs of rebuilding the quake-stricken region of Abruzzo, but this would likely require "several billion euros." Meanwhile, the government has approved a package of emergency measures to ease financial pressures on the 29,000 people left homeless by the earthquake.
According to the plan, families will receive up to 400 euros a month to help with rent while business owners, including farmers, who have had to cease activity because of the quake will receive a monthly allowance of 800 euros.
Electricity and gas bills for the stricken areas have been suspended for two months and insurance contributions have also been put on hold, while survivors will be able to renegotiate mortgages with banks. Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti said government aid to deal with the disaster had been increased to 100 million euros.
The government also approved the deployment of 700 troops to patrol the quake-hit areas alongside police to prevent looting. Some 19,000 survivors from the quake are currently housed in tent camps, while 10,000 others are allowed to live in hotels paid by the state.
The government also approved the deployment of 700 troops to patrol the quake-hit areas alongside police to prevent looting. Some 19,000 survivors from the quake are currently housed in tent camps, while 10,000 others are allowed to live in hotels paid by the state.
Photographs http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/04/the_laquila_earthquake.html
Warning given http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6046585.ece
Images http://www.flickr.com/photos/mirkosim/
BBC NEWS | World | Europe | Italy quake survivors mark Easter
Mexico City officials have shut down a main pipeline providing fresh water to millions of residents because reserves have fallen to record low levels.
BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Country profiles | Water cut off in Mexican capital
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Anyone unfortunate enough to have been caught by this year’s record-breaking UK floods might wonder how a lack of water could possibly be an imminent global problem. But away from our damp corner of the planet, things are rather different. Since 1950, the world’s population has doubled but the amount of fresh water available hasn’t actually budged at all. The result? According to the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), one-third of the world’s population is short of water. What’s worse, this is a point that the planet was not expected to reach, according to previous reports, until 2025, implying that the situation is deteriorating – fast
Pump Aid is a leading water and sanitation organisation, providing lasting solutions to clean water provision and sanitation. At Pump Aid we believe that access to clean water is a fundamental human right. Provision of clean water for rural communities in Africa, means that people can lead a healthy and productive life. Children are able to attend a full day at school, instead of fetching water from far away, open sources. Villagers in rural communities can utilise the clean water source for drinking, washing and irrigation that can lead to generating income from their vegetable crops
A desperate search for survivors is on in and around the Italian city of L'Aquila after a quake killed, Italian media say, at least 150 people.Some 5,000 rescuers are picking through rubble in the walled medieval city and nearby towns and villages, some of them said to have been virtually destroyed. Tents are being put up in tennis courts and on football pitches to house some of the 30,000-40,000 homeless. The number of people injured has been put at 1,500.
If you think it's impossibly complicated to make your town or city low carbon, think again.This website gives expert advice on planning, designing and managing a sustainable place. It cuts through the complexity with clear priorities for action. And it shows which places are getting it right.Getting it right means a more resilient economy, healthier residents, a more beautiful place and a better quality of life for everyone.
Arsenic poisoning has emerged as a fresh blow to Bangladesh, a country of 130 million population, known as a land of frequent natural calamities. Recent surveys showed that about 80 million people of the country are living under the risk of Arsenic poisoning as the groundwater of a vast region contaminated with Arsenic the Arsenic pollution is not only causing serious health hazard to the people, but also affecting the environment and creating social problems.
Arsenic poisoning was first detected in Bangladesh in 1993 by the Department of Public Health Engineering (DPHE). But the fact remained behind the screen till 1996. According to the latest surveys conducted at both Government levels, at least 53 out of the total 64 districts of Bangladesh are affected with Arsenic pollution
The destruction of nearly 182,000 hectares (450,000 acres) and the displacement of a million people by the worst Californian fire-storms in decades are focusing attention on what may, over the next 50 years, become the most pressing environmental issue in the US - the south-western states are drying up.
The south-western US is suffering its eighth consecutive year of drought. There are concerns that the Colorado River, which has sustained life in the area for thousands of years, can no longer meet the needs of the tens of millions of people living in major cities such as Las Vegas and Los Angeles.
The BBC's Matthew Price is travelling along the river to investigate the scale of the problem and is sending a series of diary items from there.
The Gibe III dam is under construction on the Omo River, approximately 300km southwest of Addis Ababa. It is the third in a series of cascading hydroelectric projects in the region.The first, the Gilgel Gibe dam (also called Gibe I), was completed north of the Gibe III dam site in 2004. The Gibe II project is a power plant associated with the Gibe I dam that is still under construction. The new Gibe III dam is expected to produce 6500 GWh of energy a year, and surplus energy is expected to create 300 million euros (£282m; $407m) in revenue, according to the Ethiopian Electric Power Corporation (EEPCo), the sole provider of power in Ethiopia. Ethiopia's neighbours, such as Djibouti, Yemen, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan and Egypt, would all be in a position to purchase the excess energy.
Chinese officials may be forced to resettle some of Beijing’s new arrivals over the next 5 to 10 years due to a population boom that accompanied both a rapid economic expansion and a decade-long stretch of yearly droughts. Probe International, an independent environmental advocacy group, advised Chinese officials that Beijing faces economic collapse as the capital begins to run out of water during that period.
The official Xinhua news agency reports that Beijing and the surrounding region have suffered drought every year since 1999. To deal with the changing climate, the country is building a multibillion-dollar scheme known as the North-South Water Diversion Project. Xinhua says that once completed, the project will divert one billion cubic yards of water to Beijing annually, mostly from the Yangtze River.
About 40 prcent of the water Beijing uses each year is normally extracted from the Miyun reservoir, an hour and half drive north of the capital. But the water stored behind its dam is now clearly depleated by a decade of drought.
A recently constructed section of the controversial US-Mexico border fence expansion project crosses previously pristine desert sands at sunrise on March 14, 2009 between Yuma, Arizona and Calexico, California. The new barrier between the US and Mexico stands 15 feet tall and sits on top of the sand so it can lifted by a machine and repositioned whenever the migrating desert dunes begin to bury it. The almost seven miles of floating fence cost about $6 million per mile to build.
A Mexican soldier walks near a U.S.-Mexico border crossing in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
The information system consists of:
Databases - The AQUASTAT main country database; Databases on African dams, on institutions, on river sediment yields, and on investment costs in irrigation
Countries and regions - Standardized text by country and by region on the state of water resources and agricultural water use
Climate information tool - A tool to provide climate estimates for the land surface of the globe
Water resources - Review of the statistics of renewable water resources by country
Agricultural water use - Review of agricultural water use by country
Global irrigation map - Global map of irrigated areas, which is a spatial dataset on areas equipped for irrigation
Maps and tables - A selection of downloadable maps and datasets on water and agriculture
AQUASTAT - FAO's Information System on Water and Agriculture
Circle of Blue is the international network of leading journalists, scientists and communications design experts that reports and presents the information necessary to respond to the global freshwater crisis. It is a nonprofit affiliate of the internationally recognized water, climate and policy think tank, the Pacific Institute.
Clean fresh water is essential to life. Unfortunately, since the Industrial Revolution, most of Europe's rivers have been treated unwisely as a convenient way of transporting waste to the sea, affecting the biodiversity of thousands of kilometers of waterways, harming human health, and in the end polluting coastal and marine waters.
The countries that make up two thirds of the world’s agricultural output are experiencing drought conditions. Whether you watch a video of the drought in China, Australia, Africa, South America, or the US, the scene will be the same: misery, ruined crop, and dying cattle.
China
The drought in Northern China, the worst in 50 years, is worsening, and summer harvest is now threatened. The area of affected crops has expanded to 161 million mu (was 141 million last week), and 4.37 million people and 2.1 million livestock are facing drinking water shortage. The scarcity of rain in some parts of the north and central provinces is the worst in recorded history.
The drought which started in November threatens over half the wheat crop in eight provinces - Hebei, Shanxi, Anhui, Jiangsu, Henan, Shandong, Shaanxi and Gansu.
Henan China's largest crop producing province, Henan, has issued the highest-level drought warning. Henan has received an average rainfall of 10.5 millimeters since November 2008, almost 80 percent less than in the same period in the previous years. The Henan drought, which began in November, is the most severe since 1951.
Anhui Province issued a red drought alert, with more than 60 percent of the crops north of the Huaihe River plagued by a major drought.
Shanxi Province was put on orange drought alert on Jan. 21, with one million people and 160,000 heads of livestock are facing water shortage.
Jiangsu province has already lost over one fifth of the wheat crops affected by drought. Local agricultural departments are diverting water from nearby rivers in an emergency effort to save the rest.
Hebei Over 100 million cubic meters of water has been channeled in from outside the province to fight Hebei’s drought.
Shaanxi 1.34 million acres of crops across the bone-dry Shanxi province are affected by the worsening drought.
Since last November, Shandong province has experienced 73 percent less rain than the same period in previous years, with little rainfall forecast for the future.
Relief efforts are under way. The Chinese government has allocated 86.7 billion yuan (about $12.69 billion) to drought-hit areas. Authorities have also resorted to cloud-seeding, and some areas received a sprinkling of rain after clouds were hit with 2,392 rockets and 409 cannon shells loaded with chemicals. However, there is a limit to what can be done in the face of such widespread water shortage.
As I have previously written, China is facing hyperinflation, and this record drought will make things worse. China produces 18% of the world's grain each year.
Australia has been experiencing an unrelenting drought since 2004, and 41 percent of Australia's agriculture continues to suffer from the worst drought in 117 years of record-keeping. The drought has been so severe that rivers stopped flowing, lakes turned toxic, and farmers abandoned their land in frustration:
A) The Murray River stopped flowing at its terminal point, and its mouth has closed up.
B) Australia’s lower lakes are evaporating, and they are now a meter (3.2 feet) below sea level. If these lakes evaporate any further, the soil and the mud system below the water is going to be exposed to the air. The mud will then acidify, releasing sulfuric acid and a whole range of heavy metals. After this occurs, those lower lake systems will essentially become a toxic swamp which will never be able to be recovered. The Australian government's only options to prevent this are to allow salt water in, creating a dead sea, or to pray for rain.
provides information on the following locations
The United States California Texas Augusta Region (Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina) Florida
South America Argentina Brazil Paraguay Uruguay Bolivia Chile
Africa faces food shortages and famine. Kenya Tanzania Burundi Uganda South Africa
Middle East and Central Asia Iraq Syria Afghanistan Jordan
Google Image Result for http://www.greatdreams.com/climate/Countries_by_agricultural_drought.png
University of California at Berkeley physics grad student Robert Rohde used all available data from government sources to map 150 years’ worth of hurricane tracks through September 2005.
Map: Where Do the Nastiest Hurricanes Emerge? | Natural Disasters | DISCOVER Magazine
Chocolate bars. They're supposed to taste good, but can they also be good? We think so!
Our Climate Change Chocolate bar is meant to educate while tasting great. It comes in a wrapper with 15 tips for lightening your environmental impact. These helpful hints teach you how to save energy by making small changes to your daily habits
TerraPass | Balance your carbon emissions and fight climate change
Losses from geo risks are increasing dramatically worldwide. Munich Re has been researching geoscientific phenomena, their risks and their loss potentials, since 1974.
What is water scarcity? Imbalances between availability and demand, the degradation of groundwater and surface water quality, intersectoral competition, interregional and international conflicts, all contributes to water scarcity.
Scarcity often has its roots in water shortage, and it is in the arid and semiarid regions affected by droughts and wide climate variability, combined with population growth and economic development, that the problems of water scarcity are most acute
10 figures for the report "Water stress in Europe, can the challenge be met?" published in 1997. Water resources, pesticides pollution, life expectancy...
Water stress in Europe - Maps and Graphics at UNEP/GRID-Arendal
