Tuesday, 29 September 2009
Sunday, 27 September 2009
Can China help to defuse the nuclear threat from Iran?
As a veto-holding permanent member of the UN Security Council, China's position will be crucial to international efforts to deal with Iran's secret nuclear facility.
"Iran is an important country for China: we have diplomatic interests, but also energy and trade links," he said. "[And] if China is too harsh, it will not be favourable to its image and influence in the Middle East."
China is the world's second-largest consumer of crude oil while Iran has the world's second largest reserves; Iranian oil made up more than a tenth of China's crude imports last year. Earlier this year, the two countries announced a $3.2bn three-year natural gas deal, and in the spring Iran's Press TV reported that trade volume between the countries leapt from $400m in 1994 to $29bn in 2008.
Can China help to defuse the nuclear threat from Iran? | World news | The Observer
Iran and United States on collision course over nuclear plant | World news | The Observer
The US and Iran raised the stakes yesterday ahead of this week's nuclear showdown in Geneva, with threats of global strife if no resolution is found.
The sharpened rhetoric followed Friday's revelation that Iran had been building a secret uranium enrichment plant under a mountain near Qom, and it points towards a new wave of sanctions that go far beyond the targeted financial measures imposed on Iran so far.
Speaking at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh, Barack Obama declared: "Iran is on notice that when we meet with them on 1 October they are going to have to come clean, and they will have to make a choice." The alternative to sticking to international rules on Iran's nuclear development, he said, would be "a path that is going to lead to confrontation".
Iran and United States on collision course over nuclear plant | World news | The Observer
Iran defiant over secret nuclear facility
BBC Iran conceal nuclear facility
10:10 | What is 10:10?
10:10 is an ambitious project to unite every sector of British society behind one simple idea: that by working together we can achieve a 10% cut in the UK’s carbon emissions in 2010.
Why bother jumping out of the way of a speeding car? Why bother removing a burst appendix?
Cutting 10% in one year is a bold target, but for most of us it’s an achievable one, and is in line with what scientists say we need over the next 18 months. We now know for certain that unless we act quickly to reduce our use of dirty fossil fuels, humanity will face terrible problems in the years to come. Politicians have so far failed to do what needs to be done, so it’s time for ordinary people to step in and show that we’re ready to defend our children’s futures. It’s now or never for the climate.
Saturday, 26 September 2009
Kenya's slums attract poverty tourism
Tourists snapping up £20 guided walks around Nairobi's open-sewer streets
The streets of Kibera, Nairobi, are attracting the interest of tour operators - but critics say the residents are on parade like animals. Photograph: Stephen Morrison/EPA
The Dutch tourists came well prepared for the walking safari: strong shoes and sunscreen, backpacks and bottled water. Ahead lay an afternoon visiting one of Kenya's most recognisable sights – but one that rarely features in tourist brochures.
"It might seem a bit strange to come here," said Eric Schlangen, as the guide led him towards the sea of tin-roofed shacks that constitute Kibera, often described as one of the world's largest slums. "But I wanted to see how people live in this country, not just the animals."
Slum tourism is taking off in Kenya. Several local organisations have started selling guided trips through Kibera, a short drive from the luxury hotels that serve most foreign visitors in Nairobi.
For about £20, tourists are promised a glimpse into the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people crammed into tiny rooms along dirt paths littered with excrement-filled plastic bags known as "flying toilets", as one tour agency explains on its website.
Kenya's slums attract poverty tourism | World news | The Guardian
Very young children among migrants heading for UK, warns UN refugee agency
The UN's refugee agency warned today that children as young as three are among the migrants attempting to reach Britain and that the number of unaccompanied refugee children is on the increase.There is evidence that ever younger children are attempting dangerous journeys around the world, said William Spindler, spokesman for the UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR).
New surfers' reef fails to make waves
In the parlance of the surfing community it was supposed to attract, Bournemouth's new £3m underwater reef was meant to be Gnarlatious, creating giant Honkers from Atlantic swells and so bringing in legions of Dudes and Dudettes who flock to resorts in Cornwall and Devon each year to ride Bamboras.Instead it has turned out to be Bogus, and is making waves for all the wrong reasons.As work on the reef at Boscombe comes to a close, surfers say there is still no sign of the promised "world-class" waves it was meant to create. Residents are furious that the project, which is more than a year behind schedule and has cost three times the original budget, is failing to deliver.
New surfers' reef fails to make waves - This Britain, UK - The Independent
Friday, 25 September 2009
Ozone Hole Appears On the Mend
Satellite instruments monitor the ozone layer, then the data are used to create images that depict the amount of stratospheric ozone. The blue and purple colors are where there is the least ozone, and the greens, yellows, and reds are where there is more ozone.The size of the hole in stratospheric ozone that develops over Antarctica at this time each year appears to have stabilized, according to satellite observations analyzed by various agencies around the world. Matthew Tulley from Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology says the hole has begun to show signs of healing because of the international agreement to phase out the production of ozone-depleting chemicals in the 1987 Montreal Protocol. Recent observations indicate that the level of ozone-depleting substances has decreased by 4 percent since 2001.
Thursday, 24 September 2009
Artic Survey education
Arctic Survey Education is an initiative to promote climate change awareness by inspiring and engaging young people and their families with new facts and knowledge. The Arctic Ocean sea ice cover may melt in just four years or in fifty years. Scientists need data so that they can forecast more precisely. The Catlin Arctic Survey team has provided ice and snow thickness data from their expedition to the Arctic Ocean during March, April and May 2009.
The Solucar solar power plant in Sanlucar la Mayor near Seville, Spain - Telegraph
The new PS20 solar tower gathers sunlight at the Solucar Platform in Sanlucar la Mayor, southern Spain
The Solucar solar power plant in Sanlucar la Mayor near Seville, Spain - Telegraph
Rash of Water Main Breaks Points To Vulnerability of Systems
Recent water main breaks highlight challenges to water infrastructure.Major water main breaks in Los Angeles and Baltimore in recent days highlight challenges to the U.S. water infrastructure system.
A rash of water main breaks in the Los Angeles water system this month have flooded streets, forced residents to evacuate, and damaged homes and businesses, the Los Angeles Times reported. One break created a sinkhole that nearly swallowed a firetruck responding to the scene, while another sent a surge of mud and water 10 feet into the air.
Since the start of September, L.A.’s Department of Water and Power has recorded 34 “major blowouts” in the city’s water system, the Los Angeles Times reported Sept. 19. By contrast, the city had only 21 such ruptures through all of September 2008, 17 in September 2007 and 13 in September 2006.
Rash of Water Main Breaks Points To Vulnerability of Systems | Circle of Blue | WaterNews
BBC NEWS | World | Getting ready for the storm surge
Millions of people who live in low-lying coastal areas of the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Belgium and the UK are at risk from a severe storm surge.A major exercise is under way in the Netherlands in which British specialist rescue teams, as well as those from other European countries, are simulating what might happen in the event of a major North Sea flood.
VIDEO
Wednesday, 23 September 2009
Saturday, 19 September 2009
Wednesday, 16 September 2009
Magazine / Geographical
Build flood defences, examine glaciers, advance renewable energy technologies, monitor water quality and more with a degree in geography. Read the FREE I am a Geographer careers supplement to find out more
Monday, 14 September 2009
Storm chaser
The extreme weather photographer and storm chaser Jim Reed has spent the past 20 years as close as possible – perhaps closer than is advisable – to the most extreme meteorological events. Covering disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Ike, Reed's book, Storm Chaser: A Photographer's Journey, documents his time in the field.
Surviving the direct strike of 17 hurricanes in the US, 2010 marks Reed's 19th consecutive year of extreme weather photography. Reed currently has images being shown at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington
In pictures: Storm chaser Jim Reed | Environment | guardian.co.uk
How drought is destroying Kenya's nomad
In the isolated border lands between Kenya and Somalia, families have always clung to a precarious existence. Now a decade of droughts has tested their endurance
VIDEO
How drought is destroying Kenya's nomads | Environment | The Observer
Saturday, 12 September 2009
Where the Premier League's players come from
Globalisation and sport. INTERACTIVE MAP
BBC SPORT | Football | Premier League | Where the Premier League's players come from
Thursday, 10 September 2009
Brits Abroad
World overview Welcome to Brits Abroad – a comprehensive guide to where Britons live around the world. Use the tabs above to explore the information, compiled by the Institute for Public Policy Research.
Wednesday, 9 September 2009
How to measure an earthquake
Originally, Charles Richter used information from seismographs - which measure earth movement - to work out the location and size of a tremor.
He developed a sliding scale based on the distance between an earthquake and the seismograph station where the quake was recorded and the amplitude of the largest seismic wave measured.
Tuesday, 8 September 2009
Intute - Natural hazards
These pages draw together resources about a range of natural hazards. These resources include satellite images, maps, articles, links to data, information on current and historical events, links to sources focusing on the measurement/classification of events, combined with links from the Intute Internet resource catalogue. Together these provide a growing resource about natural hazards around the globe.
Atlas Obscura
Welcome to the Atlas Obscura, a compendium of this age's wonders, curiosities, and esoterica. The Atlas Obscura is a collaborative project with the goal of cataloging all of the singular, eccentric, bizarre, fantastical, and strange out-of-the-way places that get left out of traditional travel guidebooks and are ignored by the average tourist. If you're looking for miniature cities, glass flowers, books bound in human skin, gigantic flaming holes in the ground, phallological museums, bone churches, balancing pagodas, or homes built entirely out of paper, the Atlas Obscura is where you'll find them.
Sunday, 6 September 2009
BEEP BioEthics Education Project: Biodiversity
What is biodiversity? The Earth contains a rich and diverse assembly of organisms. This is known as Biodiversity and was defined by UNEP in 1995:
Wednesday, 2 September 2009
Aral Sea Continues to Shrink, August 2009 : Image of the Day
Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the Aral Sea was the world’s fourth-largest lake. In the 1960s, the Soviet Union began a massive irrigation project in what are now Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan, diverting water from the rivers that feed the Aral Sea to irrigate farmland. As its water levels dropped, the lake began splitting into smaller pieces: the Northern (Small) Aral Sea and the Southern (Large) Aral Sea. The Southern Aral Sea further split into eastern and western lobes. The Earth Observatory’s World of Change: Evaporation of the Aral Sea feature tracks this process over the past decade.
Aral Sea Continues to Shrink, August 2009 : Image of the Day
A vision of Britain in 2020: power cuts and the 3-day week
Britain's homes could be without light and heat for long periods by 2020 with the government being forced to repeat the 1974 imposition of power cuts by rota, a doom-laden report by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) says today.
By then, 80% of the gas to fuel Britain's power stations and domestic central heating will be piped "from politically unstable countries thousands of miles away." Mechanical failure, sabotage and terrorist attack would lead to power cuts within days, the report says. The society, established in 1818, says Britain will be at the end of a pipeline which passes through several other countries relying on imported gas.
A vision of Britain in 2020: power cuts and the 3-day week | Politics | The Guardian
Friday, 28 August 2009
Population growth at 47-year high
The UK population grew by 408,000 in 2008 - the biggest increase for almost 50 years, according to the Office for National Statistics.
The total number of people passed 61m for the first time, with changes in birth and death rates now a bigger cause of growth than immigration.
The numbers of people arriving minus those leaving actually fell by 44%.
Wednesday, 26 August 2009
Monday, 24 August 2009
What is the 2030 Perfect Storm idea?
As the world's population grows, competition for food, water and energy will increase. Food prices will rise, more people will go hungry, and migrants will flee the worst-affected regions.
PERFECT STORM 2030 On Monday BBC correspondents report on the problems identified by UK chief scientist John Beddington, in his forecast of a "perfect storm" of food, water and energy shortages in 2030. On Tuesday they address the implications, and possible solutions.
BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | What is the 2030 Perfect Storm idea?
Thursday, 20 August 2009
BELLA GAIA
BELLA GAIA(TM) (Beautiful Earth) is a 'Living Atlas' journey of our world, expressing the deeply moving beauty of planet Earth as seen through the eyes of astronauts. Created by award winning director and classically trained violinist Kenji Williams, BELLA GAIA(TM) features live performances by Williams and world music artists against a large-screen backdrop of orbiting visualizations of Earth from space.
Shanghai urges 'two-child policy'
China's only children are often spoiled "little emperors"
Officials in Shanghai are urging parents to have a second child, the first time in decades the government has pushed for more babies.
A public information campaign has been launched to highlight exemptions to the country's one-child policy.
Couples who were both only children, which includes most of the city's newly-weds, are allowed a second child.
The move comes as China's most populous city becomes richer and older, with the number of retired residents soaring.
"Shanghai's over-60 population already exceeds three million, or 21.6% of registered residents," said Zhang Meixin, a spokesman for the city's Municipal Population and Family Planning Commission.
BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Shanghai urges 'two-child policy'
If you want to go green, buy Spanish strawberries - Green Living, Environment - The Independent
The belief that local is best when it comes to measuring the environmental impact of our food is often wrong, says new research
Millions of Britons who think they are doing their bit for the environment by choosing home-grown food over produce imported from thousands of miles away could actually be having the reverse effect, according to a startling new report.
The "food miles" philosophy that decrees anything transported over distance is worse for the environment than something closer to home is frequently flawed, according to researchers funded by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
If you want to go green, buy Spanish strawberries - Green Living, Environment - The Independent
Krakatoa's fiery eruption
Amateur photographer Marco Fulle's pictures of Krakatoa, between the islands of Java and Sumatra, taken last month, highlight the raw intensity of volcanic eruption
In pictures: The world's melting glaciers | Environment | guardian.co.uk
Glaciers around the world are retreating at unprecedented rates as temperatures rise due to climate change. Some ice caps, glaciers, sea ice and even an ice shelf have disappeared altogether in this century and many more are retreating so rapidly that they may vanish within a matter of decades
In pictures: The world's melting glaciers | Environment | guardian.co.uk
BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Typhoon batters south-east China
Typhoon Morakot has struck China's south-east coast, destroying hundreds of houses and flooding farmland.
Almost one million people were evacuated ahead of the storm, which crashed ashore in Fujian province with winds of up to 119km/h (74mph).
BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | Typhoon batters south-east China
Wednesday, 19 August 2009
Barcelona gets new water supply
A desalination plant has opened near Barcelona - said to be the biggest of its type in Europe - to ease chronic water shortages.
A drought last year forced Barcelona to import drinking water by tanker. It was one of Spain's driest years on record.
The new plant at El Prat del Llobregat will provide 24% of the water consumed in the Barcelona area, officials say. It went into operation on Monday.
Two more desalination plants are being built in the Catalonia region.
The new plant near Barcelona will provide 200m litres (44m gallons) of drinking water daily for the city's 4.5 million people.
If the UK were a village of 100 people... - Features, Health & Families - The Independent
There are, according to the estimate for this month, 6,790,062,216 people in the world. It's hard enough to say the number, never mind picture those people. You could round it up to a less tongue-twisting 6.8 billion, but does that make such a frightening figure any easier to compute? When you try, do you see faces, or just more brain-frying strings of digits?
The sheer vastness of the data we gather in our attempts to understand the world around us has been challenging statisticians since the earliest censuses. The "size of Wales" approach to number-crunching is popular among headline writers; but is it helpful, for example, to imagine the global population in terms of 75,445 Wembleys, or, indeed, 2,341 Waleses? The numbers are still too big.
It's the same with the news we read and hear each day. What does it mean when we're told that unemployment has risen by 281,000? Is that a huge number? Or just a big one? The stories are about people, but it is often hard to see beyond the figures.
If the UK were a village of 100 people... - Features, Health & Families - The Independent
Top Ten Technologies for an Alternative Energy Future « EE/RE Investing
The muscle car of energy efficiency. Combined heat and power isn’t sexy… it’s just using the “waste” heat from your powerplant for some useful purpose. Like cooking your lunch on you car radiator, but using every bit of waste heat you can… Combined heat and power can use 90% of the power in your fuel source for useful work. And now you can have it in your home.
They’re tall, they’re low-tech, and they’re baseload power. They don’t pollute, and the fuel is free. What’s not to like?
8. Molten salt thermal storage
It’s cheaper to store heat than electricity, and molten salts can store a ton of BTu’s very cheaply. And concentrating solar power can produce a ton of heat… without pollution or fuel.
7. Light Emitting Diodes (LEDs)
More lumens per watt… now that’s energy efficiency.
Our energy efficient cars can make the electric grid work better.
5 & 4. Cellulosic Ethanol and Biodiesel from Algae
The two technologies that have real hope of replacing gasoline and diesel as liquid fuel for our cars… We’ll still need massive efficiency gains and Plug-in-Hybrids to reduce our total fuel use, but even with those, corn ethanol and biodiesel from traditional oil crops just can’t produce enough volume.
3. Time of Use pricing and Demand Side Management.
Sometimes the best ideas are the simplest. To make the best use of wind power, we can store power until it is needed, or we can give people incentives to use it when it is available.
Time of use pricing is also a great boon for solar, because solar energy tends to be available near times of peak demand.
Finally, time of use pricing shaves peak demand, which means that we can delay building new fossil fired generation, while renewables get cheaper by the year.
2. Terra Preta
Discovered by aboriginals in Brazil, thousands of years before Columbus, mixing carbon into unproductive soils can make them much more productive… and the carbon stays there for thousands of years. Using charcoal dust as a fertilizer not only holds the hope of a replacement for fertilizer based on fossil fuels, but it is also an easy way to sequester carbon.
1. Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs
Where else can you get a 1000% payback with little or no risk?
Top Ten Technologies for an Alternative Energy Future « EE/RE Investing
Sunday, 9 August 2009
Met Office : Invent - Weather
This offers the chance to zoom in to your chosen area of the country and add a range of weather information. You can add places of interest, or click the map to get a forecast for the week ahead.
Thursday, 6 August 2009
Coastal path will open up 1,000 miles of previously inaccessible land - Telegraph
Land that will be opened up includes the cliff tops south of Berwick-upon-Tweed in the Borders, the crumbling Norfolk coast south of Sheringham, inaccessible land along the Solent and urban areas around Liverpool. The path will also make it possible for ramblers to walk through golf courses, country estates and farms that are currently closed to the public.
Coastal path will open up 1,000 miles of previously inaccessible land - Telegraph
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