Interactive site on disasters. PLAY stop the disaster
Thursday, 24 May 2007
Sunday, 20 May 2007
AIRPORT WATCH
Link to Airport Watch
AirportWatch is an umbrella organisation, formed in 2000. AirportWatch campaigns for a demand management approach to aviation. Demand for air travel could be dampened down by government removing the considerable tax breaks the aviation industry receives. AirportWatch believes that government policies to expand aviation can and should be resisted.
Optimum Population Trust
A radical form of “offsetting” carbon dioxide emissions to prevent climate change is proposed today – having fewer children.
Each new UK citizen less means a lifetime carbon dioxide saving of nearly 750 tonnes, a climate impact equivalent to 620 return flights between London and New York*, the Optimum Population Trust says in a new report.
Based on a “social cost” of carbon dioxide of $85 a tonne**, the report estimates the climate cost of each new Briton over their lifetime at roughly £30,000. The lifetime emission costs of the extra 10 million people projected for the UK by 2074 would therefore be over £300 billion.
Link to Optimum Population Trust
Friday, 18 May 2007
Thursday, 17 May 2007
British Airport Authority: 2006
There are detailed statistics for 2006, you need to click on the link of your choice. These links will all launch PDF's in new windows on the following topics.1. Busiest Month and Day 2. Origin and Destination 3. Top Airlines 4. Top Airports 5. Top Routes
Wednesday, 16 May 2007
Glacial Retreat
Link to EO Newsroom: New Images - Glacial Retreat
In North America, the most visited glacier is the Athabasca Glacier, one of six glaciers that spill down the Canadian Rockies from the Columbia Icefield in western Canada. Visitors who return to the glacier a few years after their first visit will notice the change wrought by warming temperatures. In the past 125 years, the Athabasca Glacier has lost half of its volume and receded more than 1.5 kilometers (0.93 miles), leaving hills of rock in its place. Its retreat is visible in this photo, where the glacier’s front edge looms several meters behind the tombstone-like marker that indicates the edge of the ice in 1992.
Tuesday, 15 May 2007
Destination UK
Immigration has contributed half of Britain's population growth in 10 years, according to new research.
Link to BBC NEWS | In Depth | Destination UK
Sunday, 13 May 2007
Saturday, 12 May 2007
Organisers to give Olympic clouds a silver lining
Three defensive perimeters, dozens of cannon, hundreds of rockets and - on standby at a nearby airport - a fleet of five planes laden with thousands of silver-iodine pellets. No, it is not a new frontline in the war on terror. This is the cloudbusting arsenal that is being put at the disposal of Beijing's weathermen as they fight to ensure blue skies for the 2008 Olympics.
Chinese metereologists are preparing one of mankind's greatest ever assaults on the heavens next August, which the organisers belatedly acknowledge as the month when the capital gets almost half its annual rainfall.
Source: Organisers to give Olympic clouds a silver lining | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited
Good related article on USA TODAY. (Thanks Val)
Thursday, 10 May 2007
Tuesday, 8 May 2007
End Water Poverty
Link to End Water Poverty
There is a global crisis in water and sanitation. Billions of people live in the kind of squalor and disease that was eradicated long ago in the rich world.
Without sanitation and water there can be no sustainable development in health, education and livelihoods, locking people into a cycle of poverty and disease.
This crisis is one of inequality and poverty. If it is not tackled decisively, it will prevent and undermine progress made in reducing poverty, in achieving universal primary education, and improving people's basic health.
ALSO
http://www.wateraid.org/
Britain starts eating the planet on Sunday 15 April
Latest figures reveal Britain’s rising global interdependence as the nation goes into ecological debt on 15 AprilResearch from nef (the new economics foundation) reveals that on Sunday 15 April this year, the UK in effect stops relying on its own natural resources to support itself and starts to ‘live off’ the rest of the world.
At current UK levels of consumption our ‘ecological debt day’ – the day we begin living beyond our environmental means – falls only a third of the way through the year and has crept ever earlier over the last four decades. These latest findings build on a report, released by nef last year which exposed, for the first time, the sharp rise in how the UK depends on the rest of world, and how the burden of the Britain’s high-consuming lifestyle is exported internationally.
Source: Britain starts eating the planet on Sunday 15 April
Monday, 7 May 2007
The Sea Shore
A site to help interpret and understand the seashore and its organisms
Salt Marshes A marsh is somewhere damp with vegetation on it. A salt marsh is a muddy seashore with plants on it.
Sand Dunes and Shingle Communities Sand dunes are accumulations of sand stabilised by vegetation.
Link to The Sea Shore
China warns of population growth
China's top family planning body has warned of a "population rebound" as couples flout one child policy rules.
The widening wealth gap could lead to a rise in birth rates, Zhang Weiqing, from the National Population and Family Planning Commission, told state media.
Link to BBC NEWS | World | Asia-Pacific | China warns of population growth
Sunday, 6 May 2007
Saturday, 5 May 2007
Google Maps
Many thanks to Noel Jenkins who enabled me to do this. The link is to his site, and the instructions can be found at "Embedding Google My Maps"
Click on the map and investigate
Friday, 4 May 2007
Thursday, 3 May 2007
Bryophytes et al
Bryophytes Link to BBS > Home
Lichens LINK
Rotifers LINK
Tardigrades (water bears) LINK
Nematodes (round worms) LINK
Mites and Springtails LINK
Antarctic Bestiary Terrestrial Animals Living on the ground of the Antarctic Peninsula presents some extreme challenges to organisms, including:
- Highly variable, extreme temperatures, from -30°F to 50°F air temperature, with summer surface temperatures of rocks and moss reaching 70°F.
- Extremely high winds.
- A very short growing season (period when temperatures allow plant growth).
- Wide swings in pH, from 3 (very acidic) to 12 (very basic), partly caused by...
- Immersion in penguin guano (waste) from nesting Adélie penguin colonies in the summer.
- Immersion in both freshwater (from melting glaciers and snow and rain) and saltwater (from waves splashing on the land).
- Dehydration from exposure to very dry air in the winter.
- Exposure to intense UV rays. The protective ozone layer is naturally thinner here, and there is a hole in it (probably caused by human pollution) that opens up in the winter.
- Lack of oxygen, due to being encased in ice for long periods, as well as being immersed in penguin guano filled with oxygen-using microbes.
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