Chasing Ice: "Chasing Ice is the story of one man’s mission to change the tide of history by gathering undeniable evidence of our changing planet. Within months of that first trip to Iceland, the photographer conceived the boldest expedition of his life: The Extreme Ice Survey. With a band of young adventurers in tow, Balog began deploying revolutionary time-lapse cameras across the brutal Arctic to capture a multi-year record of the world’s changing glaciers."
LATimes: "Climate change could cut Western water runoff by 10%
Using new model simulations, scientists at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory expanded on 2007 research that predicted a drier future for the Southwest.
The reasons involve more than a drop in precipitation -- which is actually expected to increase in some areas that are critical to Western water supplies. Rather, rising temperatures will cause greater evaporation from plants and the ground, reducing soil moisture and water runoff into rivers and streams.
Researchers concluded that average annual runoff will fall by about 10% in the three regions examined in the study: California-Nevada, the Colorado River headwaters and Texas."
Time: "The economic growth that many nations in Asia and increasingly Africa have experienced over the past couple of decades has transformed hundreds of millions of lives — almost entirely for the better. But there’s a byproduct to that growth, one that’s visible — or sometimes less than visible — in the smoggy, smelly skies above cities like Beijing, New Delhi and Jakarta. Thanks to new cars and power plants, air pollution is bad and getting worse in much of the world, and it’s taking a major toll on global health.
How big? According to a new analysis published in the Lancet, more than 3.2 million people suffered premature deaths from air pollution in 2010, the largest number on record. That’s up from 800,000 in 2000. And it’s a regional problem: 65% of those deaths occurred in Asia, where the air is choked by diesel soot from cars and trucks, as well as the smog from power plants and the dust from endless urban construction. In East Asia and China, 1.2 million people died, as well as another 712,000 in South Asia, including India. For the first time ever, air pollution is on the world’s top-10 list of killers, and it’s moving up the ranks faster than any other factor."
NRC: "Misschien vind je de opwarming van de aarde geen probleem. Een recent artikel in het tijdschrift The Lancet geeft echter wel een andere reden om je zorgen te maken over luchtvervuiling: we gaan er op grote schaal aan dood. Het is al één van de tien belangrijkste doodsoorzaken ter wereld.
Luchtvervuiling zorgde er in 2010 voor dat maar liefst 3,2 miljoen mensen vroegtijdig stierven. Dat is bijna twee keer het aantal mensen dat hetzelfde jaar overleed aan de gevolgen van hiv/aids. Het is bovendien fors meer dan tien jaar eerder, toen het aantal luchtvervuilingsdoden nog op 800.000 lag."
LATimes: "Poverty and disease often come together. That much is well understood.
But how much does poverty foster disease? Or, how much can disease perpetuate poverty? And what’s the role of nature, given that so many infectious diseases are spread by mosquitoes or spend part of their life cycle outside of the human body?
A new study finds that certain types of infectious and parasitic diseases have a significant influence on economic development across the world and accounts for some of the differences in per-capita income between those who live in countries in the tropics or those in temperate latitudes.
And the team of economists and ecologists suggests that healthy forests or other ecosystems, with broad diversity of plants and animals, can ease the burden of parasitic diseases and those spread by mosquitoes or other vectors."
PLOSBiology: "While most of the world is thought to be growing economically, more than one-sixth of the world is roughly as poor today as their ancestors were hundreds of years ago."
Vooruitgang? Het lijkt meer op één stap vooruit en twee achteruit. Met andere woorden, er is werk aan de winkel volgend jaar. En gezien zelfs de tegenstand in dit land tegen windmolens zal het een zware klus worden. Ook in Nederland.