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The analysis revealed some surprising facts. "We discovered that annually an area about the size of Connecticut is disturbed this way," said Professor Asner. "Selective logging negatively impacts many plants and animals and increases erosion and fires. Additionally, up to 25% more carbon dioxide is released to the atmosphere each year - above that from deforestation - from the decomposition [of plant material] that the loggers leave behind. Timber harvests are much more widespread than previously thought."

Using images of the Amazon basin taken from 1999 to 2002, Prof Asner studied the five states that account for 90% of deforestation. The extent of selective logging was found to be between 4,685 and 7,973 square miles each year.

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A world of 6.4 billion people, on the way to 9 billion or more, needs more protein than the planet's croplands can generate from biologically provided nitrogen. Our species has become as physically dependent on industrially produced nitrogen fertilizer as it is on soil, sunshine and water. And that means we're hooked on natural gas.

Vaclav Smil, distinguished professor at the University of Manitoba and author of the 2004 book Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch and the Transformation of World Food Production, has demonstrated the global food system's startling degree of dependence on nitrogen fertilization. Using simple math - the kind you can do in your head if there's no calculator handy - Smil showed that 40 percent of the protein in human bodies, planet-wide, would not exist without the application of synthetic nitrogen to crops during most of the 20th century.

That means that without the use of industrially produced nitrogen fertilizer, about 2.5 billion people out of today's world population of 6.2 billion simply could never have existed.

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The earth has subsided as much as four inches in parts of the Mojave Desert in southern California, according to U.S. Geological Survey scientists. Using the satellite mapping process known as interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR), scientists have detected large earth surface depressions near the agricultural areas of Lucerne Valley, El Mirage, Lockhart and Newberry Springs in the southwestern portion of the Mojave Desert. The subsidence occurred between 1992 and 1999 and is linked to declining water levels.

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I think if ever there was a time to promote vegetarianism, it's now.

In non-intensive systems, cattle don't require much grain, if any, depending on the quality of the forage.

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Each day, 1,400 children under 15 die of AIDS-related illness, according to the report. Last year, more than 2 million young people ages 16 to 24 were infected with human immunodeficiency virus.

"The needs of children are being overlooked when strategies on HIV prevention and treatment are drafted, policies made and budgets allocated," the report says. "And investments in prevention continue to be pitifully inadequate."

The report notes the alarming effect of HIV and AIDS on child mortality in African countries, many of which have already been hit hard by cyclical drought and deaths from preventable illnesses such as malaria. In Swaziland, for example, 143 children in every thousand never reach age 5, the report says.

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There are still, however, a few observers of the flat-earth variety who do not share this attitude. In their world, physical investment is capable of finding oil that the geologists say is not there – or, to put this another way, they think that ‘market solutions’ and technological innovation can overwhelm the laws of physics. Steve Forbes, owner/editor of what might be the best business magazine in the world, apparently sees the interplay of supply and demand eventually reducing the price of oil to under $40/b, while Martin van Weyler – financial commentator of The Spectator (UK) – believes that technology will provide a hundred more years of oil. Actually it will provide thousands, however once global production has peaked it hardly makes any difference what the actual figure turns out to be.

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``I'm not sure anyone is aware of it, but energy prices are quickly making the continuation of wheat farming questionable unless something begins to change soon,' said Walla Walla County farmer Nat Webb.

Over a relatively short period of time, fuel prices have tripled and the cost of fertilizer has doubled, Webb and others said.

At the same time, the price for soft white wheat, the type which accounts for 88 percent of the wheat grown in Washington state, is hovering slightly above $3 a bushel, ``a 20-year low,' said Harold Cochran, former national legislative chairman for the Washington Association of Wheat Growers.

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Originally posted by Bacchus:
But as those articles point out, vegetarianism is the problem. The fertilizer they are talking about is for use in crops, not cattle.

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The worst drought in 40 years now impacting parts of the Amazon rainforest, has led scientists to warn that this vast region could ultimately turn from a carbon sink into a carbon emitter, speeding rather than slowing climate change, according to a report in Nature magazine.

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Half of the world’s coral reefs may die within the next 40 years unless urgent measures are taken to protect them from climate change, the World Conservation Union (IUCN) warns in a new report released today. Warming ocean temperatures are causing reefs to bleach and die, but Marine Protected Areas can help.

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Starting in June, the worst drought since 1988 in northern Illinois and the northeast and central portions of Missouri turned lush green fields into wilted brown patches. By August, much of Missouri was declared a disaster area by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. High fuel prices and low crop prices compounded farmers’ problems.

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The airy cathedral ceilings that have helped sell thousands of new homes over the past decade have turned into a liability.
Soaring prices for natural gas and heating oil are making big open spaces much more expensive to keep warm. So homeowners already contending with higher property taxes and, in some cases, larger mortgage payments, are also juggling bigger energy bills.
``We've cut back (on expenses) so much that we don't see much in return because prices keep going up,'' said Kimberly Muckenfuss, a Washington Township, N.J., mother of five.

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HONOLULU — Commercial fishing has sharply depleted numbers of several species in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and threatens the health of the pristine island chain's ecosystem, according to a private study released Monday.

Populations of the opakapaka, or Hawaiian pink snapper, have plummeted 90 percent in 10 years, according to the Ocean Conservancy and the Marine Conservation Biology Institute.

Stocks of the hapu'upu'u, or the Hawaiian grouper, have sunk 64 percent over the same period in the 1,200 miles of islands and atolls northwest of Kauai, according to the study.

"There is little doubt they are being depleted far below a state of ecological health," said Dennis Heinemann, one of the study's authors.

The federal body responsible for fishing rules around the island chain criticized the study as biased against fishing.

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Activists in six states have accused the Army of distorting facts about the disposal of waste from the destruction of a deadly nerve agent stockpiled in western Indiana.

Army contractors are working to eliminate VX, a Cold War-era chemical weapon, by converting it into a caustic substance called hydrolysate at the Newport Chemical Depot.

The Army wants to transport that waste -- which has been compared to liquid drain cleaner -- to a DuPont plant in New Jersey for treatment and disposal in the Delaware River.

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The automobile driver stuck in traffic jams, who pays a surrealistic price at the pump to transport hundreds of kilos of metal, doesn't turn to the manufacturer who robbed him by selling an inappropriate product, but towards the public powers which should widen the streets by moving buildings, eradicate other users to avoid bottlenecks, build ever more parking lots to welcome these oversized vehicles and which should, above all, do away with gasoline taxes, all the while consecrating astronomical budgets to road maintenance, and repairing the damage done by the automobile and the organization of the territory as a function of its displacements, rather than concentrating habitat, employment and commerce around networks of collective transportation. The most auto-dependent country even invades sovereign countries to assure itself of that resource and is no longer capable of protecting itself against floods!

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Swiss biotech giant Syngenta has recently sought patent rights over thousands of gene sequences of rice. Rice is the staple food in most countries and if Syngenta is accorded patent rights over these gene sequences, it would practically “own” the world’s staple crop.

The company has filed for patent rights before the European Patent Office, US Patent and Trademark Office and the World Intellectual Property Organisation. It has claimed that most of gene sequences it has “invented” are identical in other crops and therefore the patent needs to be extended to other crops like wheat, corn, sorghum, rye, banana, soyabean, some fruits and vegetables.

There are also reports of more than 4,000 out of 24,000 discovered human genes being patented in the US. The patent right holders are mainly private companies like Incyte, A Palo Alto and universities. The US patent treats human DNA as any other chemical product. It recognises minor changes as innovation.

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A House committee on Wednesday approved a measure that would clear the way for oil and gas drilling in currently off-limits coastal waters and an Alaska wildlife refuge.

Supporters of the legislation argued that with natural gas and crude prices soaring and domestic supplies tight, it is time to end the 24-year federal ban that has blocked energy development along virtually all of the country's coastal waters outside the central and western Gulf of Mexico.

The provision, which will be wrapped into a massive budget package, would allow states that want drilling within 125 miles of their shores a waiver from the federal moratorium that has been in effect since 1981.

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While there has long been a Vaccine Injury Compensation Fund (VICP) to protect pharmaceutical companies from law suits when their vaccines kill or injure children, the Biodefense and Pandemic Vaccine and Drug Development Act of 2005 would make it impossible for anyone to seek compensation or pursue any legal action whatsoever if a drug or vaccine is categorized as a “countermeasure.”

The Homeland Security Act of 2002 provided liability bail-outs for Eli Lilly’s vaccine mercury preservative thimerosal which is contained in every flu vaccine, but this new act gives Big-Pharma the kitchen sink. This unprecedented legislation would establish the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Agency (BARDA) which will operate secretly, exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. BARDA would decide which vaccines and drugs are considered “countermeasures.”

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SIX-YEAR-OLD Aisha loves the orange blouse and jeans given to her by the kind woman who rescued her from the chaos of the Kashmir earthquake. She snuggles up to her, trying to forget the devastation of her village home and the deaths of her parents 15 days ago.

What Aisha does not know is that the woman, Kausar, is a prostitute who has bought her from relatives for 50,000 rupees (£500) and plans to put her to work in the sex trade as soon as she reaches puberty.

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One percent of the world's arms budget should be channelled into providing access to drinking water in the most parched corners of the planet, the campaigning widow of former French President Francois Mitterrand said.

Danielle Mitterand, whose foundation France Libertes launched an access to drinking water campaign on Tuesday, told Reuters ahead of the initial press briefing that 34,000 people die each day from a lack of fresh water.

"The world's arms budget is $1,000 billion annually," Mitterand said. "We are asking that one percent of this budget be used each year for 15 years to finalise a real programme of access to fresh water in those places where the infrastructure is insufficient."

According to World Health Organisation figures some 1.5 billion people around the world lack access to fresh water and 2.6 billion lack sanitation.

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Originally posted by Frustrated Mess:

But who will get rich ... er?

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Lovely and lissome, the masuku tree rises maybe 35 feet at maturity, its wood the hue of a rare steak, its branches dotted with sweet golfball-size fruits that ferment into a tasty wine.

Working just after sunrise atop a small mountain not far from here, Injes Juma and his nine friends needed less than five minutes to sever a masuku at its base and send it crashing to the ground.

Another five minutes of furious hacking with axes and machetes reduced the tree to a stack of five-foot logs, ready to be carried down the steep grade to the highway below.

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A state of emergency has been declared in the Amazon River basin, which is suffering its worst drought in 42 years.

More than 1000 towns and hamlets that rely on the river for transport have been cut off as water levels fall, making the river unnavigable.

Several major tributaries, as well as parts of the main river itself, contain only a fraction of their normal volumes of water, and lakes are drying up.

The Amazonas Government secretary Jose Melo said hamlets cut off from the outside world by the low river level were running out of drinking water, medical supplies and provisions.

The region bakes in intense heat of about 38 degrees at this time of year. The level of the Rio Negro, a tributary of the Amazon, has dropped 12 metres since July to just 16 metres.

The Amazon River, South America's largest, has hit its lowest level in the 36 years since records have been kept near its source in Peru.

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Textbook orthodoxy had long excluded the possibility of such an event; sea temperatures, experts claimed, were too low and wind shear too powerful to allow tropical depressions to evolve into cyclones south of the Atlantic equator. Indeed, forecasters rubbed their eyes in disbelief as weather satellites downlinked the first images of a classical whirling disc with a well-formed eye in these forbidden latitudes.

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