The world is on edge: On the edge of another financial crisis, another global recession, another bout of extreme weather, another humanitarian disaster, another food crisis, and another round of violence and civil unrest. The world's problems, it seems, are not being solved; they are being recycled with rising - and disturbing - rapidity...We live in a world that is fundamentally out of balance, and rectifying those imbalances will take years, if not decades, to correct. Welcome to "The Era of Living Dangerously."
This new era, and it is a perilous one, is not the result of excessive debt accumulation. Unsustainable debt loads have contributed to our current economic woes, but the economic malaise that now grips the world is indicative of a larger, more systemic problem: an over-heated, over-crowded, over-leveraged planet.
The last half of the 20th century produced an unprecedented rise in global standards of living. While increased efficiencies contributed to this burst of prosperity, much of it was fueled by increased consumption of fossil fuels, water, timber, metals, and minerals. And it came with escalating environment costs: the degradation of oceans, forests, rivers, and soil, and the warming of the planet.
For decades now, scientists have been warning that we live on a finite planet with finite resources, but until very recently those concerns have been widely dismissed - even derided - as theoretical, not practical. But for those who are concerned about biophysical limits to economic growth, there are plenty of warning signs today. In the last half of the 20th century, the real inflation-adjusted prices of commodities trended downward as we got more efficient at growing food and extracting minerals and fossil fuels. But in the 21st century, the demand for commodities has far outstripped supply. And it's not just oil. Almost without exception, the prices of major commodities, including grains and basic food stuffs, have doubled or tripled in the past seven or eight years...Countries and companies are scrambling to establish oil and mineral rights on the Arctic seabed and in other extreme environments.
Far more worrisome for the world's poor is the escalating cost of food. Climate change, rising energy and fertilizer prices, erosion of topsoil, depletion of underground aquifers, and loss of arable land to urbanization and desertification, are making it ever more expensive to satisfy the world's growing appetite for food. With the demand for grains and basic food stuffs expected to increase by 70 percent over the next 40 years, the outlook for food prices is not good. The price of key food staples could increase 120 to 180 percent by 2030. For commodity speculators that's an investment opportunity, but for the world's urban poor living in shantytowns on less than $1.25 a day it's a potential death sentence. With world population reaching 7 billion later this year and projected to reach 9.5 billion by mid-century, the challenges we are now confronting will not go away anytime soon. And make no mistake about it, if demographic push comes to economic shove, it's the poorest of the poor who will pay the ultimate price...It would be comforting to think that the growing unrest that is sweeping the world, including the rioting that has broken out in England, is the product of a temporary spike in food prices or the lingering after effects of the Great Recession, but it may just be a sign of things to come.
not to let him suffer from hunger when one has a chance
of coming to his assistance.**
Simone Weil
LARGEST QUAKES -
This morning -
5.0 NEAR COAST OF NICARAGUA
5.2 FIJI REGION
5.2 MINDORO, PHILIPPINES
Yesterday -
8/11/11 -
5.0 NEAR S. COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN
6.1 EASTERN HONSHU, JAPAN
5.3 NEAR EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN
5.0 NORTHERN IRAN
5.0 NORTHERN QINGHAI, CHINA
5.0 SOUTHERN XINJIANG, CHINA
5.2 ASCENSION ISLAND REGION
5.4 BABUYAN ISL REGION, PHILIPPINES
5.1 SOUTH OF FIJI ISLANDS
CHINA - The 5.8 earthquake in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region on Thursday afternoon has injured 26 people, including three in a critical condition. The quake has also toppled more than 30 units of housing.
NEW ZEALAND - About 150 houses on both sides of Christchurch's Port Hills will have to be abandoned after the quake in February. 100 houses would definitely not be reoccupied, including some at the top and bottom of collapsed cliffs in places such as Sumner and Redcliffs. The city council has declared almost 600 houses on the Port Hills off limits while engineering consultants assess the rockfall danger. A "goodly portion" of hillside suburbs could be at significant risk from rockfall.
The February 22 earthquake hit the Port Hills harder than experts expected, collapsing 6000-year-old cliff faces and creating fissures hundreds of metres long, which tore houses apart. Ground acceleration on the Port Hills during February's quake was almost 10 times greater than September's, at 2.25 times that of gravity. The figure is MIND-BLOWING. "We did not expect 15 metres in one go to fall off a cliff face, when that cliff had been there for 6000 years and showed nothing apart from the odd rock falling off it."
VOLCANOES -
Earth 'recycles' itself four times faster than thought - The volcanic recycling of the Earth's crust that sinks deep into the earth due to the movement of tectonic plates happens much faster than scientists had previously thought, a new research has found. The rock of the oceanic crust re-emerges through volcanic eruptions after around 500 million years. Previously, geologists thought this process would take about two billion years.
Hot rock rises in cylindrical columns, the so-called mantle plumes, from a depth of nearly 3000 kilometres. Near the surface, it melts, because the pressure is reduced, and forms volcanoes. The plume originates from former ocean crust, which early in the Earth’s history, sank to the bottom of the mantle. Previously, scientists had assumed that this recycling took about two billion years.
The chemical analysis of tiny glassy inclusions in olivine crystals from basaltic lava on Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii has now surprised geologists: the entire recycling process requires at most half a billion years, four times faster than previously thought. Researchers found residues of sea water with an unexpected strontium isotope ratio in lava samples from Hawaiian volcanoes, which suggested an age of less than 500 million years for the inclusions. “This discovery was a huge surprise for us."
Alaska's Cleveland Volcano Erupts with lava streams from the crater. It has been erupting for several days in the Aleutian Islands and may be preparing for a more explosive event, scientists said on Wednesday.
TROPICAL STORMS -
Tropical depression 13w was located approximately 390 nm south of Yokosuka, Japan. (Final warning on this system has been issued.)
Tropical weather could be particularly damaging in 2011 - The median cost of an Atlantic hurricane that hits land in the United States is $1.8 billion. More than a dozen tropical storms have been forecast to hit the Caribbean nation of Jamaica over the coming months.
Nock-Ten tropical storm death toll reaches 22 in Thailand from storm-triggered flash floods.
EXTREME HEAT & DROUGHT / WILDFIRES / CLIMATE CHANGE -
Texas gets even drier in 'UNPRECEDENTED' drought - Since January, Texas has received only 40 percent of its normal rainfall. Oklahoma also saw conditions worsen, with extreme and exceptional drought now spread through nearly 93 percent of the state.
