News
Weekly Linkfest – Edition 15
Welcome to round fifteen of our Weekly Linkfest, where we share the good, the bad, the ugly and the just plain interesting from what we’ve seen this week.
I would greatly appreciate readers getting involved in this weekly linkfest. Please email editor (at) permaculturenews.org with links (and ideally a summary sentence outlining the key point of each link) to noteworthy articles and news reports on the internet.
Off we go:
Good News (coz we all need it):
- More Farmers’ Markets Expand To Year-Round.
- Co-Management Holds Promise of Sustainable Fisheries Worldwide. "Community-based co-management is the only realistic solution for the majority of the world’s fisheries and is an effective way to sustain aquatic resources and the livelihoods of communities depending on them."
- The Ecosystem Engineer: Research Looks at Beavers’ Role in River Restoration. Also read the dam letter.
- To Fight Global Warming, Eat Bugs!
- Measures to Save Ozone Stemmed a Lot More Global Warming. New studies show that had humanity not cut this pollution, Earth would have experienced as much as 1.5ºC of additional global warming by 2070. Moreover, the new projections show, CFC pollution would have thinned the layer of ozone in the upper atmosphere, which blocks harmful ultraviolet radiation, even more than scientists expected, as a result of an unforeseen "feedback" effect.
- Mother’s Milk Improves Physical Condition of Future Adolescents, Study Finds.
- Massive Energy-Generating Wind Tower Proposed for Japan.
- The eddy Wind turbine. Though large windmills are more resource efficient to make, they might give some problems with noise, glimmering shadows and ice flakes thrown 300 metres away crushing your skull. All these problems are said to be solved with this new, spiralled windmill.
- SolSource: Sustainable Collaborative Design for and by Himalayan Nomadic Communities.
- The Bamboo Bike Kit Lets You Build Your Own Bike!
- Rare monk seal colony found in the Mediterranean.
- U.S. Ship Sunk to Create Reef.
- Protective Properties of Green Tea Uncovered.
- First "Transition Slum" Launched.
- We can feed 9 billion people in 2050. Further: Housing 9 billion people won’t take techno-magic.
Bad News (coz we need to understand the challenges if we’re to design our way out of them):
- Arctic sea ice levels for December at lowest since satellite measurements began.
- Queensland’s precious coral reefs face devastation after being polluted by murky flood waters with 90 per cent set to be wiped out off the central coast. See also.
- More Wikileaks Cables: U.S. Pressured the Vatican, Spain to Support GM Crops — "The Rest of Europe Will Follow".
- Australia Releases GMO Mosquitoes.
- Obama gives go-ahead to new food safety law. I hope this law is meant to fight GMO and not small permaculture farmers, but fear the worst. See also: Over-Regulating Small Farms Doesn’t Make Food Safer!
- New FDA Numbers Reveal Food Animals Consume Lion’s Share of Antibiotics. According to new data just released by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), of the antibiotics sold in 2009 for both people and food animals almost 80% were reserved for livestock and poultry.
- Herbal Drug Crackdown: Europe to Ban Hundreds of Natural Remedies in UK Next Year.
- In U.S., Obesity Afflicts Even Some of the Tiniest Tots. American kids are becoming obese, or nearly so, at an increasingly young age, with about one-third of them falling into that category by the time they’re 9 months old, researchers have found.
- Exercise Can’t Undo the Damage of Too Much Screen Time. Spending more than four hours a day sitting in front of a television or computer more than doubles your risk of dying from or being hospitalized for heart disease, according to a new study. Take care Craig; we can’t afford to lose you!
- David Cameron Is Selling Off All England’s Forests — and Starting to Drill, Baby, Drill. Does this Cameron think he’s the king, and that he can do what he likes with the people’s property? Because what’s owned by the state belongs to the people, and the people should decide what to do with it. I’m sure England’s people want to keep their forests!
- Nanoparticles in Sewage Sludge May End Up in the Food Chain.
- Abandoned Uranium Mines: An ‘Overwhelming Problem’ in the Navajo Nation.
- Peter Kent’s green agenda: Clean up oil sands’ dirty reputation. I’m sure the Madagascan governments will welcome this approach. And of course the Norwegian oil company Statoil, 2/3 owned by the government, and one of the major players in Alberta’s tar sand exploitation.
- Climate change to continue to year 3000 in best case scenarios. New paper in Nature Geoscience examines inertia of carbon dioxide emissions.
- Wake-up Call for the U.S. Southwest. History’s Wake-up Call for the Greenhouse Century.
- Corals Provide Evidence of Changes to Oceanic Currents. This is the third theory I’ve learned about in the last few months for the change in the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), which made it so terribly cold here last year. The two others are the disappearing of the pole ice, and lower solar radiation. Anyway, I freeze!
- What Carbon Cycle? College Students Lack Scientific Literacy, Study Finds. Most college students in the United States do not grasp the scientific basis of the carbon cycle — an essential skill in understanding the causes and consequences of climate change, according to research published in the January issue of BioScience.
- Researchers Find "Alarming" Decline in Bumblebees. Four previously abundant species of bumblebee are close to disappearing in the United States, researchers reported on Monday in a study confirming that the agriculturally important bees are being affected worldwide. See also.
- Honeybees May Be Spreading Disease to Wild Bees.
- What’s In Your Bottled Water – Besides Water? Information About Source, Purity and Pollutants Withheld from Consumers. See also: Is Drinking Bottled Water Worth Trashing the Planet? & Vitamin Waters = H20 + Sugar + Spin.
- Black Truffles May Be Going Way of the Dinosaur.
- What triggers mass extinctions? Study shows how invasive species stop new life.
- 25% of Patients Have More Problems After Surgery Than Before.
- Emergency Food: Millions of Americans Are Heading to Foodbanks for the First Time in Their Lives.
- Disease kills 15% of recently contacted tribe in past decade.
Just plain interesting or odd (coz we’re curious creatures):
- Drill Close to Reaching 14-Million-Year-Old Antarctic Lake. Anything living in the lake will have evolved in relative isolation for about 14 million years, so it could offer a snapshot of conditions on Earth long before humans evolved.
- Mystery of Ancient Extinction in Earth’s Oceans Revealed.
- Mummified forest tells tale of a changing north.
- 10 New Ways to Eat Well.
- Babies process language in a grown-up way.
- Autism Risk: Having Babies Close In Age May Raise Risk. Children born less than two years after their siblings were considerably more likely to have an autism diagnosis compared to those born after at least three years.
- Study: Love music? Thank a substance in your brain. Whether it’s the Beatles or Beethoven, people like music for the same reason they like eating or having sex: It makes the brain release a chemical that gives pleasure, a new study says.
- Simple rebuttals to denier talking points — with links to the full climate science.
- Bonaire: the last healthy coral reef in the Caribbean. Over the past 30 years, the Caribbean’s corals have been decimated by overfishing, disease and pollution. Last Summer’s heat spell raises the question: can the remaining corals survive global warming? The answer may lie in Bonaire, home to the region’s healthiest corals.
- Glowing tentacles and furry pillars: corals we’ll miss. Corals support over one-third of the world’s marine life. Here are six species deemed genetically crucial yet on the edge of existence.
- The Center for Biological Diversity: Today, as the human footprint on the planet rapidly grows, scientists estimate we’re losing species at 100 to 1,000 times the natural rate. Without help, 30-50 percent of all species could be on a path to extinction by 2050.Note especially the graph showing the symmetry of human population and species extinction. Sign the petition of their campaign here. See also.
- How Does Your Green Roof Garden Grow?
- The Age of Vulnerability. How the 2008 financial crash redefined what it means to be economically vulnerable.
- Study finds energy limits global economic growth.
- Driving to the Future: Can China–and the World–Afford 2 Billion Cars? See also.
- Humans First Wore Clothing 170,000 Years Ago.
- Why You Should Hold A Grudge Against Your Spouse. I think women instinctively know this.
- Why You Were a Reckless Teenager. Interview with Laurence Steinberg.
- Financially independent women want a man with experience, study reveals.
- Women’s exercise linked to lower cognitive skill.
- How Wall Street Is Like the Russian Oligarchy. Video.
- Poll: Mexicans Express Belief in Spirits, Not Science. Mexicans put too much faith in magic and too little in science, according to a survey of public perception of science and technology. According to the poll, about half the country’s citizens also believe scientists are "dangerous."
- The ‘Mad’ Egyptian Scholar Who Proved Aristotle Wrong. Ibn al-Haytham’s 11th-century Book of Optics, was published exactly 1000 years ago January 10.
- Thunderstorms Shoot Beams of Antimatter Into Space.
- The Movement of Tree Sap Analyzed.
- Competitive Nature That Is Nurtured in Soil. Creating roots takes energy, and optimally every tree would have just enough roots to capture the nutrients and water it needs. Instead, the scientists write in The American Naturalist, the trees create excess roots — probably not to help them grow more successfully, but rather to cause other trees to grow less successfully. In the resulting system, trees that produce fewer roots (or too many roots) lose out.
- Wildflower colors tell butterflies how to do their jobs. See also.
- Stag beetles ‘cannot resist ginger’.
- Scare Flies Away With Water.
- The Plant List: Most Comprehensive Compendium of Plant Species Ever Compiled By Scientists.
- Even Healthy Cats Act Sick When Their Routine Is Disrupted.
- Parasites Make Caterpillars Glow to Repel Predators.
- "Vampire Flying Frog" Found; Tadpoles Have Black Fangs.
- Whiter snowy owls dazzle rivals.
- Dust in the Wind Behaves Like Broken Glass.
- First Earth-Sized Exoplanet Discovered. See also.
- New Method for Making Large Quantities of Deuterium-Depleted Drinking Water.
- Group decision tip: One-on-One.
Don’t forget to send your links for next week’s linkfest!! – editor (at) permaculturenews.org