nuclear-news

By Kemal Atlay

The deadly and damaging effects of climate change are already being felt around the world in ways many people do not recognise, some of Australia’s top environment experts have revealed.
This week, Queensland scientists confirmed this year’s mass coral bleaching has resulted in the largest die-off of corals ever recorded, while a report warned that “megafires” in Australia will become increasingly common as the globe heats up.

Some experts even attributed a freak “thunderstorm asthma” event in Melbourne, which killed eight people, to climate change.
Around the world, bee populations across Europe declined, Israel experienced one of its worst bushfires and Siberia suffered an anthrax outbreak.
We asked experts to explain the serious consequences of some seemingly small changes to the environment.
Bee population
A steadily warming climate, combined with habitat loss and the increased use of pesticides, is causing bee populations to collapse at an alarming…

If you look at a satellite map of Cumbria it is obvious to all but the most wilfully nuclear blind that Sellafield is the biggest single solid concrete mass.  This weeks Podium piece in the Westmorland Gazette written by John Woodcock MP for Furness  invokes the Jodi Mitchell song “Big Yellow Taxi.”  The famous “pave paradise” lyrics are spoken by John Woodcock to divert attention away from the growing concrete nuclear mass which he supports and to divert attention to the pylons.  What a brass neck – and the Westmorland Gazette are only too happy to hand him the brasso while ignoring the main event.  The Furness MP fails to mention that should Moorside be allowed to happen the most important role of the various transmission lines of pylons, would be their role in taking electricity TO the proposed Moorside nuclear reactors.

I’m not sure that Joni Mitchell will be…

GR:  Yesterday I reported on the positive-feedback loop forming as global soils begin to warm and release greenhouse gasses. This article by Robert Scribbler lays out the catastrophic consequences of the feedback loop.  The world’s scientists are beginning to shout that disaster is looming. However, greed has deafened the world’s leaders. The invader’s boats have reached our shores folks.  He does not take prisoners.

“It’s fair to say we have passed the point of no return on global warming and we can’t reverse the effects, but certainly we can dampen them,” said biodiversity expert Dr. Thomas Crowther.

“I’m an optimist and still believe that it is not too late, but we urgently need to develop a global economy driven by sustainable energy sources and start using CO2, as a substrate, instead of a waste product.” — Prof Ivan Janssens, recognized as a godfather of the global ecology field.

“…we are…

The world’s leaders have promised to take urgent action on climate change. But that was the easy part. Here’s what they need to do next.

The Paris agreement has been ratified. Only one year after negotiating this historic treaty, it has come into force. This signals that the vast majority of governments around the world remain committed to fighting climate change.
Yet that was the easy part. Actually realising these commitments made at COP21 in Paris will require concerted, concrete action for many years to come. Though the vast majority of countries in the world have clear goals in the form of nationally determined contributions (NDCs), these are not action plans, nor are the NDCs strong enough to actually keep global average temperature from rising more than 2C.
The Paris agreement is a truly global commitment, spanning developed and developing countries around the world. Yet for many developing and least-developed…