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bookmark_borderLiving Planet Report: the Decline of Wildlife

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The World Wildlife Fund Reports — Global wildlife could plunge to a 67 per cent level of decline in just the fifty-year period ending this decade as a result of human activities, according to WWF’s Living Planet Report 2016. The report shows how people are overpowering the planet for the first time in Earth’s history and highlights the changes needed in the way society is fed and fuelled.

According to the report, global populations of fish, birds, mammals, amphibians and reptiles have already declined by 58 per cent between 1970 and 2012, the most recent year with available data. This places the world on a trajectory of a potential two-thirds decline within a span of the half-century ending in 2020.

Fortunately, 2020 is also a year of great promise. In that same year, commitments made under the Paris climate deal will kick in, and the first environmental actions under the globe’s new sustainable development plan are due. If implemented, these measures, along with meeting international biodiversity targets set for 2020, can help achieve the reforms needed in the world’s food and energy systems to protect wildlife across the globe.

“Wildlife is disappearing within our lifetimes at an unprecedented rate,” said Marco Lambertini, Director General of WWF International. “This is not just about the wonderful species we all love; biodiversity forms the foundation of healthy forests, rivers and oceans. Take away species, and these ecosystems will collapse along with the clean air, water, food and climate services that they provide us. We have the tools to fix this problem and we need to start using them now if we are serious about preserving a living planet for our own survival and prosperity.”

The WWF report uses the Living Planet Index, provided by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), to monitor trends in wildlife abundance. This index reports how wildlife populations have changed in size, rather than the specific number of animals that have been lost or gained.

“Human behaviour continues to drive the decline of wildlife populations globally, with particular impact in freshwater habitats. Importantly however, these are declines, they are not yet extinctions – and this should be a wake-up call to marshal efforts to promote the recovery of these populations,” said Professor Ken Norris, Director of Science at ZSL.

Additional evidence of a man-made era
The top threats to species identified in the report are directly linked to human activities, including habitat loss, degradation and overexploitation of wildlife.

The report’s findings provide additional evidence that the planet is entering completely unchartered territory in its history in which humanity is shaping changes on the Earth, including a possible sixth mass extinction. Researchers are already calling this period the Anthropocene. Understanding why we are moving into this new epoch enables us to identify solutions for restoring the ecosystems we depend upon.

According to the report, food production to meet the complex demands of an expanding human population is leading the race in the destruction of habitats and overexploitation of wildlife. At present, agriculture occupies about one-third of the Earth’s total land area and accounts for almost 70 per cent of water use.

The Living Planet Report 2016 outlines solutions to reform the way we produce and consume food to help ensure that the world is well-fed in a sustainable way. The report also focuses on the fundamental changes required in the global energy and finance systems to meet the sustainability needs of future generations.

Pushing the planet to its limits
Living Planet Report 2016 draws on leading research about the scale and impact of human activity on our planet. One such framework, developed by the Stockholm Resilience Centre in collaboration with partners, demonstrates that humanity has surpassed four out of nine Planetary Boundaries – safe thresholds for critical Earth system processes that maintain life on the planet.

In a special foreword in the report, Planetary Boundaries lead researcher Johan Rockström underlines the need for an urgent transition to a world that works within Earth’s safe operating space.

The report also features research from the Global Footprint Network that shows that while we only have one Earth, humanity is currently using the resources of 1.6 planets to provide the goods and services we use each year.

“No matter how you add it up, the math does not look good. The more we continue to exceed Earth’s limits, the more damage we do to our own future,” said Lambertini. “We are at a decisive moment in time when we can seize the solutions to steer our food, energy and finance systems in a more sustainable direction.”

Charting the way forward
The WWF report demonstrates that we need to rethink how we produce, consume, measure success and value the natural environment.

Adequately protecting the environment alongside economic and social development requires an urgent system change by individuals, businesses and governments to move from a short-sighted approach to a visionary approach that values future generations.

In one example, the report shows how smallholder farmers in Kenya work with local authorities and the food industry to manage the natural resources of Lake Naivasha, the country’s second largest freshwater body, a biodiversity hotspot and a significant contributor to its GDP.

The report also illustrates the positive momentum that is building by highlighting recent global agreements on climate change and sustainable development. In particular, the report recognizes the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development as an essential guide to decision-making that can ensure that the environment is valued alongside economic and social interests.

“A strong natural environment is the key to defeating poverty, improving health and developing a just and prosperous future. We have proven that we know what it takes to build a resilient planet for future generations, we just need to act on that knowledge,” Lambertini added.

Living Planet Report 2016: Risk and resilience in a new era is the eleventh edition of WWF’s biennial flagship publication. The report tracks over 14,000 vertebrate populations of over 3,700 species from 1970 to 2012.

bookmark_borderViolation Of The Constitution

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WEST CHESTER, PENNSYLVANIA — Civil rights violations and hate crimes have been occurring within the borough of West Chester, PA. An existing noise ordinance was used by corrupt cops and a few businesses (Penn’s Table, Malena’s, and Malcolm Johnstone of the West Chester Business Improvement District) to commit crimes of hate. After the civil rights violations, a conspiracy to cover-up the illegal activities ensued. When that failed, a new ordinance was adopted that further violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution of the United States of America:

Street Performing — Includes, but is not limited to, the following activities: acting, singing, playing musical instruments, pantomime, juggling, magic, dancing, reading aloud, puppetry and reciting.

West Chester Passes Unconstitutional Law October 18th, 2016

Dan Truitt Vs. Carolyn Comitta for PA State Representative October 13th, 2016

HATE CRIMES AND CIVIL RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
(most recent)

Anthony Marion (Penn’s Table Restaurant) Right To Know
Anthony Marion Criminal Complaint #1
Anthony Marion Criminal Complaint #2
Anthony Marion Criminal Complaint #3

Chronological Order of Crimes in West Chester Against Street Musicians in 2016 (Partial List)

More information about the Busking / Street Performance Law
Boycott-Malena's, West Chester, Gay Church

Updated Hate Crimes and Ordinance from August

August 2016

bookmark_border20 Dead in Pygmy Caterpillar Tax Protests

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20 people are dead in the Congo after Pygmies and Bantu ethnic groups clashed over a new caterpillar collection tax.

Caterpillars are a food staple of the hunter-gatherer people. A local official said the civil war was cause by a disagreement over the harvest of the insects.

“The attacks since Sunday left four (Bantu) Lubas and 16 Pygmies dead in a row over the tax traditionally paid to the Bantus by the Pygmies,” said local official Kalunga Mawazo.

A priest (who asked not to be identified) said that “the Pygmies believe they now have the same rights as citizens as the others. They refused to pay this illegal tax and shot two Luba people dead with arrows when they demanded payment.”

bookmark_borderAir Pollution Deaths

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A report from the World Bank found: Air pollution has emerged as the deadliest form of pollution and the fourth leading risk factor for premature deaths worldwide. Those deaths cost the global economy about US$225 billion in lost labor income in 2013, a new study finds, pointing toward the economic burden of air pollution.

The Cost of Air Pollution: Strengthening the economic case for action, a joint study of the World Bank and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), seeks to estimate the costs of premature deaths related to air pollution, to strengthen the case for action and facilitate decision making in the context of scarce resources. An estimated 5.5 million lives were lost in 2013 to diseases associated with outdoor and household air pollution, causing human suffering and reducing economic development.

While pollution-related deaths strike mainly young children and the elderly, premature deaths also result in lost labor income for working-age men and women. The report finds that annual labor income losses cost the equivalent of almost 1 percent – 0.83 percent — of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in South Asia. In East Asia and the Pacific, where the population is ageing, labor income losses represent 0.25 percent of GDP, while in Sub-Saharan Africa, where air pollution impairs the earning potential of younger populations, annual labor income losses represent the equivalent of 0.61 percent of GDP.

When looking at fatalities across all age groups through the lens of “welfare losses”, an approach commonly used to evaluate the costs and benefits of environmental regulations in a given country context, the aggregate cost of premature deaths was more than US$5 trillion worldwide in 2013. In East and South Asia, welfare losses related to air pollution were the equivalent of about 7.5 percent of GDP.

“Air pollution is a challenge that threatens basic human welfare, damages natural and physical capital, and constrains economic growth. We hope this study will translate the cost of premature deaths into an economic language that resonates with policy makers so that more resources will be devoted to improving air quality. By supporting healthier cities and investments in cleaner sources of energy, we can reduce dangerous emissions, slow climate change, and most importantly save lives,” said Laura Tuck, Vice President for Sustainable Development at the World Bank.

Deaths related to ambient air pollution have risen in heavily populated, fast-urbanizing regions, while deaths related to cooking and heating homes with solid fuels have remained constant despite development gains and improvements in health services. Diseases attributed to both types of air pollution caused 1 in 10 deaths in 2013, or more than six times the number of deaths caused by malaria.

“This report and the burden of disease associated with air pollution are an urgent call to action,” said Dr. Chris Murray, Director of IHME. “Of all the different risk factors for premature deaths, this is one area, the air we breathe, over which individuals have little control. Policy makers in health and environment agencies, as well as leaders in various industries, are facing growing demands – and expectations – to address this problem.”

About 90 percent of the population in low and middle income countries are exposed to dangerous levels of ambient air pollution. The World Bank works with developing countries and development partners to reduce pollution by supporting monitoring and analysis, regulatory reforms, and investments. In 2016 for example, the Bank committed US$1 billion to help China improve air quality by reducing emissions of specific air pollutants from industrial, transport and rural sources in the province of Hebei, and by increasing energy efficiency and clean energy through innovative financing in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region (also known as Jing-Jin-Ji region) that covers the capital area and neighboring provinces.

bookmark_borderCities Sink Faster Than Seas Rise

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Are sea levels rising due to global warming? Yes. Coastal cities are getting a double whammy.

NASA reports: a review article published by a team of scientists who recently assembled in New Orleans, La., and in Venice, Italy, to examine the problem. Extraction of groundwater or fossil fuels, and sometimes simply generations of farming, are causing large metropolitan areas in coastal zones around the world to subside surprisingly quickly—making the relative rise of adjacent seas an even greater potential hazard.

“Sea level rise is a problem, and subsidence is a huge problem, too,” said Cathleen Jones, a researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena who specializes in such hazards and is a member of the New Orleans team.

“There are areas where it is happening more rapidly than sea level rise,” she said. “I think it is not fully appreciated how much greater subsidence is in some of these areas, and how much it contributes to the loss of wetlands.”

Rapid subsidence makes many of these areas more vulnerable to the effects of climate change, especially those at elevations less than 10 meters (33 feet) above sea level. Several of these qualify as “megacities,” with populations greater than 10 million.

The most threatened: large river deltas, home to an estimated 500 million people. The fastest subsidence rate, 250 millimeters or nearly 10 inches per year, was seen in China’s Huanghe Delta. Southeast Asia saw 30 to 60 millimeters (1.2 to 2.4 inches) per year, while Katrina-ravaged portions of New Orleans saw rates as high as 35 millimeters (1.4 inches) per year.

The article, published in July 2016 in Earth and Space Science News, reports the group’s findings from New Orleans, where they held the first of two workshops. The city is part of the subsiding Mississippi Delta, a cause of wetland loss and the degradation of barrier islands, which, in turn, poses a threat to coastal ecosystems—as well as risks to human populations and infrastructure. Groundwater extraction and drainage of peat-rich soils, the article says, are to blame.
Dropping delta

The Sacramento River Bay Delta, though not mentioned in the report, is another site of severe subsidence, Jones said.

“It’s a bigger problem than sea level rise in the Sacramento delta,” she said. “Subsidence is largely driven there by the lowering water table. You have crops to grow; whenever you dry out soil with high carbon content, it will oxidize. It gives off carbon dioxide, loses mass and compacts. There, sea level rise is just a minor influence on it at this time. I’m not saying to ignore it, but right now these areas are threatened more by subsidence.”

While both human and natural factors contribute to subsidence, the natural processes—apart from tectonic disturbances—mostly act over very long timescales. Human causes appear to be driving the most rapid subsidence rates.

Lead author Mead Allison of the Water Institute of the Gulf in Baton Rouge, Jones and the rest of the 12-member science team advocate the creation of “supersites” around the world, like the one being assembled in New Orleans, to track a variety of contributors to subsidence.

At these sites, remote sensing would be combined with ground sensor networks to track subsidence over years. In New Orleans, that has in the past included use of the interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) instrument aboard JPL’s Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) aircraft, gathering data there during 2009-2015.

“(We want) to try to start getting more of these supersites, where we try to differentiate all the different contributions,” Jones said. “So that instead of just measuring subsidence overall, we try to figure out what parts are sediment loading, what parts (are other factors). Whenever we know how much comes from each of these, we can begin to implement policy that would remediate the ones that are anthropogenic in origin.”

bookmark_borderScientists Say No to Chemtrails

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by Daniel Brouse

You can go on the internet just about any day and see conspiracy theories about chemtrails. There are those who believe governments are poisoning the population by spraying chemicals out of airplanes. One scientist decided to do a peer-reviewed study after searching the internet for scientific facts about chemtrails and finding none.

Together with a group of other scientists, they produced a peer-reviewed study in Environmental Research Letters that debunks chemtrails. The 77 scientists concluded that chemtrails are actually water vapor known as contrails. Contrails are condensation trails produced at high altitudes as water vapor passes through jet engine propellers, condenses and freezes.

Quantifying expert consensus against the existence of a secret, large-scale atmospheric spraying program
Results: “In response to the general question of whether they have ever encountered evidence that indicates the existence of SLAP, 76 of the total 77 expert respondents (98.7%) answered no.”

Contrails Vs. Chemtrails

Top Myths Busted

bookmark_borderCows Expel Gas So They Don’t Explode

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by Daniel Brouse

CALIFORNIA — “Quite frankly, we want them to expel gas so they don’t explode,” said Anja Raudabaugh, chief executive of Western United Dairymen.

The California dairy industry is fighting back against proposed regulations to curb greenhouse gas emitted by belching and farting cows. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and the California Air Resources Board (ARB) has set a goal of reducing methane emissions. There are over five-and-half million cows in California.

“The focus here is to highlight ARB’s efforts at over-regulating the dairy industry,” said Anja Raudabaugh. “By nature’s design, cows pass lots of gas.”

The ARB proposes “improved manure management practices, new diets for cattle and gut microbial interventions.”

bookmark_borderRecord Temperatures

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NASA — Two key climate change indicators — global surface temperatures and Arctic sea ice extent — have broken numerous records through the first half of 2016, according to NASA analyses of ground-based observations and satellite data.

Each of the first six months of 2016 set a record as the warmest respective month globally in the modern temperature record, which dates to 1880, according to scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. The six-month period from January to June was also the planet’s warmest half-year on record, with an average temperature 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.4 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the late nineteenth century.

Five of the first six months of 2016 also set records for the smallest respective monthly Arctic sea ice extent since consistent satellite records began in 1979, according to analyses developed by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, in Greenbelt, Maryland. The one exception, March, recorded the second smallest extent for that month.

While these two key climate indicators have broken records in 2016, NASA scientists said it is more significant that global temperature and Arctic sea ice are continuing their decades-long trends of change. Both trends are ultimately driven by rising concentrations of heat-trapping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The extent of Arctic sea ice at the peak of the summer melt season now typically covers 40 percent less area than it did in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Arctic sea ice extent in September, the seasonal low point in the annual cycle, has been declining at a rate of 13.4 percent per decade.

“While the El Niño event in the tropical Pacific this winter gave a boost to global temperatures from October onwards, it is the underlying trend which is producing these record numbers,” GISS Director Gavin Schmidt said.

Previous El Niño events have driven temperatures to what were then record levels, such as in 1998. But in 2016, even as the effects of the recent El Niño taper off, global temperatures have risen well beyond those of 18 years ago because of the overall warming that has taken place in that time.

The global trend in rising temperatures is outpaced by the regional warming in the Arctic, said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA Goddard.

“It has been a record year so far for global temperatures, but the record high temperatures in the Arctic over the past six months have been even more extreme,” Meier said. “This warmth as well as unusual weather patterns have led to the record low sea ice extents so far this year.”

NASA tracks temperature and sea ice as part of its effort to understand the Earth as a system and to understand how Earth is changing. In addition to maintaining 19 Earth-observing space missions, NASA also sends researchers around the globe to investigate different facets of the planet at closer range. Right now, NASA researchers are working across the Arctic to better understand both the processes driving increased sea ice melt and the impacts of rising temperatures on Arctic ecosystems.

NASA’s long-running Operation IceBridge campaign last week began a series of airborne measurements of melt ponds on the surface of the Arctic sea ice cap. Melt ponds are shallow pools of water that form as ice melts. Their darker surface can absorb more sunlight and accelerate the melting process. IceBridge is flying out of Barrow, Alaska, during sea ice melt season to capture melt pond observations at a scale never before achieved. Recent studies have found that the formation of melt ponds early in the summer is a good predictor of the yearly minimum sea ice extent in September.

“No one has ever, from a remote sensing standpoint, mapped the large-scale depth of melt ponds on sea ice,” said Nathan Kurtz, IceBridge’s project scientist and a sea ice researcher at NASA Goddard. “The information we’ll collect is going to show how much water is retained in melt ponds and what kind of topography is needed on the sea ice to constrain them, which will help improve melt pond models.”

Operation IceBridge is a NASA airborne mission that has been flying multiple campaigns at both poles each year since 2009, with a goal of maintaining critical continuity of observations of sea ice and the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica.

At the same time, NASA researchers began in earnest this year a nearly decade-long, multi-faceted field study of Arctic ecosystems in Alaska and Canada. The Arctic-Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) will study how forests, permafrost and other ecosystems are responding to rising temperatures in the Arctic, where climate change is unfolding faster than anywhere else on the planet.

ABoVE consists of dozens individual experiments that over years will study the region’s changing forests, the cycle of carbon movement between the atmosphere and land, thawing permafrost, the relationship between fire and climate change, and more.

bookmark_borderClimate Change, Extreme Weather and Toxic Crops

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by Daniel Brouse

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has released a report that examines how climate change is increasing the toxicity of crops.

Crop Toxicity
Extreme weather events, such as “drought and high temperatures, can trigger the accumulation in crops of chemical compounds that are toxic to animals and humans.”

The report goes on to say: Wheat, barley, maize (corn) and millet are among the crops most susceptible to nitrate accumulation, which is caused by prolonged drought. Acute nitrate poisoning in animals can lead to miscarriage, asphyxiation and death, ruining the lives of smallholder farmers and herders.

Heavy rains that break prolonged drought can also result in the dangerous accumulation of another toxic compound called hydrogen cyanide or prussic acid in crops like flax, maize, sorghum, arrow grass, cherries and apples.

Aflatoxins, which are fungal toxins that can cause cancer and stunt foetal growth, are another emerging problem in crops. The risk of aflatoxin contamination, especially in maize, is expected to increase in higher latitudes due to rising temperatures. A recent study predicts that this toxin will become a food safety issue for Europe, especially in the most likely scenario of a 2oC rise in global temperatures.

The report highlights two critical issues associated with climate change – loss and damage. Given the delays in the last 25 years in mitigating and adapting to climate change, scientific evidence suggests that losses and damages from climate change are inevitable, with profound consequences for ecosystems, people, assets and economies. This is already happening. The heat waves of 2003 are a good example of what happens when efforts to mitigate and adapt to changes in the climate fail: 30,000 people died, glaciers decreased, permafrost thawed and the European Union’s agricultural sector lost $14.7 billion.

bookmark_borderTemperature Reaches 123 Degrees in India

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The temperature went over 123 degrees (50C) in India. This was the highest temperature ever recorded in the country.

“Fishermen are advised not to venture into the sea along and off Tamil Nadu and Puducherry during the next 24 hours, along and off Andhra Pradesh coast during the next 48 hours and also and off the Odisha coast on 19th and 20th of May,” the IMD (India Meteorological Department) said in an advisory on Wednesday. –

Deutsche Welle reported, “The heat wave comes as India suffers its worst drought in decades, affecting around 330 million people. Drinking water is running short in many areas and poor rains have prompted the central government to send water trains to regions affected by drought. Hundreds of people have died and crops have been destroyed in several states.”