Trouble on Earth

To my dear visitors and commenters

Hi, everybody! I've noticed with lots of joy and happiness, that thousands of comments have been written in my posts. It's wonderful that so may people around the world appreciate my work. Therefore, I want to thank you for that and ,at the same time I want to ask you to be this blog's followers. It's fast and easy! Make it be even more visited and spread all over the world! I'm a woman, a teacher of English in Portugal, and I've been away for quite a long time because of my father's health. Unfortunately he died from Covid19 a few months ago. Now I felt it was time to restart my activity in this and other blogs I owe. I've recently created a new one in a partnership with a street photographer, Mr. Daniel Antunes. He's fabulous! https://pandpbydandd.blogspot.com I'd like you to visit it and, who knows, become our followers. The poems, chronicles and thoughts are all mine. Thank you so much! Kisses :-)

Sunday, March 02, 2014

It's in our hands to protect all rainforests in the world!

Japan earthquake spurs technology innovation

The technology-loving nation of Japan made good use of its unique innovations and social networks in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that followed.

And the disaster has continued to spur developments in the country in everything from energy generation, smartphones, transport and emergency response technology.

Dan Simmons reports on a range of advances that aim to help the population prepare for future disasters.

Saturday, March 01, 2014

Badger culls were 'ineffective and failed humaneness test'

By Pallab GhosScience correspondent, BBC News

An independent scientific assessment of last year's pilot badger culls in parts of Gloucestershire and Somerset has concluded that they were not effective.

The BBC's Pallab Ghosh reports on both sides of the cull row

Analysis commissioned by the government found the number of badgers killed fell well short of the target deemed necessary, the BBC understands.

And up to 18% of culled badgers took longer than five minutes to die, failing the test for humaneness.

The pilot culls were intended to limit the spread of TB in cattle.

They were carried out to demonstrate the ability to combat bovine TB though a controlled reduction in the population of local badgers.

Contracted marksmen, paid for by farming groups, were employed to shoot the animals at night.

The Independent Expert Panel was appointed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) to help ministers evaluate the effectiveness, humaneness and safety of the Gloucestershire and Somerset pilots.

Prof Rosie Woodroffe, a scientist at the Zoological Society of London, said that the panel's "findings show unequivocally that the culls were not effective and that they failed to meet the humaneness criteria.

"I hope this will lead to the Secretary of State (Owen Paterson) to focus on other ways of eradicating TB in cattle," she told BBC News.

Robin Hargreaves, president of the British Veterinary Association (BVA), said it was the BVA that had taken a lead in calling for the controlled shooting to be tested and critically evaluated before it was rolled out.

"We are unable to comment in detail on the findings of the IEP until we have seen the report," he told the BBC. "But if these figures are true then they would certainly raise concerns about both the humaneness and efficacy of controlled shooting.

"We have always stated that if the pilots were to fail on humaneness then BVA could not support the wider roll out of the method of controlled shooting."

The pilots were authorised by Defra and licensed by Natural England.

From BBC News-Sci/ Environment

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Smell of forest pine can limit climate change - researchers say

New research suggests a strong link between the powerful smell of pine trees and climate change.

The fresh scent of pine trees has a significant impact on climate change

Scientists say they've found a mechanism by which these scented vapours turn into aerosols above boreal forests.

These particles promote cooling by reflecting sunlight back into space and helping clouds to form.

The research, published in the journal Nature, fills in a major gap in our understanding, researchers say.

One of the biggest holes in scientific knowledge about climate change relates to the scale of the impact of atmospheric aerosols on temperatures.

Perfumed air

These particles form clouds that block sunlight as well as reflecting rays back into space.

They can be formed in a number of ways, including volcanic activity and by humans, through the burning of coal and oil.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), they "continue to contribute the largest uncertainty to estimates and interpretations of the Earth's changing energy budget."

One of the most significant but least understood sources of aerosols are the sweet-smelling vapours found in pine forests in North America, northern Europe and Russia.

These aerosols have confounded climate models as scientists haven't been able to accurately predict how many of the particles form.

Now an international team of researchers say they have solved the chemical mystery by which the rich odours become reflective, cooling particles.

They've long understood that the smell of pine, made up of volatile organic compounds, reacts with oxygen in the forest canopy to form these aerosols.

The scientists now found that, in fact, there is an extra step in the process, what they term a "missing link".

They've discovered ultra-low volatility organic vapours in the air that irreversibly condense onto any surface or particle that they meet.

"These vapours are so crazy in structure from what we had known before," said one of the authors, Dr Joel Thornton, from the University of Washington.

From BBC -Environment

New online tool tracks tree loss in 'near real time'

A new global monitoring system has been launched that promises "near real time" information on deforestation around the world.

Highlighted in red, the new tool can show the scale of tree cover loss between 2000 and 2012

Global Forest Watch (GFW) is backed by Google and over 40 business and campaigning groups.

It uses information from hundreds of millions of satellite images as well as data from people on the ground.

Businesses have welcomed the new database as it could help them prove that their products are sustainable.

Despite greater awareness around of the world of the impacts of deforestation, the scale of forest loss since 2000 has been significant - Data from Google and the University of Maryland says the world lost 230 million hectares of trees between 2000 and 2012.