Our blogs about
America's Wars
War on Iraq
War on Drugs
War on Afghanistan
War on Columbia
War on Philippines
War on Venezuela

More
Matrix Masters
Blogs
World Events
US News
Science & Health
Earth News
Free Speech
News from Africa
News from Palestine
Bill of Rights Under Attack

Matrix Masters'
SUPPORTERS

Lorenzo's
Random Musings
. . . about Chaos,
Reason, and Hope

 

Corporate phantoms
The web of deceit over Genetically Modified (GM) food has now drawn in the Prime Minister's speechwriters . . . He suggested that in the poor world people welcome genetic engineering. It was unfortunate that the example he chose was the biotech industry in Bangalore in south-west India. Bangalore happens to be the centre of the world's most effective protests against GM crops, the capital of a state in which anti-GM campaigners outnumber those in the UK by 1,000 to one. Like most biotech enthusiasts, he ignored the key concern of the activists: the corporate takeover of the food chain, and its devastating consequences for food security. . . . Two weeks ago, this column showed how the Bivings Group, a PR company contracted to Monsanto, had invented fake citizens to post messages on internet listservers. These phantoms had launched a campaign to force Nature magazine to retract a paper it had published, alleging that native corn in Mexico had been contaminated with GM pollen. But this, it now seems, is just one of hundreds of critical interventions with which PR companies hired by big business have secretly guided the biotech debate over the past few years. . . . AgBioWorld is perhaps the most influential biotech site on the web. Every day it carries new postings about how GM crops will feed the world, new denunciations of the science which casts doubt on them and new attacks on environmentalists. It was here that the fake persuaders invented by Bivings launched their assault on the Nature paper. AgBioWorld then drew up a petition to have the paper retracted. . . . Bivings is just one of several public relations agencies secretly building a parallel world on the web. Another US company, Berman & Co, runs a fake public interest site called ActivistCash.com, which seeks to persuade the foundations giving money to campaigners to desist. Berman also runs the "Centre for Consumer Freedom", which looks like a citizens' group but lobbies against smoking bans, alcohol restrictions and health warnings on behalf of tobacco, drinks and fast food companies. The marketing firm Nichols Dezenhall set up a site called StopEcoViolence, another "citizens' initiative", demonising activists. In March, Nichols Dezenhall linked up with Prakash's collaborator, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, to sponsor a conference for journalists and corporate executives on "eco-extremism".

posted by Lorenzo 3:32 PM

 

Europe Will Ratify Kyoto Climate Protocol Friday In New York While US Abstains
BRUSSELS, Belgium, May 30, 2002 (ENS) - Representatives from all European Union governments and the European Commission will formally ratify the Kyoto Protocol on climate change at a ceremony Friday at UN Headquarters in New York. The move marks a key step towards entry into force of binding greenhouse gas emission limits for industrialized countries. European Union ratification of the protocol is a symbolic step, underlining the bloc's determination to champion the agreement and the multilateral response to climate change that it embodies against obstruction led by the United States. The move pushes aside fears that Europe would not come through on its own promise to ratify by May 31. It will give the European Union strong moral authority at the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development in late August and early September.

posted by West 7:23 AM

 

Panel weighs in on global warming: Earth's surface is warmer, they say, even if upper air isn't
msnbc.com -- A National Academy of Sciences panel has concluded that strong evidence exists to show an �undoubtedly real� warming of Earth�s surface over the last 20 years � even if satellites and weather balloons show little or no warming five miles up. �"The warming trend" at the surface over the last 20 years "is undoubtedly real and is substantially greater than the average rate of warming during the twentieth century," the 11-member panel wrote in a report released Wednesday.

posted by West 8:04 PM

 

Early blooming flowers tied to warmer Earth
msnbc.com -- In a new measure of how a warmer globe is changing biology, British researchers have found that plants are blooming much earlier and they forecast the trend will continue if temperatures rise. A father and son team report in the journal Science that the first spring flowering of 385 species of British plants has advanced by 4� days to 15 days in a decade when compared with the flowering date of the species over the previous four decades. "These data reveal the strongest biological signal yet of climatic change," the authors write in a study to be published Friday.

posted by West 7:58 PM

 

Stories of modern science: GLACIER MELTS WILL HAVE GLOBAL IMPACT
United Press International -- Most of the world's glaciers appear to be melting faster, according to a joint assessment by NASA and U.S. Geological Survey. At the same time, a few glaciers are advancing. The assessment used satellites to map and track glacier changes all over the world during the latter part of the melt season, when the underlying permanent ice is exposed. It compared current satellite images with topographical maps and other glacier records from the 20th century. What was found were strong parallels between global temperature rises and glacier retreats. Glacier changes in the next 100 years could affect agriculture, water supplies, hydroelectric power, transportation, mining, coastlines and wildlife habitats. Melting ice may cause both serious problems and -- for the short term in some regions -- beneficial increases in fresh water supplies. But all these impacts will change with time, researchers said.

posted by West 4:51 PM

 

Organic Farming More Efficient, Swiss Study Finds
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Organic farming may produce lower yields, but in the long run it is more efficient and is much easier on the environment, Swiss researchers reported on Thursday. Organic farms have more fertile soil and a higher biodiversity, both of which have been shown to increase efficiency, the researchers report in Friday's issue of the journal Science. Paul Mader of the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture in Frick, Switzerland and colleagues at the Swiss Federal Research Station for Agroecology and Agriculture in Zurich spent 21 years comparing conventional farming to organic farming, which uses no synthetic pesticides or fertilizers. "Mean yields are 20 percent lower, that's true, depending on the crop," Mader said in a telephone interview. For instance, organic wheat yields are 10 percent lower, while there is a 40 percent reduction for potatoes. "But mean energy input per hectare (2.4 acres) was about 50 percent higher (in conventional plots). As a consequence, energy input per crop unit is lower in organic."

posted by West 4:37 PM

 

Canada-U.S. Industrial Water Waste Rising-Study
MONTREAL (Reuters) -- Industrial pollution dumped into U.S. and Canadian lakes, rivers and streams rose 26 percent from 1995 to 1999, overshadowing an almost equal reduction in toxic air emissions, an environmental watchdog agency said on Wednesday. In its annual study on pollution in Canada and the United States, the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation, a Montreal-based agency created under the North American Free Trade Agreement, said the total amount of toxic releases and transfers fell only 3 percent during the five-year period. That modest decline was aided by the manufacturing sector's 25-percent reduction in air emissions, the commission said. But the reduced amount of pollution spewed into the air was offset by a 25-percent jump in on-site releases to land, a 35-percent surge in off-site releases -- mainly to landfills -- and the 26-percent rise in pollution poured into surface water.

posted by West 8:17 AM

 

Hydrogen Puts Iceland on Road to Oil-Free Future
REYKJAVIK (Reuters) -- Iceland, with its steaming geothermal power stations, already knows plenty about alternative energy. Now this island of lava on the edge of the Arctic plans to become the world's first society to ditch fossil fuels entirely, relying instead on hydrogen made using the power of its roaring rivers and volcanoes. Enthusiasts even talk about it one day becoming the "Kuwait of the North" as an exporter of the new, green fuel to markets in Europe.

posted by West 8:14 AM

 

Extinct Tasmanian Tiger One Step Closer to Cloning
SYDNEY (Reuters) -- Australian scientists announced on Tuesday a breakthrough in efforts to clone the extinct Tasmanian Tiger, saying they had replicated some of the animal's genes using DNA extracted from preserved male and female pups. The scientists from the Australian Museum in Sydney said they hoped to clone a Tasmanian Tiger in 10 years if they were successful in constructing large quantities of all the genes of the Tasmanian Tiger and sequencing sections of the genome to create a genetic library of Tasmanian Tiger DNA.

posted by West 9:59 AM

 

Scientists Begin to Heed Inuit Warnings of Climate Change in Arctic
washingtonpost.com -- And so it has come to be, the elders say, a time when icebergs are melting, tides have changed, polar bears have thinned and there is no meaning left in a ring around the moon. Scattered clouds blowing in a wind no longer speak to elders and hunters. Daily weather markers are becoming less predictable in the fragile Arctic as its climate changes. Inuit elders and hunters who depend on the land say they are disturbed by what they are seeing swept in by the changes: deformed fish, caribou with bad livers, baby seals left by their mothers to starve. Just the other year, a robin appeared where no robin had been seen before. There is no word for robin in Inuktitut, the Inuit language.

posted by West 9:29 AM

 

Mexico Becomes World's Largest Whale Sanctuary
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico announced an accord on Friday to protect whales in its waters, making it the world's largest national sanctuary for the giant mammals, environmental groups said. The office of Mexican President Vicente Fox said the "Area of Refuge" accord would provide added protection in areas such as reproduction, growth and migration to 39 whale species that spend time in Mexican waters. The accord was signed at the International Whaling Commission meeting in Shimonoseki, Japan. "We have the largest national protected area for whales in the world," said Juan Carlos Cantu, the coordinator of the Greenpeace Mexico biodiversity campaign. "We're talking about nearly 3 million square kilometers (1.15 million square miles) of the Pacific ocean and the Atlantic ocean and the Caribbean," he added, speaking on national radio.

posted by West 10:27 AM

 

Cheney's Energy Task Force Documents Show Industry Influence
WASHINGTON, DC, May 22, 2002 (ENS) - Vice President Richard Cheney's energy task force met with industry representatives 25 times for every one contact with conservation and public interest groups, shows a review by the group whose lawsuit prompted the release of thousands of Energy Department documents. The review was released the same day that the energy agency delivered another 1,500 pages of previously withheld task force information. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has now been provided more than 13,000 pages of documents by the Energy Department (DOE) after winning a lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The DOE was the lead agency working with the Cheney task force, called the National Energy Policy Development Group, which was commissioned by President George W. Bush in January 2001 to develop a national energy policy.

posted by West 2:34 PM

 

Iceberg Breaks Away From Antarctica
washingtonpost.com �� Another new iceberg has broken away from Antarctica, the National Ice Center reported Tuesday. The berg named D-17 broke off from the Lazarev Ice Shelf, a large sheet of glacial ice and snow extending from the Antarctic mainland into the southeastern Weddell Sea. The new iceberg is 34.5 miles long and 6.9 miles wide, about the same size as St. Lucia Island in the Caribbean Sea. It was observed on an image collected by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program.

posted by West 10:59 AM

 

World Facing Critical Choices on Environment
LONDON (Reuters) -- The world is at an environmental crossroads where the choice between greed and humanity will decide the fate of millions of people for decades to come, the United Nations Environment Program said Wednesday. "Fundamental changes are possible and required," UNEP executive director Klaus Toepfer told a news conference presenting the third Global Environment Outlook report. "It would be a disaster to sit back and ignore the picture painted." The GEO-3 report, designed to kick world leaders into action ahead of the Johannesburg earth summit in late August, sees a bleak outlook for the future unless radical action is taken now.

posted by West 8:56 AM

 

Summit Balances Ecosystems and Ecotourist Pleasure
QUEBEC CITY, Canada, May 20, 2002 (ENS) - The first World Ecotourism Summit has attracted over 1,100 delegates from 130 countries, who have gathered to ensure that ecotourism follows a sustainable path. The United Nations designated the year 2002 as the International Year of Ecotourism, and this summit at the Qu�bec City Convention Centre is the key global event for the year.

posted by West 3:22 PM

 

Atlantic Could See Above-Average Hurricane Season
Reuters - The 2002 Atlantic hurricane season could see an above-average number of tropical storms and up to eight hurricanes, U.S. government forecasters said on Monday.

posted by West 9:59 PM

 

Quarter of mammals faced with extinction
independent.co.uk -- Almost a quarter of the world's mammals face extinction within 30 years, a United Nations study on the state of the global environment will announce tomorrow. Scientists who contributed to the report have identified 11,046 species of plants and animals that are endangered. These include 1,130 mammals � 24 per cent of the total � and 12 per cent, or 1,183 species of birds. Despite continued and repeated warnings from the world's leading scientists, the holocaust being carried out by Homo Sapiens continues.

posted by West 7:09 PM