Clipmarks | JICWyllie's clips

Butterflies fight losing battle with climate change

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 08:40:37 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Butterflies are declining because they have become trapped in small pockets of countryside, unable to escape the effects of climate change,

the break-up of suitable butterfly habitats by urban spread and agriculture is driving the "staggering" declines.

Britain has seen some of the greatest losses of butterfly diversity in Europe.

This is because the heavy fragmentation of their habitats means they have too far to fly before reaching another suitable area of countryside.

Speaking before the conference, Dr Wilson warned that butterflies could be an early indicator of the fate in store for other insects, animals and plants as the climate warms. British temperatures have risen by between 1C and 1.5C since the 1970s.

Tags: environment, insects, i-climate change, i-extinction, i-risks, i-increase

August the cruellest month for bugs

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 08:32:26 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.independent.co.uk

The combined effect of low temperatures and rain has presented Britain's invertebrates with a double whammy. As insects are cold-blooded they need the warmth of the sun to raise their body temperatures in the morning and allow their muscles to work. A cool day means this cannot happen and they are unable to forage for food, such as nectar from flowers and plants, or other smaller insects as prey – and a succession of such days can be fatal.

Tags: environment, insects, i-extinction, i-risks, i-ncrease

Electronic smog 'is disrupting nature on a massive scale'

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 08:29:19 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.independent.co.uk

Mobile phones, Wi-Fi systems, electric power lines and similar sources of "electrosmog" are disrupting nature on a massive scale, causing birds and bees to lose their bearings, fail to reproduce and die, a conference will be told this week.

Dr Warnke, a lecturer at the University of Saarland, in Germany, adds that the world's natural electrical and magnetic fields have had a "decisive hand in the evolution of species". Over millions of years they learned to use them to work out where they were, the time of day, and the approach of bad weather.

His research has shown that bees exposed to the kinds of electrical fields generated by power lines killed each other and their young, while ones exposed to signals in the same range as mobile phones lost much of their homing ability.

Tags: environment, i-extinction, i-risks, i-increase

Pound and euro slide amid more housing gloom

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 16:09:41 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: business.timesonline.co.uk

"Our estimate is for 25 per cent to 35 per cent house-price falls from their height...resulting in up to 1.3 million households, or 18 per cent of mortgages by value, in negative equity under our recession scenario," said Bruno Paulson, senior analyst at Sanford Bernstein, the research house.

Mr Paulson said that house price falls would be "far worse" than in the last economic downturn in the 1990s and could have a huge negative knock-on effect for the UK's mortgage lenders.

Morgan Stanley estimated in April that house price falls of 15 per cent over the subsequent 24 months would put 1.2 million people into the red with their property values.

But if price falls of 25 per cent are sustained, that would put 2 million into negative equity, analysts at the investment bank said

Savills said today that its forecast that house prices will fall by 25 per cent over this year and next was looking like an increasingly safe bet.

Tags: economy, consumers, housing, i-prices, i-decrease, i-record

Boatloads of Trouble: How We Are Importing Our Way to Destruction

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 11:16:43 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie
clipper's remarks: Think about it before buying any more rubbish from China. Make your own, look after what you've got. It's the new cool. Consumption and more stuff is so vulgar.

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

Economists, bureaucrats and investors rejoiced late last month when the Commerce Department announced that U.S. exports in June were up sharply, $28.8 billion higher than in June 2007. The department made less noise about the rising tide of imports, which were up $26.4 billion.

the nation's seaports are now handling 1.4 billion tons of goods annually and that waterborne container traffic will double by 2020.

Oceangoing ships burn the lowest of low-quality diesel oil, and the fuel used by locomotives isn't much better. Trucks burn a greater quantity of fuel per ton hauled, with correspondingly high emissions.

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

imagine 7,300 football fields paved and enclosed (or have a look at these images.) Similarly vast acreages

are paved as well.

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

Halting that growth or even making deep cuts in imports would not only help clear the air, it would make it easier to clean up the toxic water pollution that accumulates in sea lanes and ports;

Tags: economy, transport, i-consequences, i-increase, environment, i-pollution, i-climate change, i-crisis

Why cheaper oil signals trouble

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 18:24:44 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie
clipper's remarks: Deflation will win over inflation.

But the "good news" will go on until just after the USA election. Then reality will begin to intrude its ugly head, again.

Clip Source: money.cnn.com

Food and energy prices are coming down in part because of a global growth slowdown that could also cool the red hot U.S. export sector - the major bright spot in an economy still struggling with a massive housing bust.

If prices keep sliding, year-over-year inflation numbers - after hitting a 17-year high last month - could soon look much healthier, reducing fears that the Federal Reserve may have to raise interest rates to stamp out rising inflation expectations.

If the growth party is over around the world, the U.S. export boom will quickly fizzle.

A pullback by some of its overseas customers offers the latest bit of unhappy news for the U.S. economy, which this year has continued to grow - if only tepidly - in large measure thanks to slowing imports and rising exports.

The halo effect from exports could already be wearing off.

second-quarter GDP data showed U.S. corporate profits from foreign sources dropped 15% from first-quarter levels, due to softer worldwide economic conditions.

Tags: economy, commodities, i-prices, i-decrease, i-consequences, i-deflation

Brazil: Deforestation rises sharply as farmers push into Amazon

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 09:51:54 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Concerns over the destruction of the Brazilian rainforest resurfaced at the weekend after it emerged that deforestation jumped by 64% over the last 12 months, according to official government data.

Brazil's National Institute for Space Research this week said that around 3,145 square miles - an area half the size of Wales - were razed between August 2007 and August 2008.

With commodity prices hitting recent highs and loggers and soy farmers pushing ever further into the Amazon jungle, satellite images captured by a real-time monitoring system, known in Brazil as Deter, showed that deforestation was once again on the rise after three years on the wane.

Brazil's push to expand its economy and develop the Amazon region is posing increasing threats to Brazil's natural resources. They accuse the government of retreating from its promises to defend the Amazon rainforest, which has been decimated since the 1970s by a mixture of logging, cattle ranching and soy farming.

Tags: environment, forests, i-deforestation, i-increase

A geopolitical tsunami: Beyond oil in world civilization clash

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 18:17:43 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: energybulletin.net

Samuel Huntington (1993; 1996) proposes the idea of an emerging fragmented world. He argues that there is a likely intercultural and inter-religious conflict looming between future world powers, each superpower cohered from within through culture and religion. The new world order will be a multi-polar world. Huntington rejects the idea that the world will continue to acquiesce to Western homogenizing forces of globalization, which many critics suggest have been mounted to serve Western interests, and so displace the interests of both Eastern and Islamic peoples. But we may be about to see these non-Western peoples aggressively pursue their vested interests

civilization can be defined as the broadest level of cultural identity of an individual, ethnic group or nation, or even group of nations. He highlights three major civilizations of influence: Christian Western, Islamic-Arabic, and Chinese.

post-globalization world which fragments along civilization fault lines.

Tags: culture, civilisation, i-breakdown, i-forecast

Dutch sabotage agent recalled from Iran over “impending” US attack - report

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 15:58:41 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie
clipper's remarks: Two indicators of an attack in the last couple of days ... Will it be before or after Christmas with George WS doing the dirty work for his successor.

Clip Source: www.debka.com

A Dutch AIVD Secret Service ultra-secret operation underway in Iran in recent years has been halted and an agent recalled in view of “impending US plans to attack Iran,” within weeks, writes Joost de Haas, known for his good intelligence contacts, in the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf.

The AIVD operation aimed to infiltrate and sabotage the weapons [and nuclear] industry in the Islamic Republic.

According to intelligence sources in the Netherlands, the US [or Israel] was expected to make a decision within weeks to attack nuclear plants with unmanned aircraft, used to avoid risking the lives of air crews and warplanes.

necessary in Israel’s case to hold its air fleet and flight crews ready to defend the country against reprisal from Iran’s allies. Syria and the Lebanese Hizballah have stockpiled thousands of rockets for this purpose.

Tags: politics, i-policy, i-war, i-attack, i-forecast

Bank of England to show no mercy as firms go under

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 13:24:01 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.independent.co.uk

The Bank of England is expected to ignore pleas for a cut in rates this week, despite warnings that the number of companies set to go under in Britain this year could reach 17,000.

The cost of borrowing should remain at 5 per cent even though figures – collated from official statistics for the first six months of 2008 – show that failures among companies could rise by a staggering third over last year's total of 12,507.

There's worse to come, insolvency experts warn. Figures for the 1990s show that company failures do not seriously escalate until the second and third year of a recession. Britain has yet to officially lurch into recession, defined as two quarters of negative economic growth.

Tags: economy, currencies, i-interest rates, i-policy, i-consequences, business, i-insolvancy, i-increase

The Next Oil-Price Shock Will Be At Christmas

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 17:56:27 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.fleetstreetinvest.co.uk

A two-pronged attack that bombed nuclear facilities and cut off benzene supplies could easily get the US exactly what they want in Iran.

It could destroy any chance of Iran getting the bomb and force Ahmadinejad out of office. It won’t take much to convince the current US administration to come along to this particular party.

So, the world is gearing up for action in Iran. The plan has been made. The warships have practiced. The will is there.

I think Israel will bomb suspected Iranian nuclear facilities and a US-led task force will block the Straits of Hormuz.

All this is likely to happen sometime in the US interregnum period around Christmas. If it does, the oil price will go utterly ballistic.

Up to 40% of the world’s oil supplies pass through the Straits of Hormuz. It is one of the most strategically important waterways in the entire world.

The Americans want to block the Straits of Hormuz to stop Iranian imports of benzene. This will cripple the country’s economy.

Tags: energy, oil, i-prices, i-increase, i-forecast, politics, i-policy, i-war, i-consequences

Retail sales slump surpasses 1990s recession

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:36:02 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: business.timesonline.co.uk

High street sales plunged to the lowest level in a quarter of century in August as wet weather and increased pressure on consumers' wallets deterred shoppers from splashing out.

Some 60 per cent of retailers said that trade fell in August compared with 13 per cent who said they had risen, according to figures from the CBI.

The resulting rounded balance of -46 per cent is down from -36 per cent in July and is the lowest figure since the CBI began its series in 1983, indicating that conditions for retailers are worse than during the last recession.

There are also signs that more jobs could be lost, with 31 per cent more retailers reporting a fall rather than a rise in employment, compared with 11 per cent in July.

Tags: economy, consumers, i-spending, i-decrease, i-record

Sean O'Grady:Credit crunch: 'It's just the end of the beginning'

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:29:12 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.independent.co.uk

According to ING, the total value of assets written down by Planet Earth's big banks is $502bn. The total value of capital raised by the same: $351bn. That deficit, of $151bn could easily get much much bigger.

Well, there are two new looming threats to keep us awake at night. First, the certainty that what one might term the "normal" writedowns and losses associated with an economic downturn will add to the strains on banks' balance sheets just when they are at their weakest.

Which brings us to the second nightmare. Will the banks be able to raise the capital required for them to regain their strength as losses mount?

The team at Capital Economics calculates that £65bn more is needed in the way of fresh capital, that is if the banks are to carry on functioning at their current rates of lending and to sort out the remaining damage from the credit crunch.

if UK bank lending drops by just 5 per cent, that will easily be enough to tip the economy into recession.

So recession here we come.

Tags: economy, financial markets, i-losses, i-increase, i-forecast

Insight: The global spending spree has hit a brick wall

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 13:30:55 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.ft.com

The US consumer is not the only one feeling down and out. Since the start of the year, higher food and energy prices have undermined consumer confidence not only in Detroit but also in Dusseldorf, Delhi and Dalian. The upshot: a global slump in personal spending is unfolding, portending rockier times for the global economy and world financial markets.

At best, global private consumption expenditures – roughly $32,000bn in nominal dollars in 2007 – are expected to rise by 2-4 per cent this year. That compares with an 11 per cent jump in 2007, and contrasts sharply with the boom in personal spending this decade.

Global consumption surged 63 per cent between 2001 and 2007, a bonanza fuelled by easy global credit conditions and soaring equity and housing prices.

consumer spending in developing nations doubled between 2000 and 2007, from $4,500bn to $9,000bn last year

Lost on the “decouplers” is this – the mood among many consumers in the developing nations is just as foul as it is in the US.

Tags: economy, consumers, i-spending, i-decrease

A Locally Grown Diet With Fuss but No Muss

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 12:24:10 GMT

clipped by: JICWyllie

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Eating locally raised food is a growing trend. But who has time to get to the farmer’s market, let alone plant a garden?

That is where Trevor Paque comes in. For a fee, Mr. Paque, who lives in San Francisco, will build an organic garden in your backyard, weed it weekly and even harvest the bounty, gently placing a box of vegetables on the back porch when he leaves.

“The highest form of luxury is now growing it yourself or paying other people to grow it for you,” said Corby Kummer, the food columnist and book author. “This has become fashion.”

the shift toward it is being driven by the increasingly popular view that fast food is the enemy and that local food tastes better.

Last year, the New Oxford American Dictionary picked locavore as its word of the year.

For a growing number of diners, a food’s provenance is more important than its brand name,

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

“I can’t tell you how joyful it makes me to hear that it’s trendy for people in Manhattan to own a part of a cow.”

Barbara Kingsolver,

said,

Tags: environment, food, i-localisation, i-sustainability, i-trend