The speed at which mankind has used the Earth’s resources over the past 20 years has put ‘humanity’s very survival’ at risk, a study involving 1,400 scientists has concluded. The environmental audit, for the United Nations, found that each person in the world now requires a third more land to supply his or her needs than the Earth can supply. Thirty per cent of amphibians, 23 per cent of mammals and 12 per cent of birds are under threat of extinction, while one in ten of the world’s major rivers runs dry every year before it reaches the sea. The bleak verdict on the environment was issued as an ‘urgent call for action’ by the United Nations Environment Programme, which said that the ‘point of no return’ was fast approaching. The report was drafted and researched by almost 400 scientists, all experts in their fields, whose findings were subjected to review by another 1,000 of their peers. Scientists conducting the review, 157 of whom were nominated by 48 governments, were split into groups of expertise for each of the ten chapters of the report. Other experts were selected from more […]
We humans tend to be an optimistic bunch. In fact, it’s long been established by psychologists that most people tend to be irrationally positive. The optimism bias, as it’s called, accounts for the fact that we expect to live longer and be more successful than the average and we tend to underestimate the likelihood of getting a serious disease or a divorce. This tendency is adaptive–many researchers have claimed that a positive outlook motivates us to plan for our future and may even have an effect on our long-term physical health. Optimism may be so necessary to our survival that it’s hardwired in our brains. A new study published in the journal Nature further confirms the idea that having a rosy outlook is a personality trait with deep, neurological roots. Researchers found that the brains of optimistic people actually light up differently on a scan than those who tend to be more pessimistic when they think about future events. The disparity between positive and pessimistic minds is especially prominent in areas of the brain that have been linked to depression. ‘The same areas that malfunction in depression are very active when people think about positive events,’ says Tali […]
A team of British scientists contends that, within 200 years, the Earth’s temperatures may become hot enough to kill off half of all existing plant and animal species. The researchers from the Universities of York and Leeds in Britain base that dire possibility on a new analysis of the 520-million-year-old fossil record, linking past mass extinctions with cycles of high temperatures that occurred at roughly the same time. ‘We could be in the temperature zone in which mass extinctions have occurred by the end of this century, [or] more likely in the next century,’ said Peter Mayhew, the study’s co-author and an ecologist at the University of York. A Strong Link Benton and his colleagues laid out their findings in a paper that appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the chief biological research journal for the British academy of science. Measuring in 10-million-year increments, they found a correlation between high temperatures and four of five mass extinctions in Earth’s fossil record, dating back 520 million years. No other research had examined both the entire globe and the entire fossil record, which begins about 540 million years ago. This analysis makes […]
Saudi Arabia has refused to cut interest rates in lockstep with the US Federal Reserve for the first time, signalling that the oil-rich Gulf kingdom is preparing to break the dollar currency peg in a move that risks setting off a stampede out of the dollar across the Middle East. ‘This is a very dangerous situation for the dollar,’ said Hans Redeker, currency chief at BNP Paribas. ‘Saudi Arabia has $800bn (£400bn) in their future generation fund, and the entire region has $3,500bn under management. They face an inflationary threat and do not want to import an interest rate policy set for the recessionary conditions in the United States,’ he said. The Saudi central bank said today that it would take ‘appropriate measures’ to halt huge capital inflows into the country, but analysts say this policy is unsustainable and will inevitably lead to the collapse of the dollar peg. As a close ally of the US, Riyadh has so far tried to stick to the peg, but the link is now destabilising its own economy. advertisementThe Fed’s dramatic half point cut to 4.75pc yesterday has already caused a plunge in the world dollar index to […]
US existing home sales fell 8.0 percent in September as a persistent housing slump continued to weigh on the property market and the world’s biggest economy, an industry group said Wednesday. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) said in a monthly snapshot that sales of existing homes and apartments tumbled to a seasonally adjusted rate of 5.04 million units in September from 5.48 million in August. The drop was worse than expected. Most economists had only expected sales to decline to around 5.25 million. Stripping out apartment sales, sales fell to their lowest level since January 1998. August’s sales pace meanwhile was revised down from an original tally of 5.50 million properties. The depth of the housing depression was underlined by an annual reading which showed sales of homes and apartments across the United States have plummeted a hefty 19.1 percent from September 2006. Sales activity has slowed dramatically and dragged down prices in many areas in the past 12 months in a market downturn which has also forced many mortgage lenders out of business. The national median existing-home price for all housing types was 211,700 dollars […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
