As many as one billion people could lose their homes by 2050 because of the devastating impact of global warming, scientists and political leaders will be warned today. They will hear that the steady rise in temperatures across the planet could trigger mass migration on unprecedented levels. Hundreds of millions could be forced to go on the move because of water shortages and crop failures in most of Africa, as well as in central and southern Asia and South America, the conference in London will be told. There could also be an effect on levels of starvation and on food prices as agriculture struggles to cope with growing demand in increasingly arid conditions. Rising sea levels could also cause havoc, with coastal communities in southern Asia, the Far East, the south Pacific islands and the Caribbean seeing their homes submerged. North and west Africans could head towards Europe, while the southern border of the United States could come under renewed pressure from Central America. The conference will hear a warning from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) that the developed world should start preparing for a huge movement of people caused by climate change. […]
Starlings can tell if you are watching them, according to a study that has shown for the first time that starlings respond to a human’s gaze. Starlings will keep away from their food dish if a human is looking at it. However, if the person is just as close, but their eyes are turned away, the birds resumed feeding earlier and consumed more food overall, according to experiments by Julia Carter and colleagues at the University of Bristol, reported today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society Biological Sciences. Could this be exploited to make a better scarecrow? ‘Starlings do seem to have a reasonably strong aversion to eyes, even to artificial eyes, but these birds are also very quick learners,’ she says. ‘Previous studies have shown that starlings will learn within a matter of hours to ignore even relatively elaborate bird scarers – these devices never do what a real predator would, they don’t actually chase the birds or present any other signs of danger, so the birds quickly learn to ignore them.’ This fear of being observed directly may be hard wired into bird brains, since predators tend to look at their prey […]
A Washington think tank is warning that housing prices are falling at an accelerating level, destroying wealth at a pace that will cost the average homeowner $85,000 in lost wealth this year alone. The projections by the Center for Economic and Policy Research are based on the numbers in Tuesday’s Case-Shiller home price index, which showed accelerating price declines in most big cities. The annual rate of price decline over the last quarter was 24.9% in the 20-city index and 25.8% in the 10-city index,’ the center said in its Housing Market Monitor today. ‘At this rate of price decline, the excesses of the housing bubble will have largely disappeared by the end of the year. At the same time, the price decline implies an incredibly rapid loss of wealth. In real terms, the rate of price decline in the 20-city index would imply a loss of almost $6 trillion in real housing wealth over the course of the year, an average of $85,000 per homeowner.’ I’m a so-so student of economic history, but I’d have to bet that, even adjusted for inflation, the only time that many Americans have lost that much wealth in a short […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
