SAN FRANCISCO — It’s hard to visualize a water crisis while driving the lush boulevards of Los Angeles, golfing Arizona’s green fairways or watching dancing Las Vegas fountains leap more than 20 stories high. So look Down Under. A decade into its worst drought in a hundred years Australia is a lesson of what the American West could become. Bush fires are killing people and obliterating towns. Rice exports collapsed last year and the wheat crop was halved two years running. Water rationing is part of daily life. ‘Think of that as California’s future,’ said Heather Cooley of California water think tank the Pacific Institute. Water raised leafy green Los Angeles from the desert and filled arid valleys with the nation’s largest fruit and vegetable crop. Each time more water was needed, another megaproject was built, from dams of the major rivers to a canal stretching much of the length of the state. But those methods are near their end. There is very little water left untapped and global warming, the gradual increase of temperature as carbon dioxide and other gases retain more of the sun’s heat, has created new uncertainties. Global warming pushes […]
COLUMBIA – No longer a phenomenon for future Missourians to worry about, climate change is clearly part of the here and now. Growing conditions in the state have become more favorable for plants previously found farther south. Several species of birds common to Missouri are shifting their ranges northward. And if climate change continues to unfold as some climatologists predict, Missouri can expect warmer temperatures, shorter winters and an overall increase in rain and flooding. Missouri’s changing birds Here are some examples of Missouri birds that have become less common, along with the observed northward shift in their range. * American Ttree Ssparrow (54 miles) * Rough-legged Hhawk (179 miles) * Golden Eeagle (58 miles) * American Bblack Dduck (182 miles) * Black-capped Cchickadee (90 miles) The following are added: The following areMissouri birds that have become more common, andas well asadded: as well as the observed northward shift in their ranges. * Turkey Vvulture (53 miles) * Eastern Pphoebe (48 miles) * […]
HARTFORD, Conn. – The Catholic population of the United States has shifted away from the Northeast and towards the Southwest, while secularity continues to grow in strength in all regions of the country, according to a new study conducted by the Program on Public Values at Trinity College. ‘The decline of Catholicism in the Northeast is nothing short of stunning,’ said Barry Kosmin, a principal investigator for the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS). ‘Thanks to immigration and natural increase among Latinos, California now has a higher proportion of Catholics than New England.’ Conducted between February and November of last year, ARIS 2008 is the third in a landmark series of large, nationally representative surveys of U.S. adults in the 48 contiguous states conducted by Kosmin and Ariela Keysar. Employing the same research methodology as the 1990 and 2001 surveys, ARIS 2008 questioned 54,461 adults in either English or Spanish. With a margin of error of less than 0.5 percent, it provides the only complete portrait of how contemporary Americans identify themselves religiously, and how that self-identification has changed over the past generation. In broad terms, ARIS 2008 found a consolidation and strengthening of shifts signaled in the 2001 […]
WASHINGTON — Neither red wine nor white wine can offer women protection from breast cancer, a new study revealed. In fact, both appear to have a negative effect. Polly Newcomb, the lead author of the study which was published on the March issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention, said that their study found red wine does not reduce the risk of breast cancer, although previous studies highlight its health benefits in reducing heart disease. ‘We found no difference between red or white wine in relation to breast-cancer risk. Neither appears to have any benefits,’ Newcomb, who is from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, said Monday in a statement. Actually, women who had 14 or more drinks per week, regardless of the type of alcohol consumed, faced a 24 percent increase in breast cancer compared with non-drinkers, the researchers said. ‘If a woman drinks, she should do so in moderation — no more than one drink a day. And if a woman chooses red wine, she should do so because she likes the taste, not because she thinks it […]
FENGHUA, China – Chen Hsien, an employee of Fenghua Ningbo Plastic Works Ltd., a plastics factory that manufactures lightweight household items for Western markets, expressed his disbelief Monday over the ‘sheer amount of [garbage] Americans will buy. Often, when we’re assigned a new order for, say, ‘salad shooters,’ I will say to myself, ‘There’s no way that anyone will ever buy these.’ … One month later, we will receive an order for the same product, but three times the quantity. How can anyone have a need for such useless [garbage]? I hear that Americans can buy anything they want, and I believe it, judging from the things I’ve made for them, Chen said. ‘And I also hear that, when they no longer want an item, they simply throw it away. So wasteful and contemptible. Let’s today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008 represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last 50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that 2008 was when we hit the […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
