MRSA: ACT II

NEW NT-MRSA Strains

The Emerging Infectious Diseases of U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discovered a new strain of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), which is responsible to more than 20 percent of all human MRSA infections in the Netherlands.

“Persons working or living in close contact with pigs or cows are at increased risk of becoming colonized and infected with MRSA. Infections can be severe, as is indicated by the hospital admission rate.”

According to other research MRSA was also prevalent in Canadian pigs and pig farmers. Full report

Related link: Should We Be Afraid of MRSA?

Species Extinction

Human activity has caused a sharp decline in the number of large mammals on about 80% of Earth’s terrestrial surface!

“By examining records dating back to AD1500, US researchers found that at least 35% of mammals over 20kg had seen their range cut by more than half. ”

Chris Muiden at the Dutch language Wikipedia, the copyright holder of this work, has published this photo under the “GNU Free Documentation License“.

The researchers state: “Large carnivores frequently shape the number, distribution and behavior of their prey… Large herbivores function as ecological engineers by changing the structure and species composition of surrounding vegetation.

“Furthermore, both sets of mammals profoundly influence the environment beyond direct species interactions, such as through [the food chain.]”

The “habitat generalists” including tigers, leopards, lions, American bison, elk and wolves suffered the greatest losses.

Full story…

Nature Loves Intelligent Species!

Is nature harnessing some of its time old mechanisms to protect the intelligent species against the energy dinosaurs?

Related Links:

Treacherous Weather Plagues Holiday Travelers
Weather eases in upper U.S. Midwest as death toll climbs to 22
Midwest storm delivers snow in time to disrupt holiday travel
Weather plagues flights in the East
State Of Emergency Declared In New Zealand After Earthquake
Australian farmers fight drought and flood
Collapsing Cities
Energy Dinosaurs

Are You a Dinosaur?

Top ten ways to know you are a dinosaur:

1. You and your partner, or other members of your species, have laid or intend to lay more than one or two eggs throughout your lifetime.

2. The overall numbers of your species are exponentially increasing.

3. Your consumption habits cause deforestation, habitat destruction and species extinction.

4. Have a larger ‘footprint’ than other animals.

5. Hoard too much stuff.

Tyrannosaurus: GNU Free Documentation License

6. Move around a lot.

7. Your dirt is getting bigger than the environment can absorb.

8. Commit cannibalism of same species eggs [aka, WAR.]

9. Instead of adapting to, you are destroying nature.

10. Using more energy and materials than the previous generations, therefore, you are regressing rather than evolving.

Related Links: Energy Dinosaurs

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Drought, Floods, Crop Damage, Grain Losses…

BEIJING (Reuters) – China is suffering its worst drought in a decade, millions of people are short of drinking water, reservoirs and rivers have shrunk. The surface area of the country’s largest fresh water lake, Poyang, in the southern province of Jiangxi, has fallen to a record 50 sq km (19 sq miles) from several thousand sq km at its peak.

Children play in a dried-up pool in southwest China’s Sichuan Province. Source: Embassy of the PR China in the U.S.

About 400,000 hectares (1,545 sq miles) of crops have been damaged by drought this year, resulting in total grain losses of 37.4 million metric tones. The meteorologists have blamed the crisis on increased extreme weather conditions. About 50 million Chinese face drinking water shortages. Full report…

Related Link: The First Wave of the World’s Collapsing Cities

Repeat After Me!

WASHINGTON (AFP) — “A small group of US experts stubbornly insist that, contrary to what the vast majority of their colleagues believe, humans may not be responsible for the warming of the planet Earth.

“These experts believe that global warming is a natural phenomenon, and they point to reams of data they say support their assertions.”

There’s no such thing as global warming!

• Global Warming is a figment of our imagination [AAR, is has nothing to do with human activity. ]

• It makes no difference whether you have 290, 450, or 560 ppm (parts per million) of CO2 in the atmosphere. A million is a 1 followed by six zeros, you know how big a number that is? [AAR, what is to do with you, are you a f**king scientist or something?]

• There’s NO toxic pollution in the environment. Do you know how toxic dioxins, mercury … blah, blah are? They are so toxic even a minute trace of them in your breast milk could cause permanent brain damage to your baby. [AAR, it has nothing to do with industrial production.]

• There’s NO ozone hole in the atmosphere [AAR, the NASA conjurers could easily make anything disappear. ;-)]

• Our oceans are so clean and teeming with fish, you could eat from them. [AAR, they were OK just a few years ago; ask your grandma, she would tell you!]

• There’s no global shortage of potable water [AAR, what’s wrong with buying your own bottled water like the rest of us?]

• If fertilizers are good for the crops and vegetables, then sewage discharge into the rivers and coastal waters must be good for the fish. [AAR, just because you don’t eat fish, it doesn’t mean they should be starved!]

• There is no deforestation [or habitat what?] anywhere on the planet. [AAR, if we don’t cut all the trees they catch fire and pollute the air- heard about global warming, buster?]

• Land degradation is scientific mumbojumbo. [AAR, the same scientists have calculated that our planet can easily feed 14 billion people and produce enough ethanol to run 2 billion cars. How could it do all of that, if it were running out of cropland?]

Now close your eyes, take a big breath of fresh air and repeat after me…

Related Links:

How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic
26 most common climate myths and misconceptions
Climate myths: Assessing the evidence

[Problems with IPCC data? Absolutely none! Perhaps … only a minor issue of a time lag-a slight delay of about 30 years compared with the real-time events.]

NYC Mayor Vows to Slash Carbon Emissions by 2050

NASA: Satellite image of the New York metropolitan area

NUSA DUA, Indonesia (AFP) – New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg vowed Friday that local US leaders would spearhead the fight against climate change despite President George W. Bush’s hardline stance in global talks. More …

What would you say to the Mayor when 6 feet of flood waters inundates the entire NYC metropolitan area well before 2050 because he didn’t cut the emissions to zero in 2007?

Bloomie, what did you have to lose by doing the right thing?

Greenland Ice Melt Faster Than IPCC Estimates

“The amount of ice lost by Greenland over the last year is the equivalent of two times all the ice in the Alps, or a layer of water more than one-half mile deep covering Washington DC,” said Konrad Steffen of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Using satellite data, Steffen and his colleagues have monitored the rapid thinning of ice, which was 10 percent greater than the previous record year in 2005.

If all the ice in Greenland melted, about one-twentieth of the world’s total, the sea level would rise by 6.4 meters globally.

According to a National Snow and Ice Center report in May, the Arctic ice cap was melting much faster than predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and was now about 30 years ahead of IPCC forecast. Read more…

Is melting ice the world’s foremost problem? Read more…

Related Links:

• Only Zero Emissions Would Avert Dangerous Warming
• UN Expert: 50 Million Could be Displaced by Climate Change by 2010
• Stern Report: “a great toxic dump of doublespeak in truly Orwellian fashion”

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Kill the World to Save the World!

Is google trying the save the world by creating more energy pollution?

Google announced it would spend hundreds of millions of dollars to fund companies developing clean-energy technology to generate electricity from renewable energy below the price of coal.

“We’re busy assembling our own internal research and development group and hiring a team of engineers and energy experts tasked with building 1 gigawatt of renewable energy capacity that is cheaper than coal. Google’s R&D effort will begin with a significant effort on solar thermal technology, and will also investigate enhanced geothermal systems and other areas.” Google said.

One headline went over the top even by google standards declaring, “Spending Google’s money on conscientious causes” (!)

Larry Brilliant of google.org bewailed, “There are thousands of suicides in southern India because the farmer is unable to keep up with the effects on (his) land from salt water. This is a real phenomenon all over the world, and we have to treat it with the respect and the urgency that it demands; not as another fad or another kind of media event. This is real. … we have two founders who are so impassioned about this…”

Ironically, the world energy demand in the past 12 months increased by at least 10.1EJ (EJ = billion gigajoules) and most probably by as much as 24EJ (~ 760gigawatt) compared with previous period, a demand that is 321 to 760 folds higher than google’s targeted 1 gigawatt capacity. Google is producing additional energy; it is not keeping the coal in the ground! Google’s energy ‘needs’ both present and future can be met by existing generators, without the need to build more power stations.

This begs the question: Is google trying the save the world by producing more energy pollution?

Google is a glorified advertising agency [about 95 percent of its income comes from advertising,] and its interest in renewable energy is motivated by commercial reasons and profit alone. Perhaps the best testimony to google’s true intentions is the extravagant lifestyle of its founders who fly around in a private Boeing 767-200 jet that usually carries up to 180 passengers. To suggest that google’s founders are “so impassioned about this…” is misleading and disingenuous even by their duplicitous standards.

An Excerpt from: The Fate of Energy Dinosaurs

“The key to preventing mass species extinction and preserving human cultures is one of creating the opportunity for humans to evolve at very low rates of energy (and material) consumption.”

http://edro.wordpress.com/energy-dinosaurs/