Irreversible catastrophe
Washington,
DC, 4 December 2013 – The world is already beginning to pass
tipping points for abrupt, catastrophic, and irreversible changes to
the global climate according to a new 200-page report released
yesterday by the US National Academy of Sciences.
Inequality
The
85 richest people are as
wealthy as the poorest half of the world.
Death
of Plankton
The
global population of phytoplankton in the oceans has fallen about 40
percent since 1950. Half
of the world's oxygen is produced by phytoplankton, and they are the
bottom of the ocean food chain - all ocean life depends on them
Human sperm count falling Human sperm counts down 50% since 1950.
Bees
dyingBees
have been dying
at the rate of about 30 % per year for five years — last year in
some areas it was well over 50%. Sixty years ago, there were 6
million honeybee colonies in the US. Now there are 2.5 million.
Atrocities
by Buddhists
Some
200 Buddhist nationalists set fire to a Muslim school in Meiktila, in
central, Myanmar, beating and torching students and even beheading
one. By the time the mob's fury was spent, 32 students and four
teachers lay dead in the schoolyard.
Irreversible
collapse
NASA-funded
study warns society is headed for 'irreversible collapse' in coming
decades.
Increasing drug use Across the U.S., heroin abuse among
first-time users has increased by nearly 60 percent in the last
decade.
Doomed
to catastrophe
A
new study made possible by the Goddard Space Flight Centre warns that
global industrial civilisation is doomed to catastrophe because of
the overstretched demand for resources.
Children dying through
violence
One child dies a violent death
somewhere in the world every five minutes,.... according to a new
report released Oct 2014 by UNICEF.
Otters dying
Otters off the northern coast
of Scotland are living only one third the lifetimes of otters in
mainland Europe, due to exposure of 'normal' household chemicals in
the sea. And they are mostly unable to reproduce.
Tobacco firm sues Australian government The tobacco firm Philip Morris is suing the governments of both Uruguay and Australia for trying to discourage people from
smoking
Desertification/Soil lossDue
to drought and desertification each year 12 million hectares of
arable land are lost (23 hectares/minute), where 20 million tons of
grain could have been grown. This is equivalent to 3 Switzerlands. It
effects 168 countries, and according to the UN, some 50 million
people may be displaced within the next 10 years as a result of
desertification. Today, the pace of degradation is estimated at 30 to
35 times the historical rate.
21,000 children each day
21,000 children around the world
die each day The silent killers are poverty, hunger, easily
preventable diseases.
Temperatures
rising
The
amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a record high
last year, and atmospheric temperatures have climbed much faster than
scientists expected, according to new research published by the
U.N.’s agency on meteorology (2014). This year is expected to be
the hottest on record. The 10 hottest years on record have all been
since 2000.
Religious violence November 2014: A young
Christian couple have been beaten and then burned to death by a mob
in a small Pakistani village in Punjab province, after being accused
of desecrating the Muslim holy book.
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Acidifying oceans
The world's oceans have experienced an overall 26% rise in acidity since the dawn of the industrial age - expected to double by 2050
United Nations Human Development Report 1998 Costing of providing for everyone in the world (US$ billions): Basic education 6 clean water 9 basic health and nutrition 13 Amount spent on ice cream in Europe 11 Amount spent on military globally 780
Food shortages looming
Oxfam foresees a 20 per cent increase in hunger by 2050; other recent academic studies predict a 35 per cent failure rate of Chinese harvests, a decline in wheat production in India and Pakistan of 20-40 per cent by 2020 (!) and so on.
Torture of children The UN chief Ban Ki-moon said the Syrian government forces "were responsible for the arrest, arbitrary detention and torture of children for their perceived or actual association with the opposition, and for using children as human shields." Witnesses have told UN investigators...... some of the treatment children were subjected to included "beatings with metal cables, whips and wooden and metal batons; electric shocks, including to the genitals; the ripping out of fingernails and toenails; sexual violence, including rape or threats of rape; mock executions; cigarette burns; sleep deprivation; solitary confinement; and exposure to the torture of relatives. The world is depleting groundwater November 2014 - An alarming satellite-based analysis
from NASA finds that the world is depleting groundwater — the water
stored underground in soil and aquifers — at an unprecedented rate.
“most of the major aquifers ... in the dry parts of the world that
rely most heavily on groundwater, are experiencing rapid rates of
groundwater depletion.”
Mass Extinction of life on earth The Sixth Mass Extinction By The Numbers
► Lion populations down 90% in 20 years.
► 50% of Great Barrier Reef gone since 1985
► 50% of all Vertebrate Species may disappear before 2040.
► Big Ocean Fish populations down 90% since 1950.
► Fresh Water Fish populations down 50% since 1987,
► Land Animal populations down 28% since 1970.
► Marine Bird populations down 30% since 1995.
► All Marine Animal populations down 28% since 1970.
► Species extinction is 1000 times faster than normal.
► Human population up to 9 billion by 2050.
This is why ecological cascading extinction collapse will become unstoppable and irreversible in 30-40 years - some say much less. Violence in cities While nearly 60,000 people die in wars
every year, an estimated 480,000 are killed, mostly by guns, in
cities No feeding the homeless In the United States, 21 cities have restricted sharing food with homeless people through legislation or community pressure since January 2013, Suicide rates climbing GENEVA, June 20 2014 The UN refugee agency reported today on World Refugee Day that the number of refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced people worldwide has, for the first time in the post-World War II era, exceeded 50 million people. Nothing
will be left
The
United Nations Environment Programme and the World Wildlife Fund for
Nature issued a joint report in 2000 that said, 'The World's seas,
fresh waters, forests and croplands are being exploited at such a
rate that nothing will be left by 2075
Suicide Bomber attacks school
November 11 2014 - At least 47 people,
most of them students, have been killed after an explosion ripped
through a secondary school in northeast Nigeria, as students gathered
for morning assembly before classes began. Police said a suicide
bomber disguised in a school uniform carried out the attack.
Methane and mass extinction
A cascade of
recent studies concludes that warming Arctic permafrost and ocean
floors are on the verge of emitting massive methane eruptions that
will quickly load the atmosphere with many times more greenhouse gas
than has been produced during the entire Industrial Age. The ensuing
warming will so destabilize the climate that a mass extinction may
follow that could be the worst in 300 million years — since the
so-called“Great Dying” of the Permian Period wiped out 90
per cent of sea life and 70 per cent of land animals.
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