Tv Meio Ambiente

Rei Ricardo III foi sepultado às pressas, indica estudo

Terra - RSS - Ciência — Fri, 24 May 2013 17:19:46 +0000

Cientistas da Universidade de Leicester, na Inglaterra, que descobriram a ossada do rei Ricardo III, publicaram nesta quinta-feira o primeiro artigo acadêmico sobre o estudo do corpo do monarca. Segundo os pesquisadores, a sepultura foi mal preparada - o que sugere que ele foi enterrado às pressas. Além disso, Ricardo III foi enterrado com "mínima reverência", em uma "estranha posição" e há evidências de que suas mãos estavam amarradas....

Peru funded illegal Amazon rainforest road, claims Global Witness | David Hill

David Hill — Fri, 24 May 2013 17:16:50 +0000

Report reveals work on road in remote Peruvian rainforest is underway, and alleges corruption and government involvement

The local government in one of the remotest parts of the Peruvian Amazon has allegedly funded the illegal clearing of rainforest at the start of the proposed route for a controversial highway that would run through the country’s biggest national park.

According to a report by Global Witness, released in Lima last week, the highway would stretch for 270km and connect the remote Purus region in south-east Peru to the rest of the country, ending at a town called Iñapari on the Brazilian border where it would link up with the existing Inter-Oceanica Highway. It would pass through a conservation concession, a communal indigenous reserve, the Alto Purus National Park, a reserve for indigenous peoples in “voluntary isolation” and one indigenous community.

Opponents fear the highway will destroy one of the most biodiverse regions in the world, increase the illegal mahogany trade, narco-trafficking and gold-mining, and decimate the “isolated” indigenous peoples if contact is made with them.

Supporters of the road say it will reduce the cost of living in a region otherwise inaccessible from the rest of Peru except by plane from a town called Pucallpa, increase trade and standards of living, and make it easier to transport people out of the region in medical emergencies.

According to the report, titled “Rocky Road: How Legal Failings and Vested Interests behind Peru’s Purus highway threaten the Amazon and its People”, the start of the proposed route leading from Purus’s biggest town, Puerto Esperanza, has already been cleared. It extends for 15-20km, says Global Witness, and is known in Peru as a “trocha”:

Former local government workers told Global Witness that the Purus municipality gave 10,000 Soles (almost US$4,000) to a pro-highway group to pay for this illegal road clearing in 2012. The road clearing does not have the necessary authorisation as the parliamentary bill has not yet been passed.

Global Witness claims the pro-highway group is led by a Catholic priest, Miguel Piovesan.

“Piovesan showed me the illegal “trocha” himself,” says Global Witness’s Billy Kyte, “Rocky Road’s” author and in Peru for its launch. “He’s proud of it.”

According to a complaint by the Environment Ministry to a public prosecutor’s office in Pucallpa, the “trocha” had reached as far as the conservation concession and the buffer zone of the Purus Communal Reserve (PCR) by last September. Rafael Pino, the PCR’s director, says that no progress has been made since then, but there are plans for 20 people to extend the “trocha” next month in the direction of the PCR, the national park and the “isolated” peoples’ reserve.

“There’s a latent danger that it will enter protected natural areas without any kind of prior authorization,” Pino says.

A bill proposing that “terrestrial connection” between Purus and the rest of Peru by a highway – or even a railway – should be declared in the “public necessity and national interest” was submitted to Congress in April 2012, and approved by Congress’s Commission for Transport and Communications in June.

The bill’s biggest supporter is widely believed to be Congressman Carlos Tubino, who calls it “my bill.” However, at a press conference launching “Rocky Road” last week, Tubino’s chief adviser, Juan Carlos Torres Figari, claimed there was now “no risk of any highway.”

At the end of the conference another of Tubino’s team handed out two statements, one of which was titled, “Know the truth about Congressman Carlos Tubino’s Bill 1035″ and read:

It does not suggest building any highway running for 270km from Puerto Esperanza to Iñapari. The bill that Congress’s Commission for Andean and Amazonian Peoples will vote on has been modified and the phrase “terrestrial connection” has been deleted.

Tubino has followed that with a series of tweets calling the highway a “phantom”, accusing Kyte of “lying”, and saying that his bill now makes no mention of a “highway” – only “connection.”

When I asked what this would consist of, Tubino said:

Currently the flights from Pucallpa to Puerto Esperanza are very long, dangerous, make essential goods excessively expensive, and are exploited by a monopoly. If the state considers it appropriate, it could build an airport at Iñapari and establish an aerial route to Puerto Esperanza. There’s no doubt this would have a positive impact: it would be a much shorter route and would substantially reduce the price of essential goods. All this would benefit the people who live in Purus, the majority of whom are poor.

But Kyte dismisses Tubino’s backtrack on the highway as “absurd”, arguing that the bill has already been approved by the Transport Commission and therefore can be scheduled for debate in Congress. He says:

The risk of a highway being built is as strong as ever. The original ruling by the Transport Commission supporting it is still active and will be discussed in Congress no matter the decision by the Peoples Commission. Congressman Tubino is well aware of the implications of this ruling, and his efforts to deflect attention from it are extremely concerning and put Purus’ indigenous people and forests at risk.

According to the Peoples Commission and the Transport Commission, both their rulings can go before Congress. However, Tubino says he can guarantee that only the Peoples’ Commission’s ruling will be debated and that it is the only one he is now backing.

“Rocky Road” makes a series of other claims including one that the local government stands accused of faking indigenous backing for the highway and another that an official tried to bribe one of Purus’s indigenous organizations, FECONAPU, with around US$10,000 to support it.

The report also highlights “possible conflicts of interests” of the highway’s main supporters, including Tubino, saying it “would ease access to illegal timber” and that he was once “Political Military Head of Ucayali” – the department in which Purus is situated – when the Armed Forces were accused of profiting from the illegal timber trade in that region.

Tubino told me he “categorically denies the accusation” and will take legal action against Global Witness for starting a “smear campaign” against him.

“I will file a criminal complaint for defamation in Peru,” he says, “and will make an appeal to the appropriate international courts.”

Miguel Piovesan and the Purus government could not be reached for comment.

David Hill

Peru funded illegal Amazon rainforest road, claims Global Witness | David Hill

David Hill — Fri, 24 May 2013 17:16:50 +0000

Report reveals work on road in remote Peruvian rainforest is underway, and alleges corruption and government involvement

Former local government workers told Global Witness that the Purus municipality gave 10,000 Soles (almost US$4,000) to a pro-highway group to pay for this illegal road clearing in 2012. The road clearing does not have the necessary authorisation as the parliamentary bill has not yet been passed.

Global Witness claims the pro-highway group is led by a Catholic priest, Miguel Piovesan.

“Piovesan showed me the illegal “trocha” himself,” says Global Witness’s Billy Kyte, “Rocky Road’s” author and in Peru for its launch. “He’s proud of it.”

“There’s a latent danger that it will enter protected natural areas without any kind of prior authorization,” Pino says.

At the end of the conference another of Tubino’s team handed out two statements, one of which was titled, “Know the truth about Congressman Carlos Tubino’s Bill 1035″ and read:

It does not suggest building any highway running for 270km from Puerto Esperanza to Iñapari. The bill that Congress’s Commission for Andean and Amazonian Peoples will vote on has been modified and the phrase “terrestrial connection” has been deleted.

When I asked what this would consist of, Tubino said:

Currently the flights from Pucallpa to Puerto Esperanza are very long, dangerous, make essential goods excessively expensive, and are exploited by a monopoly. If the state considers it appropriate, it could build an airport at Iñapari and establish an aerial route to Puerto Esperanza. There’s no doubt this would have a positive impact: it would be a much shorter route and would substantially reduce the price of essential goods. All this would benefit the people who live in Purus, the majority of whom are poor.

The risk of a highway being built is as strong as ever. The original ruling by the Transport Commission supporting it is still active and will be discussed in Congress no matter the decision by the Peoples Commission. Congressman Tubino is well aware of the implications of this ruling, and his efforts to deflect attention from it are extremely concerning and put Purus’ indigenous people and forests at risk.

Tubino told me he “categorically denies the accusation” and will take legal action against Global Witness for starting a “smear campaign” against him.

“I will file a criminal complaint for defamation in Peru,” he says, “and will make an appeal to the appropriate international courts.”

Miguel Piovesan and the Purus government could not be reached for comment.

David Hill

La entidad de residuos rechaza miles de recursos contra la tasa

EP — Fri, 24 May 2013 17:14:11 +0000

El organismo del área metropolitana de Valencia, controlado por el PP, triplicó en 2011 la factura

Climate change study with a large side-order of caveats

Graham Readfearn — Fri, 24 May 2013 17:10:37 +0000

New climate study just one step to understanding future climate change, but Australia is already feeling the heat

For anyone who loves to eat chocolate, drink lots of lovely espresso coffee or quaff plentiful amounts of red wine, there’s much comfort to be sought from scientific studies.

You can pick the studies saying you’ll live long and prosper from your chosen potions and ignore the caveats or contradictory warnings. You might also forget to check back to see if any follow-up studies were done that might spoil your fun.

Essentially, you fall foul of what’s known as “single-study syndrome” – you make a decision based on one scientific study, which is most likely just one step in the process of understanding a particular problem.

When it comes to understanding the impact of human emissions on the climate, thousands of studies published over decades (over which time probably many bars of chocolate and coffee were consumed) are what builds understanding.

And so we come to new research published in the journal Nature Geoscience suggesting global warming might not occur quite so quickly as other studies have suggested it would.

New Scientist magazine said the study could mean the world had a “second chance” to avoid dangerous climate change. The BBC reported how the study had concluded that the rate of global warming would “lead to lower temperature rises in the short term”. The Sydney Morning Herald also reported that the study “could” mean global warning might be slower in the short term.

So what did the research actually say? The study looked at two things and put numbers to them.

Transient Climate Response (TCR) looks at the likely globally averaged warming we’ll see at the point when the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is double what it was at the start of the industrial revolution.

Based on what’s been happening to the planet in the most recent decade, the study finds that at the point when CO2 in the atmosphere doubles, global warming could be as low as 0.9C and as high as 2.0C but will most likely be 1.3C. This best estimate is very slightly lower than previous estimates of 1.6C and 1.4C.

The 2007 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report said TCR was “very likely larger than 1C and very unlikely greater than 3C”.

Given the world has already warmed by about 1C, it looks as though we can already discount the lower end of this estimate. For example, the recent study carried out by the Berkley Earth Surface Temperature Study found the world had warmed by 0.9C since 1950.

The Nature Geoscience study also looks at what’s called Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) – the global warming you would expect if you applied a sharp pull on the handbrake to completely hold the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere once it gets to double what it was. You then wait a century or three for the climate system to settle (think of the time needed to ice sheets and heat to move through and out of the oceans).

On this, the paper says the best estimate is 2.0C but with a range as low as 1.2C and as high as 3.9C. On all the findings, the study’s authors make the point that:

… caution is required in interpreting any short period, especially a recent one for which details of forcing and energy storage inventories are still relatively unsettled: both could make significant changes to the energy budget.

In other words, this isn’t the end of it. Like many other studies on climate change, this study needs to be carefully interpreted.

It comes as human emissions have managed to raise the level of CO2 in the atmosphere to its highest point in several million years – a time when sea levels were a few metres higher than today.

To use a drinking analogy, the findings come with a round of caveat chasers and bowls of bar snacks filled with uncertainties.

For example, the Nature Geosciences study uses a new IPCC scenario on emissions (known as RCP4.5) that presumes the world will take some decisive action on climate change. This might happen, but it might not.

Will the major and emerging economies continue to pour CO2 into the atmosphere at the rate they’ve been doing recently? Will that rate increase or level off? How will methane emissions from melting permafrost or increases in agriculture change the picture? Could the recent rapid decline in Arctic sea create a tipping point?

I asked Professor Steven Sherwood, a director of the University of New South Wales Climate Change Research Centre, for his view on the study and how it fits into the broader climate issue.

It’s one of many studies each year offering new evidence that favours either a higher or lower estimate of future global warming. The revision it proposes is pretty small, and the method used is not that accurate due to observational limitations and natural variations in the system. So it’s one more piece of evidence for the scientific community to consider, but hardly affects the big picture.

The study concerns what we call the “transient climate response” or TCR, which is based on a hypothetical scenario. The actual warming would be much larger than the TCR for a couple of reasons. First, burning all available coal and other fuels will at least triple or quadruple the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but the TCR only includes a doubling. Second, it doesn’t count the effects of other greenhouse gases like methane, which are likely to rise in the future due to agriculture and other human activities, and currently increase the impact of CO2 by about 50%.

The way global warming is typically quantified and communicated tends not to convey how much more serious it becomes over the longer term. When you reach a doubling of CO2, unless you stop emitting the next day, global warming will blow past the “transient climate response.” By the 22nd or 23rd century you’ll have global warming equal to the TCR several times over.

But here, in my view, are the real kickers in this debate. TCR, ECS and even the global average figure for warming are yardsticks that scientists use to understand how human emissions are going to change the climate system.

They don’t relate to how climate change impacts people, businesses, economies, communities and ecosystems. They also tend to feed a presumption that the climate will change smoothly.

In Australia – and arguably elsewhere – what really worries the population are floods, extreme heat, sea level rise, droughts, super storms and the loss of habitats and species.

You can imagine how a community ravaged by a bushfire or farmers standing over heat-stressed crops might react when you tell them a study has just found that TCR might only be 1.3C instead of 1.6C. It would go down like a vat of Shiraz at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

Australia is already seeing record-breaking events set against the background of a global average warming of about 0.8C where CO2 in the atmosphere is now at 400 ppm.

The last Australian summer, for example, delivered an unprecedented heat wave covering vast swathes of the continent. The heat sparked hundreds of bushfires and destroyed homes and businesses

During the heat wave, 46.9 per cent of the continent recorded maximum temperatures of 45C or more. A special statement from the Bureau of Meteorology summarising the remarkable nature of the heat wave said:

The area-averaged temperature for Australia as a whole exceeded 39C on seven consecutive days from 2–8 January; the longest such period previously recorded was four days in December 1972. There have only been 21 days in 102 years of records where the national area-averaged maximum temperature has exceeded 39C; eight in 2013 (2–8 January and 11 January), seven in 1972–73, and only six in all other events combined.

Prof Roger Jones, of Victoria University’s Centre for Strategic Economic Studies, is a co-ordinating lead author on the next Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in the working group looking at climate change impacts and adaptations.

He says regional and global climates do not respond smoothly to changes in emissions but instead respond with jerkier “step changes”. He argued the Nature Geoscience study of short-term warming was “not one that is anywhere near appropriately framed to draw policy conclusions from”.

A recent study led by Jones and published by Australia’s National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility looked at some of the impacts Australia is already experiencing under a changing climate. He said:

Our analysis of recent changes of extremes in Australia shows this non-linearity. We have had a couple of periods of rapid changes in extremes and these have been statistically significant. That changes your exposure to risk quite quickly.

The heatwave this year shows that the heatwave of 2009 was not just an outlier, as some suggested. In south-east Australia, the summer extremes we are getting now are roughly equivalent to what the major Garnaut Review and other studies projected we would get by 2030.

There are two things you can almost guarantee in relation to the Nature Geoscience-published study about likely short-term global warming.

First, there will be another study that will settle on different numbers.

Second, the consequences of burning fossil fuels will continue to play out in the real world, giving us more to worry about than eating chocolate and sipping drinks derived from single-origin organically grown arabica beans.

Graham Readfearn

New to nature special: the top 10 new species

Quentin Wheeler — Fri, 24 May 2013 17:00:02 +0000

From a snail-eating snake to a harp-shaped sponge… Quentin Wheeler on whittling down 18,000 new species to 10 favourites

On 23 May,the International Institute for Species Exploration announced the annual top 10 new species for the sixth time. A committee of taxon experts led by Dr Antonio Valdecasas of the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales in Madrid made the final selections. The list is a kind of scientific shock-and-awe campaign, shocking us at what we did not know about our own planet and leaving us in awe over the diversity, complexity, wonder and beauty of the living world. From new species of black-staining fungi that threatened the Palaeolithic cave paintings at Lascaux, France to the first old-world monkey to be discovered in Africa in 28 years, a beautiful shrub from Madagascar’s disappearing littoral forests, a bioluminescent cockroach, and a violet from the high Andes that is barely 1cm tall, we are struck that the depth of Earth’s living diversity is matched only by our ignorance of it.

A new species of green lacewing is a sign of things to come, being discovered through social media in a collaboration among citizen and professional scientists. A new record was set for the smallest vertebrate animal by a Lilliputian frog with an average body length of only 7.7mm. As if to remind us of the constant change on our planet and unending struggle for survival, a fossil hanging fly was described from Jurassic deposits 165m years old in China that mimicked gingko leaves so well that the two were confused. Rounding out the top 10 were a beautiful, ringed, snail-eating snake and a harp-shaped predaceous sponge. Choosing just 10 species from the 18,000 or so new ones named last year was a seemingly impossible task, but merely a dress rehearsal for living through the biodiversity crisis of the 21st century. Some scientists believe that more than half of all species could disappear in the next 100 years, which would rank as only the sixth mass extinction event in Earth history. While we cannot save every species, or even all those we set out to save, we can have a significant impact on what biodiversity looks like in the future. If picking 10 favourites was tough, imagine making decisions that affect which and how many species survive.

We announce the top 10 on or about Carl Linnaeus’s birthday on 23 May as a homage to his incredible, inspiring vision of an inventory of Earth’s flora and fauna. When he conceived and set out on his inventory in the middle of the 18th century, it was a dream impossibly larger than he could have imagined. The 10,000 or so species known to him are outnumbered nearly two to one by the new species we name each year, and we have yet to become serious about completing this enterprise. Technological advances, particularly in cyberinfrastructure, have quietly chiselled away at all the constraints of access to travel, colleagues, collections, literature, and data that held back Linnaeus and the generations of taxonomists who have followed. With investments in natural history museums, taxonomic research infrastructure, and inspiring and educating the next generation of species explorers we can discover and describe most of the estimated 10m-12m “higher” plant and animal species in less than 50 years. Baseline data on what species exist and where will empower us to detect, monitor, and respond to changes in biodiversity and make effective public policies. If you liked the top 10, imagine announcing the top 10 million.

Quentin Wheeler is director of the International Institute for Species Exploration, Arizona State University

Quentin Wheeler

Shams 1, la plus grande centrale solaire du monde

Planète : Toute l'actualité sur Le Monde.fr. — Fri, 24 May 2013 16:46:04 +0000

En inaugurant en mars Shams 1, la plus grande centrale solaire à énergie concentrée au monde, les Emirats arabes unis, riche Etat fédéral pétrolier du golfe, ont fait une percée fulgurante dans le secteur des énergies renouvelables.

Horsemeat company regularly mixed horse in with beef, say Polish workers

Felicity Lawrence, John Domokos — Fri, 24 May 2013 15:58:56 +0000

Former employees of Willy Selten plant tell how horse entered European food chain over at least five years

“Everything passed through my hands: beef, horse, old meat that stank, sometimes even ‘fresh’ meat but it wasn’t exactly fresh … Yes, I cut horse. I suspected there was something wrong but I just did what I was told to do,” Jan Kowalski told us.

Kowalski (not his real name) is one of 85 Polish migrant workers who were employed at a meat processing plant in the Netherlands that was raided by the Dutch authorities in February as part of their investigation into horsemeat fraud.

Guardian interviews with Kowalski and an official from the Dutch meat union representing the Poles have thrown new light on how thousands of horses allegedly entered the food chain in place of beef over many years at the Willy Selten factory in Oss, south of Rotterdam.

They said that the horsemeat was processed at the end of the day, after the normal shift had finished and the plant had been cleaned, and that workers were tasked with cutting and mixing beef, some of it defrosted from consignments with labels as old as 2001, with horse deliveries. They had to cut out “green” putrid beef, which smelled so bad that they could keep working only by tying towels around their faces. They also described having to endure brutally tough working conditions and filthy, overcrowded accommodation.

The firm has been required by the Dutch food safety authority (NVWA) to recall 50,000 tonnes of meat that was distributed from the factory to more than 500 companies across Europe, including eight in the UK and one in Ireland, in the past two years, because it was unable to show its origin. The NVWA is still investigating and on Thursday Dutch police arrested the owner, Willy Selten on suspicion of false accounting and fraud. The prosecutor’s office said that the business had allegedly received 300 tonnes of horsemeat from England, Ireland and the Netherlands in 2011 and 2012 but its accounts only recorded beef. It delivered to supermarkets, meat processing factoires and butchers throughout Europe.

A spokesman for Selten denied that horse had ever been relabelled as beef. “It never happened,” said Selten’s lawyer, Frank Peters. However, the NVWA revealed this month that its tests on more than 150 samples of meat labelled as beef from his factory had found horse DNA in 21% of them.

Michiel Al, organiser for the Dutch meat workers’ union, the FNV, said Polish workers had told him that the mixing and repacking of horse had gone on for at least five years at the Selten plant. Kowalski said he had been involved in repacking horsemeat for two and a half years. The horse trucks would come from England and Germany, and for every 10-15 parts of beef about four of horsemeat would be mixed in.

“The worst meat was always processed in overtime or on Saturdays, not on the normal shift. We’d do it to earn a bit extra. Overtime was paid in cash in envelopes,” Kowalski said.

The meat would then be repacked and relabelled, some of it as organic beef, the Polish workers claim.

The workers were on zero-hours contracts and paid about €500 a month less than the minimum required by Dutch regulations for the meat sector, according to Al. The union is preparing a claim against Selten for unpaid wages.

Kowalski and other workers described regular accidents at the factory in which employees were seriously injured by butchering knives. They alleged that a Dutch worker would treat injuries in the canteen but that the company made no effort to take employees to hospital when necessary, leaving this to their Polish colleagues.

The employees were housed by Selten in mobile homes on a campsite or in a rented farmhouse in the village of Nistelrode, where the Dutch businessman has his own home. No one answered at Selten’s upmarket house when the Guardian visited.

When the factory was raided, the Polish workers suddenly found themselves without a job and without money, although they were still required to pay rent. At that point, 50 of them joined the union, which has been supporting them since. Some have found other work in the Netherlands; several have returned to Poland.

Al said conditions were very poor and overcrowded when he visited the Poles in their accommodation. Six to eight workers slept in bunk beds in each mobile home. At the farmhouse, walls were brown with grime and the floor was crammed with mattresses. Kowalksi said there were up to 30 workers living in the four-bedroom house and in a neighbouring property.

The landlord, Adrie van den Berg, a former pig farmer, said he thought there were 12 per house and blamed the Polish men themselves for not being clean, and for chain-smoking and drinking beer.

Peters rejected several of the workers’ allegations. Horse had been mixed with beef to meet specific orders but only for 10 months and it had never been relabelled as beef, he claimed. Where meat was old it was being recycled for pet food, he said, adding that workers were paid the legal minimum wage and wanted the flexibility of zero-hours contracts and cash for overtime.

He said that small injuries were treated in the canteen but in serious cases workers went to the doctor with a colleague. The Polish workers were responsible themselves for cleaning their accommodation and “some had stayed for years without complaints”.

He said all the workers were invited and came to family and company parties. “The atmosphere was top!” he said.

The UK and the Dutch authorities have refused to identify who was taking horses to, and meat from, Selten’s factory, while their investigations continue, but the Guardian revealed last month that horses had been regularly delivered from the Red Lion abattoir in Cheshire.

John Young, a spokesman for the Turner family, who own Red Lion, said horse deliveries had been properly labelled as such and were legal, although he admitted that one horse had been the subject of a recall, having tested positive for bute, the horse drug banned from the food chain.

All horses processed at the Red Lion site had been passed for slaughter by official vets, he said.

Felicity Lawrence

John Domokos

How horsemeat scandal company used migrant workers to boost production – video

John Domokos, Felicity Lawrence, Mustafa Khalili — Fri, 24 May 2013 15:58:56 +0000

Felicity Lawrence visits a Dutch meat processing plant alleged to have supplied horsemeat labelled as beef to outlets in several European countries

John Domokos

Felicity Lawrence

Mustafa Khalili

U.S. weather-watcher satellite fails just before hurricane season

Reuters: Environment — Fri, 24 May 2013 15:27:24 +0000

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – A key satellite positioned to track severe weather in the eastern United States has failed, just as the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season is about to start.