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Global Riot Epidemic Due to Demise of Cheap Fossil Fuels

      

A protester in Ukraine swings a metal chain during clashes - a taste of things to come? Photograph: Gleb Garanich/Reuters

submitted by Mikayla McDonald

From South America to South Asia, a new age of unrest is in full swing as industrial civilisation transitions to post-carbon reality

theguardian.com - by Nafeez Ahmed - February 28, 2014

If anyone had hoped that the Arab Spring and Occupy protests a few years back were one-off episodes that would soon give way to more stability, they have another thing coming. The hope was that ongoing economic recovery would return to pre-crash levels of growth, alleviating the grievances fueling the fires of civil unrest, stoked by years of recession. . .

. . . The recent cases illustrate not just an explicit link between civil unrest and an increasingly volatile global food system, but also the root of this problem in the increasing unsustainability of our chronic civilisational addiction to fossil fuels. . .

. . . Of course, the elephant in the room is climate change.

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New Study Models Where Agriculture is Heading Under Climate Change

      

Much is still uncertain about the potential effects of climate change on agriculture. New study merges climate models to learn more. Photo: Cgiarclimate

World's leading economic modelers put their minds together and came up with scenarios for agriculture and food production under climate change.

CLICK HERE - PNAS - STUDY - Climate change effects on agriculture: Economic responses to biophysical shocks

ccafs.cgiar.org - by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) - December 30, 2013

Climate change will alter future weather and change crop and animal productivity. But economic models differ on the magnitude of these changes, according to the world’s lead economic modelers. Estimates on both the direction and magnitude are crucial to address world food security issues at global, regional, and national levels.

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India's Dangerous 'Food Bubble'

earth-policy.org - December 4th, 2013 - Lester R. Brown

India is now the world's third-largest grain producer after China and the United States. The adoption of higher-yielding crop varieties and the spread of irrigation have led to this remarkable tripling of output since the early 1960s. Unfortunately, a growing share of the water that irrigates three-fifths of India's grain harvest is coming from wells that are starting to go dry.

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YALE/TULANE ESF-8 PLANNING AND RESPONSE PROGRAM SPECIAL REPORT TYPHOON HAIYAN (YOLANDA PH) – THE PHILIPPINES

http://www.slideshare.net/YALE-ESF8--VMOC

In light of Typhoon Haiyan, the Yale-Tulane ESF #8 Planning and Response Program has produced special reports for current efforts. To access these reports, click here.

The Yale-Tulane ESF #8 Program is a multi-disciplinary, multi-center, graduate-level program designed to produce ESF #8 planners and responders with standardized skill sets that are consistent with evolving public policy, technologies, and best practices. The group that produced this summary and analysis of the current situation are graduate students from Yale and Tulane Universities. It was compiled entirely from open source materials.

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Philippines - Needs Assessments

                                               (CLICK ON MAP IMAGE BELOW TO ENLARGE)

      

ECHO Daily Maps - http://ercportal.jrc.ec.europa.eu/Maps/Daily-maps-catalogue#

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Typhoon Haiyan: In Hard-Hit Tacloban

submitted by Nguyen Huu Ninh

cnn.com - by Andrew Stevens and Paula Hancocks - November 10, 2013

Tacloban, Philippines (CNN) -- No building in this coastal city of 200,000 residents appears to have escaped damage from Super Typhoon Haiyan.

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Using the Maya Nut Tree to Increase Tropical Agroecosystem Resilience to Climate Change in Central America and Mexico

submitted by Albert Gomez

elanadapt.net - pelicanweb.org - August 2011

CLICK HERE - CASE STUDY - Using the Maya Nut Tree to Increase Tropical Agroecosystem Resilience to Climate Change in Central America and Mexico
(10 page .PDF file)

Author affiliations: 1 International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 2 The Maya Nut Institute

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Chapter 7. Grain Yields Starting to Plateau - Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity

earth-policy.org

Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity

Chapter 7. Grain Yields Starting to Plateau

by Lester R. Brown

From the beginning of agriculture until the mid-twentieth century, growth in the world grain harvest came almost entirely from expanding the cultivated area. Rises in land productivity were too slow to be visible within a single generation. It is only within the last 60 years or so that rising yields have replaced area expansion as the principal source of growth in world grain production.

Chapter 7. Grain Yields Starting to Plateau
http://www.earth-policy.org/books/fpep/fpepch7

Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity
http://www.earth-policy.org/books/fpep

( ALSO SEE - http://resiliencesystem.org/chapter-4-food-or-fuel-full-planet-empty-plates-new-geopolitics-food-scarcity )

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Harvesting the Biosphere: What We Have Taken From Nature - Book Review by Bill Gates

thegatesnotes.com

BOOK REVIEW

How Much of This Do We Use Up Every Year?

Written by: BILL GATES

. . . I mean everything that can be consumed on
Earth: plants, animals, all of it. And by "we" of
course I mean people.

It's such a big question that many people wouldn't even know where to start.

But if you care about understanding the impact that humans are having on the Earth, and what that means for our future, it's a crucial question. Vaclav Smil sets out to answer it in his book Harvesting the Biosphere: What We Have Taken From Nature.

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Thai Oil Spill Having Extreme Impact on Tourism - Minister

      

Thai soldiers wearing biohazard suits take part as cleaning operations continue at Ao Prao Beach on Koh Samet, Rayong July 31, 2013. REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha

reuters.com - by Amy Sawitta Lefevre - July 30, 2013

(Reuters) - An oil spill that has blackened beaches at a Thai holiday island was having an extreme impact on tourism and could spread to the coast of the mainland and affect the fishing industry, officials and an environmental group said on Tuesday.

Tourists were pouring off the island of Koh Samet, 230 km (142 miles) southeast of Bangkok, while soldiers and volunteers in white bio-hazard suits struggled to clear black oily sludge off the white sand.

"We're working to move visitors to other locations if they want to move," Tourism Minister Somsak Phurisisak told reporters.

"I'm very concerned, I didn't think this spill would impact tourism in such an extreme way."

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