Japan has raised the severity rating of its nuclear disaster, as firefighters continue efforts to cool highly radioactive fuel rods at a nuclear reactor complex crippled by last week's earthquake and tsunami.

Japan on Friday increased the severity of the crisis at the Fukushima site from 4 to 5 on a 7-point international nuclear event scale. 

Firefighters are dousing water on damaged reactor buildings with powerful hoses.  But they have to limit their time inside the complex due to the high radiation levels. 

Japanese engineers also are extending an emergency power cable to the nuclear reactor complex.  A steady supply of power could enable workers at the Fukushima plant to get water pumps working again. 

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Winds passing over Japan's stricken nuclear power plant are reaching California and moving inland, but health experts say the plumes pose no danger to the public.

There is mounting alarm in the public's mind as news continues of explosions and loss of reactor cooling water at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, and its intensely radioactive fuel rods.

But winds from Japan have been blowing eastward across the Pacific at altitudes four to five miles high, and are "continually mixing with the upper atmosphere," said Kenneth Bowman, a noted atmospheric physicist at Texas A&M University and an expert on computer-based modeling of wind behavior.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/03/18/MNGU1IDTMQ.DTL

An eco-city in Portugal that its makers are aiming to build by 2015 takes its cues from the nervous system IF TODAY'S cities were living things, they would be monsters, guilty of guzzling 75 per cent of the world's natural resources consumed each year. Now a more benign urban creature is set to emerge. The planned city of PlanIT Valley, on the outskirts of Paredes in northern Portugal (see map), is aiming to be an environmentally sustainable city. And, just like an organism, it will have a brain: a central computer that regulates everything from its water use to energy consumption. The central computer of the city will act like a brain, regulating water use and energy consumption Various eco-cities are in the pipeline, but this could be the first to be fully built - by 2015 - and could open its doors as early as next year. While Masdar City in Abu Dhabi welcomed its first inhabitants this month, it will not be completed until at least 2020. And the development of Dongtan near Shanghai in China has not even got off the ground yet, following financial and political difficulties. Like other sustainable cities, PlanIT Valley will treat its own water and tap renewable energy. Buildings will also have plant-covered roofs, which will reduce local temperature through evapotranspiration, as well as absorbing rainwater and pollutants.

Reporting from Washington — The Obama administration on Tuesday lifted its moratorium on oil and gas drilling in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, potentially blunting a serious political issue in the weeks before the midterm congressional election and signaling its confidence in newly tightened regulation. "There has been significant progress over the last few months in enhancing the safety of future drilling operations, and in addressing some of the weaknesses in spill containment and oil spill response," Michael Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, said in announcing the moratorium's end. "More needs to be done," he said, "but we believe the risks of deepwater drilling have been reduced sufficiently to allow drilling under existing and new regulations." But the moratorium's end satisfied few players involved in offshore oil drilling issues. Some environmentalists criticized ending the drilling suspension while investigations and cleanup continued into the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which killed 11 people and unleashed the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. Get breaking news alerts delivered to your mobile phone. Text BREAKING to 52669.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration blocked efforts by government scientists to tell the public just how bad the Gulf oil spill could become and committed other missteps that raised questions about its competence and candor during the crisis, according to a commission appointed by the president to investigate the disaster. In documents released Wednesday, the national oil spill commission's staff describes "not an incidental public relations problem" by the White House in the wake of the April 20 accident. Among other things, the report says, the administration made erroneous early estimates of the spill's size, and President Barack Obama's senior energy adviser went on national TV and mischaracterized a government analysis by saying it showed most of the oil was "gone." The analysis actually said it could still be there. "By initially underestimating the amount of oil flow and then, at the end of the summer, appearing to underestimate the amount of oil remaining in the Gulf, the federal government created the impression that it was either not fully competent to handle the spill or not fully candid with the American people about the scope of the problem," the report says.

About 80% of the world's population lives in areas where the fresh water supply is not secure, according to a new global analysis. Researchers compiled a composite index of "water threats" that includes issues such as scarcity and pollution. The most severe threat category encompasses 3.4 billion people. Writing in the journal Nature, they say that in western countries, conserving water for people through reservoirs and dams works for people, but not nature. They urge developing countries not to follow the same path. What we're able to outline is a planet-wide pattern of threat” Charles Vorosmarty City College of New York Instead, they say governments should invest in water management strategies that combine infrastructure with "natural" options such as safeguarding watersheds, wetlands and flood plains. The analysis is a global snapshot, and the research team suggests more people are likely to encounter more severe stress on their water supply in the coming decades, as the climate changes and the human population continues to grow. They have taken data on a variety of different threats, used models of threats where data is scarce, and used expert assessment to combine the various individual threats into a composite index.

Hong Kong, China (CNN) -- While nations debate what to do about long-term problems such as climate change and dwindling water supplies, two words send immediate shivers down the spines of government officials across the world: Food security.
A series of environmental disasters fueling a wave of food price volatility has given governments, "a much needed wakeup call," said Abdolreza Abbassian, an economist for the United Nation's Security of Intergovernmental Group on Grains.

September 17, USA TODAY – (International) Drug-resistant ‘superbugs’ hit 35 states, spread worldwide. Bacteria that are able to survive every modern antibiotic are cropping up in many U.S. hospitals and are spreading outside the country, public health officials said. The bugs, reported by hospitals in more than 35 states, typically strike the critically ill and are fatal in 30 percent to 60 percent of cases. Israeli doctors are battling an outbreak in Tel Aviv that has been traced to a patient from northern New Jersey, said the director of infection control and epidemiology at the University of Pennsylvania and president of the Society of Healthcare Epidemiologists. The bacteria are equipped with a gene that enables them to produce an enzyme that disables antibiotics. The enzyme is called Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenamase. It disables carbapenam antibiotics, last-ditch treatments for infections that don’t respond to other drugs. “We’ve lost our drug of last resort,” he said. Source: http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/health/medical/2010-09-17-1Asuperbug17_ST_N.htm

A recent report concludes that dramatically reforming, re-thinking and redesigning two sectors —energy and agriculture— could generate significant environmental, social and economic returns.

Current patterns of production and consumption of both fossil fuels and food are draining freshwater supplies; triggering losses of economically-important ecosystems such as forests; intensifying disease and death rates and raising levels of pollution to unsustainable levels.