voanews.com - by Jeff Seldin - January 22, 2014

WASHINGTON — The Washington-based group Freedom House said the cause of freedom around the globe took another hit in 2013, as the group released its Freedom in the World 2014 report Thursday. The authors warned of serious setbacks in some of the world’s more influential countries.

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CLICK HERE - Report - Freedom in the World 2014

reliefweb.int - monre.gov.vn - January 25, 2014

euractiv.com - January 21st, 2014 - Rear Admiral Neil Moriseti

As the European Commission prepares its 2030 climate change White Paper, more than the environment is at stake. As well as health and social issues, a changing climate poses potential risks to global security, in particular to secure, sustainable and affordable supplies of key natural resources (food, water and energy) that are essential for economic prosperity and well being.

Whether as a result of extreme weather events - such as Super Storm Sandy or Typhoon Haiyan - or the early onset of long term trends, climate change poses a threat to EU supply chains, raw materials and markets.

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huffingtonpost.com - January 24th, 2014 - Kumi Naidoo

A mind-boggling sum of about $800 for each person on the planet is invested into fossil fuel companies through the global capital markets alone. That's roughly 10 percent of the total capital invested in listed companies. The amount of money invested into the 200 biggest fossil fuel companies through financial markets is estimated at 5.5 trillion dollars.

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Remediation workers check bags of soil and other decontamination waste at a temporary storage site in Date city in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. (Photo: G. Tudor/IAEA)

iaea.org - January 24, 2014

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) handed Japan the final report from an expert mission that reviewed remediation efforts in areas affected by the Fukushima Daiichi accident.

The IAEA report, which is available online, describes the findings of the Follow-up IAEA International Mission on Remediation of Large Contaminated Areas Off-Site the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, held on 14 to 21 October 2013. The report highlights important progress in all areas to date, and offers advice on several points where the team feels it is still possible to further improve current practices.

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A resident stands on the roof of his home that is submerged in heavy flooding brought by tropical depression ''Agaton'', in Butuan city on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao January 21, 2014.
Credit: Reuters/Erik De Castro

reuters.com - by Erik de Castro - January 21, 2014

(Reuters) - Emergency workers evacuated thousands of people across the southern Philippines on Tuesday, including many already made homeless by a typhoon in November, after three days of rain flooded towns and farmland.

Hundreds of survivors of Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest storms ever to make landfall, were forced to flee by tropical depression "Agaton" after emergency shelters were damaged or destroyed on the eastern central island of Samar.

Tents collapsed under the weight of the rain and emergency plastic sheets have been torn away, humanitarian agency Oxfam said.

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weforum.org - usatoday.com - by Kim Hjelmgaard - January 16, 2014

The World Economic Forum on Thursday released its Global Risks 2014 report.

"Taking a 10-year outlook, the report assesses 31 risks that are global in nature and have the potential to cause significant negative impact across entire countries and industries if they take place," is how the WEF describes the report in a statement accompanying its release.

"The risks are grouped under five classifications — economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal and technological — and measured in terms of their likelihood and potential impact," the statement says.

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CLICK HERE - Global Risks 2014 report

Tom Meyer's new system generates hydrogen fuel by using the sun's energy to split water into its component parts. After the split, hydrogen is sequestered and stored, while the byproduct, oxygen, is released into the air. Credit: Tom Meyer

phys.org - January 14, 2014

Solar energy has long been used as a clean alternative to fossil fuels such as coal and oil, but it could only be harnessed during the day when the sun's rays were strongest. Now researchers led by Tom Meyer at the Energy Frontier Research Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have built a system that converts the sun's energy not into electricity but hydrogen fuel and stores it for later use, allowing us to power our devices long after the sun goes down.

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European Parliament - ecowatch.com - January 15, 2014

The most hazardous plastics and certain plastic bags should be banned by 2020, as part of an EU strategy to reduce plastic waste in the environment, says the European Parliament in a resolution voted yesterday. The EU should also introduce binding plastic waste recycling targets, Members of European Parliament (MEPs) add.

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mondaq.com- by Stephen L. Kass - January 6, 2014

In my last column (" Keystone and Fukushima: Balancing Needs and Risks," Sept. 18, 2013), I pointed out the significant environmental risks from both Canada's oil sands and Japan's nuclear facilities and concluded that, after balancing their respective benefits and risks, neither represented a desirable model for either the United States or the international community to meet their future energy needs. Those needs are expected to grow substantially as developing countries strive to improve their standards of living and the world's population grows from seven billion to more than nine billion people.

Where is that new energy going to come from?

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Submitted by Luis Kun

homelandsecuritynewswire.com - January 8th 2014

Claims that the Internet will “democratize” the global village are not supported by research published in the International Journal of Electronic Governance. Instead, non-democratic governments simply exploit the networks to spy on and control their citizens more effectively and efficiently than they did before.

In a post-Snowden NSA revelation world, many pundits have suggested that the age of true democracy is upon us as social lobbyists, citizen advocates, and others claw back the agenda from those who rule them.

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euractiv.com - January 8, 2014

The EU's decarbonisation of its energy sector will only cut emissions by half the amount needed to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius in 2050, according to a business-as-usual scenario quietly released by the European Commission over the Christmas period.

CLICK HERE - STUDY - EU Energy, transport and GHG emissions trends to 2050

Scientists and EU leaders agree that by mid-century, Europe must ramp up energy savings and green its power generation to slash CO2 emissions by 80-95% compared to 1990 levels, and so avoid catastrophic climate change. 

But according to a European Commission ‘Trends to 2050’ study, which was released below the radar over the Christmas period, the continent is only on track to reduce its emissions by around a third in 2030, and 44% in 2050.

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CREDIT: shutterstock

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Multimodel assessment of water scarcity under climate change

CLICK HERE - SUPPORTING INFORMATION - Multimodel assessment of water scarcity under climate change

thinkprogress.org - by Ari Phillips - January 3, 2014

A new study by a diverse group of researchers from twelve countries found that of the human impacts stemming from climate change, the threat it poses to global water supplies may be the most severe.

Blend Images/John Lund via Getty Images

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Spread in model climate sensitivity traced to atmospheric convective mixing

huffingtonpost.com - by Nick Visser - December 31, 2013

Climate change may be far worse than scientists thought, causing global temperatures to rise by at least 4 degrees Celsius by 2100, or about 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a new study.

The study, published in the journal Nature, takes a fresh look at clouds' effect on the planet, according to a report by The Guardian. The research found that as the planet heats, fewer sunlight-reflecting clouds form, causing temperatures to rise further in an upward spiral.

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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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