Situation Report

The World Has Pledged To Divest $2.6 Trillion From Fossil Fuels

Tue, 2015-09-22 16:08 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Credit: David J. Phillip / Associated Press

"It is now unstoppable."

huffingtonpost.com - by Nick Visser - September 22, 2015

NEW YORK -- The amount of money the world has pledged to divest from fossil fuels now exceeds $2.6 trillion, a group of policymakers, philanthropists and activists announced Tuesday. The figure is 50 times higher than the $52 billion that had been divested exactly one year ago.

The news was announced at a press conference in New York, hosted by groups including the United Nations, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and environmental and faith leaders. The hosts said the $2.6 trillion figure was calculated by Arabella Advisors, a private consulting company that works with philanthropic groups.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

CLICK HERE - Arabella Advisors - Measuring the Growth of the Global Fossil Fuel Divestment and Clean Energy Investment Movement (27 page .PDF file)

CLICK HERE - About - 2015 Report - Divest-Invest

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How Research Data Sharing Can Save Lives

Mon, 2015-09-21 23:14 — Kathy Gilbeaux

CLICK HERE - WHO - Developing Global Norms for Sharing Data and Results during Public Health Emergencies

blogs.bmj.com - by Trish Groves / The BMJ - September 8, 2015

The whole debate on sharing clinical study data has focused on transparency, reproducibility, and completing the evidence base for treatments. Yet public health emergencies such as the Ebola and MERS outbreaks provide a vitally important reason for sharing study data, usually before publication or even before submission to a journal, and ideally in a public repository.

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CLICK HERE - Wikipedia - Ingelfinger rule

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Ebola Virus Mutations May Help It Evade Drug Treatment

Sun, 2015-09-20 20:57 — Kathy Gilbeaux

CLICK HERE - Ebola Virus Mutations May Help It Evade Drug Treatment (2 page .PDF file)

CLICK HERE - Cell Reports - Emergence of Ebola Virus Escape Variants in Infected Nonhuman Primates Treated with the MB-003 Antibody Cocktail

CLICK HERE - Emergence of Ebola Virus Escape Variants in Infected Nonhuman Primates Treated with the MB-003 Antibody Cocktail (11 page .PDF file)

usamriid.army.mil - September 11, 2015

Genetic mutations called “escape variants” in the deadly Ebola virus appear to block the ability of antibody-based treatments to ward off infection, according to a team of U.S. Army scientists and collaborators. Their findings, published online this week in the journal Cell Reports, have implications for the continued development of therapeutics to treat Ebola virus disease, which has claimed the lives of over 11,000 people in West Africa since last year.

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Feds to end Ebola screening for air travelers from Liberia

Sat, 2015-09-19 17:38 — mike kraft

USA TODAY by Bart Jansen Sept. 19, 2015

WASHINGTON – Federal authorities will end mandatory Ebola screening Monday for travelers from Liberia to five U.S. airports, but will continue to scrutinize travelers from Sierra Leone and Guinea, federal officials announced Friday.

The Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection had provided extra screening for more than 30,000 travelers during the past year, after an outbreak of the often fatal disease in West Africa.....

Customs and Border Protection and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agreed to remove Liberia from the list of countries subject to enhanced visa and port-of-entry screening, effective Monday....

The U.S. will maintain extra screening for travelers from Sierra Leone and Guinea, which still see a handful of new cases each week, and for people who traveled through those countries during the previous three weeks.

Read complete story.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/09/18/ebola-travel-airport-screening-liberia-sierra-leone-guinea-customs-border-protection/72398942/

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Ocean Fish Populations Cut In Half Since The 1970s: Report

Sat, 2015-09-19 10:33 — Kathy Gilbeaux

CLICK HERE - Living Blue Planet Report 2015

Populations of some commercial fish stocks, such as a group including tuna, mackerel and bonito, had fallen by almost 75 percent.

huffingtonpost.com - by Andy Campbell - September 16, 2015

A disturbing new report published by the World Wildlife Fund found that the world marine vertebrate population declined by 49 percent between 1970 and 2012.

The Living Blue Planet Report -- analyzed by the Zoological Society of London and issued as an update on our oceans' health -- also found that local and commercial fish populations have been cut in half, tropical reefs have lost nearly half of their reef-building coral, and there are 250,000 metric tons of plastic in our oceans.

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Earthquake - Chile - Tsunami Impacts

Wed, 2015-09-16 20:40 — Kathy Gilbeaux

This earthquake can have a medium humanitarian impact based on the Magnitude and the affected population and their vulnerability.

    Earthquake Magnitude 8.3M, Depth:25km
    on 16 Sep 2015 22:54 UTC
    140385 people within 100km
    inserted at 17 Sep 2015 00:48:18 UTC

CLICK HERE - GDACS - Earthquake Summary

CLICK HERE - GDACS - Tsunami Impacts

CLICK HERE - NOAA - National Tsunami Warning Center - Event Observations and Forecasts

CLICK HERE - NOAA - United States - Tsunami Advisory

CLICK HERE - USGS - Earthquake Summary

CLICK HERE - Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (PTWC)

CLICK HERE - PTWC - Tsunami Threat Message

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Social Vulnerability and Ebola Virus Disease in Rural Liberia

Wed, 2015-09-16 18:24 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Clusters of social vulnerability in rural Liberia, by district. Social vulnerability of each cluster of districts can be loosely ranked from most to least vulnerable as: Cluster 1, food quality, displaced persons, disabled, dependent populations; Cluster 3, food quantity, food quality, lack of access to land/free medical care; Cluster 4, food quantity, disabled dependent populations and Cluster 5, water quality/proximity to medical care; and finally, Cluster 2, no strong vulnerability scores.

CLICK HERE - Social Vulnerability and Ebola Virus Disease in Rural Liberia

CLICK HERE - Social Vulnerability and Ebola Virus Disease in Rural Liberia (14 page .PDF file)

srs.fs.usda.gov - by Zoe Hoyle - September 15, 2015

A newly published research study by U.S. Forest Service researchers demonstrates that the social vulnerability indices used in climate change and natural hazards research can also be used in other contexts such as disease outbreaks.

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Quarantines return as Ebola makes comeback in Sierra Leone

Mon, 2015-09-14 21:20 — mike kraft

REUTERS Sept.14, 2015
FREETOWN — Health authorities quarantined hundreds of people in northern Sierra Leone on Monday after a 16-year-old girl died of Ebola in an apparent case of sexual transmission, the first confirmed death from the virus in the district for nearly six months.

Sierra Leone celebrated last month when it discharged the last remaining Ebola patient from its treatment centers. But since then a new spate of cases has erupted, leaving two dead and five people in treatment.

The teenage girl, Kadiatu Thullah, died on Sunday at the International Medical Corps Ebola treatment unit, authorities said.

Emmanuel Conteh, head of the Ebola Response Centre for the district of Bombali in northern Sierra Leone, said that some 690 people in the village of Robuya where Kadiatu lived would be isolated for three weeks....it.

Conteh said health workers were investigating how the teenager got infected, since she had not traveled outside the village in years. Initial suspicions are that she had sex with an Ebola survivor.

Read complete story.

http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/nation-and-world/quarantines-return-ebola-makes-comeback-sierra-leone

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Worst-Case Scenario: If We Burn All Remaining Fossil Fuels, Antarctica Would Melt Entirely, Raise Sea Level 200 Feet

Sun, 2015-09-13 21:51 — Kathy Gilbeaux

This chart shows how Antarctic ice would be affected by different emissions scenarios. “GTC” stands for gigatons of carbon. Ken Caldeira and Ricarda Winkelmann

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Combustion of available fossil fuel resources sufficient to eliminate the Antarctic Ice Sheet

newsweek.com - by Zoë Schlanger - September 11, 2015

“Combustion of available fossil fuel resources sufficient to eliminate the Antarctic Ice Sheet.”

Few peer-reviewed study titles sound quite so much like a line spoken by the bad-news-bearing scientist from a dystopian sci-fi movie. But there it is. A real-world—and apparently very possible—dystopia.

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