Outside the small village of Chicua, in the western highlands, in an area affected by extreme-weather events, Ilda Gonzales looks after her daughter.

newyorker.com - by Jonathan Blitzer - Photography by Mauricio Lima - April 3, 2019

. . . In most of the western highlands, the question is no longer whether someone will emigrate but when. “Extreme poverty may be the primary reason people leave,” Edwin Castellanos, a climate scientist at the Universidad del Valle, told me. “But climate change is intensifying all the existing factors” . . . Farming, Castellanos has said, is “a trial-and-error exercise for the modification of the conditions of sowing and harvesting times in the face of a variable environment.” Climate change is outpacing the ability of growers to adapt.

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Credit: Getty Images

CLICK HERE - RESEARCH - Is Eco-Friendly Unmanly? The Green-Feminine Stereotype and Its Effect on Sustainable Consumption 

forbes.com - by Carolyn Centeno Milton - April 3, 2019

. . . Brough co-authored a paper with professors from four other universities to understand how gender norms affect sustainable decision making. They report data from seven experiments that included over 2,000 participants from the US and China. What they found was remarkable.

They found that both men and women associated doing something good for the environment with being “more feminine.” This unearths a deeply held unconscious bias that Brough and team call the “Green-Feminine Stereotype.”

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ALSO SEE RELATED ARTICLE HERE - Men Resist Green Behavior as Unmanly

nytimes.com - by Matt Richtel and Andrew Jacobs - April 6, 2019

A deadly, drug-resistant fungus is infecting patients in hospitals and nursing homes around the world. The fungus seems to have emerged in several locations at once, not from a single source . . .

. . . Individual institutions and national, state and local governments have been reluctant to publicize outbreaks of resistant infections, arguing there is no point in scaring patients — or prospective ones.

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CLICK HERE - CDC - Candida auris

CLICK HERE - CDC - Candida auris - Fact Sheets

CLICK HERE - CDC - Tracking Candida auris - U.S. Map

Figure 1: Trends in TWS (in centimetres per year) obtained on the basis of GRACE observations from April 2002 to March 2016. The cause of the trend in each outlined study region is briefly explained and colour-coded by category. The trend map was smoothed with a 150-km-radius Gaussian filter for the purpose of visualization; however, all calculations were performed at the native 3° resolution of the data product.

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Emerging trends in global freshwater availability

trend.pewtrusts.org - by Jay Famiglietti - March 13, 2019

Global changes are altering where and how we get fresh water, sparking the need for worldwide cooperation.

The availability of fresh water is rapidly changing all over the world, creating a tenuous future that requires attention from policymakers and the public . . .

Zunum Aero plans a range of aircraft, including a 100-seat airliner by around 2020 (Credit: Zunum Aero)

bbc.com - by Stephen Dowling - August 22, 2018

. . . Battery-powered aircraft have made the leap from fantasy to drawing board to production. But it’s just the start . . .

. . . By 2040, Norway intends all short-haul flights leaving its airports to be on aircraft powered by electricity.

It’s one of the most far-reaching promises yet to cut down on aviation’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.

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Yemenis at a cholera treatment centre in the capital, Sana’a. Photograph: Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images

CLICK HERE - reliefweb - 1,000 children infected every day as Yemen cholera outbreak spikes

theguardian.com - by Karen McVeigh - March 26, 2019

Yemen is seeing a sharp spike in the number of suspected cholera cases this year, with 1,000 children a day infected in the last two weeks alone, agencies said.

More than 120,000 cases have been reported, with 234 deaths in the country, which has been at war for four years this month. Almost a third of the 124,493 cases documented between 1 January and 22 March were children under fifteen. Increasing rates of malnutrition among Yemen’s children have left them more prone to contracting and dying from the disease.

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A smashed window is seen in one of the stores inside a shopping mall after looting in Maracaibo. Photograph: Isaac Urrutia/Reuters

theguardian.com - by Tom Phillips - March 26, 2019

. . . Maracaibo’s “madness” began on the night of 10 March – three days after a catastrophic blackout plunged almost the entire nation into darkness. But it had been long in the making thanks to years of economic and political neglect.

The 1.6 million residents of Maracaibo – an oil capital once celebrated as Latin America’s answer to Houston – complained of shortages of water, electricity and fuel and a worsening public transport system even before Venezuela’s crisis began to accelerate in 2016, with the onset of hyperinflation.

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An expanding list of information resources on the Ebola outbreak declared May 8, 2018 in the Democratic Republic of Congo.  A link to Information, FAQs and Research on this outbreak will be provided (in red - here), and at the bottom of this post  . . . 

CLICK HERE - WHO - DRC Ebola Surveillance Dashboard

CLICK HERE - Twitter - Technical Secretariat of the Multisectoral National Committee for the Response to Ebola Virus Disease (CMRE)

CLICK HERE - Twitter - Mike Ryan - Executive Director of WHO Health Emergencies Programme

CLICK HERE - Twitter - Ministère de la Santé de la République Démocratique du Congo (Situation Reports)

CLICK HERE - WHO - Regional Office for Africa - Situation Reports - Ebola Virus Disease

Seen from a drone Praia Nova Village, one of the most affected neighbourhoods in Beira, razed by the passing cyclone, in the coastal city of Beira, Mozambique, Sunday March 17, 2019. Families are returning to the vulnerable shanty town following cyclone high winds and rain. More than 1,000 people are feared dead in Mozambique four days after a cyclone slammed into the southern African country. (Josh Estey/CARE via AP)

CLICK HERE - reliefweb - Tropical Cyclone Idai - March 2019

apnews.com - by Andrew Meldrum - March 18, 2019

More than 1,000 people were feared dead in Mozambique four days after a cyclone slammed into the country, submerging entire villages and leaving bodies floating in the floodwaters, the nation’s president said . . .

. . . Cyclone Idai could prove to be the deadliest storm in generations to hit the impoverished southeast African country of 30 million people.

A three-year UN-backed study from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform On Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services has grim implications for the future of humanity.

CLICK HERE - IPBES - IPBES Global Assessment Preview

huffpost.com - by John Vidal - March 15, 2019

Nature is in freefall and the planet’s support systems are so stretched that we face widespread species extinctions and mass human migration unless urgent action is taken. That’s the warning hundreds of scientists are preparing to give, and it’s stark . . .

. . . The study from the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform On Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), expected to run to over 8,000 pages, is being compiled by more than 500 experts in 50 countries. It is the greatest attempt yet to assess the state of life on Earth and will show how tens of thousands of species are at high risk of extinction, how countries are using nature at a rate that far exceeds its ability to renew itself, and how nature’s ability to contribute food and fresh water to a growing human population is being compromised in every region on earth.

                                                           (CLICK ON IMAGE BELOW TO ENLARGE)

thelancet.com - March 16, 2019

The content of a reform for WHO came as somewhat of a surprise to many in the global health community. After Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in his inaugural speech, said “I do not believe in perpetual reform and I think WHO staff are reformed out”, WHO's Director-General unveiled the result of a 20-month-long consultation for reform. Aimed to be “the most wide-ranging reforms in the organisation's history”, according to the accompanying press release, this reform is a substantial top-heavy redesign of the internal structure of the WHO Secretariat.

New Zealand shooting: Manifesto by white Australian man who claimed responsibility for attacks lays out alleged motive - CBS News

cbsnews.com - March 15, 2019

At least 49 people are dead in two separate attacks on mosques in New Zealand – the deadliest mass shooting in the country's history. The mosques were packed with people beginning their Friday prayers when a man stormed in and began firing . . .

. . . A 74-page racist manifesto was posted online the same day by a man who said he was behind the attacks . . . it lays out the alleged motive, citing anti-immigrant sentiment and revenge for past terror attacks in Europe, reports CBS News correspondent Nikki Battiste.

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CLICK HERE - Christchurch shooting: 49 dead in terrorist attack at two mosques – live updates

A logo is pictured on the World Health Organization (WHO) headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, November 22, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

CLICK HERE - WHO - Global influenza strategy 2019-2030

reuters.com - by Kate Kelland - March 11, 2019

The world will inevitably face another pandemic of flu and needs to prepare for the potential devastation that could cause, and not underestimate the risks, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday.

Outlining a global plan to fight the viral disease and get ahead of a potential global outbreak, the WHO said the next influenza pandemic “is a matter of when, not if”.

“The threat of pandemic influenza is ever-present,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general, said in a statement. “We must be vigilant and prepared – the cost of a major influenza outbreak will far outweigh the price of prevention.”

Gay, Destine & Rogers, Tom & Shirley, Rebekah, 2018. "Small island developing states and their suitability for electric vehicles and vehicle-to-grid services," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 69-78.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jup.2018.09.006

sciencedirect.com - 19 September 2018

Abstract

Small Island Developing States (SIDS), while at the forefront of international climate action, face a number of development challenges linked to their historic, geographic and socio-economic characteristics. Small populations and limited energy demand cap the penetration of renewable energy technologies. Electric vehicles (EVs) offer solutions for electricity storage, grid services, reduced fuel imports, and reduced pollution with associated health benefits. This paper provides a comprehensive review of literature on island applications of electric vehicles, making the case for SIDS as an area of opportunity for further exploration, and presenting the southern Caribbean island of Barbados as a case study.

CLICK HERE - Small island developing states and their suitability for electric vehicles and vehicle-to-grid services

CLICK HERE - ncei.noaa.gov - Assessing the U.S. Climate in February 2019 - Wettest winter on record for the contiguous United States

weather.com - by Brian Donegan - February 6, 2019

Winter 2018-19 was the wettest on record in the United States after numerous heavy rain and snow events soaked the nation, according to a just-released government report.

The national climate report from NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) said the country's average winter precipitation total was 9.01 inches, 2.22 inches above the 20th-century average (1901-2000), which bested the previous record-wet winter of 1997-98 by 0.02 inches. In this analysis, winter is defined as the three-month period from December through February.

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