Author Archive
Lessons from Manila floods on climate change, responses
Posted by Bay Area Indymedia: None Given on August 17th, 2012
Bay Area Indymedia: As the Philippine government dithered and made excuses for its grossly inadequate response to the catastrophic floods -- which inundated 80% of the country's capital, Manila -- Sonny Melencio was leading a grassroots relief effort that brought the first food supplies in days to some of the poorest and most badly affected communities.
Together with other activists from the Party of the Labouring Masses (PLM), Melencio went to urban poor communities along the flood-breached Marikina River with supplies...
Biodiversity crisis: Habitat loss and climate change causing 6th mass extinction
Posted by Bay Area Indymedia: None Given on January 22nd, 2012
Bay Area Indymedia: Scientists meeting at the University of Copenhagen have warned that biodiversity is declining rapidly throughout the world, describing the loss of species as the 6th mass extinction event on the earth. The world is losing species at a rate that is 100 to 1000 times faster than the natural extinction rate, with the challenges of conserving the world's species larger than mitigating the negative effects of global climate change. Related: Climate change and habitat loss threaten biodiversity, extinction...
Climate change and habitat loss threaten biodiversity, extinction rate underestimated
Posted by Bay Area Indymedia: None Given on January 6th, 2012
Bay Area Indymedia: Two new scientific papers have emphasised the threat to biodiversity from the impacts of climate change and habitat loss. A study by US ecologist Mark Urban identified that predictions of the loss of animal and plant diversity due to climate change may be greatly underestimated as most predictions of the rate of extinctions don't take into account species competition and movement. A second key global study by University of Queensland and Australian CSIRO scientists emphasised the link between current...