How Climate Change is Destroying the Earth

by Silvio Marcacci
Earth & Industry readers most likely will agree that climate change is happening, and is caused by human actions. But it's often hard for individuals, no matter how well read, to fully grasp the enormity of how anthropogenic climate change is affecting the planet.
That's why we were interested to come across a new infographic from learnstuff.com that attempts to do just that - not only encompass all the evidence of climate change, but detail how it is destroying the Earth:

Thanks to extensive research and noticeable changes in weather and storm prevalence, it’s getting harder to turn a blind eye to the reality of climate change. Since the Industrial Age spurred the increasing usage of fossil fuels for energy production, the weather has been warming slowly. In fact, since 1880, the temperature of the earth has increased by 1 degree Celsius.
Although 72% of media outlets report on global warming with a skeptical air, the overwhelming majority of scientists believe that the extreme weather of the last decade is at least partially caused by global warming. Some examples of climate calamities caused partly by global warming include:

• Hurricane Katrina
• Drought in desert countries
• Hurricane Sandy
• Tornadoes in the Midwest

These storms, droughts, and floods are causing death and economic issues for people all over the world – many of whom cannot afford to rebuild their lives from the ground up after being wiped out by a tsunami or other disaster. Read More

Inspiring the Global Mind

"...project seems to confirm that we are all part of a collective consciousness."

by Jurriaan Kamp

For psychologist Sigmund Freud, man was determined by elemental, material passions: the need for food, sex, security. Matter does indeed provide security, but ultimately more matter does not provide more security. And beyond a certain point, more money, according to study after study, does not make us happier. The serious problems of modern civilization can be attributed to the fact that advancing material development has not gone hand in hand with parallel spiritual development. External evolution requires internal evolution. That was the dimension Abraham Maslow added to the basic Freudian needs: our search for meaning. We strive to develop our consciousness, to achieve self-actualization.
Spiritual development as humanity’s ultimate goal is not new, of course. It’s a theme that’s been around 6,000 years. Enlightened spirits such as Lao Tse, Confucius, the writers of the Indian Upanishads and Rig Veda, Buddha, Socrates, Plato, Moses, Christ and Mohammed (Author’s note: I know many women have led this lineage but shamefully, their names are not in the history books) all devoted their lives to this pursuit. But they were lone voices in their day. The Information Age has put consciousness at a more prominent place on the agenda than ever before. The Internet links billions of us together, and we influence and inspire each other ever faster and more often. That means new insights are finding their way more easily. Jesus didn’t have the Web at his disposal.An interesting research project seems to confirm that we are all part of a collective consciousness. Laboratory experiments had shown that human intention could induce small but significant changes in the output of so-called random number generators. Such instruments randomly flip virtual coins. Over time, there should be roughly as many heads as tails. However the experiments showed that human intention could change the outcome of these machines. Read More

Global Warming Pushing Trees North: The Evidence

Discovery News - As the planet warms, the Arctic is feeling the heat. Trees and shrubs are taking hold on what was once tundra, like this young pine and surrounding shrubs in Norway's Arctic Finnmark.
A new international study of the satellite record of greening landscape shows that the places which were firmly Arctic in climate during the mid-20th century are now transforming into evergreen forest lands. If the trend continues, by the end of this century northern Sweden could get the temperatures more common to southern France and northernmost Canada could be more like Montana. Read More

'I am one of the Fukushima fifty': One of the men who risked their lives to prevent a catastrophe shares his story

It was, recalls Atsufumi Yoshizawa, a suicide mission: volunteering to return to a dangerously radioactive nuclear power plant on the verge of tipping out of control.

As he said goodbye to his colleagues they saluted him, like soldiers in battle. The wartime analogies were hard to avoid: in the international media he was a kamikaze, a samurai or simply one of the heroic Fukushima 50. The descriptions still embarrass him. “I’m not a hero,” he says. “I was just trying to do my job.”
A stoic, soft-spoken man dressed in the blue utility suit of his embattled employer Tokyo Electric Power Co., (Tepco) Mr Yoshizawa still finds it hard to dredge up memories of fighting to stop catastrophe at the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Two years later, debate still rages about responsibility for the planet’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, and its impact. Fish caught near the plant this month contained over 5,000 times safe radiation limits, according to state broadcaster NHK.
A report this week by the World Health Organisation says female infants affected by the worst of the fallout have a 70 per cent higher risk of developing thyroid cancer over their lifetimes, but concluded that overall risks for the rest of the population are “low”. Over 160,000 people have been displaced from their homes near the plant, perhaps permanently, and are fighting for proper compensation. Stress, divorce and suicides and plague the evacuees. Read More

Ships to sail directly over the north pole by 2050, scientists say

Melting sea ice will allow ice-strengthened vessels to sail directly over the pole, and normal ships to take the 'northern sea route'
Ships should be able to sail directly over the north pole by the middle of this century, considerably reducing the costs of trade between Europe and China but posing new economic, strategic and environmental challenges for governments, according to scientists.
The dramatic reduction in the thickness and extent of late summer sea ice that has taken place in each of the last seven years has already made it possible for some ice-strengthened ships to travel across the north of Russia via the "northern sea route". Last year a total of 46 ships made the trans-Arctic passage, mostly escorted at considerable cost by Russian icebreakers.
But by 2050, say Laurence C. Smith and Scott R. Stephenson at the University of California in the journal PNAS on Monday, ordinary vessels should be able to travel easily along the northern sea route, and moderately ice-strengthened ships should be able to take the shortest possible route between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, passing over the pole itself. The easiest time would be in September, when annual sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean is at its lowest extent. Read More

The Super Supercapacitor | Brian Golden Davis

The Old vs. the New

by Polona Somrak

 

Dear Ones!

We are in a transition between the old and the New. What is this shift in our physical Ascension truly about? Firstly, we have to be aware that all ...the levels of our Being need to be addressed and assessed in this shift. There is no one without the other, as everything is intrinsically interconnected. Everything is whole within the grander Whole of All That Is. So when we shift on one layer of our Being, the other layers naturally align with our Source Essence as well. What are the most apparent realizations within the New?

In the New, we shift from thinking in terms of good/bad, right/wrong, serving/not serving, useful/time wasting, etc. to the perspective of Divine order of everything and we understand that everything is just about sharing different perspectives. We might resonate with a certain perspective more, as we embody a certain vibration which we may call our predominant frequency. When in the awareness of Oneness, we can neutrally see and integrate all of the other perspectives as well, while firmly residing in our own truth and Spirit integrity. We become a neutral objective observer and we see the connection of everything and the internal influences behind the "scenes".

In the New, we are moving from doing to Being, as we are shifting from Human doings to Light Beings. We realize that in the Divine Plan of Perfection, there is no control and pushing things. We act through awareness and only when we are so guided. This means that we are responsive through being aligned with our Soul instead of being reactive through the ego, which is the lower self. Being passive is something different than being active through surrendering and letting go while taking only those action steps that follow our Bliss ... the authentic Self! We also know that we can only receive guidance on the next step and we are not interested in the "distant future", as we only wish to reside in the Now moment. Read More