UN: Fertility must drop below replacement level

So it seems Singaporeans are doing the right thing after all: The world population growth rate must slow down significantly to avoid reaching unsustainable levels, says a new UN report. To have a reasonable chance of stabilising world population, fertility must drop to below “replacement level”. It must then be maintained at that level for [...]

Stephen Hawking: It’s Time to Go

He’s known for being incredibly intelligent, and now he’s saying something that is in many ways earth shattering – that the only chance for human survival is to spread out into space. And he considers himself an optimist. Watch the Video at Mouvment: Videos To Change Your World.

Apple Ranks Last for Environmental Response

A report (Chinese only) by the Beijing-based non-profit Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE) ranked Apple last among 29 tech companies for their responsiveness to health and environmental concerns in China. The report says that Apple ignored concerns at Wintek, the touch-screen factory where plant workers became ill from n-hexane exposure, and the IPE [...]

Vertical farming boosts production of vegetables

Singapore has successfully developed a vertical farming system prototype, which could help the land-scarce Republic maximise its production of leafy vegetables. Vertical farming is a technique of producing agricultural products at multiple levels, conserving land space in the process. A six-metre tall structure rotates at one millimetre per second, distributing sunlight to all the plants. [...]

Does a small temperature rise actually matter (for agriculture)?

Watch this video. 2 degrees is already making a significant difference. via CCAFS.

Q&A: Imperiled Birds on a Warming Planet

A species that is narrowly distributed, either vertically or horizontally, will face much more of a challenge. If temperatures change rapidly, they’ll experience conditions they’ve never experienced in their narrow band. Their entire geographic region could disappear. Their fate will also depend on how flexible they are in terms of things like foods, and there’s [...]

Frigid Winters and the Polar Vortex

In Tuesday’s paper, I write about the weakening of the polar vortex that keeps cold air penned up in the Arctic, a change that has contributed to two bitter winters in a row in Europe and the United States. In the piece, I mentioned that several scientists were pursuing ideas about how the drastic decline [...]