samadhisoft.com

– One of the predictions of The Perfect Storm Hypothesis is that as the geopolitical situation becomes more unstable, marginal states will begin to fail and become ungoverned disasters like Somalia. Here are some predictions about which states might go under first.

The index is compiled using the Fund for Peace’s internationally recognized methodology, the Conflict Assessment System Tool (CAST). It assesses violent internal conflicts and measures the impact of mitigating strategies. In addition to rating indicators of state failure that drive conflict, it offers techniques for assessing the capacities of core state institutions and analyzing trends in state instability.

more… ➡

Spring in the Arctic is arriving “weeks earlier” than a decade ago, a team of Danish researchers have reported.

Ice in north-east Greenland is melting an average of 14.6 days earlier than in the mid-1990s, bringing forward the date plants flower and birds lay eggs.

The team warned that the observed changes could disrupt the region’s ecosystems and food chain, affecting the long-term survival of some species.

The findings have been published in the journal Current Biology.

The scientists assessed how a range of species’ behaviour was affected by the changing climate in Zackenberg, north-east Greenland, between 1996 and 2005.

Observation of 21 species – six plants, 12 arthropods and three birds – revealed that the organisms had brought forward their flowering, emergence or egg-laying in line with the earlier ice melt.

“We were particularly surprised to see the trends were so strong when considering that the entire summer is very short in the High Arctic – just three or four months from snowmelt to freeze-up,” said co-author Toke Hoye, from the University of Aarhus.

More… ➡

– One of the contributing factors in the Perfect Storm hypothesis is that there’s an inherent and growing instability in the belief that we can continue to grow our economies, increase our populations and satiate our every consumer desire without running smack into the fact that this is a finite planet with finite resources.

— — — — —

From the BBC:

There is a strange fascination in blowing a bubble, when despite your better judgement, you keep willing it to get bigger regardless of the dangers.

Then, suddenly, the violent pop that leaves you picking bubblegum off your eyebrows, or crying soapy tears.

For many observers, global markets are getting dangerously close to such a bursting point.

Until recently, we have been living in a period of low global interest rates that have let consumers and companies borrow money cheaply.

That has driven demand for mortgages, let companies pay increasingly large sums for takeovers, and allowed consumers to spend freely.

And the results of this credit splurge are hard to ignore:

• UK house prices have doubled in the past 10 years.
• China’s main stock index has quadrupled in value since the start of 2006.
• The UK’s FTSE 100 and US S&P 500 stock indexes are at levels not seen in almost seven years.
• Commodity prices have been buoyed by strong global demand, pushing some such as copper to records.
• Merger and acquisition activity has taken off, and private equity firms are now in control of some of the world’s biggest brands.

But as the records have continued to tumble, concerns have kept on mounting.

More… ➡

– Research Thanks to the Cryptogon 

Science Daily — On the eve of World Oceans Day, a group of over 100 scientists from 15 countries has revealed new evidence for the declining state of Europe’s 4 regional seas.

Their models developed during a €2.5M EU funded research project have predicted dire consequences for the sea unless European countries take urgent action to prevent further damage from current and emerging patterns of development. The project coordinator, Professor Laurence Mee, Director of the Marine Institute at the University of Plymouth said “Europeans are just beginning to wake up to the fact that the area of their seas is bigger than the land and that it is already seriously degraded.

“In every sea, we found serious damage related to the accelerated pace of coastal development, the way we transport our goods and the way we produce our food on land as well as the sea. Without a concerted effort, to integrate protection of the sea into Europe’s development plans, its biodiversity and resources will be lost.”

More… ➡

WASHINGTON — The Southern Ocean around Antarctica is so loaded with carbon dioxide that it can barely absorb any more, so more of the gas will stay in the atmosphere to warm up the planet, scientists reported Thursday.

Human activity is the main culprit, said researcher Corinne Le Quere, who called the finding very alarming.

The phenomenon wasn’t expected to be apparent for decades, Le Quere said in a telephone interview from the University of East Anglia in Britain.

“We thought we would be able to detect these only the second half of this century, say 2050 or so,” she said. But data from 1981 through 2004 show the sink is already full of carbon dioxide. “So I find this really quite alarming.”

The Southern Ocean is one of the world’s biggest reservoirs of carbon, known as a carbon sink. When carbon is in a sink — whether it’s an ocean or a forest, both of which can lock up carbon dioxide — it stays out of the atmosphere and does not contribute to global warming.

The new research, published in the latest edition of the journal Science, indicates that the Southern Ocean has been saturated with carbon dioxide at least since the 1980s.

This is significant because the Southern Ocean accounts for 15 percent of the global carbon sink, Le Quere said.

More… ➡

ILULISSAT, Greenland (Reuters) — Atop Greenland’s Suicide Cliff, from where old Inuit women used to hurl themselves when they felt they had become a burden to their community, a crack and a thud like thunder pierce the air.

“We don’t have thunder here. But I know it from movies,” says Ilulissat nurse Vilhelmina Nathanielsen, who hiked with us through the melting snow. “It’s the ice cracking inside the icebergs. If we’re lucky we might see one break apart.”

It’s too early in the year to see icebergs crumple regularly but the sound is a reminder. As politicians squabble over how to act on climate change, Greenland’s ice cap is melting, and faster than scientists had thought possible.

A new island in East Greenland is a clear sign of how the place is changing. It was dubbed Warming Island by American explorer Dennis Schmitt when he discovered in 2005 that it had emerged from under the retreating ice.

If the ice cap melted entirely, oceans would rise by 23 feet, flooding New York and London, and drowning island nations like the Maldives.

A total meltdown would take centuries but global warming, which climate experts blame mainly on human use of fossil fuels, is heating the Arctic faster than anywhere else on Earth.

“When I was a child, I remember hunters dog-sledding 50 miles on ice across the bay to Disko Island in the winter,” said Judithe Therkildsen, a retiree from Aasiaat, a town south of Ilulissat on Disko Bay.

“That hasn’t happened in a long time.”

Greenland, the world’s largest island, is mostly covered by an ice cap of about 624,000 cubic miles that accounts for a 10th of all the fresh water in the world.

Over the last 30 years, its melt zone has expanded by 30 percent.

“Some people are scared to discover the process is running faster than the models,” said Konrad Steffen, a glaciologist at University of Colorado at Boulder and a Greenland expert who serves on a U.S. government advisory committee on abrupt climate change.

More… ➡

– Thx to Lisa G for alerting me to this YouTube video.

More on Severn Cullis-Suzuki: ➡