Happy Earth Day

I can remember back on 1970

 

When they first proposed the idea of

 

Earth Day

 

 

Many thought…

 

 

Those damn hippies

 

 

Now they want

 

Their own day of recognition

 

 

Ever wondered how Earth Day started?

 

 

This observance arose from an interest

 

In gathering national support

 

For environmental issues.

 

 

Here it is 2016

 

There are still issues

 

That must be address

 

 

 

 

God blessed us with this gift

 

Called Earth

 

 

He made it our responsibility

 

To care for it

 

To share these fruits with others

 

 

This responsibility

 

Should not be taken lightly

 

 

We are only here for a short time

 

 

Everything we do

 

Should be mindful of this gift

 

 

Handle it with care

 

For it is a….

 

Present

The Heat Goes On

Last month, I read

 

 

That the first 6 months

 

 

Of this year…

 

 

Were the hottest first 6 month period

 

 

 

Since they began keeping records

 

 

Back in the 1860s

 

 

 

 

Last week…

 

 

Ole Hurricane Schwartz

 

 

He back now

 

After double bypass surgery

 

 

 

Said that we had just experienced

 

The hottest July ever

 

 

 

I think that makes 7 months in a row!!!

 

 

 

My garden is struggling….

 

 

This year

 

 

Normally my cherry tomatoes

 

Are abundant

 

And they are……

 

 

 

Very juicy and sweet

 

 

 

Not this year….

 

 

 

All my cherry tomato plants…..

 

 

Died

 

 

 

From excessive heat

 

 

 

We probably got about

 

50 cherry tomatoes

 

 

Before they withered out on me

 

 

 

Our whole garden

 

Is weather beaten

 

 

 

Grant….

 

 

 

Did you water the garden

 

 

Yes Dad

 

 

 

How about the flowers

 

In the containers

 

 

Yes Dad

 

 

Well….

 

 

Maybe you should start

 

 

Talking to them

 

 

 

They don’t seem to be responding

 

 

 

 

Is this a phenomena?

 

 

 

Or can this be a result of…..

 

 

Global warming….

 

 

 

 

Hottest 7 months

 

 

Since they started keeping records…

 

 

 

 

Gives us something to think about

 

 

 

 

Until recently, Richard Muller,

 

 

Scientist and Director of the

 

Berkley Earth Surface Temperature Foundation

 

 

Was one of the world’s most dedicated skeptics.

 

 

 

 

However, his own research

 

Has finally caused Muller…

 

 

 

To change his position

 

Muller’s statement in a New York Times Op/Ed:

 

 

Call me a converted skeptic.

 

Three years ago

I identified problems in previous climate studies

 

that, in my mind,

 

threw doubt on the very existence of

 

global warming.

 

 

Last year,

 

following an intensive research effort

 

 involving a dozen scientists,

 

I concluded that global warming was real

 

And that the prior estimates

 

Of the rate of warming were correct.

 

 

I’m now going a step further:

 

                                                                                              

Humans are almost entirely the cause.

 

 

 

Wow!!!!

 

 

 

Pretty powerful statement

 

 

 

 

I know….

 

 

 

He’s only one person

 

 

 

Although….

 

 

He is considered to be

 

One of the world experts

 

In this field

 

 

And

 

 

He was always the one denying…..

 

 

 

The fact that Global warming existed

 

 

 

 

He changed his mind

 

 

 

Is the excessive heat

 

Over the last 7 months…..

 

 

 

A result of global warming?

 

 

 

I am not the expert in this field

 

 

But…..

 

 

I believe

 

 

This should begin to….

 

 

 

Raise the awareness on the topic.

 

 

 

Maybe we should all…

 

 

Start asking more questions?

 

 

 

What steps are being taken to

 

 

Insure the sustainability of our planet?

 

 

 

 

What is our contingency?

 

 

 

Do I hear a Plan B?

 

 

 

 

This is not a time to take sides

 

 

 

Are we going to continue

 

 

To Deny Global Warming

 

 

May be a possibility?

 

 

 

 

Are we willing to take

 

 

 

The appropriate steps

 

 

To insure

 

 

The Health and Welfare

 

 

Of future generations?

 

 

 

 

We were the generation

 

That sought to change the world

 

 

 

I don’t think

 

We had this sort of change..

 

 

In mind

 

 

 

This is our chance

 

 

To all work together

 

 

For the common good

 

 

 

Pay it forward

Natural Gas Revolution Is Overblown, Study Says

Written by Tom Zeller Jr

 For the Huffington Post

A veritable explosion in the number of natural gas wells in the United States in the late 2000’s resulted in only modest gains in production, a new study finds, suggesting that the promise of natural gas as a bountiful and economical domestic fuel source has been wildly oversold.

The findings, part of a broader analysis of natural gas published Thursday by the Post Carbon Institute, an energy and climate research organization in California, is one of a growing number of studies to undermine a natural gas catechism that has united industry, environmental groups and even the Obama White House in recent years.

It also comes on the heels of another study, published Monday, lending credence to claims that modern natural gas drilling techniques are contributing to methane contamination of drinking water wells in surrounding communities.

According to the author of Thursday’s study, David Hughes, a geoscientist and fellow at the institute, the bedrock assumptions of the natural gas revolution — that new drilling techniques have cracked open deep layers of shale and made available a 100-year supply of clean, domestic energy that could displace dirty coal and oil — are simply not true.

“The real takeaway here is scale,” Hughes said in a telephone interview. “If you look at the production estimates as the government is making them now, you’re talking about a near quadrupling of shale gas by 2035.”

The estimates come from the Energy Information Administration, which suggested in its most recent projections that shale gas would account for 45 percent of all natural gas production in the U.S. by 2035 — up from roughly 14 percent currently.

But the actual productivity profile of new, unconventional wells — often tapped at tremendous expense — is far less clear than is normally portrayed, Hughes said. Studies at existing fields, or plays, suggest that many shale wells tend to be highly productive in their first year, and then decline steeply — sometimes by as much as 80 percent or more — after that, requiring new wells to be plumbed

Indeed, while the number of active gas wells, which has nearly doubled since 1990, to half a million, has increased in the U.S, production per well has declined by nearly 50 percent over the same period, Hughes said, suggesting that as the industry converts increasingly to shale gas, more and more wells will be needed to maintain even a baseline level of production — much less to create a substantive increase.

If that’s the case, Hughes said, then those hoping that the shale gas boom might one day provide enough natural gas to replace coal for electricity generation, or oil as a transportation fuel, will be sadly disappointed. Indeed, he said, the number of new wells that would be needed to meet these goals would create a dystopian landscape of well pads and gas pipelines that few people would want to inhabit.

“If that were to happen, for those people living in Pennsylvania and New York, well, they haven’t seen anything yet,” Hughes said, referring to those states now sitting atop major shale gas deposits.

Mr. Hughes also highlighted the growing number of environmental costs that come with natural gas development. These include everything from water intensity and heavy truck traffic to the risks of localized pollution associated with hydraulic fracturing, or fracking — the high-pressure injection of water, sand and chemicals underground to break up rock formations and release gas.

More broadly, questions have been raised about the greenhouse gas footprint of natural gas development over its lifecycle, with at least one study suggesting that it may be no better than coal.

Dan Whitten, a spokesman for America’s Natural Gas Alliance, an industry lobby group, said in an e-mail message that the report was retreading old ground and amounted to a smear campaign on natural gas.

“This report is recycling the widely discredited claims of anti-drilling activists on greenhouse gas emissions,” Whitten said. “Their estimates run counter to the accepted scientific consensus and have been heavily criticized by climate scientists and others who are interested in a fact-based debate about our energy choices as a nation.”

Whitten also argued that it is now “the established scientific consensus” that the U.S. has “vast domestic supplies of natural gas that can play a growing role in meeting our country’s energy needs for generations.”

He also said that no one was seriously suggesting that coal or transportation fuel be entirely replaced by natural gas, and that such arguments amount to “unrealistic scenarios” presented by Hughes simply to be knocked down.

“Most experts in our energy debates understand and agree that it will take all kinds of energy to meet our nation’s growing future needs,” he said. “From our initial review, no new ground was broken with this report. As such, it doesn’t change the fact that the vast supplies of clean natural gas right here in North America give our country a chance to substantially improve energy security, clean our air and improve our economy.”

But while the resource is inarguably vast, Hughes is not alone in suggesting that the industry is overstating how much can be economically pulled out of the ground.

Arthur E. Berman, a geological consultant and director of Labyrinth Consulting Services, Inc., also argues that natural gas is not as abundant or as inexpensive as is commonly believed.

“I do not dispute for a minute that the resource size for natural gas is huge. There’s a lot of gas in place in shales,” Berman said in a telephone interview. “The question for me is how much can be produced for a profit?”

Berman says that reserves — meaning the amount of natural gas that is actually commercially available to produce — will last only about 22 years. This is partly because shale gas plays once touted to be monstrous in size have typically contracted to core areas of production a mere fraction of the originally advertised size.

Hughes, meanwhile, cited Berman and and other analysts who also say that gas, at roughly $4 per thousand cubic feet (mcf), is too cheap for companies to recoup the costs of producing it.

From Thursday’s study:

Analysts like Arthur Berman suggest the marginal cost is about $7.50/mcf compared to a current price of about $4.00/mcf. Others, such as Kenneth Medlock (2010), suggest that the break-even price ranges from $4.25/mcf to $7.00/mcf. The Bank of America (2008) has placed the mean break-even cost at $6.64/mcf with a range of $4.20/mcf to $11.50/mcf. One thing seems certain: Shale gas, which appears to be the only hope for significantly ramping up U.S. gas production, is expensive gas, much of which is marginally economic to non-economic at today’s gas prices.

And yet, with easier-to-reach, conventional sources of gas largely depleted, the ability to pull gas from deep layers of shale rock has been touted as a game changer, and the notion was quickly embraced by a broad cross-section of social, political and business interests.

Writes Mr. Hughes:

First, the shale gas industry was motivated to hype production prospects in order to attract large amounts of needed investment capital; it did this by drilling the best sites first and extrapolating initial robust results to apply to more problematic prospective regions. The energy policy establishment, desperate to identify a new energy source to support future economic growth, accepted the industry’s hype uncritically. This in turn led Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, 60 Minutes, and many other media outlets to proclaim that shale gas would transform the energy world. Finally, several prominent environmental organizations, looking for a way to lobby for lower carbon emissions without calling for energy cutbacks, embraced shale gas as a necessary “bridge fuel” toward a renewable energy future. Each group saw in shale gas what it wanted and needed.

And at least for now, the 100-year slogan continues.

“A lot of times, things are right underneath our feet, and all we need to do is change the way we’re thinking about them,” says Erik Oswold, an ExxonMobil geologist, in an ad circulating on the online video service Hulu. “A couple decades ago, we didn’t realize just how much natural gas was trapped in rocks thousands of feet below us. Technology has made it possible to safely unlock this cleaner burning natural gas. These deposits can provide us with fuel for 100 years.”

President Obama, delivering a speech on energy policy at Georgetown University on March 30, echoed the industry’s mantra.

“Now, in terms of new sources of energy, we have a few different options,” the President said. “The first is natural gas. Recent innovations have given us the opportunity to tap large reserves — perhaps a century’s worth of reserves, a hundred years worth of reserves -– in the shale under our feet.”

Bill Gates: We need global ‘energy miracles’

By John D. Sutter, CNN //

// -1) {document.write(‘February 13, 2010 — Updated 0103 GMT (0903 HKT)’);} else {document.write(‘February 12, 2010 8:03 p.m. EST’);}
// ]]>February 12, 2010 8:03 p.m. EST

Long Beach, California (CNN) — Microsoft Corp. founder and philanthropist Bill Gates on Friday called on the world’s tech community to find a way to turn spent nuclear fuel into cheap, clean energy.

“What we’re going to have to do at a global scale is create a new system,” Gates said in a speech at the TED Conference in Long Beach, California. “So we need energy miracles.”

Gates called climate change the world’s most vexing problem, and added that finding a cheap and clean energy source is more important than creating new vaccines and improving farming techniques, causes into which he has invested billion of dollars.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation last month pledged $10 billion to help deploy and develop vaccines for children in the developing world.

The world must eliminate all of its carbon emissions and cut energy costs in half in order to prevent a climate catastrophe, which will hit the world’s poor hardest, he said.

“We have to drive full speed and get a miracle in a pretty tight timeline,” he said.

Gates said the deadline for the world to cut all of its carbon emissions is 2050. He suggested that researchers spend the next 20 years inventing and perfecting clean-energy technologies, and then the next 20 years implementing them.

The world’s energy portfolio should not include coal or natural gas, he said, and must include carbon capture and storage technology as well as nuclear, wind and both solar photovoltaics and solar thermal power.

“We’re going to have to work on each of these five [areas] and we can’t give up on any of them because they look daunting,” he said. “They all have significant challenges.”

Gates spent a significant portion of his speech highlighting nuclear technology that would turn spent uranium — the 99 percent of uranium rods that aren’t burned in current nuclear power plants — into electricity.

That technology could power the world indefinitely; spent uranium supplies in the U.S. alone could power the country for 100 years, he said.

A “traveling wave reactor” would burn uranium waste slowly, meaning a 60-year supply could be added to a reactor at once and then not touched for decades, he said.

Gates also called for innovation in battery technology.

“All the batteries we make now could store less than 10 minutes of all the energy [in the world],” he said. “So, in fact, we need a big breakthrough here. Something that’s going to be of a factor of 100 better than what we have now.”

Gates called for more investment in climate-related technology. He said he is backing a company called TerraPower, which is working on an alternate form of nuclear technology that uses spent fuel.

Money that goes into research and development will pay bigger returns than other investments, he said, especially if money goes into energy sources that will be cheap enough for the developing world to afford.

Clean energy technologies must be installed in poorer countries as they develop, he said.

“You’d be stunned at the ridiculously low costs of innovation,” said Gates, who received a standing ovation for his remarks.

If he could wish for anything in the world, Gates said he would not pick the next 50 years’ worth of presidents or wish for a miracle vaccine.

He would choose energy that is half as expensive as coal and doesn’t warm the planet.

King Coal

Written by Robert F. Kennedy Jr

Over the past decade, nearly one hundred coal burning power plants have died in the proposal stage trumped by the legitimate objections of local communities fearful of a dirty deadly fuel that is neither cheap nor clean. Ozone and particulates from coal plants kill tens of thousands of Americans each year and cause widespread illnesses and disease. Acid rain emissions have destroyed the forests over the length of the Appalachian and sterilized one in five Adirondack lakes. Neurotoxic mercury raining from these plants has contaminated fish in every state–including every waterway in nineteen states–and poisons over a million American women and children annually. Coal industry strip mines have already destroyed 500 mountains in Appalachia, buried 2,000 miles of rivers and streams and will soon have flattened an area the size of Delaware. Finally, coal, which supplies 46% of our electric power, is the most important source of America’s greenhouse gases.

Beating our deadly and expensive coal addiction will be lucrative. America’s cornucopia of renewable energy resources and the recent maturation of solar, geothermal and wind technologies will allow us to meet most of our future energy needs with clean, cheap, abundant renewables. Bright Source, a solar thermal provider, has just signed contracts to provide California with 2.6 gigawatts of power annually from desert mirror farms. Construction costs are about the same per gigawatt as a coal plant and half the cost of a nuke plant. Once built, the energy is free forever. In contrast, once you build a coal plant, your biggest costs–fuel extraction and transportation and the harm from emissions–are just the beginning.

In the short term, a revolution in natural gas production over the past two years, has left America awash in natural gas and has made it possible to eliminate most of our dependence on deadly, destructive coal practically overnight–and without the expense of building new power plants.

How? Well it’s pretty easy. Around 900 of America’s coal plants–78% of the total–are small (generating less than half a gigawatt), antiquated, and horrendously inefficient. Their average age is 45 years, with many limping past 75. These ancient plants burn 20% more coal per megawatt hour than modern large coal units and are 60-75% less fuel efficient than high-efficiency gas plants. These small units account for less than 42% of the actual capacity for coal fired power but almost one half the total emission of the entire energy sector! The costs of operation, maintenance, capital improvements and repair costs of these antiquated worm-eaten facilities, if properly assessed, would make them far more expensive to run than natural gas plants. However, energy sector pricing structures make it possible for many plant operators to pass those costs to the public and make choices based on fuel costs, which in the case of coal, appears deceptively cheap because of massive subsidies.

Mothballing or throttling back these plants would mean huge cost savings to the public and eliminate the need for more than 350 million tons of coal, including all 30 million tons harvested through mountain top removal. Their closure would reduce U.S. mercury emissions by 20-25%, dramatically cut deadly particulate matter and the pollutants that cause acid rain, and slash America’s CO2 from power plants by 20%–an amount greater than the entire reduction mandated in the first years of the pending Climate Change Legislation–at a fraction of the cost.

These decrepit generators can be eliminated very quickly–in many instances literally overnight by substituting power from America’s existing and underutilized natural gas generation, which is abundant, cleaner and more affordable and accessible today than dirty coal.

Since 2007, the discovery of vast supplies of deep shale gas in the United States, along with advanced extraction methods, have created stable supply and predictably low prices for most of the next century. Of the 1,000 gigawatts of generating capacity currently required to meet national energy demand, 336 are coal fired, many of which are utilized far more heavily than for cleaner gas generation units. Surprisingly, America actually has more gas generation capacity–450 gigawatts–than coal. But most of the costs for coal-fired units are ignored in deciding when to operate these units. Public regulators traditionally require utilities to dispatch coal first. For that reason, high efficiency gas generators, which can replace a large percentage of U.S. coal, are used only 36% of the time. By simply changing the dispatch rule nationally, we could quickly reduce power generated by existing coal-fired plants and achieve massive emissions reductions. The new rule would change the order in which gas and coal fired plants are utilized by requiring that whenever coal and gas plants are competing head-to-head, the gas generation must be dispatched first.

To quickly gain further economic and environmental advantages, the larger, newer coal plants that remain in operation should be required to co-fire with natural gas. Many of these plants are already connected to gas pipelines and can easily be adapted to burn gas as 15 to 20% of their fuel. Experience shows using gas to partially fuel these plants dramatically reduces forced outages and maintenance costs and can be the most cost effective way to reduce CO2 emissions. This change can immediately achieve an additional 10 to 20% reduction in coal use and immediately reduce dangerous coal emissions.

Natural gas comes with its own set of environmental caveats. It is a carbon-based fuel and is extraction from shale, the most significant new source, if not managed carefully, can cause serious water, land use, and wildlife impacts, especially in the hands of irresponsible producers and lax regulators. But those impacts are dwarfed by the disastrous holocaust of coal and can be mitigated by careful regulation.

The giant advantage of a quick conversion from coal to gas is the quickest route for jumpstarting our economy and saving our planet.

Just Do It

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

Published: June 30, 2009

There is much in the House cap-and-trade energy bill that just passed that I absolutely hate. It is too weak in key areas and way too complicated in others. A simple, straightforward carbon tax would have made much more sense than this Rube Goldberg contraption. It is pathetic that we couldn’t do better. It is appalling that so much had to be given away to polluters. It stinks. It’s a mess. I detest it.

Skip to next paragraph

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Thomas L. Friedman

Now let’s get it passed in the Senate and make it law.

Why? Because, for all its flaws, this bill is the first comprehensive attempt by America to mitigate climate change by putting a price on carbon emissions. Rejecting this bill would have been read in the world as America voting against the reality and urgency of climate change and would have undermined clean energy initiatives everywhere.

More important, my gut tells me that if the U.S. government puts a price on carbon, even a weak one, it will usher in a new mind-set among consumers, investors, farmers, innovators and entrepreneurs that in time will make a big difference — much like the first warnings that cigarettes could cause cancer. The morning after that warning no one ever looked at smoking the same again.

Ditto if this bill passes. Henceforth, every investment decision made in America — about how homes are built, products manufactured or electricity generated — will look for the least-cost low-carbon option. And weaving carbon emissions into every business decision will drive innovation and deployment of clean technologies to a whole new level and make energy efficiency much more affordable. That ain’t beanbag.

Now that the bill is heading for the Senate, though, we must, ideally, try to improve it, but, at a minimum, guard against diluting it any further. To do that we need the help of the three parties most responsible for how weak the bill already is: the Republican Party, President Barack Obama and We the People.

This bill is not weak because its framers, Representatives Henry Waxman and Ed Markey, wanted it this way. “They had to make the compromises they did,” said Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign, “because almost every House Republican voted against the bill and did nothing to try to improve it. So to get it passed, they needed every coal-state Democrat, and that meant they had to water it down to bring them on board.”

What are Republicans thinking? It is not as if they put forward a different strategy, like a carbon tax. Does the G.O.P. want to be the party of sex scandals and polluters or does it want to be a partner in helping America dominate the next great global industry: E.T. — energy technology? How could Republicans become so anti-environment, just when the country is going green?

Historically speaking, “Republicans can claim as much credit for America’s environmental leadership as Democrats,” noted Glenn Prickett, senior vice president at Conservation International. “The two greatest environmental presidents in American history were Teddy Roosevelt, who created our national park system, and Richard Nixon, whose administration gave us the Clean Air Act and the Environmental Protection Agency.” George Bush Sr. signed the 1993 Rio Treaty, to preserve biodiversity.

Yes, this bill’s goal of reducing U.S. carbon emissions to 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 is nowhere near what science tells us we need to mitigate climate change. But it also contains significant provisions to prevent new buildings from becoming energy hogs, to make our appliances the most energy efficient in the world and to help preserve forests in places like the Amazon.

We need Republicans who believe in fiscal conservatism and conservation joining this legislation in the Senate. We want a bill that transforms the whole country not one that just threads a political needle. I hope they start listening to green Republicans like Dick Lugar, George Shultz and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I also hope we will hear more from President Obama. Something feels very calculating in how he has approached this bill, as if he doesn’t quite want to get his hands dirty, as if he is ready to twist arms in private, but not so much that if the bill goes down he will get tarnished. That is no way to fight this war. He is going to have to mobilize the whole country to pressure the Senate — by educating Americans, with speech after speech, about the opportunities and necessities of a serious climate/energy bill. If he is not ready to risk failure by going all out, failure will be the most likely result.

And then there is We the People. Attention all young Americans: your climate future is being decided right now in the cloakrooms of the Capitol, where the coal lobby holds huge sway. You want to make a difference? Then get out of Facebook and into somebody’s face. Get a million people on the Washington Mall calling for a price on carbon. That will get the Senate’s attention. Play hardball or don’t play at all.

Our Perspective:

Finally the Congress is recognizing there is an issue with emissions. For years, many have denied there is any correlation between emissions and climate change.

Leave it to the politicians to throw pork into an important issue.

Why would they recognize an issue, claim it and take responsibility for fixing it. They do not want to be held accountable for they have to run for reelection.

We can’t afford to push the rock any further.

Our ignorance has caused this problem.

But now that we acknowledge there is a problem, our arrogance can not let it continue.

We are only here for a short time. 

Everyday is a gift.

It is our responsibility to hand it over to the next generation, a world; that is in better condition than what we received.

This bill is flawed and we have to make our voices heard.

Have them pull the pork and make a real statement.

We can choose to lead by example! Just do it!

Let us know your thoughts? You may leave a comment or email george@hbsadvantage.com

Climate change is biggest health threat of 21st century

By David Derbyshire
Last updated at 2:44 AM on 14th May 2009
As reported in Huffington Post Green

Climate change is the biggest health threat of the 21st century, leading academics claimed last night.

Those who fail to take the issue seriously are as morally reprehensible as 18th-century slave traders, they said.

A British report said rising global temperatures will trigger food shortages, droughts, wars and floods over the next 100 years, pushing billions into ill-health, disease and poverty.

Health threat: The report said rising global temperatures will trigger food shortages, droughts, wars and floods over the next 100 years

If the world fails to act, future historians will view the current generation with ‘similar moral outrage to how we today look back on those who brought in and did nothing to stop slavery’, the authors said.

The report – commissioned by the Lancet medical journal and University College London – calls on doctors and health experts to take the threat of climate change more seriously.

Report author Professor Anthony Costello, of UCL, said: ‘The big message of this report is that climate change is a health issue affecting billions of people, not just an environmental issue about polar bears and deforestation.’

The team of scientists, lawyers, doctors, economists and engineers looked at the health implications of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s forecasts, including the most optimistic projection of a 2c rise in global temperatures and its ‘catastrophic’ forecast of a 6c rise.

In Britain, climate change will bring more frequent heatwaves – increasing the numbers of elderly dying in the summer, the report said.

In 2003, up to 70,000 extra deaths were caused by the freak summer heatwave across Europe.

Warmer weather will also increase the risk of diseases spread by insects and bacteria, including malaria and salmonella.

But the biggest health impacts will be in the poorest parts of the world.

Droughts and floods will make agriculture more vulnerable in developing countries and trigger food shortages and rising food prices, spreading malnutrition and disease, the report said.

This will increase the chances of wars over water, food and land and trigger ‘large-scale migration’, it added. More than a billion people could be forced to move from rising seas.

Professor Costello said: ‘The health lobby has come late to this debate and should have been saying more. Young people realise this is the great issue of our day.’

Our perspective:

This issue has been batted around for years. While we continue to debate the issue the polar caps are melting.

Some scientist say this is a natural phenomena, while other argue that we have been instrumental in the cause.

We should stop pointing fingers.

The facts is that it is happening and we should be making every effort to stop the abuses that may tend to effect the issue.

Sometimes I think that God just shakes his head.

What we call progress over the past 200 years have put a strain on our environment. Pollutants in our rivers and oceans. Gases released into our atmosphere.

How much is enough!

 This can not be rationized.

We are responsible to pass onto our children a better quality of life.

Let us know your thoughts? You may leave a comment or email george@hbsadvantage.com