Deforestation has risen exponentially after years of decline, with environmentalists attributing this change to the easing of laws in Brazil.
By Ananth Baliga | Nov. 15, 2013 at 12:11 PM
Deforestation in the Amazon has reached a new high after years of declining numbers, owing to the easing of environmental laws in Brazil.(CC/Alex Rio Brazil)
Nov. 15 (UPI) — Brazil has acknowledged a 28 percent rise in deforestation of the ecologically sensitive Amazon forest, between August 2012 and July 2013.The rise has been blamed on changes made to Brazil’s forest protection law. The country uses to sattelite imagery to track the decline of the country’s forest cover and is particularly shocking considering it recorded its lowest deforestation levels last year.
Initial statistics point to 2,255 sq miles of forest lost as compared to 1,765 sq miles lost in the previous 12 months. This rise ends a streak of declining deforestation which began in 2009 but does not come close to the loss in 2004 — nearly 10,500 sq. miles of forest were lost.
Environmentalists say the controversial reform of the forest protection law in 2012 is to blame for the trend in Brazil. The changes reduced protected areas in farms and declared an amnesty for areas destroyed before 2008.
Environment Minister Izabella Teixeir called the destruction of the Amazon “unacceptable” and a “crime,” but denied allegations that President Dilma Rousseff‘s administration was to blame.
“This swing is not related to any federal government fund cuts for law enforcement,” she said.
A majority of Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions has been linked to the rapid deforestation of the Amazon. These figures undermine the pledge made by Brazil in 2009 to reduce deforestation in the Amazon by 80% by the year 2020.
Nov. 15, 2013: What are the odds? On Nov. 18th and 19th not one but two comets will fly by the planet Mercury.
“This is a unique coincidence,” says Ron Vervack an astronomer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab and a member of the science team for NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft, “and a golden opportunity to study two comets passing close to the sun.”
On Nov. 18th Comet Encke will pass within 0.025 AU of Mercury, followed a day later by Comet ISON at 0.24 AU (1 AU is the distance between the sun and Earth, 150 million km). The MESSENGER spacecraft, which is orbiting Mercury, will turn its sensors toward the passing comets for a point-blank investigation of both.
A new Sciencecast video previews a rare double encounter between Mercury and two comets. Play it
The double flyby is exciting, says Vervack, but “it makes things a little crazy. We have to rush to complete our observations of Comet Encke, then do it all over again for Comet ISON. Everything is happening at more or less the same time.”
MESSENGER was designed to study Mercury, not comets, “but it is a capable spacecraft with a versatile instrument package,” he adds. “We hope to get some great data.” Onboard spectrometers will analyze the chemical makeup of the two comets while MESSENGER’s cameras snap pictures of atmospheres, jets and tails.
Comet ISON is already a media favorite. Astronomers have been tracking it since Sept. 2012 when it was discovered on a trajectory that would take it perilously close to the sun. On Nov. 28th of 2013, Thanksgiving Day in the USA, Comet ISON will pass through the sun’s atmosphere little more than a million kilometers above the sun’s fiery surface. If the icy comet survives, it could emerge as a beautiful naked-eye object for observers in the northern hemisphere. MESSENGER’s glimpse of Comet ISON as it plunges inward could give astronomers the data they need to predict the comet’s fate.
Comet Encke is less well known, but no less interesting. For one thing, it is the source of the Taurid meteor shower, a slow display of midnight fireballs that occurs every year in early- to mid-November. Comet Encke dips inside the orbit of Mercury every 3.3 years, so it is regularly exposed to solar activity. In 2007, NASA’s STEREO spacecraft watched as a solar storm ripped off Encke’s tail–which promptly grew back: movie.
“We’ll be catching Comet Encke just days before its closest approach to the sun (0.3 AU),” Vervack says, “so we get to see it at its most active.”
Ironically, the fact that MESSENGER is designed to study a rocky planet could prove advantageous for the icy comets. MESSENGER’s x-ray spectrometer, in particular, could detect signs of ‘comet dirt’.
“We hope to obtain the first definitive detections of x-ray emissions from silicon, magnesium and aluminum,” he explains. “If you think of a comet as a dirty snowball, these are elements that make up the dirt. Close to the sun is where we expect the dirt to be vaporized.”
In total, Vervack expects MESSENGER to gather 15 hours’ worth of data on Comet Encke and another 25 hours on Comet ISON. With that kind of observing time, discoveries are a distinct possibility.
Vervack says the first images will be beamed back and released to the public within days of the flybys. “There are no guarantees,” he cautions, “but I can’t wait to see the pictures.”
What did you mean to say? Are you sure that is what you meant? There will be a lot of that going around today as people pose this way then the next attempting to make themselves comfortable, and in so doing, they say and do things that are uncharacteristic but perhaps reflective of their true opinions. This is a day for stepping back from all of that. This is a day for having a hard outer shell. This is a day for forgiving. Everyone is being bombarded by a blast of energy associated with the full moon. They cannot really be WHO they are in all of this unless they are willing to go within. And that in itself can be a hard task. It is easy enough to talk about meditation, compassion, equanimity, understanding, etc., but it is much harder to live it in this 3D.
Divine Consciousness moves in mysterious ways. It can flow through whoever is open and touching unity consciousness.
I was chatting with my teenage son a couple of days ago about the state of the world and how it seems that society at large doesn’t really care about what is happening to our planet and isn’t really changing. Representing the younger generation, he said “You’d be surprised. People really do care. They just don’t know what to do about it.”
As someone who has been concerned about the planet for the best part of my life, hearing his simple statement really helped me to contemplate that maybe people really do care; that maybe it is up to the trailblazers of the coming revolution to stand up and be heard. The more people who rise up and really follow their hearts and lead by example, the more likely people at large will be willing to change.
“What the world need right now is a spiritual revolution”
Russell Brand isn’t your average, every day speaker. He’s a comedian. Yet, he’s touched something so deep within himself that he feels given to share a message of profound spiritual revolution and non-compliance with the corrupt system. He’s an unexpected gift to the spiritual world. I am awestruck!
Be inspired by the latest Russell Brand video from ‘The Journey of Purpose’ – it really illustrates the choice that we are all being given to make right now. What choice do you make?
COMET ISON OUTBURST CONTINUES: The abrupt brightening of Comet ISON on Nov. 14th has pushed the comet into the range of naked eye visibility. Dark-sky observers around the world report seeing it with their unaided eyes on the morning of Nov. 15th. To the human eye, ISON is just a faint smudge of magnitude +5.5. Backyard telescopes are revealing much more. The effects of the outburst have propagated into the comet’s suddenly riotous tail, as shown in this image taken on the morning of Nov. 15th by Damian Peach:
“It’s hard to believe this is the same comet I photographed on Nov. 10th,” says Peach. “Now that ISON has experienced an outburst, the show has really begun.”
The increase in brightness and emergence of multiple gaseous streamers could be caused by fresh veins of ice opening up in the comet’s nucleus. Rapid vaporization of ice by solar heat is a sure-fire way to boost a comet’s visibility. But, as NASA’s Comet ISON Observing Campaign states, “we have no idea.” The comet’s nucleus is hidden from view by a hazy green atmosphere, so events in the interior remain a mystery.
“I have a strong suspicion that this is Comet LINEAR (C/1999 S4) all over again,” says Mark Kidger of the ESA’s European Space Astronomy Centre in Madrid. In the year 2000, Kidger other astronomers monitored Comet LINEAR as it disintegrated en route to the sun. “The sudden appearance of ISON’s gas tail, the increasing fuzziness of its coma, and now this sudden outburst all remind me of C/1999 S4 just before it broke apart.”
To reiterate: No one knows what is happening to Comet ISON. This could be the comet’s death throes–or just the first of many brightening events the comet experiences as it plunges toward the sun for a close encounter on Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 28th).
Monitoring is encouraged. Comet ISON rises in the east just before the sun. Amateur astronomers, if you have a GOTO telescope, enter these coordinates. Dates of special interest include Nov. 17th and 18th when the comet will pass the bright star Spica, making ISON extra-easy to find.
The market for preparedness supplies tracks to broader anxieties: some sensible, some not so much. And it’s not just conspiracy theorists buying in.
By David Z. Morris
FORTUNE — More and more Americans are spending money to get ready for an uncertain future — gathering food, water, tools, and skills to help them weather anything from a hurricane to a pandemic. Contrary to images of deluded or gun-obsessed “lone wolves,” many preppers are average consumers reacting to concrete worries, and their way of thinking is spreading, fueling an emerging lifestyle trend. That lifestyle is generating demand for a broad spectrum of products offering survival — or even comfort — when large-scale systems go down.
An array of preparedness expos and conferences have cropped up around the country to serve this emerging and fast-changing market. To get a closer look, I visited Life Changes, Be Ready!, or LCBR, a new expo that held its second event on the weekend of November 2nd and 3rd, in Lakeland, Fla. LCBR gave an immediate sense of one big way that the preparedness crowd isn’t marginal at all — economically. The show floor was packed with a dizzying array of small businesses and products that defied stereotypical “prepper” classification — not just ammunition and crossbows and camping gear, but also seed banks, beehives, financial planning, and acupressure.
According to many of the entrepreneurs on the floor, business is trending upwards. John Egger of Self Reliance Strategies has been producing and selling prepackaged seed banks for nearly four years and sees his market expanding. “It’s definitely picking up. It’s not just country people anymore. We really cater to a suburban market … We call it suburban homesteading.” You can see this broadening of the market in the range of price points, from the $5,600 portable solar charging stations flogged by Alternative Energy, Inc., to the $649 “Stomp Supreme” field medic kit offered by Doom and Bloom, LLC. (“This is the one recommended for people expecting civil unrest.”) Clearly, LCBR’s vendors saw a crowd ready to drop major cash today to assuage their worries about tomorrow.
The diversity and type of products on offer was also remarkable. Egger’s seeds, for example, were prominently labelled “Organic” and “Non-GMO” — and so were all the other seeds on sale at the show. Those are distinctions you might not think were important to the same crowd in the market for a crossbow, but according to Egger, “you don’t have to explain to people anymore” why eating organic matters. That was just one element of the unique mix of gritty survivalism, back-to-the land self-sufficiency, and outright hippie dream-science on display at LCBR. There were earthworm farms and beehives for sale, and two different companies dealing in essential oils. In a back corner, Mike Mah, or “No Stress Mike,” offered $30 pain reduction sessions using his “Hoy Chi” energy healing techniques. Mah’s flyers proudly advertised that he attended every Tea Party event he could, and he manipulated the spines of dozens of willing customers with a pistol tucked discreetly in his waistband.
There are still uncertainties in the preparedness market, some driven by ideology, according to Charley Hogwood of Personal Readiness Education Programs. “All last year it was up and up and up. But after the [presidential] election, it flattened out.” Hogwood thinks that some in the market were overwrought over doomsday scenarios surrounding the reelection of Barack Obama. “Last year, I heard 100 different conspiracy theories” about what a second Obama presidency might mean. But when the election wasn’t followed by martial law and FEMA camps, both the rhetoric and the market cooled off a bit. “I rarely hear the crazy theories now. Now everyone’s worried mainly about the collapse of the dollar,” says Hogwood, referring to widespread prepper fears of hyperinflation triggered by the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing.
Hogwood, friendly and round-faced, reflected the resolute averageness that permeated the show. He snorted derisively at conspiracy theorists, and also acknowledged some of the ironies of a preparedness trade show. “Sometimes it’s like a toy store, and people buy stuff because they like it.” But in a real survival situation, “the more you know, the less you have to carry. A lot of people don’t know much and think they can buy their way out of it.” He sees some of the extremism surrounding the prepping industry as hype, maybe even fearmongering. “It’s so much more fun to worry about martial law than a hurricane. People like zombies as a marketing tool.”
In fact, I spot more than a few zombie-themed rifle targets at the show. But Hogwood is also emphatic that, the image aside, prepping is about skills — not guns. “You see some cool weaponry … but who needs a grenade launcher?” Despite the presence of at least five booths of firearms and accessories, many exhibitors are equally dismissive, even derisive, toward guns, gun shows, and the culture surrounding them. John Egger tried to sell seed kits at a gun show once and won’t be returning. Gun show attendees are “a different breed of people. They don’t want to learn.”
Learning was a big part of the LCBR experience — two large lecture halls, frequently packed, ran the duration of the show. In addition to seminars from well-known preppers and security experts David Kobler and James Wesley Rawles, attendees got gardening advice from local expert Tom MacCubbin, and a Q&A from author David Crawford. Crawford is the author of Lights Out, a preparedness-themed novel that he has successfully self-published to an eager audience. The premise of Lights Out is a large electromagnetic pulse (EMP), knocking out electronics across the U.S. and causing a slow decline of society. Crawford and a business partner were at LCBR as part of an effort to raise funds to turn Lights Out into a trio of feature films. The EMP scenario (or a “grid down”) was a recurring concern at the expo — and, at least technologically, it’s plausible.
Life Changes, Be Ready! was the work of Cindy and Jim Thompson, who have been organizing real estate expos since 2004 — “Back,” Jim jokes sardonically, “when that was still profitable.” But LCBR is as much a calling for them as it is business. Cindy, thin and blonde, and Jim, gray and fit, have been preppers themselves since the mid-1990s — though they don’t like that word. “We prefer ‘sustainable living,'” Jim says. “Less consumption.” Cindy was asked to speak about her lifestyle at a Tea Party event in 2012, and the response was so staggering that the two put together the first LCBR in a few weeks, ultimately attracting over 4,000 attendees. Almost all of their first batch of vendors returned the second time around, and with better planning, they were expecting much higher attendance numbers.
Jim is emphatic about the mainstream audience he’s catering to. “Our core audience is 40-75 years old. Eighty percent have college degrees. Twenty percent of those have advanced degrees,” he said. He attributes his success in attracting a higher-end clientele to the educational bent of LCBR. “When you bring in a higher caliber of speaker, you attract a different group — more disposable income, more moderate in their thinking. That [extreme] element of the preparation mindset, they still show up, they come in, but that’s not what we’re about.”
The event also has strict ground rules to produce a nonthreatening environment. “If you go to the speaking engagements, you won’t hear any racist crap, you won’t hear any discriminatory talk. We don’t allow it.” Jim is proud of what they’ve achieved in that regard: “I’ve seen homosexual couples walking around the show,” he says. “Who am I to discriminate?”
Still, it was impossible to completely ignore the presence of an element many would consider reactionary. Political and social initiatives represented at the show included the Polk County Libertarians and the admirable entrepreneurship mentoring program Patriot Mission, Inc. — but also the marginal, conspiracy-minded John Birch Society. After a relatively measured primer on the threats of inflation, featured economist Dr. Kirk Elliot encouraged me to look into how the Rothschild and Rockefeller families continue to own the Federal Reserve — a common canard among New World Order conspiracists of the Alex Jones stripe.
Finally, at the end of my conversation with John Egger about the rise of “suburban homesteading,” a man with a white shock of hair interjected himself into the conversation. “You know what chemtrails are?” he asked, referring to another conspiracist trope that sees chemical tampering in jetstream vapor trails. “They’re changing the weather, then selling drought tolerant seeds. George Soros and Bill Gates are behind it.” Egger nodded politely and smiled, tolerant of a potential customer’s eccentricities.
While normalcy and centrism may be the goal for businesspeople like Cindy and Jim Thompson, it seems the preparedness lifestyle hasn’t completely shaken loose its extremists and kooks.
There are things to be seen today but not commented upon. Take time to be aware of what is going on around you. Without judgment, without fear. Let it be. You are seeing many changes at this time and all of them can put you in a place in which you are finding yourself confused and uncentered. Take time to ground, to go within, to connect with WHO you are and see things for what they truly are. The confusion is only temporary, and the end of the day will bring clarity to more than one issue that you have been grappling with. There is also an answer to something that you have been wanting to know. The time for making plans begins now.
The theme this week is Too Near and yet, Too Far. You can find yourself getting rally fed up with things that keep happening over and over. You can find yourself really, really ready for that change, that move, that new sunrise. This is a perspective changing week!
Overall Color for the Week: Tan
The week is almost over, yet the surprises and events of the week are just beginning to crescendo. This is a good week for making sure that you have things on hand. You can find yourself needing things that you never thought you would and missing things that you thought you had. You can also be finding that some of your usual habits are changing and along with those eating and sleeping patterns. Do not fight it, just go with it. Your body is changing some of its nutritional needs and some of the old right and wrong nutritional so-called paradigms are no longer quite so applicable to the new physicality that is emerging. This is all good. You will be changing more as the patterns click more and more into place, and those changes can bring tears and laughter. You will be feeling the shift his week, and the important this is to allow, to go with it, not to fight it. Step back from all the craziness and be the observer. It is time to allow the new information to come in. Some of it you might be aware of , and some can be an huge surprise. Regardless, take it. It is there for you and will benefit you as the year moves towards its end.
On the larger scale, things are just beginning. What you have seen happening in the firs days of this week will continue more and more. There is a huge atmospheric bump or cloud that will be expressing or spilling or coming forth in some crazy way this weekend. It will be affecting the Earth and the effects will shake up some rocky political situations. There is an individual in South America who will be coming on the stage. This person has some unusual messages to put out there. Some of these are warnings. Much will be taken for granted until it is seen that what is being said is true and verifiable. There can be fear attached to all of this. There is much uncertainty in many countries these days. Add to it the fear that is being engendered by those who feel they are pulling the strings, and this weekend can see some really unexpected and potentially frightening things. The extra galactic energy is playing hide and seek with the Sun these days. It will be felt in the atmosphere of the earth as things begin to drift in. Along with that, there can be unusual activity in the skies as the Cloud Gatherers come froth in an attempt to regulate and give direction to this energy.
Once upon a time… So, be prepared to listen to a lot of stories today. Some are true. Some are patently not true. Some are merely fiction. And some have a moral to tell. The tricky part is knowing which is which. As always, it is well to start the day grounded and centered. Work with the knowing of your heart and open the sense of its deepest intuition. There are lessons in everything around you, and there are pointers. You are working towards your own fulfillment right now, and the closer you get, the more confusing it can become Even as you are weeding out and throwing away, that opens up space where other stuff flies in. Right now, you are the quester upon the path to the grail. There is help along the way, but the deepest and truest and most consoling of help comes from your connection to All That Is, the Universal Consciousness, god/goddess, however you wish to term that totality of which you are a clear part. Know your power, and know that when things become cloudy or difficult, there is always help.
Ten mega corporations control the output of almost everything you buy; from household products to pet food to jeans.
According to this chart via Reddit, called “The Illusion of Choice,” these corporations create a chain that begins at one of 10 super companies. You’ve heard of the biggest names, but it’s amazing to see what these giants own or influence.
(Note: The chart shows a mix of networks. Parent companies may own, own shares of, or may simply partner with their branch networks. For example, Coca-Cola does not own Monster, but distributes the energy drink. Another note: We are not sure how up-to-date the chart is. For example, it has not been updated to reflect P&G’s sale of Pringles to Kellogg’s in February.)
Here are just a few examples: Yum Brands owns KFC and Taco Bell. The company was a spin-off of Pepsi. All Yum Brands restaurants sell only Pepsi products because of a special partnership with the soda-maker.
$84 billion-company Proctor & Gamble — the largest advertiser in the U.S. — is paired with a number of diverse brands that produce everything from medicine to toothpaste to high-end fashion. All tallied, P&G reportedly serves a whopping 4.8 billion people around the world through this network.
$200 billion-corporation Nestle — famous for chocolate, but which is the biggest food company in the world — owns nearly 8,000 different brands worldwide, and takes stake in or is partnered with a swath of others. Included in this network is shampoo company L’Oreal, baby food giant Gerber, clothing brand Diesel, and pet food makers Purina and Friskies.
Unilever, of soap fame, reportedly serves 2 billion people around the world, controlling a network that produces everything from Q-tips to Skippy peanut butter.
And it’s not just the products you buy and consume, either. In recent decades, the very news and information that you get has bundled together: 90% of the media is now controlled by just six companies, down from 50 in 1983, according to a Frugal Dad infographic from last year.
It gets even more macro, too: 37 banks have merged to become just four — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and CitiGroup in a little over two decades, according to this Federal Reserve map.
The nation’s 10 largest financial institutions hold 54% of our total financial assets; in 1990, they held 20%. As MotherJonesreports, the number of banks has dropped from more than 12,500 to about 8,000.
(Click to enlarge)
The numbers are stark, and the charts visualize the mind-bending reality. This is the world we live in.
FORTUNE — More and more Americans are spending money to get ready for an uncertain future — gathering food, water, tools, and skills to help them weather anything from a hurricane to a pandemic. Contrary to images of deluded or gun-obsessed “lone wolves,” many preppers are average consumers reacting to concrete worries, and their way of thinking is spreading, fueling an emerging lifestyle trend. That lifestyle is generating demand for a broad spectrum of products offering survival — or even comfort — when large-scale systems go down.
