Ekologija

Na jugu Tajlanda uginuo je kit nakon što je progutao više od 80 plastičnih kesa, saopštili su zvaničnici, nakon uzaludnog pokušaja spasavanja mladog kita.

Predsednik upravnog odbora Fur free Alliance i dr veterinarske medicine Mark Glover istakao je značaj Srbije i Zakona koji je dobro uređen, a sa druge strane kritikujući opcuju da bitna odredba Zakona o dobrobiti životinja može biti ukinuta.

„Savet Evrope je dao jasne preporuke Srbiji koje ona zanemaruje. Smatram da je Srbija zemlja humanog društva i da se mora potruditi da ova zabrana stupi na snagu kako je planirano. Bila bi prava tragedija da zabrana koju širom sveta pozdravljaju ne stupi na snagu od strane ljudi koju su potkupljeni. Uzgajivači su imali dovoljno vremena da nađu neki novi izvor prihoda“, rekao je Glover.

„Pitanje uzgoja činčila je pre svega moralno pitanje. Srbija sama sebi puca u nogu, ako bi radila protiv zakona koji je donet. Njihova motivacija za kršenje zakona je neopravdana. Odbor za poljoprivredu, šumarstvo i vodoprivredu je prešao svoja ovlašćenja i tu inspekcija treba da reaguje. Zakon o dobrobiti životinja je dobar zakon, ali pitanje je koliko će opstati“, kazao je profesor Pravnog fakulteta u penziji Stevan Lilić.

According to the CDP report, the cement industry is the second-largest industrial emitter of carbon after the steel industry. And when accounting for its use in human-made structures, it is responsible for more than a third of the world’s carbon emissions. But unlike the transportation sector, in which a new type of fuel can dramatically decrease the sector’s pollutants, cement’s problem is, well, cemented in its formulation: Limestone is mixed with other raw materials in an immense kiln at high temperatures; as the kiln separates the limestone’s calcium carbonate structure, an extremely dirty strand of carbon is emitted by the ton.

The resulting hard substance is called a "clinker” (this onomatopoeia has its origins in Holland from the word “klinken,” which means “to ring”), and it is then pounded into the recognizable powder that is blended with material binders and water to form cement.

For cement companies, lowering emissions would mean either developing a whole new material or investing in carbon-capture systems, a technology that can capture and store the carbon dioxide emitted by an industrial process. Yet the CDP found the industry to be unwilling or unable to finance the research required to develop a low-cost, low-carbon alternative to cement.

The issue goes beyond the industry. Material scientists, those best suited to study and improve cement’s molecular chemistry, have begun developing a form of cement that uses far less calcium (the pollutive material in cement) in its production. Franz-Josef Ulm, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at MIT, has worked with his team to lower the amount of pollutive calcium in cement’s molecular structure, dramatically decreasing the emissions associated with it and increasing its strength two-fold. The material is in production but not yet feasible for widespread use and hasn’t been tested for long-term durability.

“We have created the Ferrari, now we need to create the Ford,” Ulm said. To accomplish this, Ulm and his team have partnered with the Portland Cement Association, a non-profit that promotes the use of concrete, to bring their alternative cement into the mainstream. “We desperately need more industry partners,” Ulm told me. “The cement industry is a business, they will keep selling the product everyone already knows and wants. Really, what we need is [carbon-pricing] legislation.”

This would require the cement industry to explore the use of alternative materials in their factories, but according to the CDP report, the industry has only used a token amount of their revenues to explore alternatives. And due to their lack of scientific acumen, they’ve focused on using different raw material mixers for cement which are introduced after the carbon intensive portion of the process.

One of those other factors is the jet stream – a core of strong winds around five to seven miles above the Earth’s surface that blow from west to east and which steer weather around the globe. Sometimes, when they are intense, they bring storms. On other occasions, when they are weak, they bring very calm and settled days. And that is what is occurring at present.

“The jet stream we are currently experiencing is extremely weak and, as a result, areas of atmospheric high pressure are lingering for long periods over the same place,” added Mitchell.

Other factors involved in creating the meteorological conditions that have brought such heat to the northern hemisphere include substantial changes to sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic. “These are part of a phenomenon known as the Atlantic multidecadal oscillation,” said Professor Adam Scaife, of the Met Office.

“In fact, the situation is very like the one we had in 1976, when we had similar ocean temperatures in the Atlantic and an unchanging jet stream that left great areas of high pressure over many areas for long periods,” said Scaife.

“And of course, that year we had one of the driest, sunniest and warmest summers in the UK in the 20th century.”

However, there is one crucial difference between 1976 and today, added Professor Tim Osborn, director of research at the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia. “The baseline on which these effects operated is very different today. Since 1976 we have had several decades of global warming – caused by rising carbon emissions – which has raised baseline global temperatures significantly.”

As a result, any phenomenon such as the weakening of the jet stream is going to have a more pronounced effect than it did 40 years ago.

And as global carbon emissions continue to rise and predictions suggest the world will be unable to hold global temperature rises this century to below 2C above pre-industrial levels, widespread heatwaves are very likely to get worse and become more frequent, scientists warn.

Nor is the problem of increasingly severe heatwaves confined to the land. “We have marine heatwaves as well – all over the globe,” said Michael Burrows, of the Scottish Marine Institute, Oban. “For example, there was a major marine heatwave that struck the coast of Australia last year. It devastated vast swathes of the Great Barrier Reef. More to the point, marine heatwaves are also becoming more and more frequent and intense, like those on land, and that is something else that we should be very worried about.”

The omega-3 industry is in a twist. Again. Last week, , an organisation that compiles and evaluates medical research for the general public, released a meta-analysis – a study of studies – to determine whether or not omega-3 pills, one of the world’s most popular dietary supplements, reduced the risk of coronary heart disease. After comparing 79 trials involving 112,059 people, the researchers could find “little or no difference to risk of cardiovascular events, coronary heart deaths, coronary heart disease events, stroke or heart irregularities”.

But the fact that the industry’s arguments shift with each new, damning meta-analysis gives you pause. What is going on? Is there an international conspiracy to discredit omega-3s? Or does Omega World keep moving the goalposts? When I posed this question to Ellen Schutt, the executive director of the Global Organization for EPA and DHA Omega-3s, probably the world’s most prominent omega-3 advocacy organisation, she made it seem as if the problem didn’t even exist. “As a matter of fact, we track media sentiment … and have found many more positive omega-3 stories than negative, in general. Of course, the negative stories are the ones that catch people’s attention. As we both know, negative stories are much more interesting and the media is definitely guilty of sensationalist ‘clickbait’ headlines such as: ‘Omega-3s don’t work.’”

As sympathetic as I am to the trials of Omega World, as studies continue to poke holes in aspects of the omega-3 cardiovascular argument, I can’t help thinking there is something else going on. Because, while the fish oil supplement business is a big deal, it is also a sheen on the surface of a much deeper pond. Long before omega-3 supplements became popular, an industry arose that used the same omega-3-rich creatures not for medicine, but for an odd array of agricultural and industrial purposes.

Ultimately, it was this so-called “reduction industry” that created the oily-fish extraction system that now consumes millions of tonnes of marine wildlife every year. Today, one in every four kilograms of fish caught is reduced into oil and meal and used for agriculture, land animal husbandry and, most recently, fish farming, AKA aquaculture.

The reduction industry has appeared in different forms under different ownership over centuries of human history.

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Amid all the conflicting reports, there is one bit of data that shines out: fish and seafood can bring considerable health and environmental benefits. Fish, in addition to providing us with omega-3s, delivers protein with far fewer calories than meat: 100g of salmon contains 139 calories and 23g of protein. By comparison, 100g of beef contains 210 calories and 20g of protein.

Harvesting wild fish from well-managed stocks requires a fraction of the carbon as farming terrestrial livestock. Similarly, fish farming puts a lesser burden on the Earth in terms of carbon and freshwater use than pretty much any form of terrestrial animal husbandry. We could make the farming of fish even more carbon- and resource-efficient if we used alternative ingredients for fish food based on algae and food waste. And if you consider growing “filter feeders” such as mussels, clams and oysters, the benefits are even more extreme. These bivalves don’t have to be fed anything, and make water cleaner even as they grow fatter. They provide protein 30 times more efficiently than cattle.

Is the epidemiological evidence for fish-eating better than simply taking a fish oil pill? Again, we are stuck with the problem of correlation versus causation. It is very difficult to feed someone a fish in such a manner that they don’t know they are eating a fish. Hence an RCT of seafood-eating hasn’t really ever been done. Most of the studies around seafood are association studies. And, while one such study associated eating fish twice a week with a possible reduction in mortality of 55,000 lives a year, we don’t know what a fish-eater does with the rest of their life beyond eating fish.

But what we do know is this: the omega-3 industry and the reduction industry that bred it removes fish from the water in a way that doesn’t put protein on our plates – it just puts pills in our cupboards. Is this the way we want to continue to do business with the planet?

"This is the kind of stuff you don't want to be right about."

Elektrosmog je nevidljivo elektromagnetsko zračenje koje nastaje kao posledica korišćenja bežične tehnologije i električne struje. Najčešći izvori elektrosmoga su svima dobro poznati i svi ih imamo kod kuće ili na poslu:

Električni smog je odgovoran za stanje poznato kao elektro-senzitivnost (ES) ili elektro-hiper-senzitivnost (EHS). Simptomi ovakvih nemilih oboljenja kod čoveka su:

glavobolja
poremećaji spavanja
hroničan umor
depresija
razdraženost
nepravilan krvni pritisak
promene na koži
promena ponašanja kod dece.

Činjenice kao pokazatelji štetnosti
Posledice po zdravlje usled dejstva elektrosmoga se mogu javiti i nakon 10 ili 20 godina, ponekad se efekat pokaže i odmah. Neka istraživanja pokazuju da između 3% i 5% opšte populacije verovatno pati od ES.

U Švedskoj, na primer, kod 285 000 ljudi (preko 3% stanovništva) registrovan je ovaj sindrom pa dosta ljudi traže invalidninu od države.

U novembru 2005. Agencija za zaštitu zdravlja (The Health Protection Agency) objavila je izveštaj ‘Definicija, epidemiologija i upravljanje električnom osetljivošću‘, sa namerom da identifikuje i preporuči neke savete u vezi ovih zdravstvenih problema.

U gradu Salzburgu u Austriji je na snazi uredba o maksimalnom nivou emisije električnog zračenja od 0,6 volta po metru.

Godine 2007. radna grupa „Bioinicijativa“ (Bioinitiative Working Group) nastala je na bazi međunarodne saradnje prestižnih naučnika i stručnjaka za javnu zdravstvenu politiku iz SAD-a, Švedske, Danske, Austrije i Kine. Oni su objavili izveštaj od 650 stranica u kom je 2.000 analiza i istraživačkih radova sa mnogo detalja o toksičnim efektima EMF-a skoro svih električnih uređaja.

Takođe, ovde stoji da i hronična izloženost čak i malim stepenima zračenja (poput onih iz mobilnih telefona) može uzrokovati različite vrste raka, narušiti imunitet i biti uzrok pojave Alzheimerove bolesti i demencije, bolesti srca i mnogih drugih bolesti.

“Sada imamo kritičnu masu dokaza i svakog dana su ti dokazi brojniji“, kaže David Carpenter, direktor Instituta za zdravlje i životnu sredinu na Univerzitetu Albany i koautor radova na temu javnog zdravlja u ovom izveštaju.

Navikli smo na gradski smog, ne samo da ga udišemo već ga i vidimo, ali šta sa smogom koji se nalazi u zatvorenom prostoru unutar kuće?

Veliki je broj onih koji tvrde da ni jedan naučnik ne može zasigurno da potvrdi i objasni zašto i koliko je EMF potencijalno štetan za ljude. Međutim, poslednjih godina sve je više pouzdanih i doslednih istraživanja na životinjama pokazalo da elektromagnetska polja, poput onih koje generišu mobilni telefoni, otvaraju prave barijere u krvnom i moždanom sistemu usporavajući venama protok krvi do mozga i oštećuju neurone.

Električna preosetljivost (EHS)

Simptomi EHS-a su umor, iritacija lica, tinitus, vrtoglavica i probavni poremećaji. Javljaju se uglavnom nakon izlaganja ekranima raznih uređaja (displeji mobilnih telefona, WiFi uređaji, kompjuteri). Stručnjaci kažu da je čak 3% od ukupnog broja ljudi klinički preosetljivo, a čak jedna trećina nas u manjoj meri.

Električna zagađenost se dramatično povećava

“Po prvi put u našoj evoluciji stvorili smo sasvim posebno, celovito, sekundarno virtuelno, složeno okruženje –možemo ga nazvati ‘elektromagnetska čorba svega i svačega‘ – koja se u suštini preklapa s ljudskim nervnim sistemom”, kaže Michael Persinger, neurolog na Univerzitetu Laurentian koji je proučavao efekat EMF-a na ćelije raka.

Dr. Pall is Professor Emeritus School of Molecular Biosciences, Washington State University and author of numerous scientific papers on oxidation and inflammation. At this Wireless Technology and Public Health conference in Mountain View, California Oct 10, 2015 he discusses the cellular mechanisms of action that explain the adverse biological effects of wireless devices on the human body. Dr. Pall demonstrates how wireless EMF can cause harm to the heart, brain and reproductive organs via a cell membrane changes in Voltage Gated Calcium Channels(VGCC). In addition he cites important research that underscores the need to change current safety standards for EMF radiation from our wireless devices and cell towers. The conference was sponsored by the Santa Clara County Medical Association Alliance Foundation.