TOP 100 SCIENCE SITES
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| Trying to Explain a Drop in Infant Mortality Mothers in Dane County, Wis., are the subject of a study by researchers into the large racial gap in infant deaths. feeds.nytimes.com |
Letters: Our voice needs to be heard at Copenhagen As representatives of people from the developing world who are most affected by climate change, we are still fighting to ensure our voices are heard in Copenhagen. We are alarmed about the potential failure of the talks (Report, 15 December).People in many of our countries in the global south are already experiencing the destructive effects of climate change. It is these people, who have not contaminated the planet, who hold the solutions in their hands. It is the rural farmers, indigenous, and the poor people of the world that can teach us how to sustain life on the planet through learning from and living in harmony with nature.We urgently hope that in the few days left Copenhagen changes the status quo which continues to damage the natural world. We hope that the global north recognises its ecological debt to the world's impoverished peoples; that it begins to repair our villages and ecosystems and reaches substantial agreements to ensure greenhouse gas emissions are curbed. Enough funds should be provided to southern countries to support this socio-environmental restoration: the climate debt to the world's poor must be settled.If Copenhagen achieves nothing, the resulting delay to securing these vital agreements will be a terrible sentence for all human beings and the planet. The earth is a unique global ecosystem in which everything is interrelated. Today, misery afflicts many peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Tomorrow other countries will face extinction too.Innocent Hodzongi Programmes director, Environment Africa, ZimbabweLloyd Simwaka Progressio country director, MalawiJosé Ramon Avila Director of the National Association of NGOs, HondurasAntónio Pacheco Director, Social and Economic Development Association of Santa Marta, El SalvadorMaría Elena Salas Dias Director, Cajamarca Ideas Centre, PeruDinorah Granadeiro Executive director, NGO Forum, Timor-Leste Victor Ochoa President, Campamento Environmental Movement, HondurasDr Angel Ibarra Director, Salvadorian Ecological Union, El SalvadorEgo Lemos Founding director, Permaculture Timor-Leste, East TimorMaría Elena Mendez Director, Centre for Women's Studies, HondurasAnna Zucchetti Director, GEA Group, PeruKevin Ndemera Progressio Country Director, ZimbabweAntonio Gaybor Executive secretary, National Water Resources Forum, EcuadorManuel Ernesto Cruz Director, Youth Development Foundation, El SalvadorDeometrio do Amaral Executive director, Haburas Foundation, Timor-LesteCarmen Medina Progressio country director, El SalvadorLarry José Madrigal Rajo General co-ordinator, Bartolomé de las Casas Centre, El SalvadorDulce Marlen Contreras Co-ordinator of Rural Women's Association of La Paz, HondurasLuís Camacho Progressio country director, EcuadorLidia Castillo Director, Centre for the Investigation and Promotion of Human Rights, El SalvadorRoque Rivera Executive director, Popol Nah Tun, HondurasJesús Garza Co-ordinator of the Honduran Coalition for People's Action, HondurasMarianela Gibaja Progressio country director, PeruDr Juan Almendares Bonilla Founding director, Mother Earth Movement, HondurasXiomara Ventura Progressio Country Director, HondurasMaximus Tahu Researcher, La'o Hamutuk, Timor-LesteJuvinal Dias Researcher, La'o Hamutuk, Timor-Leste Jesus Garza Coordinator, The Honduran Coalition for People's Action, HondurasTibor van Staveren Progressio country director, Timor-Leste Dr Jeannette Alvarado Director, Maquilishuat Foundation, El Salvador• As one who was at Seattle to see the WTO's open-market blitzkrieg temporarily halted, I wholeheartedly agree with Madeleine Bunting's perceptive bookending of the noughties with Seattle and Copenhagen (Protesters in Seattle warned us what was coming, but we didn't listen, 14 December). However, she is not correct to imply that the movement "differed dramatically" over alternatives to economic globalisation. There was a general consensus that to control finance and global corporations there needed to be a return to countries having the will and the ability to protect, nurture and rebuild their local economies. This would also entail the political control of such damaging corporate forces and a change in the end goal of trade and financial rules that have allowed big business and banks to prosper, while trashing local economies and the environment.The twin towers and the wars on terror diverted attention from these priorities. Tackling the global economic crisis presents new opportunities for this "protect the local, globally" approach to solve the triple credit, climate and oil-supply crunches. An example of this is the Green New Deal proposal. This emphasises a massive £50bn-a-year local jobs and business programme to decarbonise the UK economy. It involves comprehensive measures to gut the power of finance and details a fairer global taxation system to fund such programmes in poorer countries. It is the latest step along the path that first received global coverage in Seattle. Indeed to compensate for the disaster of the last 10 years, the Green New Deal needs to become a key blueprint for campaigns and government policies in the 2010s.Colin HinesConvener, Green New Deal Group• Reading George Monbiot's article (This is bigger than climate change. It is a battle to redefine humanity, 15 December), I felt a Freudian subconscious must have been at work. He managed to refer to "our crowded planet", the human race being "hedged in" by the consequences of its own actions, that we are acting in "defiance of natural constraints", that we are no longer able to "swing our fists regardless of whose nose might be in the way", and that "perpetual growth cannot be accommodated on a finite planet". As if to ram home the point, he even concludes with a reference to "another great unmentionable". Was he, I thought, going to join other leading environmentalists like Jonathan Porritt and David Attenborough, and agree that we should all be treating population growth as a serious issue? Alas, no. The particular "unmentionable" turned out to be the folly of searching for more oil at a time when we should be phasing out its use. The real unmentionable remains, in his world, just that.Chris PadleyMarket Rasen, Lincolnshire• George Monbiot again attempts to make the subliminal link between those who disagree with the consensus view on climate change and Holocaust deniers (Comment, 8 December). However, he fails to admit the real scandal of the leaked emails. As Karl Popper taught us, scepticism is a cardinal virtue, and this is particularly true in sciences that rely upon the interpretation of historical data and the output of theoretical models. In this respect climate science is similar to my own subject, financial economics, and there are important lessons to learn from the way that discipline has developed. In the 1970s the Chicago School dominated finance, and leading journals would not accept articles contradicting the rational expectations/market efficiency paradigm. Over the subsequent decades, counter-evidence and alternative theoretical explanations of market behaviour began the emerge at the margins of the discipline. Now, the contrary view has become so persuasive that the certainties of 40 years ago appear naive. However, the academic lockout put back the development of the subject for a generation.My reading of this affair is that climate science, like finance in the 1970s, is at an immature stage of development. There are heavy consequences when scientists forget Popper's dictum that good science seeks to refute, not confirm. With climate science the stakes are high, and so we need the very best of science. That is why I am on the side of the sceptics.Emeritus Professor Bob RyanNettleton Shrub, WiltshireCopenhagen climate change conference 2009Climate changeClimate changeClimate change scepticismProtestWTOGlobalisationDevelopmentPopulationOilCarbon emissionsGreen politicsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Calif. space tourism firm launches S. Korea deal LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A California company developing a rocket plane for space tourism announced Thursday that it has an agreement with a nonprofit group in South Korea to conduct launches in that nation.... hosted.ap.org |
Ingham soccer field overrun by kangaroos A north Queensland soccer club says some of its juniors are reluctant to resume training next week - because their practice fields have been overrun by more than 200 kangaroos. abc.net.au |
UK returns nuclear waste to Japan The first shipment of highly radioactive nuclear waste from the UK has left Sellafield en route for Japan. news.bbc.co.uk |