Climate change ' will reduce water for farmers: United Nations (AFP)

ROME (AFP)-l' food Thursday UN Agency warned climate change will limit the availability of water for agriculture in the coming decades, including in the Mediterranean region urged Governments to take measures.

A report by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said climate change will reduce runoff refills and the aquifer of the River, adding that the loss of glaciers "will ultimately impact on the quantity of available surface water."

The report said that in Asia "large areas of irrigated land-based glaciers from melting snow and the mountain of water are also affected."

She added "densely populated river deltas are exposed to a combination of flows of water, increased sanity and rising waters".

FAO also revealed that while the increased temperatures will extend the growing season in temperate zones of the North that they will be reducing it almost everywhere, leading potential productivity and water of the yield to decline.

It is said that Governments should enhance the capacity of countries to measure their water resources, and to encourage farmers to change their cropping patterns to allow for earlier or later planting and reduce their water consumption.

"Farm size and access to capital set the limits of the scope and extent of adaptation and change at the farm level", said the report.

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To deal blow to fruits, nuts, climate change: study (AFP)

WASHINGTON (AFP) - climate change is expected to change the world industry in the fruit and nuts considerably as the tree as the pistachio and cherry crops are struggling in the rising temperatures, the researchers said.

A study says that even if polluters takes more action to reduce carbon emissions, the impact of climate change is likely be sufficiently serious for the industry of fruit and nuts of nearly 100 billion dollars annually must reassess planning.

Trees in temperate regions evolved in need of a cold period they can grow in the spring. The rising temperatures pose a special problem for temperate, but relatively warm areas where the winter cold is already in short supply.

The study, published in may by the journal PLoS One online, provides that fruit and nut trees to be very affected in the southeast of United States, of the Southern California and the southwest of the Australia and the province of Yunnan.

Areas which have already seen the worst of the losses from the winter chill include Israel, Morocco, Tunisia, and the region of Cape Town, South Africa, the study said.

Commune of fruits and nuts in warm temperate areas understand with pistachio nuts, which are popular in Iran and in California with nut Grenoble, cherries and peaches.

Co-author Eike Luedeling of the World Agroforestry Centre based in Nairobi, said that long-term investments necessary to reach farmers quickly that fruit and nuts is more vulnerable than many other crops.

"If I am growing wheat or corn, and then a year to year I can decide to plant a little later or earlier planting or plant a variety of different,"said Luedeling."

"But for trees, you can not." Once you have made the decision to plant a certain culture, you're locked in 30 years, "he says.

Luedeling, who observed the problem of the decline in yields while research on Oman trees, said that the economic impact of climate change for the fruit and nuts will depend on the decisions taken today.

"If farmers wake up to the reality of the climate change and begin to make these adjustments - switching of cultivars are appropriate in the future, but not necessarily yet - now and then the disturbance to the markets may be minimal," he said.

"But if this is not, if farmers believe that they can continue to do what makes their grandfathers, then we will see some serious problems", he said.

Forecasts, climate change have a lesser impact on the cool temperate and cold of winter may in fact increase in some colder regions, the study found.

Co-author Evan Girvetz, a Senior Climatologist at The Nature Conservancy, an American environmental group, said colder regions had a window larger to the temperature rise, as they began with more days of cold of winter.

But many warmer parts are "already on the edge of not having enough cold during the winter of fruits and the production of nuts", Girvetz said.

"They have years when you do not have enough full production and while we are moving into the future, we find that which will become more frequent," he said.

Even if the world reduces gas emissions to greenhouse effect, "we are projecting that the qualities of those cultures are likely to reduce", he said.

Intergovernmental Group of experts on the evolution of the climate in a major report in 2007, provides that the world would be heat 1.8 to 4.0 ° C (3.2 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100 compared to pre-industrial levels and that some damage was irreversible.

However, a political boost to fight against climate change has decreased since then, especially in the United States, with a number of conservative legislators raise doubts about science and say that the action is too expensive.

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Climate change providing infection, hunger, disease (Reuters)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - climate change threatens far more than our environment. He has already led to the spread of infectious diseases and respiratory illnesses around the world and has contributed to thousands of deaths through heat waves and other extreme weather events. He has even fuelled these recent revolts in the Middle East and the North Africa.

Which is by Dan Ferber and Dr. Paul Epstein, the authors of a new book, Changing Planet, changing health: how the climate crisis threatens our health and that can do about it (University of California Press, April 2011).

The health of all human beings human is directly linked to how respond us, as communities, nations, and a global population, to the growing threat of the climate, said Ferber, a scientific journalist and the Epstein, the Deputy Director of the Centre of health and the environment at Harvard Medical School.

Ferber and Epstein spoke with Reuters Health Thursday on how malaria, the Lyme disease and cholera, as well as food shortages and malnutrition, are all of the increased risks becoming with the constant increase in temperatures. (See the live blog of the discussion here: http://bit.ly/lJnshE)

Although out of the humanity of corner has submitted itself in will be an effort in the world, they say that effort can be led by a surprising player: industry.

"Change of finance is a critical part of... to rewrite the rules"on management of climate, Epstein said."."

For the financial sector, there is much at stake, Epstein has continued.

"With uptake in extreme events - particularly because it affects food security at the global level and prices of food products - we will see a renewed interest on the part of investors and insurers in the stability of society,"he says. ". Already, "financial industry sometimes has in the last several decades were fully aware of the dangers and risks of climate change."

MANY OF THE THREATS, A CAUSE

Climate change is striking - human health and the stability of political and social, all sides, Epstein and Ferber said. On a daily basis, many of these impacts are hidden from the point of view - to ensure that you take back.

Even slight increase in temperature - a couple of degrees - can expand the habitat for pests that cause infectious diseases, malaria to the Kenya to Lyme disease in Maine, they said.

And the assertion that areas saturated with infectious diseases will move just, rather that to develop, is useful because it lacks other key points, said Epstein.

For example, in some parts of the Honduras it is too hot for malaria-carrying mosquitoes to thrive. "But it was so dry and hot that people have changed as well, and they moved in the area of the North, in the forest where there are lot of malaria,"he explained.""

Pests also target wildlife, decimating forests and increasing the risk of fire, as in the Rockies and the Cascades, where it is used to be too cool for these pests to venture at high altitude.

Another result of climate change: heat and carbon dioxide amplify the effects of asthma and allergies, especially in the cities where more and more children are respiratory problems.

And a combination of heat waves – as one who has killed thousands of Russians last summer - drought not only causes health crises local immediate but also threatens world health by destroying crops and increasing the price of food, the authors say.

Food availability can be the most urgent question of all.

"Our food, our air, our water, such are the questions that really underlie our public health," says Epstein. "" "". These are life-support systems. It is those who are ultimately the most critical and most sensitive to climate instability. ?

An unstable climate, Epstein explained, is directly linked to social and political unrest. "I think that we seek to increase the damages and social upheaval of climate and extreme instability," he said. "The earth itself can go a new balance, but we must decrease." We're pushing it hard. ?

A CHANCE FOR INDUSTRY

But it is not all bad news, and Ferber said there is reason to hope that we could be at a turning point in terms of acceptance and the climate change - a change which could be piloted in economics.

Some companies, he said, have already understood ways to profit and grow by switching of climate-friendly policies.

For example, Ferber said, the reinsurance company Swiss Re realized that it was possible to ensure a premium lower than oil platforms, wind farms because entire wind farms are not likely to be slaughtered in a disaster.

"Who benefited from the company, and it has also benefited the wind farm developers," said Ferber. "This type of creative thinking in the financial world can lead to win - win solutions."

He gave Stonyfield Farm as an example of another company that has developed how to enable the protection of the environment, in a business strategy as using microbes to ferment some of its dairy waste - deleting shipping it not be treated elsewhere. Stonyfield yogurt recipes now at the head of Kraft, the authors have say.

A NEW DIRECTION

Players in the industry is beginning to realize that central coal-fired, for example, may not be a good investment, Ferber said, communities can also take steps to make their streets, businesses and homes more healthy climate. Tree plantations, installation paths, and green roofs, and funding projects to assist green residents that their homes are all achievable steps that together could make a concrete difference, he suggested.

And the evidence shows that we are short of time to start taking these measures.

Epstein, said that humans have a need to significantly reduce fossil fuels and wood "to give the climate a chance of it at a level which would be viable" for the environmental and human health.

"The people across the country realize that we have a real problem on our hands," said Ferber. "" I'm really optimistic that more people are beginning to deal with this reality and say, ' what can we find for this problem? "".

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"No follow" would change the rules

Here are the foundations of what is discussed and how new browsers fit into the discussion. By InformationWeek Doug henschen
April 09, 2011 00: 00 AM if you have ever looked online for a new car or new shoes, only to notice ads for similar products shortly after independent Web sites, you are seeing behavioral tracking to work. This is a very widespread practice behind a lot of online marketing, a way of providing offers targeted to people who have shown an interest in specific products.

Protection of personal information and many consumers groups, find this kind of tracking a little too creepy, so they seek controls on behavioural advertising. Enter the Federal Trade Commission, end of last year published a report proposing "no follow" regulations which allow people to choose to let websites and marketers collecting data on their online search and navigation.

The most likely mode of implementation of the-not-track would be a setting on browsers. Internet Explorer 9 upcoming for Firefox 4 of Mozilla and Microsoft have features which allow users to indicate that they do not want to be followed. Fishing is that it is only a request - indicated by an electronic indicator that is visible to Web site operators. No advertising or marketing of business networks have said that they comply you with the request, and trade groups main ad say that their members do how to comply with. Google Chrome and Apple Safari browsers do not offer the option.

Debate rages, even within the FTC. J. Thomas Rosch, one of the five Commissioners of the FTC, wrote recently in Advertising Age that there were "serious questions" about the-not-track and believes that the technical feasibility "remains to demonstrate."

The legislation has been proposed by several members of Congress to limit the amount of information Internet marketing companies collect. For now, however, consumers may be surprised to learn that the feature-non-track in new browsers has no teeth. Web sites are not required to honor these requests to remove cookies and surf stories is the only surefire road to anonymity online.

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