OTTAWA — The federal government should make a billion-dollar investment to eradicate the root causes of poverty, or face billions more in ongoing expenses, a new report says.
Poverty costs taxpayers more than $24 billion a year, said the report, which was released Wednesday from a federal government advisory board, the National Council of Welfare.
The federal government should take the lead and create a sustained, Canada-wide poverty investment program that co-ordinates resources at all levels of government, the report says.
The initial investment could be in the billions of dollars, the report suggests, which says it would be worth the expense in the long run.
A large cash investment today would reduce poverty costs to taxpayers in the ensuing years, the council says.
"In an investment model, the more resources devoted to preventing poverty and directly lifting people out of poverty, the greater the payoff would be for all Canadians in reduced health-care and other indirect costs," says the report, titled The Dollars and Sense of Solving Poverty.
"An investment model is geared towards the longer term. It may require larger initial resources and may take time, but there will be a far greater and more permanent payoff."
Governments should focus public spending on prevention programs such as income supplements and affordable housing, which are cheaper than reactionary measures such as emergency shelters, the council says.
For example, the cost of keeping one person in a shelter in Calgary for one year can be as much as $42,000, the report says. A one-year stay in a prison or psychiatric hospital can cost as much as $120,000, the report says.
Supportive housing, where residents can access services, costs as much as $18,000 a year per person, the report says, while affordable housing can cost government as much as $8,000 a year per person.
Investing in prescription-drug plans to make medicine more affordable could improve the health of those with low incomes, the report says, and reduce visits to emergency rooms, which eat up greater portions of taxpayers' dollars.
"An approach based on short-term spending to help people in poverty get by can often carry indirect costs. It does not do a good job of reducing poverty itself," the report says.
"In medical terms, this is like getting half a dose of antibiotic and having your infection ease up for a little while, only to return worse than it was before."
Wednesday, 28 September 2011
Monday, 26 September 2011
The Water Shortage Crisis
By the year 2050, some 4 billion people (that's over half of the entire world's population) will be facing severe water shortages. In the United States, people living in Southwestern states like Arizona could be facing severe freshwater shortages even sooner -- by 2025.
This is not a far-fetched scenario from a science fiction movie, as it may sound. Instead, this information comes from NASA, the World Health Organization (WHO) and other agencies worldwide. And when you consider the facts, it's not hard to understand why there's a problem:
The water shortage has yet to significantly impact the United States, at least not on par with how other parts of the world are already struggling. According to the World Water Council, 1.1 billion people are currently living without clean drinking water, while another 2.6 billion lack adequate sanitation.
Most of the people facing water shortages are in developing countries -- where it's not uncommon for women to walk for miles to find water -- but not all of them. In China, where water supplies equal those of Canada (but the country has 100 times more people), per-capita water reserves are just one-fourth the global average. Over half of its cities regularly face moderate to critical water shortages, and each year the country uses 30 cubic kilometers more water than rain is replacing.
Other areas of the world facing severe water crises include India, where experts predict groundwater supplies in some areas will be gone in five to 10 years (and farmland turned to desert as a result), and the Middle East, where Meir Ben Meir, Israel's former water commissioner, said, "At the moment, I project the scarcity of water within five years." That was in 2000.
Water Wars
It is almost guaranteed that, once water supplies become even more scarce, conflict will break out across the globe.
"Water is blue gold; it's terribly precious," said Maude Barlow, chair of the Council of Canadians, told the Monitor. "Not too far in the future, we're going to see a move to surround and commodify the world's fresh water. Just as they've divvied up the world's oil, in the coming century, there's going to be a grab."
Conflicts could easily breakout over water between Israel, the Palestinians, Jordan and Syria, according to Meir.
"I can promise that if there is not sufficient water in our region, if there is scarcity of water, if people remain thirsty for water, then we shall doubtless face war," he says.
Meanwhile, conflicts closer to home are also a very real possibility. Already, the seven states (Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California) that share water from the Colorado River have began negotiations on how to manage the river's limited water.
"It's not a question of 'if' there's a shortage anymore, it's 'when,' " said Sid Wilson, general manager of the Central Arizona Project, which sends water from the Colorado River to Phoenix, Tucson and other Arizona regions. "We're struggling, but I have optimism that we'll reach a compromise. We have to."
What's Causing the Shortage, and What Could Help Solve It?
Even though the earth is mostly water, less than 2 percent of it is fresh (and of that small percentage, much of it is polluted, unsanitary or dependent on cyclical rain patterns).
The shortage is further compounded by an extreme amount of wasted water when it comes to irrigation practices throughout the world. According to the World Water Council, 66 percent of water withdrawals are for irrigation, and in arid regions irrigation accounts for 90 percent of water withdrawals (other water withdrawals are for industry (20 percent) and household use (10 percent), while about 4 percent evaporates from reservoirs).
Key to saving the limited water supply that is left is reducing the waste. As the World Water Council points out:
"Whatever the use of freshwater (agriculture, industry, domestic use), huge saving of water and improving of water management is possible. Almost everywhere, water is wasted, and as long as people are not facing water scarcity, they believe access to water is an obvious and natural thing ... However, changes in food habits, for example, may reduce the problem, knowing that growing 1kg of potatoes requires only 100 liters of water, whereas 1 kg of beef requires 13,000 liters."
If you'd like to know more about the water shortage facing the world, science writer Fred Pearce has written an excellent book, When the Rivers Run Dry. This book is an alarming wake-up call and a much-needed call-to-action about what could be greatest environmental crisis the world will ever see.
 More than 1 billion people are currently living without clean drinking water, and an estimated 3 billion people could be facing similar water shortages in less than 45 years. |
- The world's population tripled in the 20th century, and is expected to increase by another 40-50 percent in the next 50 years.
- Meanwhile, the use of renewable water resources has grown six-fold.
- There isn't any more fresh water in the world today than there was 1 million years ago.
- Water cannot be replaced (such as alternative fuel sources can replace petroleum).
The water shortage has yet to significantly impact the United States, at least not on par with how other parts of the world are already struggling. According to the World Water Council, 1.1 billion people are currently living without clean drinking water, while another 2.6 billion lack adequate sanitation.
Most of the people facing water shortages are in developing countries -- where it's not uncommon for women to walk for miles to find water -- but not all of them. In China, where water supplies equal those of Canada (but the country has 100 times more people), per-capita water reserves are just one-fourth the global average. Over half of its cities regularly face moderate to critical water shortages, and each year the country uses 30 cubic kilometers more water than rain is replacing.
Other areas of the world facing severe water crises include India, where experts predict groundwater supplies in some areas will be gone in five to 10 years (and farmland turned to desert as a result), and the Middle East, where Meir Ben Meir, Israel's former water commissioner, said, "At the moment, I project the scarcity of water within five years." That was in 2000.
Water Wars
It is almost guaranteed that, once water supplies become even more scarce, conflict will break out across the globe.
 March 22 is World Water Day (WWD) 2007. This year's theme, Coping with Water Scarcity, is designed to raise awareness to the growing water shortage facing the world, and help design some real solutions. |
Conflicts could easily breakout over water between Israel, the Palestinians, Jordan and Syria, according to Meir.
"I can promise that if there is not sufficient water in our region, if there is scarcity of water, if people remain thirsty for water, then we shall doubtless face war," he says.
Meanwhile, conflicts closer to home are also a very real possibility. Already, the seven states (Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California) that share water from the Colorado River have began negotiations on how to manage the river's limited water.
"It's not a question of 'if' there's a shortage anymore, it's 'when,' " said Sid Wilson, general manager of the Central Arizona Project, which sends water from the Colorado River to Phoenix, Tucson and other Arizona regions. "We're struggling, but I have optimism that we'll reach a compromise. We have to."
What's Causing the Shortage, and What Could Help Solve It?
Even though the earth is mostly water, less than 2 percent of it is fresh (and of that small percentage, much of it is polluted, unsanitary or dependent on cyclical rain patterns).
The shortage is further compounded by an extreme amount of wasted water when it comes to irrigation practices throughout the world. According to the World Water Council, 66 percent of water withdrawals are for irrigation, and in arid regions irrigation accounts for 90 percent of water withdrawals (other water withdrawals are for industry (20 percent) and household use (10 percent), while about 4 percent evaporates from reservoirs).
Key to saving the limited water supply that is left is reducing the waste. As the World Water Council points out:
"Whatever the use of freshwater (agriculture, industry, domestic use), huge saving of water and improving of water management is possible. Almost everywhere, water is wasted, and as long as people are not facing water scarcity, they believe access to water is an obvious and natural thing ... However, changes in food habits, for example, may reduce the problem, knowing that growing 1kg of potatoes requires only 100 liters of water, whereas 1 kg of beef requires 13,000 liters."
If you'd like to know more about the water shortage facing the world, science writer Fred Pearce has written an excellent book, When the Rivers Run Dry. This book is an alarming wake-up call and a much-needed call-to-action about what could be greatest environmental crisis the world will ever see.
Thursday, 22 September 2011
The Time Of Your Life
The Time Of Your Life
Which significant event or season would you describe as “the time of your life”? Perhaps your wedding day and honeymoon, an adventurous vacation, or the birth of a child. These memorable moments stick in our minds and remembering them brings back feelings of joy. Yet while our lives may be marked by notable occasions, they’re not defined as much by any single event as by the unremarkable days which shape our character and values. The hours, minutes, and seconds in a day literally are the time of our lives. How we use them shapes who we are. To make the most of the precious resource of time, consider the following three steps.1) Gain Clarity
Clarity is the most important concept in personal productivity. Leaders cannot make the best use of time until they have a clear-cut notion of their purpose in life. Dr. Edward Banfield of Harvard University, after more than fifty years of research, concluded that “long-term perspective” is the most accurate single predictor of upward social and economic mobility in America. Long-term perspective turns out to be more important than family background, education, race, intelligence, connections, or virtually any other single factor in determining your success in life and at work.
Successful people have a clear future orientation. They think five, ten, and twenty years out into the future. Take a moment to ponder your purpose. What do you hope to accomplish in life? Where would you like to be in 10 years?
More concretely, ask yourself, “Why am I on the payroll?” Pose this question to yourself over and over again throughout your career. In truth, most people are not sure exactly why they are on the payroll. Yet, if you are not crystal clear about the results you have been hired to accomplish, it is very hard to perform at your best, raise your value as an employee, and earn promotions.
2) Generate Priorities
Leaders look ahead to where they hope to be in the future, and they set priorities in the present to make sure they end up at their desired destination. Their future intent influences their present action. Prioritization means giving focus and energy to those things that give the highest return.
The 80/20 Rule is a helpful concept to hone in on your high-return tasks. This principle says that 20 percent of your activities will account for 80 percent of your results, 20 percent of your customers will account for 80 percent of your sales, and 20 percent of your products or services will account for 80 percent of your profits. This means that if you have a list of ten items you do, two of those items will turn out to be worth five or ten times or more than the other eight items put together. Which priorities on your to-do list are most likely to account for the bulk of your productivity?
3) Get on a Schedule
Scheduling is telling your time where to go instead of wondering where it went. Sticking to a predetermined schedule guards your time and puts you in control of your agenda. Alternatively, unscheduled time flows to trivial tasks, falls under the sway of the assertive personalities around us, and surrenders to every emergency that arises.
Thoughts on scheduling:
1. Schedule in advance
Work a couple of months ahead. Put top priorities on the calendar first, making sure keep your family at the top of the list.
2. Resist the urge to overschedule
You’re not Superman or Superwoman, so don’t try to cram 14 hours of work into an 8-hour day. Also, build in ample time for rest and exercise. In addition, give yourself margin. Leave some free time to deal with unexpected events or to fit in an unforeseen appointment. Finally, just say no. Filter out meetings or involvements that eat away time and offer little in return.
3. Create large chunks of time
Most of the truly important work you do requires large chunks of unbroken time to complete. Your ability to carve out and use these blocks of peak-value, highly productive time is central to your ability to make a significant contribution to your work and to your life. Study your natural rhythm and carve out space on your calendar to perform your most important work during the time of day when you function best.
Lock of hair pins down early migration of Aborigines
A lock of hair has helped scientists to piece together the genome of Australian Aborigines and rewrite the history of human dispersal around the world.
DNA from the hair demonstrates that indigenous Aboriginal Australians were the first to separate from other modern humans, around 70,000 years ago.This challenges current theories of a single phase of dispersal from Africa.
An international team of researchers published their findings in the journal Science.
While the Aboriginal populations were trailblazing across Asia and into Australia, the remaining humans stayed around North Africa and the Middle East until 24,000 years ago.
Only then did they spread out and colonise Europe and Asia, but the indigenous Aborigines had been established in Australia for 25,000 years.
Australian Aborigines therefore have a longer claim to the land in which they now live than any other population known.
The research also highlights the exciting future possibilities of comparing the genomes of multiple individuals to track migration of small indigenous groups.
Tiny genetic differences Archaeological remains are known from Australia from around 50,000 years ago, putting a maximum age of the Aborigines' settlement there.
But the history of their journey and their relationship with the indigenous people of Asia and Europe had not been solved.
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Dr Francois Balloux Imperial College LondonThey could walk almost the entire way because the sea level was much lower”
It was previously thought that modern humans dispersed in one pulse out of Africa and the Middle East, and because of the distances involved, the modern Europeans would have separated from the Asians and Australians first.
Genetic information from a lock of Aboriginal hair has been used to show that the Australians set off a lot earlier. By looking at the tiny (fraction of a percent) differences between the DNA of Aborigines and other ancient humans, the scientists show that the indigenous Australians were first isolated 70,000 years ago.
Dr Francois Balloux, of Imperial College London described how a "population expanded along the coastline because of the rich resources available there. They could walk almost the entire way because the sea level was much lower". Just one small sea crossing would be required to reach Australia.
Any potential archaeological remains of this journey, which lasted 25,000 years, would be lost to the deep sea under rising sea levels.
The remaining populations in the Middle East moved out to colonise Europe and Asia 24,000 years ago, and the aboriginal genome records some interbreeding between Asian populations and aboriginal ancestors at this time.
Discovering the history of human migration with DNA has been made possible by improvements in the techniques used to study the genome.
Traditionally, genetic divergence dates were arrived at by combining the number of unique mutations in the DNA with an assumed rate of acquiring those mutations.
Now, computationally powerful models can simulate lots of different scenarios for migration timings and directions, and researchers can compare and choose the situation that most closely matches what is seen in the genome.
By comparing the Aboriginal genome with the DNA of African, European and Han Chinese individuals it was possible to highlight the later interbreeding after initial colonisation.
Australia was the first place to be colonised; Eurasians remained in the Middle East until 24,000 years ago. The findings of these researchers are supported by an independent study, published this week in the American Journal of Human Genetics, which looks at the characteristic DNA from an extinct, archaic form of human, the Denisovans.
Denisovans lived over 30,000 years ago, and contributed genes mostly to present-day New Guineans.
This independent study identifies a pattern of Denisovan DNA in Asian individuals that can only be explained by two separate waves of human migration: the first of Aboriginals colonising Australia, and the second involving the occupation of Asia itself.
'Jurassic Park science' The Aboriginal research was carried out on a single lock of hair, which was donated by a young Aboriginal man to the British anthropologist Dr A C Haddon in 1923.
"At this time, it was fashionable to take human samples," said Dr Balloux. The collection of hair was one of the more innocuous efforts of anthropologists at the time.
The researchers chose to examine the hair, as opposed to any other type of remains, for legal reasons. Hair is not classified as a human tissue.
"More important to us was that the research would be acceptable from a social and moral point of view" said Dr Balloux.To the surprise of the scientists, the people they consulted were very supportive of the study and its results. Dr Balloux explained that in the past, indigenous people have been "extremely sensitive of the motivations of western scientists".
The research has been published with "strong endorsement" from the Goldfields Land and Sea Council, the organisation that represents the Aboriginal traditional owners of parts of Western Australia, he said.
Genomics techniques like those used in this study have the potential to be used more extensively in the study of human migrations and the evolution of health and disease.
The international team next plans to look in more detail at the dispersal of modern humans out of Africa, as well as solving how and when the Americas were colonised.
Dr Balloux said he was excited about the unexpected potential of the techniques, describing it as "borderline Jurassic Park science".
Deep Oceans Trap 'Missing Heat' Creating Hiatus Periods" During Global Warming
By IB Times Staff Reporter | September 20, 2011 9:22 AM EDT
"Missing heat" is hiding in oceans deeper than 1,000 feet (300 meters), researchers say, disguising the effects of global warming even when there is long-term warming.
Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) say Earth's deep oceans tend to absorb enough heat and hide it for about a decade. That action could explain periods when global warming slows even when satellite data show there's no change in the amount of energy trapped in the planet's atmosphere.
Scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) say Earth's deep oceans tend to absorb enough heat and hide it for about a decade. That action could explain periods when global warming slows even when satellite data show there's no change in the amount of energy trapped in the planet's atmosphere.
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"We will see global warming go through hiatus periods in the future," says NCAR's Gerald Meehl, who is the lead author of the study, through press release. "However, these periods would likely last only about a decade or so, and warming would then resume. This study illustrates one reason why global temperatures do not simply rise in a straight line."
The researchers ‑ from the U.S. and the Bureau of Meteorology in Australia - published their findings in the Sept. 18 issue of the journal Nature Climate Change.
"The research shows that the natural variability of the climate system can produce periods of a decade or more in which Earth's temperature does not rise, despite an increase in greenhouse gas concentrations," says Eric DeWeaver, program director in NSF's Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences. "These scientists make a compelling case that the excess energy entering the climate system due to greenhouse gas increases may not be immediately realized as warmer surface temperatures, as it can go into the deep ocean instead."
The researchers ‑ from the U.S. and the Bureau of Meteorology in Australia - published their findings in the Sept. 18 issue of the journal Nature Climate Change.
"The research shows that the natural variability of the climate system can produce periods of a decade or more in which Earth's temperature does not rise, despite an increase in greenhouse gas concentrations," says Eric DeWeaver, program director in NSF's Division of Atmospheric and Geospace Sciences. "These scientists make a compelling case that the excess energy entering the climate system due to greenhouse gas increases may not be immediately realized as warmer surface temperatures, as it can go into the deep ocean instead."
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The Earth's warmest decade in more than a century of weather records was in the 2000s.Still the single-year mark for warmest global temperature, set in 1998, remained unmatched until 2010. The releasing of greenhouse gases continued to rise during the 2000s, and satellite measurements showed that the discrepancy between incoming sunshine and outgoing radiation from Earth actually increased.
This implied that heat was building up somewhere on Earth, according to a 2010 study published in the journal Science by NCAR researchers Kevin Trenberth and John Fasullo, who also co-authored the new study.
The two researchers had suggested that the oceans might be putting away some of the heat that would otherwise go toward other processes such as warming the atmosphere or land, or melting more ice and snow.
Observation of a global network of buoys has shown some warming in the upper ocean, not enough to account for the global build-up of heat.
Scientists suspected the deep oceans played a role, but few measurements were available to back that hypothesis.
So Meehl and his colleagues set out to track where the heat was going by using a powerful software tool known as the Community Climate System Model, developed by scientists at NCAR and the Department of Energy developed and others.
Using the model's ability to depict complex interactions between the atmosphere, land, oceans, and sea ice, researchers were able to perform five simulations of global temperatures. These simulations based on projections of future greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, showed that temperatures would rise by several degrees during this century. Each simulation also showed periods in which temperatures would stabilize for about a decade before rising again.
For example, there's one simulation that showed the global average rising by about 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit (1.4 degrees Celsius) between 2000 and 2100, but with two decade-long hiatus periods during the century. During these hiatus periods, simulations indicate that extra energy entered the oceans, with deeper layers absorbing a disproportionate amount of heat because of changes in oceanic circulation.
The vast area of ocean below about 1,000 feet (300 meters) warmed by 18 to 19 percent more during hiatus periods than at other times. The shallower global ocean above 1,000 feet warmed by 60 percent less than during non-hiatus periods in the simulation.
"This study suggests the missing energy has indeed been buried in the ocean," says Trenberth. "The heat has not disappeared, and so it cannot be ignored. It must have consequences."
From the simulations researchers learned that the oceanic warming during hiatus periods the average sea-surface temperatures decrease across the tropical Pacific, while they tend to increase at higher latitudes, especially in the Atlantic, where surface waters converge to push heat into deeper oceanic layers.
These patterns, Meehl say,s are similar to those seen during a La Niña event, adding that El Niño and La Niña events can be overlaid on top of a hiatus-related pattern.
"The main hiatus in observed warming has corresponded with La Niña conditions, which is consistent with the simulations," Trenberth says.
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