DAILY QUICK READ - JUNE 22, 2016

People Are Stupid – Jaguar Dies

 A smiling yellow jaguar is the symbol of the Rio Olympics.  Unless they shot that one, too.

A jaguar featured at an Olympic torch ceremony was shot dead by a soldier shortly after the event in the Brazilian Amazon city of Manaus as the animal escaped from its handlers, an army statement said.

The jaguar was killed Monday at a zoo attached to a military training center, when a soldier fired a single pistol shot after the animal, despite being tranquilized, approached the soldier, the army said.

“We made a mistake in permitting the Olympic torch, a symbol of peace and unity, to be exhibited alongside a chained wild animal. This image goes against our beliefs and our values,” the local organizing committee Rio 2016 said in a statement, adding “We guarantee that there will be no more such incidents at Rio 2016.”

Wildlife is Not Renewable

Hawaii is moving to 100% renewable power, but the downside of wind and, to some extent solar, facilities is their impact on birds and bats.  Hawaii is already a deadly place for many of its native species, so a great deal of careful planning has been focused on how to implement wind and solar with minimal impact on wildlife.  Those lessons should be translated to all 50 states.

The state of Hawai‘i has an ambitious goal of achieving 100 percent renewable electrical energy by 2045. As some of the most isolated islands in the world, Hawai‘i's costs for importing oil are very high. A move towards generating renewable electrical energy thus makes a lot of economic and environmental sense.

Unfortunately, this plan is not without its own environmental hazards. It means vastly more wind turbines and solar farms on or around the islands, and one of the biggest challenges is their potential impact on Hawai‘i's endemic birds and bats.

To address the growing and recognized risk to threatened and endangered species, federal and state regulators have created protections that are currently unique to Hawai‘i. While far from perfect, we believe these protocols should, at minimum, also be employed on the mainland. Doing so would go a long way toward helping protect threatened and endangered birds and bats.

Yes, We’re Destroying the Planet – But Our Profits Are Great

Let’s dig more coal out of the ground, what could possibly go wrong?

As the scale of the recent catastrophe on the Great Barrier Reef has become widely known, a clamor has occurred across Australia.

People are grieving and furious about the devastation of our reef. I have lost count of the number of distressed people I have talked with, distraught at what has happened, hardly knowing what to say.

But, amid the uproar, some voices have been noticeably absent. It seems that in the face of what Prof Justin Marshall of the University of Queensland has called “Australia’s biggest ever environmental disaster”, the nation’s big business bosses have little to say.

Since the shocking revelation in March that the reef had experienced the worst bleaching event on record, the Business Council of Australia has issued press releases on various topics including the Australia-China CEO round-table, the release of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s review of the east coast gas market and the launch of the commonwealth’s smart cities plan. But the BCA has not seen fit to make a single media statement on the fate of the reef.

Not content with silence, the Minerals Council of Australia has gone one step further, calling for more of the same. In the midst of the unprecedented devastation to the reef caused by global warming, the MCA found its voice to commend the granting of the Carmichael coalmine leases as a “sensible decision”.

Extreme Weather Events

Global warming will lead to more extreme weather events.  So after years of drought, three scorching days can lead to a series of wildfires.  Damn,the Chinese and their climate change hoax.

Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock

A searing heatwave and rugged terrain have hindered firefighter efforts to tackle two blazes burning out of control in the Angeles national forest.

Two wildfires are burning out of control on the outskirts of Los Angeles, forcing hundreds of families to flee and the police to deploy to deter potential looting.

A searing heatwave and rugged terrain hindered efforts to tackle the blazes which grew overnight and raged on Tuesday in Duarte and Azusa, towns in the Angeles national forest east of LA.

The proximity of the so-called Reservoir and Fish fires, separated by a canyon, prompted authorities to term them the San Gabriel Complex fire. Combined they cover 5,400 acres.

The Human Infection

Will the planet treat us like an infection?  Let’s hope not.

Let’s face it — we haven’t taken care of this planet as we should have. In fact, humanity’s relatively brief stint on Earth resembles a nasty viral infection, and sooner or later Earth might say ‘enough’s enough’ and cleanse us. But there’s still hope and a bit of time left to redeem ourselves.