Environment

Authored by Brahma Chellaney, originally posted at Project Syndicate,

Tensions over water are rising in Asia – and not only because of conflicting maritime claims. While territorial disputes, such as in the South China Sea, attract the most attention – after all, they threaten the safety of sea lanes and freedom of navigation, which affects outside powers as well – the strategic ramifications of competition over transnationally shared freshwater resources are just as ominous.

Stunning new data from NASA indicates El Nino drove record high temperatures, suggesting man-made emissions are not to blame for global warming after all. Global average temperatures have fallen more than 1 degree since the middle of this year – coinciding with the end of El Nino – and now some scientists are arguing that the high temperatures of previous years were caused by El Nino, a cyclical natural phenomenon that has nothing to do with greenhouse gas emissions by humans. The stunning new NASA data revealing the huge drop in temperatures suggests they were right.

Simple clarification flowchart for snowflakes, swamp-rats, and sanctuary-dwellers.

Source: The Burning Platform

Israeli settlers have been forced to flee as wildfires have started to spread through areas near to settlements in the occupied West Bank. According to a police spokeswoman on Saturday nearly 1,000 settlers were forced to leave the Halamish settlement near the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah as 45 settler units were either damaged or destroyed by the fires. The blazes, fueled by drought and high winds, were raging in many locations throughout the Israeli-occupied territories on Friday . The fire in Israels third largest city Haifa has forced some 80,000 people to flee.

A group of angry farmers in Argentina have successfully stopped the expansion of a Monsanto facility and have halted future construction plans. Farmers, anti-GMO activists, and concerned citizens bravely occupied the Monsanto plant in Malvinas, Argentina, by descending on the property and refusing to vacate. Csglobe.com reports: “Residents of an Argentinian town have forced one of Monsanto’s half-completed GMO seed plants to be dismantled,” says Christina Sarich, writing for the Underground Reporter.