Gerard Kennedy, who has represented the Liberals on both the provincial and federal level, has announced his bid for leadership of the Ontario Liberal Party.
The former Ontario cabinet minister, who once campaigned, unsuccessfully, for the federal Liberal leadership, made his candidacy official Monday in a prepared statement and a video posted to his website.
“I believe that public service is a privilege and it’s time for those of us who believe that to come together to deliver a better government,” Kennedy said in the video.
In the short clip, Kennedy called upon members of the Liberal party for support, particularly those who have not been active in the party as of late.
“I need you to work with me,” he said, gesturing towards viewers with both his hands. “I need you to join me in showing people what Liberals can do at their best.”
Kennedy was first elected as an MPP in 1996 in the Toronto riding of York-South, making him the first Liberal member of provincial Parliament to represent the area.
He was later elected as MPP for Toronto’s Parkdale – High Park riding and served as Ontario’s Minister of Education between 2003 and 2006.
A cup of morning coffee could be much harder to find, and much more expensive, before the century is out thanks to climate change and the possible extinction of wild Arabica beans.
That’s the warning behind a new study by U.K. and Ethiopian researchers who say the beans that go into 70 per cent of the world’s coffee could be wiped out by 2080.
Researchers at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew and the Environment and Coffee Forest Forum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia looked at how climate change might make some land unsuitable for Arabica plants, which are highly vulnerable to temperature change and other dangers including pests and disease.
They came up with a best-case scenario that predicts a 38 per cent reduction in land capable of yielding Arabica by 2080. The worst-case scenario puts the loss at between 90 per cent and 100 per cent.
There is a “high risk of extinction” says the study, which was published this week in the academic journal Plos One.
That would be bad news for both coffee drinkers and coffee-producing countries such as Ethiopia, Brazil and Colombia, which in 2009/2010 shipped some 93 million bags of coffee around the world, worth an estimated $15.4 billion.
Most coffee is made from Arabica beans. They are prized for their genetic diversity and grow best at between 18 C and 21 C. Above that, the plants ripen too quickly — which affects taste — or grow too slowly. Other coffee stems from Robusta beans.
The study goes on to note that its results are “conservative” because it did not take into account the large-scale deforestation of the Arabica-suitable highland forests of Ethiopia and South Sudan.
Precise modelling of the influence of climate change on Arabica coffee is limited; there are no data available for indigenous populations of this species. In this study we model the present and future predicted distribution of indigenous Arabica, and identify priorities in order to facilitate appropriate decision making for conservation, monitoring and future research. Using distribution data we perform bioclimatic modelling and examine future distribution with the HadCM3 climate model for three emission scenarios (A1B, A2A, B2A) over three time intervals (2020, 2050, 2080). The models show a profoundly negative influence on indigenous Arabica. In a locality analysis the most favourable outcome is a c. 65% reduction in the number of pre-existing bioclimatically suitable localities, and at worst an almost 100% reduction, by 2080. In an area analysis the most favourable outcome is a 38% reduction in suitable bioclimatic space, and the least favourable a c. 90% reduction, by 2080. Based on known occurrences and ecological tolerances of Arabica, bioclimatic unsuitability would place populations in peril, leading to severe stress and a high risk of extinction. This study establishes a fundamental baseline for assessing the consequences of climate change on wild populations of Arabica coffee. Specifically, it: (1) identifies and categorizes localities and areas that are predicted to be under threat from climate change now and in the short- to medium-term (2020–2050), representing assessment priorities for ex situ conservation; (2) identifies ‘core localities’ that could have the potential to withstand climate change until at least 2080, and therefore serve as long-term in situ storehouses for coffee genetic resources; (3) provides the location and characterization of target locations (populations) for on-the-ground monitoring of climate change influence. Arabica coffee is confimed as a climate sensitivite species, supporting data and inference that existing plantations will be neagtively impacted by climate change.
To keep in contact with an ever growing armada of spacecraft ESA has developed a tracking station network called ESTRACK. This is a worldwide system of ground stations providing links between satellites in orbit and ESA’s Operations Control Centre (ESOC) located in Darmstadt, Germany. The core ESTRACK network comprises 10 stations in seven countries. Major construction has now been completed on the final piece of this cosmic jigsaw, one of the world’s most sophisticated satellite tracking stations at Malargüe, Argentina, 1000 km west of Buenos Aires.
ESA’s Core Network comprises 10 ESTRACK stations: Kourou (French Guiana), Maspalomas, Villafranca (Spain), Redu (Belgium), Santa Maria (Portugal), Kiruna (Sweden), Perth (Australia) which host 5.5-, 13-, 13.5- or 15-metre antennas. The new tracking station (DSA3) at Malargüe in Argentina, joins two other 35-metre deep-space antennas at New Norcia (DSA1) in Australia (completed in 2002) and Cebreros (DSA2) in Spain, (completed in 2005) to form the European Deep Space Network.
The essential task of ESTRACK stations is to communicate with missions, up-linking commands and down-linking scientific data and spacecraft status information. The tracking stations also gather radiometric data to tell mission controllers the location, trajectory and velocity of their spacecraft, to search for and acquire newly launched spacecraft, in addition to auto-tracking, frequency and timing control using atomic clocks and gathering atmospheric and weather data.
Deep-space missions can be over 2 million kilometres away from the Earth. Communicating at such distances requires highly accurate mechanical pointing and calibration systems. The 35m stations provide the improved range, radio technology and data rates required to send commands, receive data and perform radiometric measurements for current and next-generation exploratory missions such as Mars Express, Venus Express, Rosetta, Herschel, Planck, Gaia, BepiColombo, ExoMars, Solar Orbiter and Juice.
DSA3 is located at 1500m altitude in the clear Argentinian desert air, this and ultra-low-temperature amplifiers installed at the station, have meant that performance has exceeded expectations. The first test signals were received in June 2012 from Mars Express, over a distance of about 193 million km, proving that the station’s technology is ready for duty.
[. . .]
The tracking capability of all three ESA deep space stations also work in cooperation with partner agencies such as NASA and Japan’s JAXA, helping to boost science data return for all. The three Deep Space Antenna can be linked to the 7 stations comprising the Core Network as well as five other stations making up the larger Augmented Network and eleven additional stations that make up a global Cooperative Network with other space agencies from around the world.
Now that major construction is complete, teams are preparing DSA 3 for hand-over to operations, formal inauguration late this year and entry in routine service early in 2013.
According to the ancient Maya calendar, Dec. 21, 2012 will mark the end of a grand cycle of 13 144,000-day “baktuns”, lasting 5,126 years.
“It’s offensive, it’s an insult, and it is contradictory for indigenous people to continue to be steeped in poverty while public funds are squandered on celebrating,” activist Ricardo Cajas, of the non-governmental Guatemalan Council of Maya Organisations (COMG), told IPS.
“There is nothing to celebrate,” he said. “This is an event involving traditional wisdom, which allows us to make an analysis of the ‘internal colonialism’ we see in Guatemala, where a dominant class keeps indigenous people in a state of subsistence and extreme poverty.”
In Guatemala, indigenous people make up close to 40 percent of the population of 15 million according to official statistics, although native organisations put the figure at over 60 percent.
But Guatemala has never had an indigenous president, and only 19 of the 158 members of the single-chamber Congress are Indians. And the only member of the cabinet who identifies himself as native is the minister of culture and sports, Carlos Batzín.
Governments in “Mesoamerica” – a cultural area extending from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, where advanced civilisations like the Maya flourished before Spain’s colonisation of the Americas – are planning major celebrations of the end of the Maya long-count calendar.
[. . .]
The hype and promotion surrounding the end of the current era has led to a surge in global interest in the ancient Maya civilisation and to an explosion of tourism to Maya historical and cultural sites in Mesoamerica.
According to historians, the 13th baktun began on Aug. 11, 3114 BC and ends Dec. 21, 2012, and a new era begins the following day.
The end of the current baktun has also given rise to predictions of catastrophes and even prophecies about the end of the world, which have been debunked by indigenous leaders.
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