Monday Nov 25, 2024
Monday Nov 25, 2024
Friday, 18 October 2019 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
The Buddha the Enlightened One on attaining enlightenment over 2,600 at Bodh Gaya uttered this paean of joy where he said, “For so many lives in the Sansara I have been looking for you the house builder, I have seen you and you will never make a house for me again.”
Post UN Climate conference in New York it is stated in the UN website https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/: Summit delivers major step up in national ambition and private sector action on pathway to key 2020 climate deadline. As recognition mounts that time is running out, youth leaders warn: ‘we will be watching’.
Major announcements by government and private sector leaders at the United Nations Climate Action Summit boosted climate action momentum, and demonstrated growing recognition that the pace of climate action must be rapidly accelerated.
Issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a United Nations body made up of scientists from around the world, the Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) evaluates the latest research relating to climate change and its impacts on global ecosystems.
This new report will be the first to specifically address the impacts of a warming world on Earth’s oceans and cryosphere — the parts of the planet that are covered in ice, such as glaciers, permafrost and sea ice — to outline the risks that they face, the IPCC said in a statement.
Data in the report represents the work of 104 scientists from 36 countries, and it references nearly 7,000 publications, according to the statement. This new report will be the first to specifically address the impacts of a warming world on Earth’s oceans and cryosphere — the parts of the planet that are covered in ice, such as glaciers, permafrost and sea ice — to outline the risks that they face, the IPCC said in a statement. Data in the report represents the work of 104 scientists from 36 countries, and it references nearly 7,000 publications, according to the statement.
Some of the topics addressed by the report will include extreme weather; sea level rise; coral reef health; ocean acidification; and threats to human communities that inhabit or depend on vulnerable marine ecosystems, according to the IPCC.
Climate change’s devastating impacts are inescapable, marked in vanishing glaciers and crumbling ice sheets. Scientists recently found that devastating storms have become wetter in recent years due to climate change, and this trend could continue in the coming decades if the planet keeps heating up.
What’s more, the runaway warming happening on Earth right now is unfolding faster than any other climate change event in the past 2,000 years, Live Science previously reported.
By comparison, global leaders’ responses to the climate crisis have been maddeningly slow. To address that, hundreds of thousands of students abandoned their classrooms on Sept. 20, marching in cities worldwide in a Global Climate Strike and calling on politicians to take action.
A gaping hole in a dying tectonic plate beneath the ocean along the West Coast of the United States may be wreaking havoc at Earth’s surface, but not in a way most people might expect.
This gash is so big it may trigger earthquakes off the coast of Northern California and could explain why Central Oregon has volcanoes, a new study found.
The researchers in the new study aren’t the first to suggest that the Michigan-size Juan de Fuca (pronounced “wahn de fyoo-kuh”) plate has a tear. But thanks to a new, detailed dataset, they’re the first to say so with certainty. [The Science of Plate Tectonics and Continental Drift (Infographic)] (Link >>)
Other frontiers
Britain’s Supreme Court has ruled Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s five-week suspension of Parliament was unlawful, prompting the Speaker to send MPs back to work. What will be the outcome come 31 October?
Eleven judges of the Supreme Court considered the matter over the past week, after the Court of Session in Scotland ruled the suspension was illegal, but the High Court in London ruled it was not a matter for the court.
On Tuesday (AEST), Lady Hale of the Supreme Court announced the judges unanimously had ruled Johnson’s suspension of Parliament was illegal. She added it “was not a normal prorogation” and it was unlawful “because it had the effect of frustrating or preventing the ability of Parliament of carrying out its function”.
In USA When Democrats won control of the US House of Representatives nearly a year ago, there was one central question: when would they launch impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump?
Nancy Pelosi, who became House Speaker when the new Congress was seated in January, quickly offered a response. There would be no impeachment proceedings, she said in March. “He’s not worth it,” Speaker Pelosi declared.
Absent bipartisan support, Pelosi said she felt impeachment hearings, in which a president’s alleged wrong doings are publicly investigated, would divide the country.
That did not silence the demands that the House launch the hearings and the drumbeat has grown louder in the past several weeks.
Representative John Lewis, a hallowed Democrat who was one of the nation’s civil rights movement pioneers, spoke on the House floor and called for impeachment proceedings to begin.
Finally, later in the day, the Speaker walked before television cameras, and made it official: “I’m announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry,” Ms. Pelosi said.
“The President must be held accountable. No one is above the law.”
US President Donald Trump’s attacks on Democrat Elijah Cummings over the weekend — deriding the black congressman’s district as “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” — represent another juvenile attempt to humiliate and belittle political adversaries with tweets featuring racist undertones.
It follows his bullying of four congresswomen of colour a fortnight earlier, telling them to “go back” to the “broken and crime infested places from which they came”.
More and more new information is coming out. All of this is adding to the rising tension among the people in USA. Now a second whistleblower too has emerged.
A federal judge says eight years of US President Donald Trump’s tax returns must be provided to Manhattan prosecutors, forcefully rejecting the President’s argument that he was immune from criminal investigations.
Key points:
Trump’s returns will not be turned over immediately, after the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan granted the President’s request to temporarily block the order, handed down by US District Judge Victor Marrero. Link >>
Then there is Syrian way and the latest developments. The White House has said Turkey will soon invade northern Syria, renewing fears of a slaughter of Kurdish fighters allied with the US in a years-long campaign against Islamic State (IS).
Key points:
For months, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been threatening to launch a military assault on the Kurdish forces in northern Syria, many of whom his Government considers terrorists. (Link >>)
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Global markets are being smashed after a rapid escalation in hostilities between the US and China over trade. The US declared China a ‘currency manipulator’ after the yuan suddenly fell in response to a new round of US tariffs. (abc.net.au)
The horror experienced in Bahamas and even in Madagascar, the floods in Spain, the extreme heat in Europe in July, the heavy rains and flooding in Japan, South Korea and North Korean and China, the forest fires in Amazon jungle are too well known and need not elaborate further.
And now in October, It’s another steamy summer day across the eastern half of the United States. The only problem? It’s October.
Temperatures are peaking on Wednesday during an extended stretch of high heat and humidity east of the Mississippi River. The mercury is soaring well into the 90s from the nation’s capital to Florida to Texas, and just about everywhere in between. Wednesday looks to be the hottest day before the heat settles south of Interstate 20 by Friday and into the weekend. Link >>
The death toll from typhoon Hagibis has reached 30 after landslides bury homes, rivers break banks in Japan.Link >>
The four great elements
In all the above weather situations it is fire, water and air. The whole of our planet and other planets too have four great elements, Earth, Water, Fire and Air. These are the foundations of the elements in the Periodic Table. So far this year three have been very active, water, fire and air.
The earth too had its share this year with many earthquakes in many countries. The most recent in Pakistan, a 5.8 magnitude earthquake has struck eastern Pakistan, killing at least 19 people and injuring more than 300, local officials say. The quake’s epicentre was close to the city of Mirpur, in Pakistan-administered Kashmir. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-49814309.
With passage of each day there is more tension building around the world, Hong Kong protests have not abated, impeachment process in USA is ongoing, rioting in Iraq and more.
In the Dhamma, the teachings of Buddha, five modes of income earning are discouraged. Buddha told lay followers to earn in the righteous way. The five modes that should not be practiced are selling of animals, selling of Meat, selling of intoxicants including liquor and others, selling of poison and selling of weapons. But sadly though these five are the biggest businesses in the world. The rich nations are in the forefront in selling weapons and liquor, but are always in the frontline when it comes to castigating smaller developing nations on small issues.
The only commodity that is manufactured from all this strife and tension is hatred. Hatred is a force of extreme high frequency. It can impact the Four Great Elements negatively leading to aberration in the natural way of the four great elements. Of conditioned things, Four Great Elements too being conditioned, Buddha said, “Bhikkus there are three characteristics in all conditioned, arising can be seen, ceasing can be seen and what is seen as permanent is the change from this to that.”
The force of hatred can impact this process in the Four Great Elements and who knows how the plate tectonics would react? With hatred amongst people mounting with each day, how will be the behaviour of plate tectonics across our planet earth be? What will happen to over 7.5 billion houses (human beings)?
