Russia "Ready To Shoot Down" U.S. Spy Plane

Russia "Ready To Shoot Down" U.S. Spy Plane Behind Attacks On Airbase, Says Defense Official

Zero Hedge,
30 October, 2018

A Russian defense official has doubled down on prior claims that the United States was behind a prior massive drone attack against Khmeimim Air Base near Latakia (alternately Hmeimim), which has further come under sporadic waves of attack by small armed drones which have appeared increasingly sophisticated. 

Vladimir Shamanov, head of the lower parliamentary house's defense committee and a former airborne troops commander, warned, according to a translation of his Tuesday statement by Russian Market:

In case of another U.S. drone attack on Russian Military Base in Syria, Russia is ready to shoot-down that plane. 

The threat was made against an American spy plane possibly being in the area near Syria to coordinate any future attack. Last week the Kremlin said, based on new intelligence provided by the Russian defense ministry, that a major attack on Khmeimim last January was coordinated by a US P-8 Poseidon surveillance plane. 

The nighttime January 8th attack which involved 13 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in total — 10 approached Khmeimim while 3 attempted an attack on the naval facility in Tartus. That significant attack came after a prior New Year's eve drone assault actually damaged Russian jets parked at the airbase. 

Last weekend President Putin himself addressed the uptick in drone attacks especially over just the past two months while in discussions with the leaders of Germany, France and Germany in Istanbul, according to TASS: 

Terrorists continue attacks in Idlib, with dozens of drones shot down near the Russian military base in the country in the past two months or so, Russian President Vladimir Putin told reporters after a four-party summit on Syria held in Istanbul on Saturday.

"Russia reserves the right to support the Syrian government if terrorists carry out provocations from the Idlib zone," Putin said. "Quite recently - I have informed my counterparts - artillery strikes were delivered from the Idlib zone in the direction of Aleppo. In the recent six weeks to two months, our air defense has shot down 50 aerial vehicles near our base in Hmeymim."

Though at the Istanbul summit the Russian president stopped short of blaming the U.S. for coordinating the attacks — something that Pentagon officials have vehemently denied — the words came just days after Russian Deputy Defense Minister Colonel General Alexander Fomin went public with details of a Russian intelligence report at a plenary session of the Beijing Xiangshan Forum on security last Thursday: "Thirteen drones moved according to common combat battle deployment, operated by a single crew. During all this time the American Poseidon-8 reconnaissance plane patrolled the Mediterranean Sea area for eight hours," the deputy defense minister said

These latest threats "to shoot down that plane" also follow the mistaken downing of a Russian Ilyushin-20 reconnaissance plane in mid-September with 15 crew members on board after Israel launched a massive attack on Syrian government targets. Following the incident, for which Israel expressed regret, Russia had vowed an "adequate response" and effectively declared a "no-fly zone" in the area of its assets in Syria, and further moved forward with transferring S-300 air defense systems to the Syrian government. 

With Russia's heightened rhetoric of late, it appears to be anticipating the next potential major incident over the skies of Syria — only this time Moscow has raised the stakes as it vows to follow through on attacking American or other foreign aircraft behind attacks on Russian bases and aircraft in Syria. 

Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970, report finds

More than half the world's vertebrates have disappeared since 1970; WWF sounds warning

ABC,

30 October, 2018

The number of vertebrate animals in the world has halved since 1970 and there are few signs we are slowing the trend, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has warned.

Populations of vertebrates — including African elephants, Sumatran tigers, and Australian species like the spotted-tailed quoll — have declined by an average of nearly 60 per cent globally in the past 40 years.

That's according to the WWF's latest Living Planet Report, published every two years as an update on the state of the environment.

It looks at population trends from over 4,000 species and is based on data from the Zoological Society of London and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red list, among other sources.

Land clearing for livestock grazing is the main cause of the decline, with Australia's east coast named in the report alongside the Amazon, the Congo Basin, Sumatra and New Guinea as land clearing hotspots.

Increased land clearing on Australia's east coast puts koalas on track to be extinct in New South Wales in a little over 30 years, according to WWF chief executive officer Dermot O'Gorman.

Australia is among the worst 11 countries for deforestation, according to WWF.

(Supplied: WWF)

"You wouldn't think Australia would be up there in the top 11 deforestation fronts in the world," Mr O'Gorman said.

The plight of our koalas is one of the consequences of that."

Land clearing has also spiked in Queensland since laws were eased in 2013, with more than 1 million hectares cleared since 2013.

But drought and disease are also heavily impacting koalas, according to Valentina Mella from the University of Sydney, who said numbers are definitely declining.

"There's no doubt that there are multiple threats — disease is a huge one which we don't really have a solution to at the moment," Dr Mella said.

"I'm not very optimistic about the future of koalas. I can't put a date on it, but it doesn't look good."

Nepal tigers show we can turn things around

Some species have been able to recover where we've allowed them to.

(Supplied: Matthew Scott Luskin)

The report also notes that there has been an 83 per cent decline in freshwater crocodile populations since 1970, and that the tropics have been the hardest hit.

To reverse the trend of wildlife loss, Mr O'Gorman said we need to urgently examine how we value natural resources.

"We've lost 20 per cent of the Amazon in the last 50 years, and more than 50 per cent of shallow water corals have disappeared in 30 years," he said.

"Unless we have a new deal for the relationship between people and nature, these stats are going to continue to get worse and worse."

About 22 per cent of animal habitat has been removed since 1970, according to WWF.

The conservation group also estimates that 90 per cent of the world's seabirds have plastic fragments in their stomachs, and that five taxonomic groups — birds, mammals, amphibians, corals and cycads — are in decline.

The good news, according to Mr O'Gorman, is that we know the threats and there are things we can do about them.

"We've seen for example in Nepal, tiger numbers have nearly doubled in the last decade through concerted effort by government and communities to protect them," he said.

"I think that when we, as humanity, do put our effort towards these sort of problems, we can solve them."

Climate, development major threats in future

The tropics have seen the worst population declines over the past 40 years, WWF says.

WWF lists habitat loss, overexploitation, climate change, pollution, and invasive species as the key threats that need to be addressed in order to stem the loss of wilderness and biodiversity.

Particularly in the tropics, clearing for crops like oil palm plantations are driving huge habitat losses throughout South-East Asia and the Americas.

But there are more concerted development programs that pose a threat as well.

China's ambitious "Belt and Road" initiative involves massive infrastructure construction across Europe, Asia and Africa.

Effectively the Belt and Road is the development of sea and land trade routes out of China, through countries with about half the world's population combined.

With an infrastructure cost of about $5 trillion, China says the project is being implemented to rigid ecological standards and will facilitate "a brighter future together", but critics say it will decimate the environment.

A China-backed hydropower dam planned for Sumatra, is predicted to flood critical orangutan habitat, according to research by Bill Laurance from James Cook University.

Professor Laurance has previously described the potential impacts of the Belt and Road as "flat-out scary".

And climate change is already taking its toll on wildlife, including koalas, according to Dr Mella.

"We know that climate change is affecting them. They're animals that sit in trees, and if it's 40 degrees, they sit in 40 degrees," she said.

An IPCC report released last month predicted that unless urgent action is taken to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, warming will reach 2 degrees Celsius by late this century.

At that level of warming, extinctions are likely to increase dramatically, and experts say the majority of world's corals — including on the Great Barrier Reef — will disappear.

Russian scientists find new sources of methane

Russian scientists find new greenhouse gas sources in the Arctic

Scientists found new sources of methane emissions in the Arctic during an expedition on board the Akademik Keldysh research vessel

TASS,

30 October, 2018

MOSCOW, October 29. /TASS/. Russian scientists during an expedition on board the Akademik Keldysh research vessel found new sources of methane emissions in the Arctic, the Ministry of Education and Science’s press service said on Friday.

Experts say thawing of the Arctic Ocean’s underwater and coastal permafrost causes massive emissions of greenhouse gases - methane and carbon dioxide. The growing emissions may affect the planet’s climate system.

"Russian scientists have found a new big area in the East Arctic’s seas with big emissions of greenhouse gases," the press service said. "They also saw that emissions in earlier found areas had become more active."

According to specialists, the new area of methane’s massive emissions from sediments has formed recently, as only a few years earlier, during previous expeditions, that field was not found. Thus, they say, the process proves continuing anomalously quick degradation of the permafrost on the ocean floor.

Scientists received another confirmation of the continuing processes as they took pictures of the Podkova (horseshoe) seep field. Seeps are areas where methane bubbles fountain from the seafloor. The field’s diameter has multiplied since the previous studies in 2014.

The Akademik M. Keldysh research vessel returned to Arkhangelsk’s port on October 25. A team of specialists from Russia’s leading scientific institutions worked for 35 days. At the East Arctic’s seas, they made a complex of bio-geo-chemical, geo-physical and geological studies.

The expedition went offshore the East Arctic seas - the World Ocean’s widest and most shallow shelf, which keeps giant resources of oil, coal, and natural gas, mostly methane

Strange phenomenon on the surface of Mars

Mysterious 900 MILE long 'plume' cloud spotted on the surface of Mars near a giant volcano

• Huge cloud is now over 900 miles (1500km) long and began forming near the 20 km-high Arsia Mons volcano
• Scientists believe the vast cloud is not caused by volcanic activity, but is a water ice cloud
• Believed the vast dust storm earlier this year on Mars may be behind its huge size

Since 13 September 2018, the Visual Monitoring Camera (VMC) on board ESA's Mars Express has been observing the of a curious cloud formation. The cloud can be seen in this VMC image taken 10 October as the white, elongated feature extending 1500 km westward of the volcano. The huge cloud is now over 900 miles (1500km) long, and began forming near the 20 km-high Arsia Mons volcano, close to the planet’s equator.

Daily Mail,

30 October, 2018

Scientists are closely tracking a mysterious giant 'plume' cloud on the surface of Mars.

The huge cloud is now over 900 miles (1500km) long, and began forming near the 20 km-high Arsia Mons volcano, close to the planet’s equator.

However, scientists believe the vast cloud is not caused by volcanic activity.

Instead, it is a water ice cloud 'driven by the influence of the volcano’s leeward slope on the air flow' – something that scientists call an orographic or lee cloud – and a regular phenomenon in this region.

'The cloud’s appearance varies throughout the martian day, growing in length during local morning downwind of the volcano, almost parallel to the equator, and reaching such an impressive size that could make it visible even to telescopes on Earth,' the European Space Agency said.

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Left, The water ice cloud, which arises as the volcano slope interacts with the air flow, can be seen as the white, elongated feature in the lower left part of the image, extending westward of the volcano and casting a shadow on the surface. The image was taken on 17 September 2018, from an altitude of 11 000 km. North is up. Right, The cloud began forming near the 20 km-high Arsia Mons volcano, close to the planet’s equator. a comparison, the cone-shaped volcano has a diameter of about 250 km; a view of the region with labels is provided here.

ESA’s Mars Express has been observing the evolution of the storm since 13 September.

The formation of water ice clouds is sensitive to the amount of dust present in the atmosphere, ESA said.

These images, obtained after the major dust storm that engulfed the entire planet in June and July, will provide important information on the effect of dust on the cloud development and on its variability throughout the year.

The High Resolution Stereo Camera on board ESA’s Mars Express snapped a view of a curious cloud formation that appears regularly in the vicinity of the Arsia Mons volcano. This water ice cloud, which arises as the volcano slope interacts with the air flow, can be seen as the long white feature extending to the lower right of the volcano. The cloud, which measures 915 km in this view, also casts a shadow on the surface. This image was taken on 21 September 2018 from an altitude of about 6930 km. North is up.

Mars just experienced its northern hemisphere winter solstice on 16 October. 

In the months leading up to the solstice, most cloud activity disappears over big volcanoes like Arsia Mons; its summit is covered with clouds throughout the rest of the martian year.

However, a seasonally recurrent water ice cloud, like the one shown in this image, is known to form along the southwest flank of this volcano - it was previously observed by Mars Express and other missions in 2009, 2012 and 2015. 

THE MARTIAN MEGASTORM KILLING OPPORTUNITY: WHAT DO WE KNOW?

The Martian dust storm that has blotted out the sun above Opportunity has continued to intensify.

The storm has been growing since the end of May, and by mid-June had already covered 14-million square miles (35-million square kilometers) of Mars' surface, or a quarter of the planet.

Now, the experts say it’s grown to be a planet-circling dust event – though they don’t quite know what’s driving it.

This series of images shows simulated views of a darkening Martian sky blotting out the Sun from NASA's Opportunity rover's point of view, with the right side simulating Opportunity's current view in the global dust storm (June 2018). The left starts with a blindingly bright mid-afternoon sky, with the sun appearing bigger because of brightness. The right shows the Sun so obscured by dust it looks like a pinprick. Each frame corresponds to a tau value, or measure of opacity: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11.

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This graphic compares atmospheric opacity in different Mars years from the point of view of NASA’s Opportunity rover. The green spike in 2018 (Mars Year 34) shows how quickly the global dust storm building at Mars blotted out the sky. A previous dust storm in 2007 (red, Mars Year 28) was slower to build

When the orbiter team saw the storm nearing Opportunity, they notified the rover's team to begin preparing contingency plans.

In a matter of days, the storm had ballooned. 

It now spans more than 7 million square miles (18 million square kilometers) -- an area greater than North America -- and includes Opportunity's current location at Perseverance Valley. 

More importantly, the swirling dust has raised the atmospheric opacity, or 'tau,' in the valley.

This is comparable to an extremely smoggy day that blots out sunlight. The rover uses solar panels to provide power and to recharge its batteries.

Opportunity's power levels had dropped significantly by Wednesday, June 6, requiring the rover to shift to minimal operations.

On June 12, NASA confirmed the rover had fallen silent. 

Farmers attacking Brazilian natives

Farmers attacking Brazilian natives on the border with Paraguay

Farmers attacking Brazilian natives on the border with Paraguay. They are without water, without food. Rent killers are still attacking indigenous people.

Brazil's new president threatens the Amazon

Scientists are terrified that Brazil's new president will destroy the 'lungs of the planet'

• On Sunday, Brazil elected the far-right presidential candidate Jair Bolsonaro.
• Scientists across the globe are worried about Bolsonaro’s plans.
• Bolsonaro has indicated he wants to plow through Brazil’s Amazon, the Earth’s biggest and most diverse tropical rainforest, which helps cool the planet.

Business Insider,

31 October, 2018

Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s far-right presidential candidate,swept the polls on Sunday to win the election.

“Brazilians are exhausted by corruption, by rising violence, by an economy that just hasn’t improved,” and Bolsonaro has made a lot of promises to fix those things, according to Peter Prengaman, The Associated Press’ Brazil news director.

Bolsonaro, who has been called the “Trump of the Tropics” and has a history of making anti-gay, misogynistic,violent, and racistcomments, is also taking aim at the country’s environmental policies. And scientists across the globe are worried.

As Brazil’s president, Bolsonaro will control nearly two-thirds of the Amazon, the largest tropical rainforest on Earth. He has argued that too many environmentally protected areas are hampering the country’s development.

Bolsonaro has said he’s thinking about opening up a highway through the Amazon and barring environmental nongovernmental organisations like Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund from the country, The Guardian reported earlier this month.

Bolsonaro plans to cut down more of the world’s largest tropical rainforest, and critics fear he’ll ‘institutionalize genocide’ in the Amazon

Bolsonaro recently promised reporters that Brazil would stay in the Paris agreement, the landmark global climate deal he has been critical of in the past. But it’s unclear how he’d uphold Brazil’s end of that deal while simultaneously cutting down large swaths of the Amazon, which helps keep the world cool.

Bolsonaro has also indicated he plans to eliminate Brazil’s Ministry of the Environment, Science magazine reported.

“His reckless plans to industrialize the Amazon in concert with Brazilian and international agribusiness and mining sectors will bring untold destruction to the planet’s largest rainforest and the communities who call it home and spell disaster for the global climate,” Christian Poirier, the program director of Amazon Watch, said in a statement after Bolsonaro’s election.

Poirier isn’t the only one who’s concerned.

“I think we are headed for a very dark period in the history of Brazil,” Paulo Artaxo, a climate change researcher at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, told Science. “There is no point sugarcoating it. Bolsonaro is the worst thing that could happen for the environment.”

Genevieve Guenther, who founded EndClimateSilence.org, said on Twitter that Bolsonaro’s election “guarantees that Brazil will do nothing to curb pollution emission and untold acres of the Amazon rainforest will be destroyed,” while the meteorologist Eric Holthaus argued that a forest-privatization scheme that the new president has in mind is essentially “planetary suicide.”

Other scientists, like Jess Phoenix, a volcanologist who ran in a Democratic primary race in Southern California over the summer, agreed.

Some indigenous people who live in the forest said they feared that more loggers and miners could head toward their homes under Bolsonaro.

“We are very scared. I fear for my own life,” Dinaman Tuxa, the national coordinator of Brazil’s Association of Indigenous Peoples, said in an interview with Brazil de Facto, adding that Bolsonaro would “institutionalize genocide.”

Christopher Dick, a tropical-plant expert at the University of Michigan, said on Twitter that if Bolsonaro “carries through on his rhetoric we can expect tribal genocide, torture of dissidents, and climate altering destruction of Amazon forest.”

“This is a nightmare scenario,” he added. “I hope I am wrong.”

The Amazon is literally breathing life into the planet

Plants in the rainforest suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, use the carbon to grow, and release oxygen back into the air. This is why the Amazon, which covers 2.1 million square miles, is often referred to as the “lungs of the planet.”

The forest helps our spinning ball breathe carbon dioxide in and exhale oxygen back out, performing a critical check on human-fuelled climate change. Scientists have estimated that the Amazon may house one-sixth of the carbon stored in vegetation around the world.

Environmental experts argue that this carbon-sucking system is one of the best solutions we have for climate change.

“We have to take carbon dioxide basically out of the atmosphere in order to prevent a very dangerous increase in temperature, and major increases in floods, severe storms, and heat waves,” Doug Boucher, a science adviser at the Union of Concerned Scientists,told Grist magazine earlier this month. “The best way we know to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere is to preserve and rebuild forests.”

Though the Amazon is the most diverse forest on the planet, scientists say that less than 0.5% of its flowering plant species have been studied for their medicinal potential, according to the WWF. Adamning new report the organisation released Tuesday said it found that “a fifth of the Amazon has disappeared in just 50 years.”

As Brazil has raced to keep pace with demand for more beef and soybean production, pieces of the Amazon the size of entire countries have been cleared. In one particularly intense tree-cutting period from 1991 to 2000, an area the size of Spain was cut down. That rapid pace of deforestation has slowed in recent years, though the trend of trading trees for livestock and agriculture is expected to continue.

Even though Amazonian soil is not good for farming, scientists estimate that an area the size of Delaware, or more than 1,900 square miles, was bulldozed through last year, and they expect that to rise under Bolsonaro.

Farmers attacking Brazilian natives on the border with Paraguay. They are without water, without food. Rent killers are still attacking indigenous people.

Farmers attacking Brazilian natives on the border with Paraguay

Farmers attacking Brazilian natives on the border with Paraguay. They are without water, without food. Rent killers are still attacking indigenous people.