Ebola and Other Diseases: The role of Climate Change and Deforestation

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This week the World Health Organisation described the current Ebola outbreak as ‘the most severe acute health emergency in modern times’, with the epidemic now killing more people than all previous Ebola outbreaks combined.

Whilst epidemics on this scale are thankfully rare, there are increasing fears that our burgeoning population, warming climate and rapid urbanisation of previously forested land has already increased the pace in which deadly diseases can infect and spread amongst humans. As deforestation and climate change look set to get worse before they get better, are we facing a future of greater risk from global disease?

5 Ways to Geoengineer Earth's Climate

Artificially changing one of natures most complicated and global systems may sound like something out of science fiction, but geoengineering Earth's climate system is becoming increasingly likely to play a part in remediating anthropogenic climate change. Geoengineering also promotes one of the benefits of climate change; a chance to explore the innovation and new technologies that come alongside each new problem faced by humanity. With this in mind, here's a run down of some geoengineering projects that have been proposed to counter climate change:

Earth's Weather and Climate: Online Tools to Explore the Data

Data has become so commonplace in our day-to-day life that we seldom appreciate just how much information we collect on a daily basis. The challenge is not in compiling the data, however, but in how best to portray it in a way that allows us to distinguish between meaningful trends and insignificant noise. With the advent of the internet, scores of websites have come online that deals with this problem in new and inventive ways, using data previously inaccessible to the general public. Whereas before we could only visualise datasets through graphs or pictures, we can now interact with datasets, painting a much more thorough and informative picture.

However, another problem is knowing how to find these websites. This post will overview just some of the free and readily available tools that can be used to visualise climate change and weather statistics in an elegant and engaging way.

India's Energy: How to Power 1.2 Billion People

India is a country so unique and huge that there are few facts or anecdotes can do justice to the sub-continents dizzying mix of culture, religion and languages. It is a country that simply must be explored, and one that I'm lucky enough to have just spent the past few months travelling across.

On an environmental front it is apparently a country of extremes; streets are dusty and dirty, stagnant water is often filled with malodorous waste and the city air is thick with smog. On the other side of the coin, however, it is a country in transition. Its green-energy growth is faster than almost anywhere else on Earth and, by raw numbers alone, the average Indian lives a far more sustainable life than the average westerner.

The Top 5 Most Influential Climate Change Deniers

When truth is inconvenient there will always be those that discourage it. Few people, for example, are foolish enough to refute the causative link between smoking and respiratory disease that has been demonstrated in medical science since the 1950s, and yet lobbyists still, to this day, fund pro-smoking policies to protect the tobacco industry.

The same is true of climate science. The threat of fossil fuel divestment and enforced cuts in greenhouse gas emissions gives a clear motive for various stakeholders to promote climate denial. A recent study examining US tax records has suggested that between 2003 and 2010 a total of 140 foundations made over $558 million of grants to promote human-caused climate change as a scientific mistake. Unfortunately, this likely represents just the tip of the iceberg with potential donors, keeping an eye on PR, reducing the amount of publicly traceable donations.

The Untapped Potential of Geothermal Energy

You only have to see the steam billowing from Iceland's naturally heated 'Blue Lagoon' to realise the potential geothermal energy has to provide more than enough heat in even the coldest of places.

The 'Land of Fire and Ice' sits atop a plume of magma that lends itself perfectly to the exploitation of geothermal heat. This rather neglected renewable energy source has huge potential, and not just in Iceland. New technologies and growing demand makes geothermal power a possibility all across the world. At the moment, only 5% of global production potential is realised and the sector is growing by 10% each year.

Water Water Everywhere? The Future of our Water Supply

Worrying about water is nothing new. Finding reliable sources of water has long been a primary concern of our ancestors. Think how many major cities of the world surround rivers; the Nile, for example, literally acts as an artery of human civilisation (pictured).

Industrialisation and the subsequent explosion of population during the 1800s marked the start of major shortages, and by the turn of the 20th Century about 2% of people experienced 'chronic' water shortage. By 1960, this number had risen to 9% (280 million people) and by 2005 it affected a staggering 35% of the world's population (2.3 billion people).

In some areas, water is becoming as valued as oil and some predict it to be a major source of conflict and war in the 21st Century and beyond. Unfortunately, things may be about to get worse. Recently, research has indicated that climate change will seriously impact water availability and this, when coupled with our rapidly rising population, makes water supply one of the most serious challenges facing human development.