Thread: Merkel: Europe 'can no longer rely on allies' after Trump and Brexit

Merkel: Europe 'can no longer rely on allies' after Trump and Brexit

14 minutes ago
From the section Europe

Europe can no longer "completely depend" on the US and UK following the election of President Trump and Brexit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel says.

Mrs Merkel said she wanted friendly relations with both countries as well as Russia but Europe now had to "fight for its own destiny".

Her comments come after Mr Trump refused to re-commit to the 2015 Paris climate deal at the G7 summit.

Mrs Merkel is on the campaign trail ahead of elections in September.

"The times in which we could completely depend on others are on the way out. I've experienced that in the last few days," Mrs Merkel told a crowd at an election rally in Munich, southern Germany.

The relationship between Berlin and new French President Emmanuel Macron had to be a priority, Mrs Merkel said, adding: "We Europeans have to take our destiny into our own hands."

On Saturday, the German leader had described climate change talks at the G7 group of rich nations as "very unsatisfactory".

Leaders from the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan had re-affirmed their support for the Paris accord - but Mr Trump said he would make a decision in the coming week.

Mr Trump has previously pledged to abandon the Paris deal, and expressed doubts about climate change.

Speaking in Brussels last week, Mr Trump also told Nato members to spend more money on defence and did not re-state his administration's commitment to Nato's mutual security guarantees.

Mrs Merkel's latest comments are partly a move to appeal to German voters first and foremost, the BBC's Europe editor Katya Adler says.

Polls suggest Mrs Merkel is on course to be re-elected for a fourth term as German chancellor at elections in September.

Passionate Merkel - BBC's Damien McGuinness in Berlin:

It might have been thanks to the beer, pretzels and Bavarian brass-band enlivening the crowd.

But Mrs Merkel's words were uncharacteristically passionate and unusually forthright. By all means keep friendly relations with Trump's America and Brexit Britain, was the message - but we can't rely on them.

Rapturous applause greeted her fiery calls for Europeans to fight for their own destiny.

No wonder she's sounding confident. France has a new president who shares her pro free-trade, Europhile values, so there is a positive feeling in Europe that the EU's Franco-German motor is back in business.

With four months to go before elections, Angela Merkel's position also looks stronger than ever domestically. Initial enthusiasm for her centre-left rival Martin Schulz has fizzled out. And Sunday's beer-tent event underscored her strength by marking an end to a potential split with her Bavarian sister conservative party.

She might not have welcomed Brexit or Trump. But it seems that Mrs Merkel has decided that standing up for the EU will only strengthen her chances of winning another term in September.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-40078183

Hmmmm. Well, we can't rely on Germany to comply with the NATO agreement and the only reason Merkel and Germany are so "passionate" about the Paris Accord is because they are one of the largest producers of solar panels. When you use "accords" to beat up on fossil fuels in the name of "global warming" and "climate change", you increase your sales of solar panels. It has nothing to do with being "European", it has to do with Germany being Germany. We've been down this road before, a couple of times. And if she thinks anyone let alone the United States is going to stand by for a third go around, then someone needs to bop her in the head with a 2 x 4 until she thinks right again.

And France, this time you better be damn sure who your friends really are.

Sounds like Merkel didn't like getting her overdue bill.

She's mad because Trump didn't fall for her "Paris Accord" scam to support Germany's solar panel sales at the expense of fossil fuels. Or at least he hasn't yet. I hope he pulls out. Our coal and oil and gas industries, automotive industries and many others are adversely impacted by the Paris Accord. That doesn't mean we can't run our own program to reduce pollution of all types including ALL the greenhouse gases.

Hasn't anyone asked why the Paris Accord only focuses on carbon emissions instead of all greenhouse gas emissions? The answer is, it isn't about the environment, it's about promoting Germany's solar panel industry, solar panel production involves all types of toxins and pollutants, it also takes almost as much energy to produce the panels as the panels can produce in their lifetime. All is not what it seems, so please don't believe the Globalists posing to be concerned about our "environment". Like everything else, it's all about the money, ours or theirs, and I'd prefer it be sucking on theirs instead of ours for a change.

BUSINESS 12/02/2015 03:45 pm ET
How American Exceptionalism Is Destroying The Planet, In 2 Charts

Our carbon emissions per capita are twice Western Europe’s.

By Shane Ferro

BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY IMAGES

America.

At the COP21 conference in Paris this week, world leaders met to attempt an agreement on a global solution to one of humanity’s biggest problems: climate change.

But while this is now a worldwide problem, it’s one that a small part of the population is disproportionately responsible for. It’s our problem. Me, you, people who are wealthy enough to own smartphones, computers, cars and big-screen televisions.

A new report out by economists Lucas Chancel and Thomas Piketty shows just how unequal carbon emissions are around the world. (There’s a short version published byOxfam here, and a full, bilingual version here.) They find that richest 10 percent of people in the world are responsible for half of the total lifestyle consumption emissions, or those emissions related to things that people buy. This particular statistic is one my colleague Sam Levine wrote about at greater length.

OXFAM

Consumers in North America are the worst offenders. The chart below shows carbon emissions by region per capita, or the average per person in the population. North Americans are ruining the planet at twice the rate of their Western European counterparts.

CHANCEL/PIKETTY

Climate change is not just a North American problem, but we’re more responsible than almost anyone else. That should probably play a part in proposed solutions.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/american-lifestyle-consumption-emissions_us_565f363be4b072e9d1c45a29

Carbon Dioxide May Destroy All Coral Reefs by the End of the Century

By Science Progress - Sep 19, 2011, 3:42 PM CDT

A new book out this week by United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health leader Peter Sale predicts that coral reefs will be wiped off the face of the earth by the end of the century. Sheril Kirshenbaum, author and reserach associate at the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy, explains why in this climate progress cross-post.

Marine chemist Richard Feely, a senior scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, has been collecting water samples in the North Pacific for over 30 years. He’s observed a decrease in pH at the upper part of the water column, notably the region where carbon dioxide from automobile exhaust, coal-fired power plants, and other human activities has collected. This surface water is now acidic enough to dissolve the shells of some marine animals such as corals, plankton, and mollusks in laboratory experiments. Feely’s findings are just one sign of a troubling global phenomenon called ocean acidification.

We spend a lot of time worrying about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as a form of pollution and also as a key greenhouse gas that traps solar heat. But we pay less attention to the effects emissions have in the ocean. There is no debate that rapidly increasing seawater acidity is the result of man-made carbon emissions.

“The chemistry of the uptake of carbon dioxide and its changing pH of seawater is very, very clear,” explains Feely.


SOURCE: The independant.co.uk

The oceans absorb an estimated 22 million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere every day. This buffers the greenhouse effect by drawing the planet-warming gas out of the atmosphere and storing it in water, but at a great cost to ocean life. This carbon mixes with the salt water to create carbonic acid, which immediately breaks down, forming bicarbonate and hydrogen. And this excess hydrogen increases the water’s acidity.

Higher acidity, in turn, makes life difficult for marine animals by hampering their ability to form shells and skeletons. For microscopic plankton and many other species at the base of marine food chains, this means slower growth and potential population decline. These problems trickle up to affect the large fish that depend on smaller organisms for food.

Acidification also causes some coral species to grow more slowly or disappear. Since coral reefs support 25 percent of the ocean’s species of fish, this spells widespread trouble. Marine ecosystems are so interconnected, in fact, that scientists cannot predict the full effects of acidification. They only know that changes in the availability of food and in community structure can scale up quickly.

Carbon emissions released since the start of the industrial revolution have sped the process of ocean acidification, leaving little time for plants and animals to adapt to altered conditions. Scientists now anticipate an average pH decline from 8.1 units to 7.8 in oceans by the end of this century. According to John Guinotte, a marine biogeographer at the Marine Biology Conservation Institute, in Washington, D.C., human activity is now increasing the amount of CO2 in the ocean at an accelerating rate. “Unless we alter human behavior,” he warns, “we may experience irreversible shifts in the marine environment that can have dire consequences for life on Earth.”

An international team of marine biologists recently traveled to Papua New Guinea where excess CO2 released from volcanic activity has already decreased local ocean pH to the levels that are expected globally by 2100. In this area, they found that more than 90 percent of the region’s coral reef species were lost. The study provided a glimpse of how oceans might one day change around the world and serves as a warning that we must curb carbon emissions as quickly as possible.

For us on land, ocean acidification will do more than raise the cost of seafood. A decline in reefs worldwide, for example, would make coastal communities more vulnerable to storm surges and hurricanes. Meanwhile, the fishing and shellfish industries stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars, and countless jobs, because of acidification’s effects on shellfish, as well as associated changes in the populations of larger species. In the United States, oyster hatcheries in the Pacific Northwest have already experienced reduced shell growth due to higher acidity levels. No one can predict the full consequences of ocean acidification, but it’s clear our own species will experience them in many ways.

“About one billion people throughout the world depend on protein from fish for survival, so we have to think about what this means for international food security,” explains Feely.

Carbon emissions clearly cause problems beyond climate change. And because sea waters mix slowly, whether or not we reduce emissions now, acidification will continue for centuries. If Congress cannot act to restrict emissions, it must as least ensure that marine scientists have the funding needed to study the effects of changing pH on different marine species and, in the decades ahead, to search for ways to mitigate the effects of ocean acidification.

By Sheril Kirshenbaum
Source: Science Progress

http://oilprice.com/The-Environment/...e-Century.html

And when war breaks out from your open border policy...do NOT rely on American's lives, blood OR treasure to bail you out.

Be ready to fight your own battles and defend your own country due to your poor policies destroying your Country.

Time for ALL countries to start loading up and deporting these refugees, asylum liars and illegal aliens. They must go back and fix their own countries...NOT abandon them!

The Gravy Train is OVER.

It seems trump is ignorant due to his make money blinders and glad to read he is starting to open his eyes since his papal visit and receiving the encyclical on climate change and its effects.
Am very disappointed in cabinet selections that are not qualified - trash science. Please there are so many studies on pesticides causing asthma, cancer, brain damage to children, endocrine disruptors, etc. If your endocrine system, your glands are dysfunctional, well how many diseases cascade? That does not mean that incompetent obama's EPA regulations should be sacred but neither should trashing all environmental concerns FOR INDUSTRY, STOCK HOLDERS' PROFITS.

Reefs:
A new way to predict and prevent the end of coral reefs

© Jürgen Freund / WWF
Date: January 05, 2017

For the first time, researchers have created models to predict when, where, and to what extent coral bleaching will occur in reefs around the world at a finer scale than ever before. Because many countries depend on their reefs for food, tourism, and costal protection, knowing when and where bleaching will occur could help government officials, natural resource managers, and conservationists make informed decisions on how and where to prioritize conservation work.
Coral reefs are especially vulnerable to climate change impacts because they are easily stressed by changes in water temperature. Bleaching occurs when above-average sea temperatures or other stressors disrupt coral’s mutualistic relationship with the algae, called zooxanthellae, that lives within its tissue. When stressed, the algae leaves the coral, causing it to turn white and leaving it much more vulnerable to disease and death.
The study, entitled “Local-scale projections of coral reef futures and implications of the Paris Agreement,” published in Nature Scientific Reports, predicts that all coral reefs will experience annual bleaching by the end of this century, but tells us which reefs are likely to bleach sooner. Scientists from multiple organizations and universities analyzed data on where warming sea surface temperatures will have the greatest effects on reefs in the near future.

© Jerker Tamelander

© Jürgen Freund / WWF

The models created in the study account for two emissions scenarios: assuming pledges 196 nations made in a landmark global plan to curb climate change take place, and assuming nations do not follow through on the agreements. Even if everyone follows through on their commitments to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, coral reefs are still on the decline and expected to experience severe loss in the coming decades. But this loss will be comparatively slower and allow more time for people to develop and implement potential solutions to the problem.

“We are going to need to be much more innovative and proactive if we want to see coral reefs thrive into the next century,” said WWF lead marine scientist and study co-author Dr. Gabby Ahmadia. “Conventional conservation is not going to cut it against the impacts of climate change. We need to embrace the new climate reality to guide efforts to save our oceans”.
Corals can sometimes recover, depending on the severity of the bleaching, but they don’t always. Just this last year, more than 90% of coral on the Northern Great Barrier Reef in Australia was affected by bleaching, and more than 20% of it died as a result.
https://www.worldwildlife.org/storie...ntent=1707c-ed

Ancient Deep Sea Corals Need Protection From Modern Threats

Posted by Lee Crockett of The Pew Charitable Trusts in Ocean Views on January 4, 2017

Sandra Brooke on board the research vessel Atlantis, with the submersible Alvin behind her, in 2000. During this trip off the Central American coast, she logged her third dive to the East Pacific Rise hydrothermal vents in the eastern Pacific Ocean. For 90 minutes, Sandra Brooke sat in the chilly darkness of a titanium sphere as she dropped more than 8,000 feet into the Pacific Ocean off Costa Rica.
When she and another scientist in the small submarine reached the bottom, where two of the Earth’s tectonic plates meet, their onboard pilot flipped on the outside lights.
The Johnson-Sea-Link submersible, carrying Brooke and pilot Don Libertore, returns from a dive to the deck of a research vessel after exploring deep-sea corals off the east-Central Florida coast in 2005. Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute in South Florida owned and operated the submersible. “It’s amazing. You’re looking at an ecosystem that shouldn’t exist,” recalls Brooke, a researcher at Florida State University’s Coastal and Marine Laboratory. “It’s 4 degrees Celsius, with incredible pressures and noxious gases escaping as the plates are moving and the seafloor is spreading apart.”
Brooke’s first journey in the famous Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute’s submersible Alvin, in 1999, took her to seabed fissures that spew water heated from deep within the planet. These hydrothermal vents play host to other-worldly species such as giant tubeworms, and as the vents shift with the tectonic plates, corals can colonize the bare rock left behind.
But deep-sea corals, Brooke’s specialty, aren’t found only thousands of feet below the surface. They’re spread throughout the world’s oceans, and she has traveled far and wide—including four trips in Alvin plus journeys in other submersible vehicles—to study these fragile organisms, which grow in a variety of formations and can live for thousands of years.
A marine animal known as a crinoid (foreground), which is related to sea urchins, takes up residence on pink bubblegum coral (Paragorgia arborea) hundreds of feet underwater in Norfolk Canyon off the coast of Virginia. These are the most common corals in the underwater canyons of the Mid-Atlantic Bight, the long, gradual bend in the shoreline and continental shelf from southern New England to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Deep-sea corals form reefs, mounds, and undersea forests. Some species are pure white, and others are brightly colored; some branch widely while others, such as certain types of stony corals, can form structures hundreds of feet tall. All thrive in cold, dark water. Brooke’s focus is the slow-growing species Lophelia pertusa, which builds reefs as new coral polyps stack upon the skeletal remains of previous generations.
“Corals look like beautiful flowers and yet are voracious carnivores that capture small prey in their tentacles. They also battle each other for space on the reef using large stinging cells,” says Brooke, who grew fascinated with coral during her research at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Florida Atlantic University.
A golden crab finds shelter under Lophelia coral in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. Government leaders and marine management bodies that oversee oceans from New Zealand to the Arctic, in national waters and on the high seas, are recognizing the importance of deep coral communities and their vulnerabilities to human activities. For example, in the Gulf of Mexico—where corals provide homes for countless invertebrates, such as sponges, sea urchins, and crabs, and such fish as large grouper and sharks—fishery managers are considering protecting more of these ocean jewels, based in part on research by Brooke and her colleagues. Among other threats, deep corals in the Gulf are at risk from oil spills, and the extent of damage from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster remains unknown.
The Gulf’s corals “can create massive geological structures, which provide homes for a multitude of other animals, including commercially important fisheries species,” says Brooke, whose love of scuba diving led her to a doctorate in oceanography from the University of Southampton in her native United Kingdom. “Unfortunately this close association between valuable fish and the corals has caused the demise of many reefs,” because fishing, when done carelessly, can damage them. “We’re mowing down ancient ecosystems in search of a few fish, which is not only unconscionable—it’s unsustainable. Once the corals are gone, the fish go also.”
Brooke removes coral samples from the basket of the University of Connecticut’s remotely operated vehicle Kraken2 after a dive in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. And once damaged, corals may take hundreds and in some cases more than 1,000 years to recover, if they come back at all. Among the many threats facing reefs, Brooke says, the greatest physical impact comes from fishing gear—heavy trawl nets dragged on the seafloor, weighted fishing lines, and traps secured by chains or ropes—that breaks corals or stirs up sediments that can suffocate them. Other threats to corals include warming water, ocean acidification, industrial equipment used in oil and gas exploration, deployment of pipelines or underwater communications cables that get dragged along the seafloor, and the emerging threat of deep sea mining.
Brooke says the Gulf of Mexico’s corals face several of these threats, including the possibility of expanding fisheries for species that live near deep-sea corals. In the Gulf, unlike in other parts of the ocean, many of the corals are spread out—in this case, along the continental shelf—rather than concentrated in major reefs. To protect the coral, the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council has prohibited anchoring and the use of damaging fishing gear in a few areas, including Pulley Ridge (133 square miles) off South Florida. The council also has pinpointed nine other coral areas so fishermen and others can avoid causing damage, but it has not imposed fishing restrictions in those places.
A large specimen of thriving black coral (Leiopathes sp) in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. These corals are named after their black skeletons, which are often used to make jewelry. The oldest living animal ever recorded is a black coral, age 4,270 years, that scientists recently found off the coast of Hawaii. Throughout the world, scientists have documented at least 3,300 species of deep-sea corals, including a 4,270-year-old black coral specimen off Hawaii that is the oldest known living marine organism. Although fishermen have long known about deep-sea corals, scientists did not fully understand these ecosystems until manned mini-submarines allowed researchers to travel to the depths.
Scientists are investigating whether the chemical processes within coral environments could be duplicated in the laboratory to help advance medical science. For example, octocorals, which are soft and flexible corals such as sea fans, possess properties that might be useful in cancer treatment. Bamboo corals may have a use in bone grafting. Duplicating coral properties and processes in a lab could help avoid mass harvesting of corals in pursuit of new health treatments.
Bamboo coral, like this one in the Florida Straits, can live for thousands of years. The species produces growth rings that, similar to those of a tree, can help scientists see how deep-sea conditions, such as acidification levels, have changed over time. Some countries are already protecting deep-sea corals. Norway became the first European government to protect corals when, in 2003, it restricted trawling on Rost Reef, the world’s largest known deep-water coral reef and a site Brooke has studied. In 2015, the U.S. Mid-Atlantic Fishery Management Council banned the use of potentially damaging fishing gear in deep waters where corals are found from Virginia to New York. Brooke and her colleagues’ studies contributed to development of those protections as well.
Off Florida’s central east coast, rules—again, some of which Brooke worked on—protect deep corals in about 23,000 square miles of water. She says that by the early 1990s trawlers probably destroyed much of the corals in one section known as Oculina Bank. Due to that and other factors, fish populations that once thrived there were also severely depleted. Today, the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council is trying to help the coral recover in hopes that fish also will return to the area.
This type of octocoral, genus Iridogorgia, creates large spirals as it grows. It is commonly found on underwater mountains, known as seamounts, off the New England coast. In September, President Barack Obama protected nearly 5,000 square miles of underwater canyons and seamounts off New England, the country’s first Atlantic Ocean national marine monument. “Creating these protected areas is a good step forward,” Brooke says, “but just drawing lines in the ocean is not enough. We need enforcement, or regulations may be violated and the protection will not work.” Surveillance is difficult and expensive in large offshore areas, but it is feasible with technologies such as vessel monitoring systems, shipboard video monitoring, and satellite tracking. Such mechanisms, of course, require funding.
And while corals are more likely to live for hundreds or thousands of years in places that humans can’t disturb, Brooke says such areas are increasingly rare because technology allows people to fish and explore in areas of the ocean, including deep-sea coral habitat, that were once too deep or remote to access. Placing the areas off-limits now is a proactive step that recognizes the value of deep sea ecosystems.
A deep-water shrimp rests atop the yellow zoanthid, which is taking branches of white coral (Anthothela grandiflora) in Norfolk Canyon, within the Mid-Atlantic Bight off the Virginia coast. Global bodies are also taking action. For example, the International Seabed Authority is at work on environmental regulations that could set large areas off-limits to deep-sea mining to protect vulnerable ecosystems beyond state and national borders.
“As people deplete coastal resources, we look into the deep sea for fish and other resources,” Brooke says. “These corals have been there for thousands of years. They’re ecologically important, and they have a right to exist. It’s unacceptable to carelessly destroy them for short-term gain.”
http://voices.nationalgeographic.com...odern-threats/

Trump didn't cause these problems. Despite how some interpret his changes to policies and government spending, Trump and his team will probably be the ones to actually solve many of our pollution problems, including issues with the oceans and climate change.

A lot of the complaints is about the money, government money. Government has rarely solved a problem no matter how much money we spent on it. We have $20 trillion in national debt and they'll vote to raise the debt ceiling again in September. $20 trillion in debt with absolutely nothing to show for it. No new airports, no meaningful train programs, roads, bridges, dams and levees falling apart, education system in decline, life-expectancy down, wars still raging, terrorism growing, poverty and near poverty growing by millions a year, wages stagnant, environment still in jeopardy .... nothing to show for the $20 trillion plus of government money thrown at issues without any solutions.

Give this administration a chance to try a new way to tackle these issues, one that is results-oriented which usually doesn't require government money or excess regulations. We have laws, Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, that just need to be enforced. There is plenty of money in the EPA budget to do that. When government money is used for these types of issues, they become their own gravy train without a solution because if you actually solve a problem, then the gravy train ends and no one wants that. They want their careers, they want their money to play the more money game in perpetuity.

So give Trump the opportunity to tackle these issues his way, with less money and more results.

Originally Posted by MW

BUSINESS 12/02/2015 03:45 pm ET
How American Exceptionalism Is Destroying The Planet, In 2 Charts

Our carbon emissions per capita are twice Western Europe’s.

By Shane Ferro

What no mention of India and China - foul!