Kid's shore activities during the December school holidays
Celebrating Singapore Shores!
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China postpones lifting rhino, tiger parts ban
AFP Yahoo News 12 Nov 18;
China appeared to backtrack on a controversial decision to lift a ban on trading tiger bones and rhinoceros horns, saying it has been postponed, state media reported Monday.
The State Council, China's cabinet, unexpectedly announced last month that it would allow the sale of rhino and tiger products under "special circumstances", a move conservationists likened to signing a death warrant for the endangered species.
Permitted uses included scientific research, sales of cultural relics, and "medical research or in healing".
But in an interview transcript published by the official Xinhua news agency, a senior State Council official said the new rules have been put on hold.
"The issuance of the detailed regulations for implementation has been postponed after study," said Executive Deputy Secretary-General Ding Xuedong.
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Modest warming risks 'irreversible' ice sheet loss, study warns
Patrick GALEY, AFP Yahoo News 13 Nov 18;
Paris (AFP) - Even modest temperature rises agreed under an international plan to limit climate disaster could see the ice caps melt enough this century for their loss to be "irreversible", experts warned Monday.
The 2015 Paris Agreement limits nations to temperature rises "well below" two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels and to less than 1.5C if at all possible.
That ballpark of getting 1.5-2C hotter by 2100 is scientists' best-case-scenario based on our consumption of natural resources and burning of fossil fuels, and will require radical, global lifestyle changes to achieve.
For comparison, humans' business-as-usual approach -- if we continue to emit greenhouse gases at the current rate -- will see Earth heat by as much as 4C.
Scientists have known for decades that the ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica are shrinking, but it had been assumed that they would survive a 1.5-2C temperature rise relatively intact.
However, according to a new analysis published in the journal Nature Climate Change, even modest global warming could cause irreversible damage to the polar ice, contributing to catastrophic sea level rises.
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