An unprecedented absence of rain in the Middle East has Jordanians praying in Amman
As the water crisis in Jordan deepens, the country’s ministry of religious affairs is urging citizens to hold special prayers for rain. The move comes after a significant delay in the rainy season and five successive years of limited rainfall which threatens the country’s water supplies.
Jordan has no significant rivers or lakes of it own and so relies on rainfall to replenish underground aquifers and reservoirs for water. The special Muslim prayer called Salat al-Istisqa, which has been practised since the time of the Prophet Muhammed (pbuh) who would pray for rain in Mecca whenever the rainy season was late, is being carried out in the water-dry country.
Green Prophet hosts the Green Business Blog Carnival. Step right up for hot green business news.
A travelling circus is our chance for a brief moment in the year to see sights, sounds and acts from far and oft. For a week or more the old dusty parking lot near the strip mall is transformed into a exhibition of dazzling lights, smells and people – that draws in the entire community, young or old.
And if the circus is really good we learn something about human nature and ourselves. This week Green Prophet is host to a carnival of sorts, the Green Business Blog Carnival where we pick up the big carnival ferris wheel, spin it, and show our faithful readers some highlights from green business blogs that are reporting from around the world. We find eBay e-cycling, Facebook smart gridding (?), and some surprising “for prophet”, we mean “for profit” eco-villages. Check out the news below.
The fire rages on in Israel’s Carmel Mountains, a nature reserve.
With untold damage to wildlife and one of Israel’s only forests, Friday morning in Israel a wildfire that broke out yesterday at noon, still rages out of control, picking up speed as it rips through the western part of the Carmel Mountains teetering on the edge of the city of Haifa. Fourteen thousand people have been evacuated and 14,000 dumans (3,500 acres) have been decimated. It’s the worst fire in Israeli history and international support including a pledge from Barack Obama has come in to offer to help Israel fight the fire.
“As rescuers, firefighters are continuing their work, the United States is acting to help our Israeli friends in this time of disaster,” he said during a Hanukkah lighting ceremony of 500 people at the White House.
Carmel fire at sunset, as seen through the lens of a police photographer
Israel’s worst forest and brush fire in modern history continues to rage on and at this writing, “is completely out of control by our combined fire fighting units” according to Haifa Fire Department spokesman Hezi Levi. Speaking to reporters of Israel’s Channel 2 TV station, Levi added that “this is the worst fire disaster since the founding of the State of Israel. It’s not going to take hours to extinguish but days.” He said that all of the 200 tons of fire extinguishing chemicals held in reserve has been used up and more will have to be brought in from abroad.
Besides the resort community and kibbutz at Beit Oren, the artist colony at Ein Hod is also under serious threat. Ein Hod, and neighboring Arab village Ein Hud, have experienced fires in the past with one that occurred back in 2007, destroying part of the artist village.
Israel may lose one of its most precious nature reserves to wildfire ripping through the Carmel Mountains, killing people, animals and trees.
“We have completely lost control of the fire,” Hezi Levy, a spokesman for the firefighting service in Haifa told Globes business newspaper an hour ago, speaking of the fire currently destroying a nature reserve and villages in Israel: “I call on all 1500 firefighters in Israel to contact their units and come to the fire in an orderly fashion. The fight for the Carmel is now a fight for Israel.
“Currently, the State of Israel has no firefighting material. It’s all finished.”
Israel’s Innowattech is engineering piezoelectric technology for trains.
This time, in conjunction with the National Railway Company, they are testing the efficacy of their piezo-electric technology for use on railway tracks to gather data automatically. For the test 32 existing railway pads were replaced with Innowattech’s electricity generator pads to measure how well they produce electricity. The installation is almost amusingly fast, simple and uncomplicated. Innowattech’s identically sized pads, embedded with piezoelectric elements were just swapped out for the original railway pads.
Despite high temperatures and desertification, FIFA awarded Qatar the right to host the 2022 World Cup Finals.
Despite our huffing and puffing to blow out its scorching world cup bid, Qatar has won the bid to host the 2022 finals. FIFA announced this afternoon in Zurich that the small Middle Eastern country – the first to hold a world cup final – won despite proposals from the United States, Australia, Japan, and South Korea.
Critics are concerned that unlike Russia, which won the 2018 bid, Qatar’s high summertime temperatures and humidity will be an important impediment. But the country has plans to build several sophisticated, solar-powered and carbon neutral stadiums that will maintain a comfortable environment for both players and spectators.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cr5oGnVeYU&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]Believed to have been started by arsonists, a deadly fire is racing out of control in UNESCO-protected Carmel Mountain. People, and animals, are being evacuated. Death toll is at 40.
Some 40 people trapped in a bus are known to have been killed and 45 more reportedly injured as a massive fire on Israel’s Mount Carmel rages on. Believed to have been started by arsonists, the fire broke out in a cedar forest around noon near Isifiya, a Druize village. Although the winter season has officially started, the rains despite the prayers, have not come, leaving the forest vulnerable to attacks.
Towns, villages and Haifa University have been evacuated, as well as a prison holding 500 prisoners. As we speak, planes and firefighters are working to contain the blaze, while specialists have been brought into the scene to help evacuate animals living at the Hai Bar Nature Reserve on Mount Carmel.
The Israeli Ministry of Health have warned residents not evacuated to stay indoors since hazardous substances in the area may be burning. And the national electric company, the IEC has asked for appliances to be switched off to reduce the load on the grid. Power lines have been damaged.
According to the Jerusalem Post the majority of those killed in an overturned bus that caught fire were prison wardens on route to evacuate prisoners from a nearby jail. About 6,000 dumans of land have been destroyed according to reports from about 6 PM.
About a month ago, an email dropped into my inbox by the Al Jazeera Doha correspondent Dan Nolan who wanted to cover the story on the water park in UAE. This was the park name ‘Ice Land’ we reported on which was built around the global warming theme despite the huge amount of water it uses through desalination and its location in a water-scarce region. I was glad to help and Dan asked if I would be able to do a short TV interview talking about the project.
People often have this misconception that as journalists are happy to ask people difficult questions and poke cameras in their faces, that they are also happy to speak in front of a camera too. Well, I am not. Print and web journalism affords you a certain amount of anonymity which I like and so I was a little nervous about saying yes, especially as I would be representing Green Prophet. I eventually agreed comforted by the fact that a) it was not going to be a live TV interview and b) if it all went horrible wrong they would just use none of it.
I arranged for a day and time with the Al Jazeera team and got the train down from Manchester (where I live- it’s in North England and seems to famous for nothing but football) to London. The news team who explained the questions they would be asking and what kind of things I need to avoid doing- talking to fast/slow, fidgeting or panicking.
They sit me down in front of a computer screen with the Green Prophet site on it and then when I least expect it they switch on the studio lights and I was temporarily blinded. Really! It was so bright I couldn’t think straight for a minute.
One of the presenters starts speaking to me and I’m still a little blinded so I start swivelling my chair to move eyes away from the light. The camera man looks up- I need to stop moving on the chair as it’s changing the angle. Okay. They start again and by now my eyes seem to have adjusted and I try to calmly answer their questions.
Representing The Green Prophet Team
It all went very fast, I can’t really remember the questions or what I said and after around 15 minutes we’re done! I was so relieved I wanted to run out. The presenter seemed happy with the interview too and said it had all gone really well. Happy with that I leave the office and forget all about until I got an email yesterday saying that’s the news piece is on TV and also online. I sat down to watch it and there I was talking on telly. It was surreal but also really, really embarrassing.
Even so, it was great to be able to represent a new generation of people from the Middle East who have a deeper understanding of climate change and are not fooled by green washing tactics. Whilst we are probably still in the minority, awareness and concern about environmental issues is rising in the region and I’d like to think that the work of Green Prophet has played a part in that!
Well done to everyone at Green Prophet for making the site such a great resource for green issues in the Middle East and also a big thanks to Karin for her hard work and support!
In three separate (and unusual) incidents, a white-tip shark attacks tourists off the coast of Sinai’s Sharm Al-Sheikh.
I don’t think anyone who has watched the movie can enter a large body of salt water without the Jaws theme song thumping ominously at their amygdala. Human beings have a prehistoric terror of what they perceive as blood-thirsty, razor-toothed killers, even though shark attacks are relatively uncommon.
What causes sharks to attack human beings? In the case of yesterday’s incidents off the coast of Egypt’s heavily-trafficked tourist resort town Sharm al-Sheikh, there is speculation that a spate of Yemenese poaching (the Japanese are willing to pay big beans for shark fin soup) may have caused the unusual behavior. But fear not, gentle snorkeler, the authorities have shut down the area until the perpetrator is captured.
The “jean capital of the world” exacts a dark environmental and public health price – too steep for wholesome gift-giving.
When the last Hanukkah candle is extinguished, we will shift our attention to Christmas. Since the wise men laid down their wares at baby Jesus’ feet in Bethlehem, Christians (and atheists and agnostics and many in between) have demonstrated their love and consideration for friends and family through gifts. Theoretically.
In reality, this tradition has evolved into a cacophony of registers blowing smoke from burning cash. So people in the green world have been calling for more meaningful giving: fair trade items, homemade art, or experiences versus things because only a gift that has been created with a wholesome spirit, from the cradle to the grave, can be truly loving. Which is why we think blue jeans may just be the most unloving gift of all.
Researchers thought it only happened at the poles; new research between Israel and the US shows that bromine above the sea can make mercury way more toxic in fish.
A joint US/Israel study funded by the National Science Foundation has found that the Dead Sea has measurable effects on the chemistry of the air above it, in a paper just published at Nature: Geoscience.
The research, led by scientist Daniel Obrist and colleagues at Nevada’s Desert Research Institute with a group of Israeli researchers at Hebrew University, found that mercury was concentrated into the most toxic form in the air above the Dead Sea.
The atmosphere over the Dead Sea, researchers found, is laden with oxidized mercury, a much more toxic form of Mercury than the elemental form. The finding was surprising, as such high levels of oxidized mercury have only been found at the polar regions.
Aga Khan awards the Wadi Hanifa reclamation project in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia with top honors.
Typically the Aga Khan Award for Architecture is reserved for just that – socially transformative buildings constructed in areas that have a strong Muslim presence. But this year, Aga Khan also recognized Saudi’s Wadi Hanifa Watershed project for its contribution to society.
And it really is a watershed moment for the country whose water resources are deeply limited. Wetlands throughout the Middle East have suffered from poor management, leading to negative consequences for both the environment and public health. But Saudi Arabia’s sparkling initiative demonstrates that recreation and ecology can flow in harmony.
Mr. Amin claims that government subsidies given to the fossil fuel industry impedes serious growth of the renewable sector.
On Sunday, Israel made a public NIS2.2 billion (US$0.6 billion) commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That announcement came just days after Rupert Murdoch and Lord Jacob Rothschild bought shares in Genie Oil & Gas Inc., whose subsidiary Israel Energy Initiatives (IEI) was granted license by the Ministry of Infrastructure to proceed with oil shale exploration.
The pair proclaimed that extracting not only Israel’s shale oil, but that of America’s Green River Formation – the world’s largest reserve – would put international energy on a new stage. A western stage, complete with powerful spotlights. This insane chicken dance – two steps forward and a mile back – underscores the challenges facing the renewable energy industry, a challenge that the Interim Director of the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) understands all too well.
The 8-day Jewish holiday of Hanukah starts tonight. Is there a connect with climate change?
This week marks the Jewish holiday of Hanukah – celebrated by widely in Israel by Jewish people. And the local Israeli Arabs enjoy it too, feasting on the jelly doughnuts that go along with the 8-day holiday.
“What does Hanukah have to do with global warming?”
Hanukah sends an environmental message: how could a one-day supply of oil last eight days and nights?
“It represents an early example of energy conservation with relevance to our current environmental challenges,” wrote Adam Stern from the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL). In the past he’s recommended that people switch over to CFLs this holiday season.
For some yummy recipes to go along with the miracle of Hanukkah, how about latke recipes of Rachel Barenblat, the wife of a World Changing writer. Rachel’s Asian latkes with soy dipping sauce sound tempting and definitely modern, we would probably choose a hot and crispy jelly doughnut (sufganiyot) over a latke any day. That’s if you’re a calorie counter.
An unprecedented absence of rain in the Middle East has Jordanians praying in Amman
