WcP.Watchful.Eye's blog

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Around 90% of the fresh water on the Earth's surface is held in the ice sheet. The only current ice sheets are in Antarctica and Greenland (ice sheets are bigger than ice shelves or alpine glaciers). Greenland ice melting 3 times faster, loss of vast ice sheet. ice (fresh water!) runs away by hundreds of billions of tons a year.

Drinking sewage: solving Singapore's water problem
Australia: Recycled water to be on tap  read more »

Prince William, David Beckham and Yao Ming for WildAid

The Duke of Cambridge, David Beckham, and Yao Ming are speaking out to protect rhinos for future generations in this WildAid message. The trio met in London in September 2013 to film two messages that began airing globally, with targeted outreach in China and Vietnam, beginning in January 2014 as part of WildAid's demand reduction campaign and the Royal Foundation's United for Wildlife Collaboration.

“'The End of the Wild' aired last week in China, and it airs on Animal Planet this Autumn. Yao Ming is an incredible ambassador for +WildAid & also now for United for Wildlife!”

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Yao Ming: "Say No To Ivory"
To better understand what’s happening to these species as a result of Asian demand for ivory and rhino horn, Yao Ming traveled to Africa for the first time to come face-to-face with some of the world’s most majestic species - the elephant and the rhino.  read more »

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150 Years Of "Real" Oil Prices
In real terms, the price of crude oil has not been more expensive since the Pennsylvania Boom over 150 years ago...

Galloping inflation in American college fees
For decades, college fees have risen faster than Americans' ability to pay them. Median household income has grown by a factor of 6.5 in the past 40 years, but the cost of attending a state college has increased by a factor of 15 for in-state students and 24 for out-of-state students. The cost of attending a private college has increased by a factor of more than 13 (a year in the Ivy League will set you back $38,000, excluding bed and board). Academic inflation makes most other kinds look modest by comparison.

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Image courtesy Oil Prices and The Economist / BLS / FHFA / Thomson Reuters

The world's first Earth Hour Forest will soon be created in the East African nation of Uganda, to fight against the 6000 hectares of deforestation that occurs in the country every month.

*update* 23 March, 2013 - Earth Hour is here again -
Millions of people in thousands of cities and towns across the world to switch off their lights for an hour at 8.30pm local time on Saturday 23 March to show their concern for the environment. Some of the key landmarks that will mark the event include the Sydney opera house and Harbour bridge, Petronas towers in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore's Marina Bay Sands, Tokyo tower, Taipei 101, the Bird's Nest in Beijing, the Gateway of India, the world's tallest building the Burj Khalifa, the Ancient Citadel of Erbil in Kurdistan, Table Mountain, the Bosphorus Bridge, the Eiffel Tower, the Brandenburg Gate, the UK Houses of Parliament, Buckingham palace, the Empire State Building, Niagara Falls and Los Angeles airport. Landmarks switching their lights off for the first time for Earth Hour this year include Copenhagen's Little Mermaid statue and Florence's Statue of David.
Iconic landmarks plunged into darkness for Earth Hour

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For Earth Hour 2013, Landmarks In 7,000 Cities Will Go Dark  read more »

global "headache": 1.5 million credit, debit cards may be breached

"when you swipe you card, all your information is stolen"... scary

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Hackers put a tiny device on the card readers where you swipe your credit or debit card. So when you scan it they get all your personal information
"They can put a phony thing over the part where you swipe your card. You think you're swiping your card through a reader and what you're really doing is swiping your card through a device the hacker has created," said Jim Lee, head of Consumer Fraud at the Rhode Island Attorney General's Office.
Lee says the trouble is this type of hacking is becoming more common at stores, gas stations, and ATM's.
"People are realizing that this is a new form of theft that they can do electronically, they can do high tech and it has a real volume to them," said Lee.
And because more and more people now pay this way thieves don't have to empty your account. They take a little here, a little there, from many accounts, which people often don't even notice.

October 24, 2012 - "appears to be a massive theft" - MasterCard and Visa warn of potential cardholder account breaches  read more »

"Grant self and others Dignity and Decency. High technology is not invented to destroy privacy or nobility, nor is Golden Rule disposable, ever." - Editor

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Topless Princess Kate Pics Spur Privacy Issues
A French magazine has published photos of the Duchess of Cambridge topless, causing a new scandal for the royal family. The Duchess and her husband Prince William were on private property at a French resort when they were photographed presumably off-limits to the public. But in today's world of hidden cameras and powerful zoom lenses, there's really no place for a celebrity to hide from determined paparazzi.

Report raises privacy concerns about the use of cameras in bathrooms, changing rooms at UK schools - 'a shock to many parents' 825 cameras reportedly located in the toilets or changing rooms of 207 schools across England, Scotland and Wales

RAINFORD High has been named on a list of school's using CCTV cameras in toilets and changing rooms. The school has SEVEN cameras installed in either toilets or changing rooms. It is one of only 207 schools across the country and the only school in St Helens to engage in the controversial practice.  read more »

News / Marilyn Monroe's Death 50 Years On: What's Changed, What Hasn't

One change is certain - the temperature of Earth has been obviously and continuously rising particularly in the last 50 years:

Data on global land-ocean temperature anomalies indicate that Earth has been warming approximately 0.36 Fahrenheit (0.2 degrees Celsius) per decade for the past 30 years. This rapid warming has brought global temperature to within about 1.8 degrees F (1 degree C) of the maximum estimated temperature during the past million years.

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