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Archive for February 5th, 2010
UN defends climate panel after Himalaya blunder
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 5th, 2010
Reuters: The U.N.'s panel of climate experts said on Friday it was reviewing whether it wrongly said that more than half of the Netherlands is below sea level in a new glitch after exaggerating the thaw of Himalayan glaciers. "We are looking into it," said Brenda Abrar-Milani, a spokeswoman for the Geneva-based Secretariat of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). A 2007 report stretching to about 3,000 pages includes the sentence that "the Netherlands is an ...
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Angry Villagers Bear Pollution Costs of Sponge Iron Industry
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 5th, 2010
Inter Press Service: At dawn, 65-year-old Indian share farmer Gundicha Rout goes to the stone water trough in his backyard to wash his face and prepare for paddy husking. He reaches out for the water, dipping into a thin film of oil on its surface. As he swishes the water in his mouth, there is a bitter metallic taste. It has been like this in Patharakata hamlet in Rampei village, Cuttack district in Orissa state, located in India's mineral-rich central eastern belt, during the three years since ...
Defusing the Methane Greenhouse Time Bomb
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 5th, 2010
Scientific American: Methane trapped in Arctic ice (and elsewhere) could be rapidly released into the atmosphere as a result of global warming in a possible doomsday scenario for climate change, some scientists worry. After all, methane is 72 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over a 20-year timescale. But research announced at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union this December suggests that marine microbes could at least partially defeat the methane "time bomb" sitting ...
Tibet temperatures hit record high in 2009
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 5th, 2010
Reuters: Temperatures in Tibet rose last year to the highest level since records began for the remote Himalayan region, which scientists say is particularly vulnerable to global warming, state media reported on Friday. The average temperature in Tibet in 2009 was 5.9 degrees Celsius (42.6 degrees Fahrenheit), 1.5 degrees higher than "normal," the official China Daily newspaper reported, citing latest figures from the regional climate center. It did not detail how the "normal" level was ...
Climate change likely to make it harder to feed 1 billion hungry: CIDA chief
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 5th, 2010
Canadian Press: Poor countries are still gripped by the food crisis of two years ago and climate change will only make things tougher in the coming years, says the head of Canadian International Development Agency. CIDA President Margaret Biggs offered that candid assessment of the state of the undeveloped world and what Canada can to do help, in a speech Thursday to University of Ottawa students. Biggs, who rarely speaks publicly, also said a tough road lies ahead in rebuilding ...
Centralia, Pennsylvania, coal fire is one of hundreds that burn in the U.S
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 5th, 2010
Christian Science Monitor: The fire burning deep below Centralia, Pa., is just one of numerous coal fires burning in at least 20 states today, with thousands more worldwide. They gobble up resources, spew dangerous emissions, and scar the land. Yet little is known about their impact on climate change or human health due to carbon dioxide and mercury emissions, say experts. Approximately 200 underground coal fires burn in about 20 states, according to Glenn Stracher, a researcher at East Georgia College in ...