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Archive for February 9th, 2010
Baltic Sea states seek clean-up; Russia expands oil
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 9th, 2010
Reuters: Political and business leaders meet in Helsinki on Wednesday to spur efforts to clean up the Baltic sea, which has suffered from decades of pollution and is a focus of Russia's oil and gas expansion plans. The Baltic, which organizers call the most polluted sea in the world, remains for adjacent countries a major destination for untreated sewage and many chemical pollutants, including agricultural waste that causes blooms of algae that choke marine life. It is also facing ...
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Chinese farms ’cause more pollution than factories’
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 9th, 2010
Guardian: Farmers' fields are a far bigger source of water contamination in China than factory effluent, the Chinese government revealed today in its first census on pollution. Senior officials said the disclosure, after a two-year study involving 570,000 people, would require a partial realignment of environmental policy from smoke stacks to chicken coops, cow sheds and fruit orchards. Despite the sharp upward revision of figures on rural contamination, the government suggested the ...
Indonesia: One billion trees program ‘verifiable’: Govt
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 9th, 2010
Jakarta Post: The government on Monday defended its ambitious plan to plant 1 billion trees this year to check carbon emissions, saying the program would comply with international standards in which all trees must be verified on the ground. Forestry Minister Zulkifli Hasan said his office would allocate 500,000 hectares of land to plant about 500 million trees using the state budget. Each hectare will be planted with 100 trees. "The remaining target will be shared between members of the ...
Warm world will be more fragrant
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 9th, 2010
BBC: As CO2 levels increase and the world warms, land use, precipitation and the availability of water will also change. In response to all these disruptions, plants will emit greater levels of fragrant chemicals called biogenic volatile organic compounds. That will then alter how plants interact with one another and defend themselves against pests, according to a major scientific review. According to the scientists leading the review, the world may already be becoming more ...
David Adam on internecine war in IPCC over glacier error
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 9th, 2010
Guardian
China points to farms as major pollution risk
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 9th, 2010
Agence France-Presse: China on Tuesday named pollution from farms as a major cause for concern, as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases released its first nationwide survey on sources of environmental degradation. "There were some outstanding problems identified by this national census such as the high contribution to water pollution by agricultural sources," the State Council, or Cabinet, said in a statement. China's rapid industrialisation has led to widespread environmental damage over ...
Russia: Climate scientists withheld Yamal data despite warnings from senior colleagues
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 9th, 2010
Guardian: In a unique experiment, The Guardian has published online the full manuscript of its major investigation into the climate science emails stolen from the University of East Anglia, which revealed apparent attempts to cover up flawed data; moves to prevent access to climate data; and to keep research from climate sceptics out of the scientific literature. As well as including new information about the emails, we will allow web users to annotate the manuscript to help us in our aim of ...
Australia: WA drought ‘could be worst for 750 years’
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 9th, 2010
WA Today: Scientists have made a surprising link between climate patterns in Australia and Antarctica. If you thought the drought affecting south-west WA since the 1970s was extreme, you were right. But just how extreme has been a matter of contention. Now, scientists believe it could be the worst of its kind in 750 years, after making an unexpected discovery. Researchers from the Australian Antarctic Division and Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Co-operative Research ...
U.S. proposes new climate service
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 9th, 2010
Washington Post: The Obama administration proposed a new climate service on Monday that would provide Americans with predictions on how global warming will affect everything from drought to sea levels. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Climate Service, modeled loosely on the 140-year-old National Weather Service, would provide forecasts to farmers, regional water managers and businesses affected by changing climate conditions. The move is essentially a reorganization of NOAA, ...
RELEASE: Global Campaign to Protect and Restore Old Forests Gaining Traction
Posted by Water Conservation Blog on February 9th, 2010
Campaigns to end industrial primary rainforest logging in Papua New Guinea and Madagascar based upon ecological science, and meant to end corruption and ecological harm
By Earth's Newsdesk, a project of Ecological Internet (EI)
CONTACT: Dr. Glen Barry, glenbarry@ecologicalinternet.org
Ecological Internets (EI) ongoing campaigns in Madagascar [1] and Papua New Guinea [2] (PNG) to end primary forest logging [search] (please continue to take action below), is part of EIs global networks campaign to globally protect and restore old forests. Ecological science reveals forest and other terrestrial ecosystem destruction to be a primary cause of climate change, biodiversity loss, water and soil degradation, and social disintegration. Yet forest policy-makers, including major environmental groups, continue to assert sustainable forest management and FSC certified logging of primary and old-growth forest logging is possible and desirable. They are wrong, as ecologically intact old forests are vital components of Earths biosphere and are the optimal land cover to absorb and hold carbon long-term, while maintaining biodiversity and operable ecosystems, and the Earth System.
The term old forests is used to encompass primary unlogged forests, late successional natural regrowth, and planted mixed-species forests regaining old-growth characteristics. Forests logged industrially for the first time are permanently ecologically damaged in ...