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Archive for February, 2010
United Kingdom: How to make your school more eco-friendly
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 12th, 2010
Ecologist: With the carbon footprint of English schools already tipping 9.4m tonnes CO2, many campaigns to "green" schools are already underway. But reducing carbon is not the only goal. School buildings, food, waste – even school curriculum should all support a connection to, and appreciation for, the environment. The success stories so far prove that in many cases it is down to one or two dedicated teachers, parents or students to make a positive difference. School food The Food ...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on United Kingdom: How to make your school more eco-friendlyPakistan: Sanitation, drinking water issues top priority, says Afridi
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 12th, 2010
Daily Times: Environment Minister Hameedullah Jan Afridi on Thursday said that development of a management information system (MIS) for water and sanitation sectors would contribute to better planning and decision-making on nationwide provision of safe drinking water and sanitation services. He also said the MIS development along with the launch of a website on water and sanitation situation in Pakistan (WATSAN) by the ministry would help meet millennium development goals (MDGs). Addressing ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Pakistan: Sanitation, drinking water issues top priority, says AfridiGlaciers: Changing at a less than glacial pace
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 12th, 2010
Time Magazine: Glaciers are thought to change at, well, a glacial pace. Certainly that has been true throughout the planet's history. The current ice age -- known as the Pilocene-Quatenary glaciation, which began 2.6 million years ago -- has witnessed some 20 cycles of glacial (freezing) and interglacial (thawing) periods, with ice sheets advancing and retreating completely on roughly 100,000-year time scales. But scientists are unsure exactly what prompts the shifts in cycles. In glacial periods, ...
Snow Sparks Climate Change Debate In US
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 12th, 2010
Voice of America: Unprecedented blizzards in the eastern United States have triggered renewed debate about climate change, with some critics using the record snow to attack the concept of global warming. Some experts have been quick to point out that the extreme weather is consistent with a pattern of climate change. Record-breaking snows in the U.S. capital have proponents and skeptics of climate change in a heated debate. Many critics of the theory of global warming say the recent blizzards in ...
Panel aims to find ‘new and innovative’ ways to fund climate adaptation
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 12th, 2010
Reuters: A new high-level panel of world leaders, bankers and finance and development experts will have until December to find ways to quickly raise billions of dollars to help developing nations deal with the impact of climate change, the U.N. Secretary-General said on Friday. The panel, led by Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, is tasked with rapidly finding "new and innovative" ways of raising money to meet pledges made under the Copenhagen ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Panel aims to find ‘new and innovative’ ways to fund climate adaptationIs Ethanol from Corn Bad for the Climate?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 12th, 2010
Scientific American: The Obama administration last week gave the green light to corn ethanol as a low-carbon renewable fuel – in apparent contradiction to California's declaration last summer that the biofuel's carbon footprint was too big to help the state mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. Regulators and policy experts insist there's no conflict: Both rules match the science; it's simply a matter of what year you start counting emissions. Indeed, timing is everything: California looked at current ...
Food crisis looms, warn scientists
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 12th, 2010
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: A new report by Australian researchers claims far more needs to be done if we're to feed the estimated 9 billion people who will be living on the planet by 2050. The report, by Professor Mark Tester and Professor Peter Langridge of the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics at the University of Adelaide, appears today in the journal Science. "The simple fact is while food production has increased by 32 million tonnes a year, an annual increase of 44 million tonnes a ...
Despite rain, California still fighting over water
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 12th, 2010
Reuters: California has been deluged with rain and snow this winter, but its epic tug-of-war over water rages on, this time in the form of a plan by U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein to divert more water to the state's farmers. Feinstein has infuriated environmental activists, fishing groups and even fellow California Democrats by drafting federal legislation that would ease Endangered Species Act restrictions to allow more water to be pumped out of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta for ...
Northeast starts snow clean-up; costs mount
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 11th, 2010
Reuters: The U.S. Northeast began to dig out after two blizzards in a week brought the region to a standstill with record snowfalls, creating a multimillion-dollar mess for cash-strapped cities and states. From Washington to Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York, cities began to clean up and airports tried to reopen runways for flights possibly later on Thursday but residents were advised to stay home while crews tried to clear streets. Airlines, already facing economic troubles, were ...
Climate change affecting Kenya’s coffee output
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 11th, 2010
Reuters: Climate change has affected Kenyan coffee production through unpredictable rainfall patterns and excessive droughts, making crop management and disease control a nightmare, a researcher said on Thursday. Intermittent rainfall in the 2007/08 crop year, for example, caused a terrible bout of the Coffee Berry Disease that cut Kenyan output 23 percent to 42,000 metric tons as farmers were caught out by rains and did not protect their crop in time. "We have seen climate change in ...