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Archive for February, 2010
Heavy rains bring Spanish wetlands back to life
Posted by Water Conserve: Water Conservation RSS Newsfeed on February 6th, 2010
Independent (UK): An environmentally valuable expanse of Spanish wetlands that dried up through mismanagement of water resources and drought is once again awash with water due to heavy rainfall, an official said Tuesday. Over 1,200 hectares (3,000 acres) of the wetlands of the Tablas de Daimiel National Park are flooded, the highest level since 1997, up from just 67 hectares on January 7, a park spokesman said. The heavy rains also put out an underground peat fire which had raged at the ...
United Kingdom: Food, Inc: saved from the bin
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 6th, 2010
Telegraph: My pulse is racing. I have found a new way to save money on food -- and help to save the planet in the process. I had thought there was nothing more I could do to cut back on bills and waste as I am already a devotee of markets, pound shops, supermarkets' yellow cut-price stickers and recycled leftovers. But the next logical step has just been delivered to my door: a box full of items that supermarkets cannot sell but are still fit to eat. According to Approved Food, the leading ...
Action Alert: PAPUA NEW GUINEA: Logging Violence and Corruption Flare in Ramu, Madangs Mighty Rainforests
Posted by Water Conservation Blog on February 6th, 2010
TAKE ACTION!
Local landowner initiated court case has shut down logging for two months. The PNG Forest Authority's review of the granting of the right to log to notorious Rimbunan Hijau [search] of Malaysia in Ramu River valley expected soon. Industry and corrupt government officials pulling out all stops to re-grant permit to this violent and corrupt criminal-enterprise. Massive cash payments and brutal violence to intimidate communities resisting logging is rife. Yet local protest to logging continues to intensify in Madang [search], as do calls to end all industrial primary rainforest logging in PNG.
TAKE ACTION!
Donate to Ramu/Sogeram Landowners Resisting RH & primary rainforest logging
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Comments Off on Action Alert: PAPUA NEW GUINEA: Logging Violence and Corruption Flare in Ramu, Madangs Mighty RainforestsUN 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 ...
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 ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Angry Villagers Bear Pollution Costs of Sponge Iron IndustryDefusing 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 ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Climate change likely to make it harder to feed 1 billion hungry: CIDA chiefCentralia, 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 ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Centralia, Pennsylvania, coal fire is one of hundreds that burn in the U.SClimate debate needs facts, not anecdotes
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 4th, 2010
New Zealand Herald: Anyone who sets out to discredit a piece of published work can do so by finding a single factual error. No matter how peripheral the mistake may be, it undermines public confidence in the work. People naturally wonder, if the authors were careless on this point how much else might be wrong? More than one mistake has been found recently in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, set up by the United Nations to provide authoritative reports on global warming, ...