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Archive for March 5th, 2010
Canada shift on reviewing energy projects critiqued
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 5th, 2010
Reuters: Ottawa's plan to shift responsibility of environmental assessments to Canada's main energy regulator fails to address fundamental problems surrounding major oil and gas projects, a green think tank said on Friday. But the oil industry, which had complained that the regulatory process for such developments as oil sands projects and pipelines was overly cumbersome and expensive, welcomed the streamlining initiative. Canada's federal budget, delivered on Thursday, contained a ...
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Regional rainfall in a warming world
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 5th, 2010
Discovery News: Slowly but surely, a picture of climate change at the regional scale -- where it really matters -- is beginning to take shape. Apart from the obvious warming at the high polar latitudes, which already is affecting Arctic sea ice, the rate of Greenland ice cap melting, and Antarctic ice shelves, new details are beginning to emerge about the impact of global warming in the Tropics -- the boiler-room of Earth's climate and weather. This is the home of El Niño, and the generator of ...
Warming data said stronger than IPCC claim
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 5th, 2010
United Press International: Evidence of manmade global warming is stronger than the besieged U.N. climate panel claimed, with rainfall changes altering the Earth, British scientists said. "The fingerprint of human influence has been detected in many different aspects of observed climate changes," Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at the Hadley Center for Climate Research run by Britain's meteorological office, said in remarks quoted by the Financial Times. "Natural variability, from the sun, volcanic ...
World’s Largest Dead Zone Suffocating Sea
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 5th, 2010
National Geographic: "Eagle!" The shout goes up as a great shadow sweeps over our boat. The white-tailed eagle makes its descent to one of the 24,000 islands that make up Sweden's pine-covered, rocky Stockholm Archipelago. The tourists on board for this nature tour in August 2009 mostly miss the photo opp. But local wildlife expert Peter Westman, of the conservation group WWF Sweden, assures the group that there will be others. Numbers of this once-threatened predator have soared from 1,000 to more ...
Drought extinguishes Venezuela’s lightning phenomenon
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 5th, 2010
Guardian: Darkness rarely lasted long in the skies over Lake Maracaibo. An hour after dusk the show would begin: a lightning bolt, then another, and another, until the whole horizon flashed white. Electrical storms, product of a unique meteorological phenomenon, have lit up nights in this corner of Venezuela for thousands of years. Francis Drake abandoned a sneak attack on the city of Maracaibo in 1595 when lightning betrayed his ships to the Spanish garrison. But now the lightning has ...
Drought affects 6 million in southern China
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 5th, 2010
Associated Press: Workers have begun tapping into underground water reserves to help the nearly 6 million people who have been affected by the worst drought to hit China's southern province of Yunnan in 60 years, a local official said Wednesday. Severe water shortages for crops and livestock prompted the local government to send dozens of teams out Wednesday to six major drought-hit regions around Yunnan to pump water from underground sources, said a director at the Yunnan Land Resources Bureau, who ...
The Thirsty Caribbean
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 5th, 2010
Inter Press Service: Caribbean countries are considering options like desalination plants and cloud seeding to confront a drought that threatens the regional economy and which experts warned about years ago. In St. Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago, the authorities are warning of prosecution, including jail time, if consumers violate measures introduced to curb the use of water other than for drinking, cooking and bathing. In a paper presented in a 2007 conference in Barbados, entitled "Coping with ...