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Archive for March, 2010
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 ...
Fish Fry: How Will a Warming World Impact U.S. Trout Populations?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 4th, 2010
Scientific American: Dear EarthTalk: A fisherman friend of mine told me that trout populations in the interior West of the U.S. are already shrinking due to global warming. Is this true? And what is the long term prognosis for the trout? --Jon Klein, Portsmouth, N.H. Most scientists agree that the effects of global warming are starting to show up all around the world in many forms. Throughout America's Rocky Mountain West, rivers and streams are getting hotter and drier, presenting new challenges ...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Fish Fry: How Will a Warming World Impact U.S. Trout Populations?United States: Glacier melting a key clue to tracking climate change
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 4th, 2010
Reuters: The world has become far too hot for the aptly named Exit Glacier in Alaska. Like many low-altitude glaciers, it's steadily melting, shrinking two miles over the past 200 years as it tries to strike a new balance with rising temperatures. At the Kenai Fjords National Park south of Anchorage, managers have learned to follow the Exit and other glaciers, moving signs and paths to accommodate the ephemeral rivers of blue and white ice as they retreat up deeply carved ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on United States: Glacier melting a key clue to tracking climate changeEU drafts reveal biofuel’s environmental damage
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 4th, 2010
Reuters: Biodiesel and other "green" fuels that Europeans put in their cars can have unintended consequences for tropical forests and wetlands, European Union reports show -- the first evidence of EU misgivings. The EU aims for its 500 million citizens to get about a tenth of their road fuels from renewable sources such as biofuels by 2020, but some EU officials want the target reduced in a review in four years time. Modelling exercises are starting to show unwanted impacts spreading ...
Australia: The big dry ahead
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 4th, 2010
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: The Department of Water says a report on Western Australia's future water supply presents significant challenges. The CSIRO report found water levels in south western WA will fall by an average of 25 per cent by 2030 but it is predicting they could possibly fall by half. The report blames climate change since the mid 1970s for a big drop in rainfall and surface and groundwater yields. It says as a result, once abundant wetlands and perennial streams have, in the worst ...
Sri Lanka: “We are in the middle of earth’s sixth extinction”
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 3rd, 2010
Daily Mirror: Global warming has triggered the sixth mass extinction of life on earth and this time human life is being threatened along with that of animals and plants due to man-made causes, Minister of Environment and Natural Resources Patali Champika Ranawaka said, addressing the Chamber of Pharmaceutical Industries on Monday. Delivering his presentation on global warming, the Minister explained that there had been five major extinctions in the history of life on earth, with the last one dating ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Sri Lanka: “We are in the middle of earth’s sixth extinction”Eating Appalachia: NASA satellite images reveal mountain cannibalism for coal
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 2nd, 2010
Mongabay: New images released by NASA reveal the conversion of mountains and forests in southern West Virginia to a giant surface mine. The time-lapse shots from 1984 to 2009 show the process of mountaintop removal in Boone County, West Virginia. The images show forests being stripped, valleys filled, and giant craters excavated in the process of mining thin seams of coal at Hobet mine. "These natural-color (photo-like) images document the growth of the Hobet mine as it moves from ridge ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Eating Appalachia: NASA satellite images reveal mountain cannibalism for coal‘Climate Change is Killing People in Drylands”
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 2nd, 2010
InDepthNews: "Enhancing soils anywhere enhances life everywhere," says UN's top official Luc Gnacadja, who is tasked with combating land degradation and drought – not only in Africa, the most vulnerable continent, but all along the drylands belt running from Latin America through Sahel and Asia. Gnacadja is executive secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), which along with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity ...
UN mulls global environment organization
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 2nd, 2010
Mongabay: Mass extinction, ocean acidification, deforestation, pollution, desertification, and climate change: the environmental issues facing the world are numerous and increasingly global in nature. To respond more effectively, the United Nations is considering forming a World Environmental Organization or WEO, similar to the World Trade Organization. The idea was first seriously considered at Copenhagen in December, but has taken a step forward at an annual meeting of the United Nation ...