Archive for April 13th, 2010

Canadian Ice Sheet Is Melting Rapidly, Study Shows

Yale Environment 360: One of the largest ice sheets in Canada's high Arctic has been swiftly shrinking in recent decades as a result of warmer summers, according to a new study. The 895-square-mile ice cap on Devon Island, an uninhabited island in Baffin Bay, has declined steadily since 1985, according to analysis by scientists at the University of Calgary. Because the remote Arctic area is essentially a desert, with minimal annual S. Boon, L. CoplandResearchers collect data in 2008 precipitation, any increase of ...

Peruvian glacier split triggers deadly tsunami

Guardian: A massive ice block broke from a glacier and crashed into a lake in the Peruvian Andes, unleashing a 23-metre tsunami and sending muddy torrents through nearby towns, killing at least one person. The chunk of ice, estimated at the size of four football pitches, detached from the Hualcan glacier near Carhuaz, about 200 miles north of the capital, Lima, on Sunday. It plunged into a lagoon known as lake 513, triggering a tsunami that breached 23 metre (75ft) high levees and damaged ...

Q & A: Farming Fish

New York Times: Q. Why do ecologists seem to give the nod to farmed catfish and tilapia but not salmon? A. The ecological issues related to fish farming vary from freshwater to saltwater fish; from carnivorous species to noncarnivores; and from open pens to closed ponds and tanks, among many other factors. Farmed salmon, often raised in pens that are permeable by surrounding ocean waters and fed a diet rich in fish meal and fish oil, have been of special concern to critics like the World ...

China plans to curb foreign investment in polluting sectors

Agence France-Presse: China said Tuesday it planned to curb foreign investment in polluting sectors and instead direct it into high technology and new energy. The State Council, the nation's cabinet, said in guidelines on its website that it aimed to "seriously restrict (foreign investment) in high energy, highly polluting... projects". It added that foreign investment in "high-end manufacturing, high-technology and service industries, and new energy and energy-saving environmental sectors" should ...

Water Shortage Calls for Second Look at Indus Treaty

Inter Press Service: Climate change and the probability that a current water shortage would worsen may make constantly bickering neighbours, India and Pakistan, take a closer look at a 50-year-old treaty under which they share rivers originating from the Himalayas. And while the latest official annual meeting regarding the treaty ended inconclusively in Lahore in March, experts say the two countries would do well to keep talking about the water resources they share. Danish Mustafa, a water ...

RELEASE: Planetary Ecological Emergency Declared

Human pressures on Earth System’s nine life-support systems have reached a scale where people power revolutionary action may be necessary and warranted to stop abrupt global environmental collapse From Earth's Newsdesk and New Earth Rising, projects of Ecological Internet (EI) Contact: Dr. Glen Barry, President, Ecological Internet glenbarry@ecologicalinternet.org Ecological Internet (EI) today declares a planetary ecological emergency [search]. On the basis of overwhelming new ecological science indicating Earth is past the tipping point and key global ecosystems and life-support systems are failing – EI calls for an immediate and escalating people’s power Earth Revolution on behalf of Earth, all her life, and the human family. A recent highly significant scientific paper entitled “Planetary Boundaries: A Safe Operating Space for Humanity“[1] highlights the numerous means by which the Earth System’s life-support systems are failing. The natural right of all species to take all necessary actions to protect themselves, their habitat and do what is necessary to avoid ecocide is thus activated. This is not a drill. The human family faces the imminent collapse of the biosphere – the thin layer of life organized into ecosystems, upon an otherwise lifeless planet – that makes Earth habitable. Marshes and rivers and forests and fish are far more ...