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Archive for May, 2010
Loss of wildlife threatens food supplies – UN
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 10th, 2010
Telegraph: The latest report on global biodiversity gives a more bleak picture than ever before of the state of the natural environment. In the last 35 years there has been a 30 per cent decline in the number of mammals, birds and other vertebrates on the planet, while the human population has doubled. It is impossible to count the loss of plants and insects because there are so many, but scientists fear millions of species could have been lost before they are even discovered. Already major ...
Report: Climate change could render much of world uninhabitable
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 10th, 2010
USA Today: A worst-case scenario of global warming, in which temperatures would soar some 21 degrees, is that much of the world may simply become too hot for humans to live in, according to new research published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "We found that ... a 21-degree warming would put half of the world's population in an uninhabitable environment,"says study co-author Matthew Huber of Purdue University. While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate ...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Report: Climate change could render much of world uninhabitableCollapsing biodiversity is a ‘wake-up call for humanity’
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 10th, 2010
Mongabay: A joint report released today by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the UN Environment Program (UNEP) finds that our natural support systems are on the verge of collapsing unless radical changes are made to preserve the world's biodiversity. Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity, Ahmed Djoghlaf, called the bleak report "a wake-up call for humanity." The report is the third edition of the Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO-3). Employing scientific ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Collapsing biodiversity is a ‘wake-up call for humanity’Gulf spill will change deep water operations across oil industry, says BP
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 10th, 2010
Guardian: The oil industry will have to overhaul how it operates in deep water as a result of the Gulf of Mexico disaster, BP's chief executive, Tony Hayward, said last night, as the company disclosed that the cost of the spill had now reached $350m (£236m). He said there would be "significant implications" in terms of new regulations and safety, while companies drilling offshore may be required in future to have spill-response equipment on standby. The blowout preventer, which failed to ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Gulf spill will change deep water operations across oil industry, says BPBP, other companies point fingers in oil rig blast
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 10th, 2010
Associated Press: Early finger-pointing erupted Monday among companies involved in the oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico and unstopped leak of millions of gallons of oil, on the eve of the first congressional hearings into the accident. A top American executive for BP, Lamar McKay, said a critical safety device known as a blowout-preventer failed catastrophically. Separately, the owner of the rig off Louisiana's coast said BP managed it and was responsible for all work conducted at the site. A ...
Flood money: The water cycle
Posted by Water Conserve: Water Conservation RSS Newsfeed on May 10th, 2010
Independent (UK): You've probably heard the dubious statistic that a glass of tap water in London has cycled through seven different people before ending up in your tumbler. But how much does water cycle naturally around the world? You might also remember those diagrams with lots of arrows in science lessons, showing water cycling between the seas, skies and rivers, but what is the relationship between the global water wheel and our environment? When it comes to the amount of water that trickles, drips ...
Oil spill swells to 4M gallons; fixes days off yet
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 10th, 2010
Associated Press: Black Hawk helicopters peppered Louisiana's barrier islands with 1-ton sacks of sand Monday to bolster the state's crucial wetlands against an epic oil spill, 4 million gallons and growing, in the Gulf of Mexico. At the site of the ruptured well a mile below the surface, a remote-controlled submarine shot chemicals into the maw of the massive undersea leak to dilute the flow, further evidence that BP expects the gusher to keep erupting into the Gulf for weeks or more. Crews ...
Nigeria: Don urges action on desertification
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 9th, 2010
Champion: A University teacher, Prof. Joshua Kayode has advised Nigerians to embrace tree planting as a way of curbing the impending desert encroachment that is ravaging some parts of the country The University of Ado Ekiti(UNAD) Professor of Botany, said it was better the country realized the importance of forest and tree planting in time to prevent the country from being devastated by high rising deforestation Delivering the 26th Inaugural Lecture of the University entitled: ...
Lawyers on the prowl after US oil spill
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 9th, 2010
Agence France-Presse: Armies of lawyers are turning their sights to the massive oil slick spreading across the Gulf of Mexico, eagerly seeking damages from the companies at the center of the disaster. Lawyers who faced a massive onslaught of demands after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005 are now flooded with calls from oil workers and local fishermen eager to receive compensation for their losses. Judy Guice, an attorney based in Biloxi, Mississippi, said the oil spill "has the ...
One winter of heavy snow doesn’t fix global warming
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 9th, 2010
Kansas City Star: Tom Watson is a terrible golfer. Sound absurd? It should. But using the type of flawed logic some climate-change deniers use, it is a reasonable statement. Forget decades of empirical data. Instead, look at his performance in last year's British Open. Watson battled for the Claret Jug on the final day only to lose in a tie-breaker after bogeying on 18. Based on this singular occurrence, this must mean that Watson isn't that talented, and his backlog of success must all be misleading ...