RSS Feed
Archive for June, 2010
Indonesia: Scientists on hunt for climate-change clues explore rare tropical glacier
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on June 14th, 2010
Christian Science Monitor: Indonesia's towering Puncak Jaya mountain on the island of Papua straddles one of the world's richest and most inaccessible gold and copper mines. But the scientists currently prospecting on the 16,000-ft peak are digging for a different kind of treasure: fragile ice cores that can yield clues to the climatic past and give pointers on the future. Puncak Jaya, a patch of ice on a barren peak that juts from the jungle-clad southern shores of western Papua, is one of only a handful of ...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Indonesia: Scientists on hunt for climate-change clues explore rare tropical glacierIntensive farming ‘massively slowed’ global warming
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on June 14th, 2010
New Scientist: Fertilisers, pesticides and hybrid high-yielding seeds saved the planet from an extra dose of global warming. That, at least, is the conclusion of a new analysis which finds that the intensification of farming through the green revolution has unjustly been blamed for speeding up global warming. Steven Davis of the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Palo Alto, California, and colleagues calculated how much greenhouse gases would have been emitted over the past half-century if the ...
The Business of Bottled Water: An “Obsession” with a Price
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on June 14th, 2010
National Geographic: This story is part of a special series that explores the global water crisis. For more visit National Geographic's Freshwater website. Everyone needs water, and in much of the developed world, they get it--virtually for free. Yet companies have made a big business out of selling water products to people with ready access to safe, clean tap water. The effects of the bottled-water movement have been devastating, not just on wallets but also on the environment, says Peter Gleick, ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on The Business of Bottled Water: An “Obsession” with a PriceChesapeake bay acid affected oysters
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on June 14th, 2010
Environmental News Network: The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States. It lies off the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by Maryland and Virginia. In its waters are abundant marine life but the environment is changing. The shells of young oysters in Chesapeake Bay are not getting as thick as they've been in the past, and higher acidity levels seem to be to blame. The bay is mostly known for its great seafood production, especially blue crabs, clams and oysters. The plentiful oyster harvests led to ...
Florida Keys Residents Plan Their Own Oil Spill Cleanup
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on June 14th, 2010
Time Magazine: A small island in the middle of a big ocean, Key West has always made a virtue of its isolation. In 1982, for example, an onerous Border Patrol checkpoint on U.S. Route 1, which links the Keys to mainland Florida, resulted in the island's declaring itself the autonomous Conch Republic. This was, of course, mostly a joke ("We Seceded Where Others Failed" was its e pluribus unum), but the mayor's declaration of independence did include a twinge of real anger and a vow that "we have no ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Florida Keys Residents Plan Their Own Oil Spill CleanupW.House confident BP will set up big escrow account
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on June 14th, 2010
Reuters: The White House is confident BP Plc will agree to set up a multibillion-dollar escrow account to pay mounting claims relating to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a spokesman said on Monday. "We feel confident that this is going to be able to move forward," White House spokesman Bill Burton told reporters traveling with President Barack Obama for a two-day visit to the Gulf region. He declined to comment specifically on the size of the account beyond saying that it would be in the ...
New UN panel to focus on saving life on Earth
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on June 14th, 2010
Mongabay: In South Korea last week 230 delegates from 85 nations approved a new UN science panel focusing on saving life on Earth, known as the Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). The panel, which is to be modeled off of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is meant to bridge the gap between scientific understanding of biodiversity loss and the policy decisions necessary to stop it. "IPBES represents a major breakthrough in ...
Moon Has a Hundred Times More Water Than Thought
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on June 14th, 2010
National Geographic: Not only does the moon's surface hold a "significant amount" of water--as two NASA crashes confirmed in October--but, a new study says, the moon's interior may hold at least a hundred times more water than previously estimated. "If we could take all the water which is locked up in the moon's interior, it would make a one-meter-deep [one-yard-deep] ocean covering its entire surface," said lead study author Francis McCubbin, a geologist with the Carnegie Institution for Science in ...
Pumping up the heat for a climate-friendly future
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on June 14th, 2010
ScienceDaily: Making ground-source heat a cost-effective alternative to fossil fuels has long been a dream for countries that depend on energy imports and need to cut their carbon dioxide emissions. A team of businesses and researchers in Slovenia and Serbia set out to develop the heat pump technology that would make this dream a reality. The chaos caused by a volcanic eruption in Iceland April 2010 and the dispersal of its ash cloud across European airspace was a reminder of the tremendous forces ...
Using the Danube more without abusing it
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on June 13th, 2010
Agence France-Presse: Countries bordering the Danube want to increase shipping on the second longest river on the European continent without abusing an ecosystem unique in the world. "Today, shipping goods on the Danube is very limited when the potential is enormous," Karla Peijs, the European coordinator for inland waterways, told AFP during a conference on the European Union Danube strategy in Mamaia, Romania. "If we increase it, it could help stimulate economies in Eastern and Central Europe," ...