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Archive for July 17th, 2010
Environment minister launches flood strategy to combat impact of climate change in Wales
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 17th, 2010
Daily Post: FUTURE public spending on flood defences in Wales must be targeted at communities most at risk, a new strategy suggested yesterday. Fresh plans for managing flooding and coastal erosion aim to respond to the increasing threat from climate change. One in six properties in Wales is already at risk from inundation. Predicted changes to rainfall patterns and rising sea levels will significantly increase the risk in the future. Welsh environment minister Jane Davidson ...
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Too much of a good thing: Growth in wind power makes life difficult for grid managers
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 17th, 2010
Oregonian: On the afternoon of May 19, in a single chaotic hour, more than a thousand wind turbines in the Columbia River Gorge went from spinning lazily in the breeze to full throttle as a storm rolled east out of Hood River. Suddenly, almost two nuclear plants worth of extra power was sizzling down the lines -- the largest hourly spike in wind power the Northwest has ever experienced. At the Bonneville Power Administration's control room in Vancouver, it was too much of a good thing. ...
Thousands evacuated as storm batters Vietnam
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 17th, 2010
Reuters: Vietnamese troops evacuated thousands of people from their homes in the north of the country Sunday due to threats of flash flooding and landslides, as the death toll from Typhoon Conson rose to more than 70. Typhoon Conson was downgraded to a tropical storm as it hit northern Vietnam late Saturday after battering the Philippines and the southern Chinese island of Hainan over the past week. State-run Voice of Vietnam radio said the army had sent 3,500 soldiers to help evacuate ...
Finding Hope, Adventure Deep Within the Amazon Rain Forest
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 17th, 2010
Yahoo News: If asked to compile a list of careers that offer old-fashioned thrills, one might say archeologist (Indiana Jones), or perhaps ship captain (Jack Sparrow). But geographer? Enter Robert Walker, a professor of geography at Michigan State University (MSU), and a scientist whose South American exploits lend his rather stuffy-sounding profession a glamorous luster. Walker's research into land use and its effects requires several trips a year down to Brazil, where he tracks changes ...
Alaskan glacier detaches itself from seafloor, goes rogue
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 17th, 2010
Christian Science Monitor: An Alaskan glacier has lost its footing with the seafloor and is floating in the ocean, new first-of-their-kind observations show. The observations have implications for predicting the sea level rise that could accompany global warming and the melting of glaciers around the world. Glaciers are huge rivers of ice formed when snow and ice accumulate over hundreds and thousands of years. They are found at the Earth's poles and in some mountain ranges. These icy rivers move slowly ...
Indonesia: Visit shows Papua glacier in swift decline
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 17th, 2010
Associated Press: Lonnie Thompson spent years preparing for his expedition to the remote, mist-shrouded mountains of eastern Indonesia, hoping to chronicle the affect of global warming on the last remaining glaciers in the Pacific. He's worried he got there too late. Even as he pitched his tent on top of Puncak Jaya, the ice was melting beneath him. The 3-mile-high glacier was pounded by rain every afternoon during the team's 13-day stay, something the American scientist has never encountered in ...
CO2 emission lower from peatland, study says
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 17th, 2010
Toronto Star: The carbon dioxide (CO2) emission from oil palm plantations on tropical peatland is lower than that of the forest, a study has shown. Dr Lulie Melling, director of the Tropical Peat Research Laboratory Unit in Sarawak Chief Minister's Department, said preliminary findings also revealed that the CO2 emission from plantations on tropical peatland decreased over time. She said these breakthrough scientific findings would be useful to counter accusations from western ...
New study charts effects of each degree of warming
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 17th, 2010
Discovery News: The human impacts on climate come into sharper focus in a new National Research Council report that warns policymakers that carbon dioxide lives so long in the atmosphere "it can effectively lock the Earth and future generations into a range of impacts, some of which could become very severe." The range of impacts -- temperatures, crop yields, precipitation, streamflow, wildfires -- have long been part of the global warming scenario, but the new analysis by leading climate scientists ...
For US, ongoing battle against changing oil ‘Blob’
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 17th, 2010
Associated Press: Inside a sprawling command post in southern Louisiana, The Blob is everywhere. It stains the many maps tacked to white walls. Computer monitors beam satellite images of it floating in the Gulf of Mexico, a magenta mass that looks more like an island than the colossal oil slick that it is. It sometimes changes shape on these screens, or breaks off into bits and pieces, but The Blob itself never vanishes. Coast Guard Capt. Roger Laferriere oversees this command center, ...
The power of green
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 17th, 2010
Business Mirror: Bill Gates and Exxon Mobil are among those who see huge potential--and challenges--in wringing fuel from algae. Inside an industrial warehouse in South San Francisco, California, Harrison Dillon, chief technology officer of startup Solazyme Inc., examines a beaker filled with a brown paste made of sugar cane waste. While the smell brings to mind molasses, this goo, called bagasse, won't find its way into people-pleasing confections. Instead, scientists will empty it into ...