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Archive for July 23rd, 2010
Pakistan’s drinkers of the dust
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 23rd, 2010
Globe and Mail: The Indus looks nothing like the mighty river from history books. Alexander the Great once sailed galleys along these waters; centuries later, the British used steamboats. Now, the decaying remnants of boats are stranded high on the sandy banks, dozens of metres above the brown trickle that was once a legendary river. Only small fishing skiffs remain on the water, and most sit empty. As a sandstorm sweeps down from the dunes, obscuring the river with its haze, a fisherman named Ghulam ...
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Technique for arsenic-free water developed
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 23rd, 2010
SciDev.Net: A novel approach to arsenic removal could lead to a quick and inexpensive purification of drinking water in developing countries. Previous research demonstrated that arsenic can be removed from water using activated carbon or iron minerals, such as magnetite nanocrystals. However, such particles are too small to be effective in flowing water and they quickly degrade when exposed to the atmosphere, rendering them useless. Now scientists have combined the nanocrystals with ...
United States: Finding answers in a secluded marsh
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 23rd, 2010
The Capital: One hundred and fifty acres of marshland stretch across the banks of the Rhode River, cattails and grasses sprouting from the sloshy soil. Pamela Wood - The Capital Pat Megonigal, a biogeochemist, explains how scientists use the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center's marsh to study how plants are affected by global change, such as increased carbon dioxide levels, excess nitrogen and rising sea levels. The marsh looks much like any other marsh along the Chesapeake Bay ...
Paper mill blamed for polluting Baikal
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 23rd, 2010
BBC: Ecologists and non-governmental organisations are blaming the Soviet-era Baikalsk Pulp and Paper mill for polluting the world deepest and oldest lake, Lake Baikal in Siberia. Baikal, a World Heritage site, holds one fifth of the world's fresh water and is home to many unique plants and animals. Ecologist Marina Rikhvanova from the Baikal Environmental Wave organisation, told BBC News reporter Katia Moskvitch that she has been battling the mill for years.
Scientists commend Indonesia for conservation measures, but urge immediate action on forests and peatlands
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 23rd, 2010
Mongabay: Scientists convening at the annual Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC) meeting in Sanur, Bali urged Indonesia's leaders to strengthen measures to protect the country's biologically-rich ecosystems. In a resolution issued on the final day of the five-day conference, ATBC commended Indonesia for recent moves to protect forests, including a pledge to cut illegal logging and a billion dollar partnership with Norway to reduce deforestation and forest degradation, but ...
BP accused of trying to silence science on spill
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 23rd, 2010
Agence France-Presse: The head of the American Association of Professors accused BP Friday of trying to buy the silence of scientists and academics to protect itself after the Gulf oil spill, in a BBC interview. "This is really one huge corporation trying to buy faculty silence in a comprehensive way," said Cary Nelson. BP is facing lawsuits after the oil spill, which has destroyed the livelihoods of many people along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. A copy of a contract offered to scientists ...
Interview: How Our Economy is Killing the Earth
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 23rd, 2010
Atlantic: When Bill McKibben first sounded the alarm about global warming 20 years ago, he was something of a voice crying in the wilderness. Now McKibben, author of The End of Nature and Deep Economy, is issuing an even more dire warning. His new book, with the science fiction-y title Eaarth, paints a picture of a depleted, overheated planet no longer suited to its inhabitants. That planet is our own, the time is now, and the book is non-fiction. Laying the blame for climate change squarely at ...
Deep underground, miles of hidden wildfires rage
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 23rd, 2010
Time: Three blistering fires are blazing through Wyoming's scenic Powder River Basin, but firefighters aren't paying any attention. Other than a faint hint of acrid odors and a single ribbon of smoke rising from a tiny crack beyond the nearby Tongue River, a long look across the region's serene grassland shows no sign of trouble. That's what makes the three infernos, and the toxins they spew, so sinister. Their flames are concealed deep underground, in coal seams and oxygen-rich fissures, ...