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Archive for July, 2010
China: Three Gorges dam faces major test
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 19th, 2010
Guardian: China's Three Gorges dam faces its biggest test this week as rain storms threaten to swell upstream water levels beyond those that preceded the Yangtze's last devastating flood in 1998. Flood control is one of the major objectives of the 16m tonne concrete barrier, which was pushed through by the government despite concerns about the environmental and social impact. Torrential downpours, which have claimed at least 146 lives since the start of the month, have created the most ...
A celebration of hope in a dry land
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 19th, 2010
Guardian: On ranches like mine, perched on the windy northern Great Plains, drought is a daily companion. Our official average rainfall is about 16 inches a year, one of the few statistics I know by heart – and I don't believe it. During four normal years, for example, our rainfall was 6.45, 6.15, 17.65, and 8.12 inches, averaging about 10 inches a year. And that included winter storms with 60mph winds. Ranchers have, like native plants and animals, adapted. Lately, the land of ranchers who ...
Feinberg urges spill claimants to opt for fund
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 19th, 2010
Associated Press: The administrator of a $20 billion Gulf oil spill compensation fund offered a hard sell Monday, promising fishermen and others with lost income claims from the disaster that he'll be more generous with them than any court would be. Kenneth Feinberg noted that claimants are free to instead file a lawsuit, but added, "You're crazy to do so, though." "Because under this program, you will receive, if you're eligible, compensation without having to go to court for years, without the ...
Without carbon emissions cuts, the ‘anthropocene’ looms as an ugly epoch – study
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 19th, 2010
ClimateWire: Choices the world makes about whether to cut man-made carbon dioxide emissions will determine the severity of climate change over the next thousand years -- or longer, according to a new report by the country's leading scientific advisory body, the National Academy of Sciences. That's because the greenhouse gas lingers in the atmosphere for hundreds or even thousands of years. "The bottom line is that because CO2 is so long-lived in our atmosphere, it could effectively lock the ...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Without carbon emissions cuts, the ‘anthropocene’ looms as an ugly epoch – studyNew conservation model emerges in Canada’s boreal
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 19th, 2010
Daily Climate: The scale of the conservation effort is staggering: 470,000 square miles - half the size of the Louisiana Purchase, five times the size of the U.S. national park system - forever shielded from logging, mining and damming. This is the first time in Canada, and quite possibly the world, where a government is creating a law that intends to protect carbon. - Janet Sumner, Wildlands League It is part of an ongoing and unprecedented drive to protect Canada's northern boreal forests, ...
Lake Superior, a Huge Natural Climate Change Gauge, Is Running a Fever
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 19th, 2010
ClimateWire: The Great Lakes are feeling the heat from climate change. As the world's largest freshwater system warms, it is poised to systematically alter life for local wildlife and the tribes that depend on it, according to regional experts. And the warming could also provide a glimpse of what is happening on a more global level, they say. "The Great Lakes in a lot of ways have always been a canary in the coal mine," Cameron Davis, the senior adviser to the U.S. EPA on the Great Lakes, ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Lake Superior, a Huge Natural Climate Change Gauge, Is Running a FeverDefra lays out actions for structural reform
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 19th, 2010
Business Green: Despite facing budget cuts of up to 50 per cent, Defra has laid out its Structural Reform Plan (SRP) for public comment. The plan underlines the department's commitment to make British farming more competitive while making food production more sustainable, protecting biodiversity and boosting the green economy. "The food and farming industry, from the farm to the plate, has demonstrated its ability to withstand economic shocks and will be a pillar of the new green economy, so ...
Obama sets plan for oceans, Great Lakes
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 19th, 2010
Reuters: President Barack Obama set a new policy on Monday intended to improve coordination of uses of U.S. coastal waters ranging from recreation to commercial fishing to offshore drilling. As his administration contends with the BP Plc oil spill, Obama was to sign an executive order creating a single National Ocean Council to make sense of the huge number of rules from different agencies on the use of U.S. coastal waters and the Great Lakes. The plan, the final recommendation of an ...
30 frog species, including 5 unknown to science, killed off by amphibian plague in Panama
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 19th, 2010
Mongabay: With advanced genetic techniques, researchers have drawn a picture of just how devastating the currently extinction crisis for the world's amphibians has become in a new study published in the Proceedings of the Nation Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Studying frog populations using DNA barcoding in Panama's Omar Torrijos National Park located in El Copé researchers found that 25 known species and 5 unknown species have vanished since 1998. None have returned. Amphibians are threatened in ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on 30 frog species, including 5 unknown to science, killed off by amphibian plague in PanamaThe Future Of ‘Wild Fish’
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 19th, 2010
National Public Radio: Writer Paul Greenberg has been eating fish caught in local waters since he was a kid growing up in Connecticut. Most of the fish he caught himself – but occasionally, he would visit the fishmonger in his hometown and purchase wild fish, fresh from the sea. But when he visited fish markets as an adult, he realized that the types of fish for sale had changed. Instead of a variety of wild-caught fish, Greenberg saw four varieties of fish – salmon, sea bass, cod and tuna – that seemed to ...