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Archive for August 11th, 2010
460 Million Dollars Sought for Pakistan Flood Relief
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 11th, 2010
Inter Press Service: With an estimated 14 to 16 million people affected by what the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) calls "the worst monsoon-related floods in living memory", the U.N. launched a humanitarian flash appeal Wednesday seeking 459.7 million dollars for relief efforts in Pakistan. "The disaster is continually getting worse," said John Holmes, U.N. under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator. Speaking to reporters at the ...
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Water meters will save wildlife
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 11th, 2010
Telegraph: The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) warned that a third of river catchments were facing damage as a result of too much water being taken out of them. Following a summer which has seen drought and water shortages leading to hosepipe bans in some areas, thecharity is calling on the Government and water companies to ensure universal metering is in place by 2020 to help cut demand. Related Articles Government launches campaign telling people to take shorter showers Water ...
Climate change, Pakistani floods, and causality
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 11th, 2010
Telegraph: We report in today`s newspaper that the floods in Pakistan, wildfires in Russia and landslides in China are "proof" of global warming, according to the IPCC. The story, with a less dramatic headline, is online here. The angle there is the more modest "global warming could be the cause" of the various disasters. The first, paper, headline is, I would say, not technically accurate. Firstly, it`s not the case because the IPCC actually says no such thing: in the story itself, the ...
Climate Change: How Extreme Heat May Affect Your Food
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 11th, 2010
Times: Hot enough for you? If you live in one of the more than 15 states that were suffering under a heat advisory or excessive heat warning on Tuesday, I'm going to guess the answer is yes, God, please make it all stop. The oppressively high temperatures that gripped much of the U.S. during June--the hottest month on record worldwide, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)--barely relented in July, when average temperatures around the country were 1.3 F higher than ...
Cape Verde: no resources, no problem
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 11th, 2010
Reuters: For a small string of barren volcanic islands that have no natural resources, suffer from chronic droughts and are perched far off Africa's west coast, Cape Verde is punching well above its weight. Unscathed by conflict or political instability, the country has quietly become a middle-income nation and looks set to be one of few in Africa to meet any of the Millennium Development Goals set for measuring progress in improving livelihoods. Yet it has loftier ambitions. In ...
Gordon Brown makes aid appeal for Pakistan flood victims
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 11th, 2010
Guardian: Gordon Brown has appealed to the British public to donate more amid concern that the official international response to the flood disaster in Pakistan has been slow and ungenerous compared with past emergencies. The former prime minister, in one of his first interviews since his election loss, insisted that "compassion fatigue" was not a factor. "I think there's not a compassion or giving fatigue," Brown told GMTV. "I think there's an outpouring of compassion in this country. I ...
Images capture giant ice island
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 11th, 2010
BBC: Satellite images released by Nasa have captured the scale of the ice island that broke off the Petermann Glacier in northwestern Greenland on 5 August. The image on the left was taken on 28 July and the image on the right was taken on 5 August. The floating chunk of ice measures approximately 100 250 square kilometres. According to Nasa's Earth Observatory, the glacier lost about one-quarter of its 70km-long floating ice shelf.
China braces for more floods
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 11th, 2010
Guardian: Survivors of the landslides in north-western China are braced for further misery as forecasters predict more heavy rains. At least 1,117 people died when mud and debris swept through Zhouqu, in Gansu province, late on Saturday night and more than 600 are missing. There is little hope of finding more survivors among what are thought to be the hundreds who were buried alive in metres of sludge. The 10,000 rescue and relief workers are continuing to search for bodies but attention ...
Ladakh paradise lost in a global warning
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 11th, 2010
Asian Times: Paradise was buried under a vast, cataclysmic mud flow that struck Ladakh district, the beautiful Shangri-la in the Indian Himalayas, last week, killing over 160 people in and outside Leh, the area's main town. Flash floods and landslides near Leh, which in two hours also destroyed two decades of infrastructure growth, unleashed questions about the fatal effects of pollution and shortsighted economic development on millennia-old sensitive ecological systems. Leh has become a terrible ...
Sub-Saharan Africa news in brief: 28 July-August 11 2010
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 11th, 2010
SciDev.Net: Uganda's effort to curb methane emissions is a global first Uganda has registered a programme with a series of activities aimed at cutting down methane emissions, according to the World Bank. The programme will promote financially and environmentally sustainable waste composting in urban areas and is said to be the first of its kind globally. "This programme ... serves as an example for many other African countries to design and implement large scale mitigation activities," said Henry ...