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Archive for August 11th, 2010
On Our Radar: Drought and Floods
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 11th, 2010
NYT: Famine looms as severe drought deepens a food crisis in Niger and Chad. "It is crucial that donors continue to come forward as soon as possible if we are to prevent the loss of a whole generation of children to malnutrition and food insecurity," an aid worker says. [United Nations] The United Nations calls for nearly $500 million in aid for flood-ravaged Pakistan. [Reuters] Floodwaters are rising fast in central Iowa. [Des Moines Register] Germany considers a new tax on ...
Posted in 
Up the Congo Without a Paddle
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 11th, 2010
NYT: When doing fieldwork in Congo one thing is for sure: the best-laid plans will very probably go horribly awry. This time it's nothing too dire, but our "10-hour trip" upriver to the small settlement of Tshumbiri has taken a full three days. It's been a series of very long days sprawled on top of bags full of our hard, lumpy equipment, slowly motoring upriver. The river is huge here, more than a kilometer wide, and as we struggle upstream we dodge large clumps of grass, some as large as small ...
Huge Ice Island Could Pose Threat To Oil, Shipping
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 11th, 2010
National Public Radio: An island of ice more than four times the size of Manhattan is drifting across the Arctic Ocean after breaking off from a glacier in Greenland. Potentially in the path of this unstoppable giant are oil platforms and shipping lanes - and any collision could do untold damage. In a worst case scenario, large chunks could reach the heavily trafficked waters where another Greenland iceberg sank the Titanic in 1912. It's been a summer of near biblical climatic havoc across the ...
The extreme weather conditions bringing floods, fire and drought
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 11th, 2010
Guardian
Russia’s peatland fires seen burning for months
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 11th, 2010
Reuters: Some of Russia's smog-causing peatland fires are likely to burn for months, part of a global problem of drained marshes that emit climate-warming greenhouse gases, experts said on Wednesday. Novel carbon markets could offer a long-term fix for peat bogs, from Indonesia to South Africa, if negotiators of a U.N. climate treaty can agree ways to pay to safeguard marshes that are often drained to make way for farms, roads or homes. "Peat fires continue underground and...they will ...
Fears Russian wildfires could send Chernobyl waste to Moscow
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 11th, 2010
Guardian: Forest wardens today stepped up patrols in the Chernobyl fallout zone as a leading ecologist warned that fires could send radioactive particles as far as Moscow. Around 160,000 emergency personnel are battling 600 wildfires across Russia, 290 of which ignited in the last 24 hours. Greenpeace said at least 20 fires – three of them in a highly contaminated forest area – had broken out in the Bryansk region, bordering northern Ukraine, in recent days. Bryansk was part of ...
Scientists see spike in oil-soaked Gulf turtles
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 11th, 2010
Reuters: U.S. wildlife officials have recovered over 1,000 oil-soaked turtles from the Gulf of Mexico in recent weeks, but the threat from BP Plc's oil spill has waned since the ruptured well has been capped, experts said. On April 20, a Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and spewed oil into the Gulf of Mexico for nearly three months. U.S. wildlife officials have been tracking the number of oiled turtles recovered since the spill. The number of turtles began to spike in late July. From July ...
In La., signs of regrowth seen in oiled marshes
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 11th, 2010
Associated Press: Shoots of marsh grass and bushes of mangrove trees already are starting to grow back in the bay where just months ago photographers shot startling images of dying pelicans coated in oil from the massive Gulf oil spill. More than a dozen scientists interviewed by The Associated Press say the marsh here and across the Louisiana coast is healing itself, giving them hope delicate wetlands might weather the worst offshore spill in U.S. history better than they had feared. Some marshland ...
Russia Fires, Pakistan Floods Linked?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 11th, 2010
National Geographic: They're raging a continent apart, but two deadly natural disasters--the Russian wildfires and the Pakistan floods--may be connected by the Asian monsoon, one of the most powerful atmospheric forces on the planet, scientists say. That's because the monsoon--a seasonal wind system that brings rain and floods to Pakistan and much of the rest of Asia in summer--also drives the circulation of air as far away as Europe, said Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the Boulder, Colorado-based ...
Analysis: U.S. oil spills hit support for Canada mega-pipeline
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 11th, 2010
Reuters: For Calgary-based TransCanada, a recent Michigan oil spill from a pipeline operated by its rival Enbridge Inc couldn't have come at a worse time. The spill threatens to tilt public opinion against TransCanada's $12 billion pipeline system that could ultimately stretch from Alberta to Texas. More than 800,000 gallons (3.6 million liters) of crude oil from a 41-year-old stretch of Enbridge Inc's 6B pipeline spewed into a Michigan waterway on July 26, in one of the biggest ...