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Archive for August 21st, 2010
Alaska leaders must unite on climate change
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 21st, 2010
Dutch Harbor Fisherman: It is simply incredulous that as leaders and policymakers of the free world that our United States Senate could not come to a general understanding of the seriousness of the issues related to climate change. How many Alaska coastal villages most we lose, retreating glaciers or diminished fisheries must we suffer, in Alaska before our elected policymakers realize that our accelerated use of carbon in the last 100 years is placing all of our Alaskan environment in jeopardy? This past ...
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Mauritania plants trees to hold back desert
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 21st, 2010
Reuters: Mauritania has launched a tree-planting program aimed at protecting its capital from the advancing desert and coastal erosion, a project that could eventually extend thousands of kilometers across Africa. President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz on Saturday planted the first of some 2 million trees that are meant to form a "green belt" around the capital, Nouakchott, and curb erosion elsewhere in the desert nation that straddles black and Arab Africa. "The aim of this green belt is to ...
Worldwide slowdown in plant carbon uptake
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 21st, 2010
ScienceNews: Droughts stifled carbon storage in vegetation in many regions during the last decade, satellite images reveal. Declines in carbon storage from 2000 through 2009 are depicted in shades of red; green denotes increases in vegetation for the same period. Stronger trends are depicted in darker colors.Zhao and Running/University of Montana Deep and extended droughts are responsible for a recent slowdown in the amount of carbon dioxide that land plants pulled from the atmosphere as they ...
Thinking green? It’s not just black and white
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 21st, 2010
Washington Post: Can a big house be green? Yes, but a smaller house will always be greener because fewer resources were used in its construction and less energy is needed to heat and cool it. This critical distinction is little understood by the general public, but in the world of green building, prudent use of resources, also called "sustainability," is a cornerstone. It means using resources to meet our needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. From a ...
Spill bound BP, feds together
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 21st, 2010
AP: For months, the U.S. government talked with a boot-on-the-neck toughness about BP, with the president wondering aloud about whose butt to kick. But privately, it worked hand-in-hand with the oil giant to cap the runaway Gulf well and chose to effectively be the company's banker -- allowing future drilling revenues to potentially be used as collateral for a victim compensation fund. Now, with a new round of investigative hearings set to begin Monday on BP's home turf and the ...
Eyewitness: Food drop for flood victims
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 21st, 2010
Guardian: X
Australia: Oz: a climate change hotspot
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 21st, 2010
New Zealand Herald: Irrigated by one of the world's mightiest river systems, the Murray-Darling Basin yields almost half of Australia's fresh produce. But the basin is ailing and scientists fear that as climate change grips the driest inhabited continent its main food bowl could become a global warming ground zero. The signs are ominous. In the Riverland, one of the nation's major horticulture areas, dying vines and parched lemon trees attest to critical water shortages. Farmers have had their ...