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Archive for September 23rd, 2010
Soaring Bottled Water Use Highlights Mistrust of Tap Water
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 23rd, 2010
Inter Press Service: More bottled water is consumed per capita in Mexico than in any other country in the world, according to a U.S. consultancy -- a fact that alarms non-governmental organisations because it highlights the lack of access to safe tap water. Organised civil society also holds bottling companies directly responsible for the dependence on bottled water pointed out by the Beverage Marketing Corporation, a leading research, consulting and financial services firm dedicated to the global ...
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Glacial retreat: Ecuador’s environmental timebomb
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 23rd, 2010
Guardian: The Cayambe volcano lies dead on the equator line in Ecuador and is the third-highest mountain in all the Americas at 17,159 ft (5,230m). It is really only climbed by serious "Andenistas" - as opposed to Alpinists - because of its crevasses and icecap, so the great Guardian/Oxfam climate expedition stopped at a modest 4,675m (14,250ft), which is nearly the height of Mont Blanc. Okay, we went nearly all the way by Toyota pickup on a perilous track, but the wind was bitter and the snow ...
United States: Everglades Restoration’s Momentum Challenged by Growing Costs — Scientists
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 23rd, 2010
Greenwire: The multibillion-dollar effort to restore the Everglades has made slow but tangible progress in recent years, but scientists today warned that sustaining momentum will be among the top challenges as costs continue to rise. The National Research Council, in its third biennial report to Congress on the progress of the world's largest environmental restoration effort, today struck a brighter note than in its last report in 2008. Progress at the time was "scant," the council said ...
Low-emission shale gas to discourage nuclear, carbon capture, Chatham says
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 23rd, 2010
Bloomberg: Cheap, low-emission shale gas, with double the global reserves of conventional sources, will discourage investment in nuclear reactors and carbon storage that would fight climate change, a British study shows. "In a world where there is the serious possibility of cheap, relatively clean gas, who will commit large sums of money to expensive pieces of equipment to lower carbon emissions?" Paul Stevens, senior research fellow at Chatham House, a London- based institute for the study of ...
Saving Africa?s lands from ever encroaching desert
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 23rd, 2010
Afrik News: The United Nations has designated 2010−2020 as the decade to raise public awareness of the threat posed by worsening drought and human mismanagement of drylands. Meanwhile, farmers around the world find new ways to salvage degraded lands that lead to desertification. Drylands make up more than 40 percent of the world`s land surface and are home to 2.1 billion -- one in three -- people worldwide. Every year, 12 million hectares of land (120,000 square kilometers) are lost to such ...
Indian floods wash away thousands of homes
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 23rd, 2010
AP: Floods triggered by heavy rain in northern India have killed at least 17 people, washed away thousands of homes and forced the evacuation of some 2 million people in a 24-hour period. A swath of Uttar Pradesh state has been covered by floodwaters spilling over the banks of several rivers that crisscross the region, the state spokesman Diwakar Tripathi said. Soldiers and paramilitary troops were working to evacuate people from marooned villages and move them to relief camps. "At ...
France: Paris Offers Water With Bubbles, but No Bottles
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 23rd, 2010
New York Times: In the latest in a series of unusual efforts to make Paris green, the city is now offering residents free sparkling water to try to wean Parisians not from red wine, but from overconsumption of plastic bottles. Inaugurated on Tuesday by Eau de Paris, the public water company, "la pétillante" – "the bubbly" – is a water fountain installed in a wooden hut of the Jardin de Reuilly, in eastern Paris, that delivers sparkling water. "We chill the water between 6 and 8 degrees ...
UM, MSU to create center to study climate of Great Lakes
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 23rd, 2010
Crain's Detroit Business: The University of Michigan and Michigan State University announced today a joint effort to study how climate change is affecting the Great Lakes. Funded by a five-year, $4.2 million grant from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the universities will create the Great Lakes Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments Center. The center will initially focus on the watersheds of Lake Erie and Lake Huron and how climate impacts agriculture, watershed ...
Breaking Out of a Wind Ghetto
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 23rd, 2010
NYT: Saturated with too much energy from wind and water, the Bonneville Power Administration, a federal agency based in the Pacific Northwest, has been forced to look for outside help. For the moment its problems represent an extreme, but experts predict that other systems will find themselves in the same pickle as utilities build more wind machines in an effort to reach state-mandated quotas for renewable energy. Bonneville, which issued a report this month on its rough patch, went ...
BP spill released 4.4m barrels of oil into the ocean, study finds
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 23rd, 2010
Guardian: The starting up of the hype machine for Donald Rumsfeld's upcoming memoir has got me thinking about his famous line before the US invasion of Iraq. There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know. In Rumsfeld's case, the former Pentagon chief was basically admitting, albeit in an extremely ...