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Archive for October 15th, 2010
Philippines: Manila: A warning against overpopulation
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 15th, 2010
Guardian: In the heart of Manila's vast North Cemetery, the largest graveyard in the capital of the Philippines, Ricky Baking is hunched over a tomb with a hammer and chisel. After several determined blows, the lid cracks into three pieces. He opens the rotten coffin to reveal the skeleton of a 65-year-old man, dressed in his burial suit and shoes. Baking steps into the tomb with bare feet, and reaches for the bones. This isn't a grave robbery – it's an eviction. Like everywhere else in Manila, ...
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Coming Now to a Job Near You! Why Climate Change Matters for California Workers
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 15th, 2010
Huffington Post: What will be the impact of climate change on California workers if the US and other countries around the world fail to significantly reduce green house gas emissions? In other words, what happens in a "do nothing" scenario? Climate scientists have established that climate change is caused by "greenhouse gasses," especially carbon dioxide, which trap the sun's heat and therefore raise the earth's temperature. Average California temperatures are already rising; they are expected to rise ...
Canada: U.S. cash vs. oil sands
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 15th, 2010
Financial Post: There has never been a major oil spill in Vancouver harbour, but this coming Sunday protestors who say a spill is inevitable will take kayaks and canoes out into the water to stare down oil tankers. Chances are there won't be a tanker in sight, but there will be a party boat, organizers say. If the campaign against oil tankers were to succeed in Vancouver, overseas exports of Canadian oil would be blocked and Canada would be stuck with only one major customer for Alberta oil: the ...
Dust from Hungarian mud spill a big health risk: Greenpeace
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 15th, 2010
AFP: The dust produced by a toxic red sludge that swept over several villages in western Hungary poses a huge health risk, the environmental group Greenpeace warned Friday after an analysis of the mud. A study for Greenpeace by the University of Vienna's physiographic laboratory found that the mud produced very fine dust particles measuring less than two micrometres (two-thousandth of a millimetre). If the sludge dries out and is converted to dust, this will pose a huge health risk, ...
Carbon Dioxide Controls Earth’s Temperature
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 15th, 2010
redOrbit: Water vapor and clouds are the major contributors to Earth's greenhouse effect, but a new atmosphere-ocean climate modeling study shows that the planet's temperature ultimately depends on the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide. The study, conducted by Andrew Lacis and colleagues at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, examined the nature of Earth's greenhouse effect and clarified the role that greenhouse gases and clouds play in absorbing outgoing infrared ...
In NASA Image, a Submerged Pakistan
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 15th, 2010
NYT: A satellite image captured last week shows floodwaters lingering in Sindh Province and Manchhar Lake at twice its normal size. New satellite images from NASA show the extraordinary scope of the continuing disaster in Pakistan, where thousands of square miles of land remain submerged two months after the country was hit by catastrophic flooding. An image from October 2009 (below) shows the Indus River during typical conditions, a thin ribbon of blue winding through irrigated ...
Mich. Democrat Downplays Oil Spill-Response Role in Cutthroat Re-election Push
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 15th, 2010
Greenwire: In the three months since a ruptured pipeline sent more than 800,000 gallons of oil into his district's waterways, Rep. Mark Schauer (D-Mich.) never strayed far from the spill response and won GOP support for safety reforms. But those efforts are nowhere to be found in his re-election rhetoric. Locked in a rematch with ex-Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) for Michigan's 7th District, Schauer leads with bread-and-butter economic issues -- manufacturing, Social Security, trade with China -- ...
Groundbreaking research shows that rainforests and coral reefs create rainfall
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 15th, 2010
Mongabay: Coral reefs and rainforests seem to have little in common beyond the fact that they are both hotspots of diversity, yet groundbreaking research is showing how these different ecosystems--when intact--may actually seed clouds and produce rainfall. According to a recent study in Science, an undisturbed Amazon rainforest acts as its own 'bioreactor', whereby clouds and precipitation are produced by the abundance of plant materials in the ecosystem. "The trees basically 'sweat out' ...