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Archive for November 14th, 2010
Climate change poses threat to Middle East
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 14th, 2010
Reuters: Climate change poses a graver threat to the water-stressed Middle East than to many other parts of the world. [ID:nLDE6A6050]
Here are some facts about climate change in the Middle East:
* The region's emissions of greenhouse gases are less than 5 percent of the world's total. But emissions from the Middle East and North Africa surged 88 percent from 1990 to 2004, the third-largest rise in the world and more than three times the world average, with which they are now roughly in line.
* Per...
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Greenland: As glaciers melt, scientists seek new data on rising seas
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 14th, 2010
New York Times: With a tense pilot gripping the stick, the helicopter hovered above the water, a red speck of machinery lost in a wilderness of rock and ice. To the right, a great fjord stretched toward the sea, choked with icebergs. To the left loomed one of the immense glaciers that bring ice from the top of the Greenland ice sheet and dump it into the ocean. Hanging out the sides of the craft, two scientists sent a measuring device plunging into the water, between ice floes. Near the bottom, it reported a temperature...
Arab world among most vulnerable to climate change
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 14th, 2010
Reuters: Dust storms scour Iraq. Freak floods wreak havoc in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Rising sea levels erode Egypt's coast. Hotter, drier weather worsens water scarcity in the Middle East, already the world's most water-short region.
The Arab world is already suffering impacts consistent with climate change predictions. Although scientists are wary of linking specific events to global warming, they are urging Arab governments to act now to protect against potential disasters.
There are huge variations...
Climate change threatens wheat crop, farmers fear
Posted by Associated Press: Charles J. Hanley on November 14th, 2010
Associated Press: In these volcanic valleys of central Mexico, on the Canadian prairie, across India's northern plain, they sow and they reap the golden grain that has fed us since the distant dawn of farming. But along with the wheat these days comes a harvest of worry. Yields aren't keeping up with a world growing hungrier. Crops are stunted in a world grown warmer. A devastating fungus, a wheat "rust," is spreading out of Africa, a grave threat to the food plant that covers more of the planet's surface than any...