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Archive for November 29th, 2010
Will a Flood of Tiny Sensors Help Us Cut Emissions?
Posted by ClimateWire: Saqib Rahim on November 29th, 2010
ClimateWire: Advances in information technology have some companies dreaming of a world abuzz with sensors, some of which could reduce carbon emissions.
Companies such as IBM, Intel and Hewlett-Packard describe a future world "smarter" than today's, where cars don't crash, planes run on time and cell phones can "smell" bacteria in food. The companies see this "smart" movement also showing up in the power industry, factories and public infrastructure.
They call it "sensor networking," and it's being driven...
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Greenpeace Sues Chemical Makers, Alleging Spy Effort
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 29th, 2010
New York Times: Contractors working for Dow Chemical and Sasol North America, a chemical manufacturer, hired private investigators to conduct a two-year corporate espionage campaign against the environmental group Greenpeace, according to a lawsuit filed on Monday in federal district court in Washington.
The investigators stole documents from locked trash bins, tapped phones and hacked into computer networks, and operatives posing as activists infiltrated Greenpeace offices and meetings, the suit claims.
The...
China: Climate Change Increasing Flood Risk in Hong Kong
Posted by Bloomberg: John Duce on November 29th, 2010
Bloomberg: Climate change is increasing the risk of flooding in Hong Kong and China’s Pearl River Delta, according to a report by the Civic Exchange think tank and researchers at the University of Leeds.
Sea levels in the region may rise 20 centimeters (7.9 inches) by 2050, forcing more than a million people to move to higher areas, according to the report.
The Hong Kong Observatory has recorded a higher incidence of heavy rain storms in the past decade, increasing the risk of flooding in lowland areas...
BLM responds to climate change online
Posted by MSNBC: None Given on November 29th, 2010
MSNBC: The Bureau of Land Management announced that it has posted web pages to describe its response to climate change and related environmental challenges.
The BLM's Climate Change pages are located here: http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/more/climatechange.html
"Public lands managed by the BLM are facing widespread environmental challenges that transcend traditional management boundaries," said BLM Director Bob Abbey in a prepared statement. "These challenges include managing wildfire, controlling...
Rainforest Collapse Drove Reptile Evolution
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 29th, 2010
ScienceDaily: Global warming devastated tropical rainforests 300 million years ago. Now scientists report the unexpected discovery that this event triggered an evolutionary burst among reptiles -- and inadvertently paved the way for the rise of dinosaurs, 100 million years later.
This event happened during the Carboniferous Period. At that time, Europe and North America lay on the equator and were covered by steamy tropical rainforests. But when the Earth's climate became hotter and drier, rainforests collapsed,...
Soil Microbes Define Dangerous Rates Of Climate Change
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 29th, 2010
redOrbit: The rate of global warming could lead to a rapid release of carbon from peatlands that would further accelerate global warming.
Two recent studies published by the Mathematics Research Institute at the University of Exeter highlight the risk that this 'compost bomb' instability could pose, and calculate the conditions under which it could occur.
The same Exeter team is now exploring a possible link between the theories described in the studies and last summer's devastating peatland fires in...
Supreme Court Declines to Take Fla. Water Transfer Case
Posted by Greenwire: Lawrence Hurley on November 29th, 2010
Greenwire: The Supreme Court decided today not to intervene in a Florida case concerning the strongly contested question of whether the Clean Water Act requires permitting in order to pump water from one body of water to another.
At issue is whether South Florida water managers can pump water from a canal into a lake without applying for a permit.
The legal issue was once before the Supreme Court but was not resolved.
By declining to take up the case, Friends of the Everglades v. South Florida Water...
Canadian diplomats sought help from U.S. oil companies
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 29th, 2010
Montreal Gazette: Canadian diplomats in Washington have quietly asked such oil-industry players as Exxon Mobil and BP to help "kill" U.S. global-warming policies in order to ensure that "the oil keeps a-flowing" from Alberta into the U.S. marketplace, Postmedia News has learned.
In a series of newly released correspondence from Canada's Washington embassy, the Canadian diplomats describe recommendations from Environment Canada to clean up the oilsands as "simply nutty," proposing instead to "kill any interpretation"...
Weird weather leaves Amazon thirsty
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 29th, 2010
Reuters: The river loops low past its bleached-white banks, where caimans bask in the fierce morning sun and stranded houseboats tilt precariously. Nearby sits a beached barge with its load of eight trucks and a crane. Its owners were caught out long ago by the speed of the river's decline.
This is what it looks like when the world's greatest rainforest is thirsty. If climate scientists are right, parched Amazon scenes like this will become more common in the coming decades, possibly threatening the survival...
Climate change scientists warn of 4C global temperature rise
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 29th, 2010
Guardian: The hellish vision of a world warmed by 4C within a lifetime has been set out by an international team of scientists, who say the glacial progress of the global climate change talks that restart in Mexico today makes the so-called safe limit of 2C impossible to keep. A 4C rise in the planet's temperature would see severe droughts across the world and millions of migrants seeking refuge as their food supplies collapse.
"There is now little to no chance of maintaining the rise in global surface...