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Archive for November, 2010
Lawmakers Ponder Massive Water, Lands and Wildlife Bill Before End of Year
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 19th, 2010
Greenwire: Lawmakers are working to bundle a slew of waterways, public lands and wildlife bills into a monumental natural resources package that could attract enough bipartisan support to pass before Congress ends next month.
Success is far from assured, aides say, given the lame-duck session's already-crowded agenda. Staffers and environmental lobbyists are working down a list of possible measures, reaching out to Senate offices and counting votes to determine which individual bills could attract the support...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Lawmakers Ponder Massive Water, Lands and Wildlife Bill Before End of YearNew Yorkers Learn the Troubles Posed by Sea Level Rise Flow Far Beyond Manhattan
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 19th, 2010
ClimateWire: New York state is beginning to take the threat of sea level rise attributed to climate change seriously as a new government prepares to settle in next year.
Starting Monday, state officials in Albany will gather with members of the public to discuss a recently released 93-page report that recommends major changes to development planning and conservation along coastlines from the tip of Long Island all way up the Hudson River Valley.
Any reforms to come from the process, starting next week,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on New Yorkers Learn the Troubles Posed by Sea Level Rise Flow Far Beyond ManhattanA call to action on ocean acidity
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 19th, 2010
New York Times: States bordering water bodies that are becoming more acidic from the absorption of carbon dioxide should list them as impaired under the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agency declared in a memo this week.
Carbon dioxide emissions are considered a threat not only because of their heat-trapping properties in the atmosphere but also because of their ability to change ocean chemistry. The world`s oceans act as a sponge for carbon dioxide, and as the gas dissolves in seawater, it changes...
U.S. Oil Imports Shrink, Yet Worries Loom
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 19th, 2010
New York Times: Good news on the energy security front?
According to some October statistics released by the American Petroleum Institute, the United States imported 10.75 million barrels of oil a day last month, a decrease of 133,000 barrels a day from October 2009.
That decline may seem small, and indeed that is equivalent to only about one-eighth of what the country imports from Saudi Arabia every day. But from a security and economic point of view, some say that it`s a step in the right direction, particularly...
U.S. Regulators Omit Wider Implications of GM Salmon
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 19th, 2010
Inter Press Service: U.S. regulators are poised to decide as early as next week whether to approve a genetically modified salmon for human consumption.
It would be the first GM animal approved for human consumption, and there are fears that the review process is overlooking key ripple effects of approving the fish.
These ripple effects are both positive, such as public health benefits, and negative, such as environmental degradation, say researchers.
The debate over the salmon, which would be raised on fish...
Haiti’s cholera epidemic caused by weather, say scientists
Posted by SciDev.Net: María Elena Hurtado on November 19th, 2010
SciDev.Net: Weather conditions -- not UN soldiers -- may have triggered Haiti's cholera epidemic, which has killed more than 1,000 people in less than a month, three leading researchers have told SciDev.Net.
A coincidence of several catastrophic events -- from climatic changes caused by the ocean-atmosphere phenomenon La Niña, to the plunge in water and sanitation quality following Haiti's disastrous January earthquake -- provide the most likely explanation for the outbreak, which has hospitalised 17,000...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Haiti’s cholera epidemic caused by weather, say scientistsAfrican Pelicans in Russia
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 18th, 2010
NYT: Pink pelicans that landed in Siberia on Tuesday were taken to a zoo aviary in Barnaul.
A flock of African pelicans lands in Siberia after being thrown off course by abnormally warm weather this autumn throughout Russia. "They just lost their way and went in exactly the opposite direction: Instead of Africa they somehow chose the Altai region," a zoologist says. [Reuters]
Britain`s plan to double its use of biofuels by 2020 will significantly boost global carbon dioxide emissions, officials...
Fooling Fish to Grow and Multiply
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 18th, 2010
Inter Press Service: Surrounded by glass jugs and beakers full of bubbling green slime, Mohamed Ashour appears to be experimenting with a new formula for pea soup. As part of his daily rounds, the Egyptian researcher checks the valves on the tubing connecting each vessel, ensuring their verdant-hued contents are adequately aerated.
It is a tedious task, but an important one. The colonies of microalgae brewing inside the glass vessels form the basic building block of a marine hatchery food chain. The harvested microscopic...
Cattle Ranching Areas in the Amazon Industrialise
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 18th, 2010
Inter Press Service: The agricultural frontier state of Rondonia in Brazil is a byword for deforestation in the Amazon jungle, much of which has been cleared in the northwestern state for cash crops and a cattle herd that has grown to 12 million head.
But industrialisation is arriving by the hand of the construction of two big hydropower dams and transport corridors -- including roads, railways and waterways -- that will provide an overland link connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
The Indústria Metalúrgica...
Cracks in Costa Rica’s Green Image
Posted by Inter Press Service: Daniel Zueras* - IPS/IFEJ on November 18th, 2010
Inter Press Service: For many, Costa Rica embodies the notion of a country committed to taking care of its natural environment. But Costa Rican activists beg to differ, and have a list of the actions that contradict the country's green "for-export" image.
Open-pit mining, pollution of rivers and an international reprimand for weak protection of wetlands only fuel their criticisms.
The non-governmental World Wetland Network chastised Costa Rica in October with its Grey Globe award for the Neotropics region, citing...