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Archive for December, 2010
Population 7 billion
Posted by National Geographic: Robert Kunzig on December 30th, 2010
National Geographic: One day in Delft in the fall of 1677, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, a cloth merchant who is said to have been the long-haired model for two paintings by Johannes Vermeer—“The Astronomer” and “The Geographer”—abruptly stopped what he was doing with his wife and rushed to his worktable. Cloth was Leeuwenhoek’s business but microscopy his passion. He’d had five children already by his first wife (though four had died in infancy), and fatherhood was not on his mind. “Before six beats of the pulse had intervened,”...
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Sea trout and otters return as British rivers improve
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 30th, 2010
Telegraph: Water quality in English and Welsh rivers has improved year on year for the past 20 years, according to the Government agency responsible for regulating the use and management of rivers.
A number of wildlife species have benefited, including otters which were hit by the effects of pesticides but are now found back in every region in England and Wales.
But conservationists warned that almost three quarters of rivers fall below tougher new European standards because they do not support the wildlife...
Hundreds of Australians evacuated in Queensland’s worst floods for decades
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 29th, 2010
Guardian: At least 1,000 people have been evacuated in Queensland, including the entire population of one town, as north-eastern Australia experiences its worst flooding in decades.
Two Blackhawk helicopters helped to relocate all 300 people living in the town of Theodore, and with the river of the same name still in flood, only police and essential services personnel remained in the town, according to the Queensland government.
Authorities have declared half of Queensland a disaster zone, and the state...
Threats Churn in the San Juan River
Posted by Inter Press Service: José Adán Silva on December 29th, 2010
Inter Press Service: The San Juan River, centre of discord and diplomatic conflicts between Costa Rica and Nicaragua, is seeing its riverbanks fill up with economic projects that scientists and environmentalists say will irreversibly alter its course.
According to biologist Salvador Montenegro, director of Nicaragua's Centre for Aquatic Resource Investigation, a hydroelectric project agreed between the governments of Brazil and Nicaragua in 2007 would seriously harm the biodiversity of the San Juan and the nature...
Floods, freeze not the end of global warming, warns CSIRO
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 29th, 2010
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: A CSIRO scientist is warning authorities not to interpret floods in eastern Australia and snowstorms over Europe and North America as signalling the end of global warming.
NASA research shows that 2010 is the hottest year on record.
Barry Hunt, an honorary research fellow at the CSIRO's Marine and Atmospheric Research unit, says global temperatures will continue to rise even if there is another cold snap.
"Over the last century, the global mean temperature has gone up by 0.8 degrees [Celsius],...
Forests biggest emission producers in Indonesia
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 29th, 2010
Bernama: Forests and peat soil are the biggest sources of gas emissions in Indonesia, as it supplied 56 percent of the national carbon emitters, Indonesia's Antara news agency reported.
"Judging from Indonesia's emission profile, the biggest contributor are forests and peat land," Head of the Land and Forestry Change of Use National Working Group the Climate Change National Council (DNPI) Doddy S. Sukadri said here Tuesday.
He said the result of an analysis and research by DNPI shows that the forests...
Greenland ice sheet future grim, says Aberystwyth study
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 29th, 2010
BBC: A glaciologist is warning that the Greenland ice sheet is "retreating and thinning extensively" after a year of record-breaking high temperatures.
Dr Alun Hubbard on Aberystwyth University says its future is "grim" but disputes claims by other experts that it could collapse within 50 years.
He maintains it would be at least 100 to 1,000 years before it "potentially passes any point of no return leading to any widespread collapse".
Dr Hubbard and his team have been analysing the results of...
Australian downpour spreads south, cuts off towns
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 28th, 2010
Reuters: Heavy rain across much of eastern Australia left towns cut off by floods on Monday as the storms spread southwards and threatened agriculture and mining, forecasters said.
The deluge over the Christmas weekend has gradually moved south from northeastern Queensland to hit agricultural areas of New South Wales, with further rainfall forecast for coming days.
Up to 250 mm of rain was recorded in the 24 hours to 6 p.m. EST Sunday in parts of Queensland, as the remains of a tropical cyclone that...
More Blue Crabs, but Chesapeake Bay Is Still at Risk, Report Says
Posted by NYT: LESLIE KAUFMAN on December 28th, 2010
NYT: A group of volunteers washed and bagged oyster shells as part of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation oyster restoration program in Gloucester Point, Va.
The blue crab population is growing again in Chesapeake Bay, but the 64,000 square-mile system of bays, marshes and rivers remains imperiled, according to a report [pdf] released Tuesday by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
The foundation is a nonprofit advocacy organization that measures the health of this complex system, the largest estuary in the...
More Blue Crabs, but Chesapeake Bay Is Still at Risk, Report Says
Posted by NYT: LESLIE KAUFMAN on December 28th, 2010
NYT: A group of volunteers washed and bagged oyster shells as part of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation oyster restoration program in Gloucester Point, Va.
The blue crab population is growing again in Chesapeake Bay, but the 64,000 square-mile system of bays, marshes and rivers remains imperiled, according to a report [pdf] released Tuesday by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
The foundation is a nonprofit advocacy organization that measures the health of this complex system, the largest estuary in the...