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Archive for January 6th, 2011
Britain cannot afford to turn its back on deepwater drilling
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 6th, 2011
Independent: Outlook In the end, of course, it is all about the money. The Energy and Climate Change Committee's announcement today that a moratorium on deep-water drilling off the coast of the UK should not be imposed does not imply there is no risk of the sort of disaster seen in the Gulf of Mexico last summer. Whatever your views about the safety record of oil and gas explorers, that risk can never be entirely discounted. No, this is a decision based on a head-headed economic view: that such is the demand...
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Disappearing lakes
Posted by News Week: None Given on January 6th, 2011
News Week: Two and a half years ago, the Baker River in Chilean Patagonia suddenly tripled in size, causing a virtual river tsunami. In less than 48 hours, roads, bridges, and farms were severely damaged and dozens of livestock drowned. Residents were in disbelief. Jonathan Leidich, an American whose company regularly leads tourists on treks up to nearby glaciers, hiked to the Colonia Glacier at the eastern flank of the Northern Patagonian Ice Field and discovered the source of the mysterious flood: Lake Cachet...
Is global warming making Tibet dustier?
Posted by Science Magazine: Eli Kintisch on January 6th, 2011
Science Magazine: Sediments taken from the bottom of a lake on the Tibetan Plateau suggest that changes in wind patterns caused by global warming may be making the area dustier. That trend could accelerate the melting of crucial glaciers in the Himalayas and affect already imperiled water supplies.
Jessica Conroy, a graduate student in paleoclimatology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, and colleagues collected sediment cores from the bottom of Kiang Lake in southwestern Tibet using equipment suspended from...
A tale of two floods shows the disaster gap between rich and poor
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 6th, 2011
Time: So far 2011 has not treated Australia well. Vast areas of the county's northeastern Queensland state have been hit by some of the worst flooding on record. Tremendous rains--thanks in part to an unusually strong La Nina weather pattern--fell in late December, triggering floods that have affected half the state's 715,000 sq. mi. More than 200,000 people and at least 22 towns have been impacted by the rising waters, with thousands of residents forced to evacuate. Though the worst of the rain had stopped...
Rare earths leave toxic trail to Toyota Prius, Vestas turbine
Posted by Bloomberg: Stuart Biggs on January 6th, 2011
Bloomberg: Rare earth metals are key to global efforts to switch to cleaner energy -- from batteries in hybrid cars to magnets in wind turbines. Mining and processing the metals causes environmental damage that China, the biggest producer, is no longer willing to bear.
China's rare earth industry each year produces more than five times the amount of waste gas, including deadly fluorine and sulfur dioxide, than the total flared annually by all miners and oil refiners in the U.S. Alongside that 13 billion...
Does money grow on trees?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 6th, 2011
BBC: Certainly, you can find a growing number of people in the conservation movement suggesting that it does; and that if the money is to keep flowing, the wealth in the trees needs to be secured as safely as gold bars in any bank.
If forests do not actually sprout banknotes, they do provide services whose value in monetary terms can be measured... refuges for pollinating insects, roots that prevent landslides, absorption of climate-changing carbon dioixide - even places where we like to walk.
So...
Australia blames ‘La Nina’ for epic floods
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 6th, 2011
Agence France-Presse: Flood waters cover the city of Rockhampton on January 5, 2011 after the swollen Fitzroy River broke its banks. Australia has blamed the disruptive "La Nina" weather pattern for epic flooding that has inundated thousands of northeastern homes and swamped an area the size of Texas. Australia has blamed the disruptive "La Nina" weather pattern for epic flooding that has inundated thousands of northeastern homes and swamped an area the size of Texas. The meteorology bureau said La Nina, which forms...
Bahrain’s Farms Disappearing Under Concrete Towers
Posted by Inter Press Service: Suad Hamada on January 6th, 2011
Inter Press Service: Environmentalists are engaged in a nation-wide campaign to protect what is left of the agricultural belt in Bahrain. Seventy percent of farms have been eliminated due to urbanisation, according to environmentalists who are warning of a serious environmental crisis.
The 692 square kilometre island - with a population of 1,234,596 according to preliminary results of the census released in Nov. 2010 - has been involved in massive sea reclamation activities, but has also been turning farms in the...
Coalition declares Sierra, Delta habitats threatened by climate change
Posted by Sacramento Bee: Matt Weiser on January 6th, 2011
Sacramento Bee: Both the Sierra Nevada and the San Francisco Bay-Delta have been named by environmental groups to a new list of 10 American habitats threatened by climate change.
The list was released Wednesday by the Endangered Species Coalition, a network of hundreds of conservation groups in the United States.
The 10 threatened habitats – deemed most important for endangered species in a warming world – were selected by a panel of 10 scientists from across the country representing academia and...
Global climate: Tough little girl
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 6th, 2011
Economist: EL NIÑO, a periodic sloshing of warm water from west to east across the Pacific, gets its name--“the boy child”--because it is around Christmas that it warms the water off Peru. It is now understood to have far wider effects, leading to characteristic patterns of temperature, rainfall and drought around much of the world. El Niño’s female counterpart, La Niña--a cooler sloshing from east to west--is less well known, and less frequent. But it too can impose a distinctive pattern of weather worldwide....