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Archive for January 21st, 2011
BLM Charm Offensive Backfires, Critics Fume Over ‘Wild Lands’ Policy
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 21st, 2011
Greenwire: Bureau of Land Management Director Bob Abbey's meetings with top elected leaders from Western states has failed to soothe anger over his agency's new "wild lands" policy that could extend the highest level of federal protection to millions of acres of public land. Some who have met with the BLM director in the past week say Abbey has failed to provide key details about how the Dec. 22, 2010, executive order from Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will be enforced and what impact it will have on key...
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House Democrats Vow to Stay Strong on Environmental Issues
Posted by Greenwire: Sarah Abruzzese on January 21st, 2011
Greenwire: House Democrats will not shy away from environmental issues as they begin to rebuild and look toward the elections of 2012.
On the kick-off day of the House Democrats' annual conference on the Eastern Shore, where they are concentrating on job growth and upcoming election strategies, Democratic leaders told reporters yesterday that they believe they have a very real opportunity to retake the House in 2012.
Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina, who is the assistant House minority leader, said,...
Calif. Plants Put A Wrinkle In Climate Change Plans
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 21st, 2011
National Public Radio: RENEE MONTAGNE, host: As the earth warms up, many plants and animals are moving uphill to keep their cool. Conservationists are anticipating much more of this, as they make plans to help natural systems adapt to a warming planet. But a new study in Science magazine finds that plants in Northern California are bucking this uphill trend. NPR's Richard Harris explains. RICHARD HARRIS: Coping with climate change is, quite literally, an uphill struggle for ecosystems looking to remain in a temperature...
Eggs show arctic mercury cycling may be linked to ice cover
Posted by Science Centric: None Given on January 21st, 2011
Science Centric: An international research team working with National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) scientists at the Hollings Marine Laboratory (HML) in Charleston, S.C., has suggested for the first time that mercury cycling in the flora and fauna of the Arctic may be linked to the amount of ice cover present. Their study is the latest work reported from the Seabird Tissue Archival and Monitoring Project (STAMP), a multiyear joint effort of NIST, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the U.S....
Iceland may reverse Magma bid for HS Orka: Björk
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 21st, 2011
Agence France-Presse: Pop megastar Bjork told a Canadian newspaper Friday that Iceland's government is prepared to reverse Canada's Magma Energy Corp's takeover of geothermal energy producer HS Orka.
Bjork made the comments after last week presenting Iceland's prime minister and finance minister with a petition calling for a referendum on foreign ownership of the country's natural resources.
"They told us they want to reverse the (Magma) deal and make sure Iceland?s energy companies and the access to its energy...
UC Davis study shows plants moved downhill, not up, in warming world
Posted by Science Centric: None Given on January 21st, 2011
Science Centric: In a paper published today in the journal Science, a University of California, Davis, researcher and his co-authors challenge a widely held assumption that plants will move uphill in response to warmer temperatures.
Between 1930 and 2000, instead of colonising higher elevations to maintain a constant temperature, many California plant species instead moved downhill an average of 260 feet, said Jonathan Greenberg, an assistant project scientist at the UC Davis Centre for Spatial Technologies and...
How can we feed the world and still save the planet?
Posted by Guardian: Madeleine Bunting on January 21st, 2011
Guardian: Food has become subject to one of the sharpest global debates, with rising anxiety about how the world's growing population is going to feed itself. Increasingly, Olivier de Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, is establishing himself as one of its key protagonists with an unapologetically radical agenda.
In London this week to give evidence to a UK parliamentary working group on food and agriculture, he explained the challenge he is putting to the donors and the international...
Assessing the health of the Gulf, post-spill
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 21st, 2011
National Public Radio: IRA FLATOW, host:
This is SCIENCE FRIDAY, from NPR. I'm Ira Flatow. Last week, President Obama's National Oil Spill Commission released its final report on the BP Deep Water Horizon oil well explosion in the Gulf of Mexico and the eventual release of about five million barrels of oil.
This week, a whole bunch of scientists, engineers and policy wonks are meeting here in Washington at a conference of the National Council for Science and the Environment, and they're here to talk about the report's...
Plants’ global warming dilemma: Climb to escape heat or stoop for water?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 21st, 2011
Christian Science Monitor: For years, scientists have recorded the gradual march of plants and animals up mountain slopes and toward higher latitudes as global warming has forced them to chase their climatic comfort zones.
A new study suggests that for plants, however, a warming climate can send them downhill as well – a result several researchers say has important implications for efforts to conserve the biological richness of mountain habitats in the face of long-term global warming.
Other researchers have noted that...
Uganda: Climate Change Affecting Nation’s GDP
Posted by New Vision: Gerald Tenywa on January 21st, 2011
New Vision: UGANDA annually loses 15% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) due to the destruction of forests, land and water resources.
According to Simon Thuo, the director of Global Water Partnership (GWP) in eastern Africa, the 2008 state of environment report for Uganda put the annual environmental degradation cost arising out of biodiversity loss at sh506b and soil degradation at sh225b.
Other costs stated in the report are rangeland degradation at sh815m, wetland destruction at sh2b, water hyacinth...