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Archive for January 22nd, 2011
Could Climate Change Have Led To The Fall Of Rome?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 22nd, 2011
National Public Radio: Rome may have fallen hundreds of years ago, but much of the civilization the Romans built still dots the landscape today. One team of scientists recently unearthed a different kind of Roman artifact that may hold a strange clue to the empire's downfall. A study of tree rings recently published in the journal Science provides evidence of climate shifts that, perhaps not coincidentally, occurred from A.D. 250 to 550, a period better known as the fall of the Roman Empire. Ulf Buentgen and his team...
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United Kingdom: Undercover police cleared ‘to have sex with activists’
Posted by Guardian: Mark Townsend and Tony Thompson on January 22nd, 2011
Guardian: Undercover police officers routinely adopted a tactic of "promiscuity" with the blessing of senior commanders, according to a former agent who worked in a secretive unit of the Metropolitan police for four years.
The former undercover policeman claims that sexual relationships with activists were sanctioned for both men and women officers infiltrating anarchist, leftwing and environmental groups.
Sex was a tool to help officers blend in, the officer claimed, and was widely used as a technique...
Climate change threatens species from tropics to mountaintops
Posted by Taipei Times: Elisabeth Rosenthal on January 22nd, 2011
Taipei Times: Simon Joakim Kiiru remembers a time not long ago when familiar birdsongs filled the air here and life was correlated with bird sightings. His lush, well-tended homestead is in the highlands next to the Aberdare National Park, one of the world’s premier birding destinations. When the hornbill arrived, Kiiru recalled, the rains were near, meaning that it was time to plant. When a buzzard showed a man his chest, it meant a visitor was imminent. When an owl called at night, it foretold a death. “There...
Answering Questions About Antarctica
Posted by New York Times: John Goodge on January 22nd, 2011
New York Times: Back at home, it is nice to be enjoying a sunny winter’s day. Despite my earlier posts about weather and delays, our work in Antarctica ( View Slide Show) went relatively smoothly, and I owe a debt of gratitude to my wife and partner, Vicki, who took care of family, house, meals, dogs and all manner of things while working full time herself -- much more challenging and unrelenting than what I faced!
Jeff and I were unable to see our posts until we got back to McMurdo, and it has been very enjoyable...
Extreme weather: the reality of a warming world
Posted by GlobalPost: Solana Pyne on January 22nd, 2011
GlobalPost: In the past year, every continent except Antarctica has seen record-breaking floods. Rains submerged one-fifth of Pakistan, a thousand-year deluge swamped Nashville and storms just north of Rio caused the deadliest landslides Brazil has ever seen. Southern France and northern Australia had floods, too. Sri Lanka, South Africa, the list goes on. And while no single weather event can be linked definitively to global climate change, a growing number of scientists say these extreme events represent...
Indonesia: Govt wants haze agreement ratified
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 22nd, 2011
Jakarta Post: Indonesia, the 2011 ASEAN chair and the only country in the region that has not endorsed the haze agreement, has set a target to ratify the ASEAN haze pollution agreement this year. Senior officials, including from the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Forestry Ministries, had intensified talks and targeted to ratify the agreement before Indonesia hosts the ASEAN summit this year. The government had previously tried to seek House of Representatives approval to ratify the haze agreement, but the...
EARTH MEANDERS: Ecological Internet: Being Green and Meaning It
Posted by Water Conservation Blog on January 22nd, 2011
Caring for Earth is cool; not caring, overly consuming, greenwashing, ecological ignorance, superstition and inaction are not acceptable
By Dr. Glen Barry, Ecological Internet
Earth Meanders come from Earth's Newsdesk
The Earths life is some 3.5 billion years old. In a mere 300 years human super-predators have taken it upon themselves to cut and burn other life forms to make a more comfortable life. Most are blissfully unaware that they are destroying their habitat. Remedial actions are orders of magnitude inadequate, band-aids instead of open heart surgery. We will quickly halt this growing industrialization, commit to ecosystem protection and restoration, and return to the forest garden, or we will all die. Really, if we continue as we are, the biosphere and ecosystems collapse taking being with it. And it will be grisly.
I havent written a really good rip-snorting Earth Meanders in awhile; though this is largely what I am known for doing. I use to meander quite frequently, writing personal essays in the tradition of Montesquieu looking at ecological sustainability in relation to other social issues, showing it is all related with ecology as the unifier. Nor have I literally ruminated regarding my life and ecology like I use to, spilling my guts ...
Does helping the planet hurt the poor?
Posted by Wall Street Journal: Peter Singer on January 22nd, 2011
Wall Street Journal: Environmental protection often comes at the expense of the world's poorest people, who struggle to meet their subsistence needs. Children carry firewood in the eastern Indian state of Bihar.
All of us who are middle class or above in the U.S. and other industrialized nations spend money on many things we do not need. We could instead donate that money to organizations that will use it to make a huge difference in the lives of the world's poorest people--people who struggle to survive each day...
Record melt from Greenland icesheet in 2010
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 22nd, 2011
Agence France-Presse: Greenland's icesheet, feared as a major driver of rising sea levels, shed a record amount of melted snow and ice in 2010, scientists reported Friday, a day after the UN said last year was the warmest on record.
The 2010 runoff was more than twice the average annual loss in Greenland over the previous three decades, surpassing a record set in 2007, said the study, published in the US-based journal Environmental Research Letters.
Ice melt has now topped this benchmark every year since 1996, according...
Biofuel jatropha falls from wonder-crop pedestal
Posted by Reuters: Juliane Von Reppert-Bismarck on January 22nd, 2011
Reuters: Jatropha, a biofuel-producing plant once touted as a wonder-crop, is turning out to be much less dependable than first thought, both environmentalists and industry players say.
Some biofuel producers found themselves agreeing with many of the criticisms detailed in a report launched by campaign group Friends of the Earth this week -- "Jatropha: money doesn't grow on trees."
Jatropha has been widely heralded as a wonder plant whose cultivation on non-arable land in Africa, Asia and Latin America...