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Archive for February 21st, 2011
An assault on the environment
Posted by Times-Union: None Given on February 21st, 2011
Times-Union: The new House Republican majority likes to say that the American people spoke last year. If the GOP's spending bill is any indication, it seems the American people are clamoring for more mercury in their fish, oil on their coasts and pollution in their drinking water. Those would be just some of the environmental highlights of a House spending bill to keep the government running through Sept. 30. Or perhaps anti-environmental highlights would be more apt. Anti-health, too. The GOP's bill would...
Posted in 
China: Pests and diseases plague crops
Posted by China Daily: None Given on February 21st, 2011
China Daily: China's farmlands face a serious increase in pests this year, in addition to the current prevailing long-lasting drought, the Ministry of Agriculture said.
This year, the accumulated arable areas hit by plant diseases and insects are expected to reach 402 million hectares due to global warming and catastrophic drought, according to a notice posted on the ministry's website on Friday.
A farmer from Yanghe village in Shiyan, Central China's Hubei province, checks on withered bok choi plants on...
Gore calls protecting forests from global warming a ‘moral issue’
Posted by New West: David Frey on February 21st, 2011
New West: Seen from above, the mountains of central Colorado are a snow-covered mosaic of meadows, aspens and lodgepole pines. Some of those pines are green, their branches holding new-fallen snow. Others are red fading to brown -- the telltale signs of trees killed by an epidemic of bark beetles that have wiped out millions of acres across the West. Scientists say those trees are also a clear indication of global warming, one of several indelible marks a warming planet has left on the West. "We have beautiful...
Are Extreme Weather Events From Climate Change?
Posted by National Public Radio: Adam Frank on February 21st, 2011
National Public Radio: Here is a link to some new work on climate change and extreme weather (flooding, etc.) detailed in Nature. The gist of the results can be gleaned from the abstracts:
Min et al
Here we show that human-induced increases in greenhouse gases have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy precipitation events found over approximately two-thirds of data-covered parts of Northern Hemisphere land areas.
From Pall et al
Here we present a multi-step, physically based 'probabilistic event...
Oscar buzz for Gasland film
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 21st, 2011
Guardian: There is no such thing as bad publicity. But the PR adage seems to have been overlooked by America's energy lobby, whose attacks on a documentary on natural gas drilling have dramatically raised the film's pre-Oscar buzz.
The attacks – including a demand to strike the film, Gasland, from Oscar contention – have brought a fresh burst of public attention to the documentary as well as its subject, a controversial method of natural gas extraction known as hydraulic fracturing.
In the countdown...
United Kingdom: Monsanto agrees to clean up toxic chemicals in South Wales quarry
Posted by Ecologist: Tom Levitt on February 21st, 2011
Ecologist: Monsanto has agreed to help clean-up a quarry in South Wales it is accused of polluting with a cocktail of toxic substances despite consistently refusing to accept liability, the Ecologist can reveal. But the taxpayer could still end up meeting the estimated £2 million clean-up bill. Waste from a Monsanto-owned plant in Newport was dumped at the Brofiscin quarry, near the village of Groesfaen, in the 1960s and 70s. Investigations since have revealed the site is heavily polluted with dangerous toxins...
Brazil rates well in green stakes
Posted by Financial Times: Henry Mance on February 21st, 2011
Financial Times: Please respect FT.com's ts&cs and copyright policy which allow you to: share links; copy content for personal use; & redistribute limited extracts. Email ftsales.support@ft.com to buy additional rights or use this link to reference the article - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/51c7d7e4-3d10-11e0-bbff-00144feabdc0.html#ixzz1EbHCnsom Brazilian companies have less than half the environmental impact of emerging-market peers, a survey has found, strengthening the case for green investment in the world’s eighth-largest...
UN unveils vision for global green economy
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 21st, 2011
Agence France-Presse: The United Nations Monday unveiled a strategy to ensure a sustainable future for the planet by investing two percent of wealth generated by the global economy, or some 1.3 trillion dollars annually, in ten key sectors.
This paradigm shift toward a "green economy" would also help alleviate chronic poverty, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said in a report, released as more than 100 environment ministers meet in Nairobi.
Under the UN strategy, individual incomes would outstrip trajectories...
Planet Earth ‘unrecognisable’ by 2050
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 21st, 2011
Agence France-Presse: A growing, more affluent population competing for ever scarcer resources could make for an "unrecognisable" world by 2050, warned researchers at a major US science conference.
The United Nations has predicted the global population will reach seven billion this year, and climb to nine billion by 2050, "with almost all of the growth occurring in poor countries, particularly Africa and South Asia," said John Bongaarts of the non-profit Population Council.
To feed all those mouths, "we will need...
Picture could ‘hardly be worse’ after Gulf spill
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 21st, 2011
BBC: It is almost a year since the largest offshore oil spill in United States history, the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Today's Tom Feilden attended the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington conference, where the event dominated proceedings.