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Archive for April 17th, 2011
Weatherwatch: why grass made Britain great
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 17th, 2011
Guardian: A sheep enjoys the grass on the North Yorkshire Moors. Photograph: Alamy
April showers interspersed with warm sunshine provide perfect conditions for grass to grow at maximum speed. Listening to the whirr of lawn mowers it is easy to forget that it was grass that made Britain great. Its lush nutritious greenness fed the sheep that made wool our main export; many a village church and manor was built on the profits of wool.
Late medieval skills in managing early growth of grass on water meadows...
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Sugar cane ethanol cools climate when it replaces cattle pasture
Posted by Mongabay: None Given on April 17th, 2011
Mongabay: Sugar cane ethanol cools climate when it replaces cattle pasture
Converting cattle pasture and cropland in Brazil to sugar cane helps cool local climate reports research published in Nature Climate Change.
Scientists with the Carnegie Institutions’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University and the University of Montana analyzed temperature, reflectivity, and evapotranspiration from satellite data across 733,000 square miles--an area larger than the state of Alaska. They found converting...
NASA image reveals extent of 2010 Amazon drought
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 17th, 2011
Mongabay: NASA image reveals extent of 2010 Amazon drought
From NASA: image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, the image shows vegetation 'greenness' during the 2010 drought, between July and September, compared to average conditions for the same period between 2000 and 2009 (except for 2005, the other drought year). The redder the image the less 'green' the forest. The "greenness index" measures how much photosynthesis could be happening based on how...
Sugarcane cools climate
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 17th, 2011
Physorg: Brazilians are world leaders in using biofuels for gasoline. About a quarter of their automobile fuel consumption comes from sugarcane, which significantly reduces carbon dioxide emissions that otherwise would be emitted from using gasoline. Now scientists from the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology have found that sugarcane has a double benefit. Expansion of the crop in areas previously occupied by other Brazilian crops cools the local climate. It does so by reflecting sunlight...
Sugarcane grown for fuel cools Brazil’s climate
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 17th, 2011
Reuters: Sugarcane grown to power Brazil's cars and trucks as an alternative to climate-warming fossil fuels has a beneficial side effect: it also cools the local air temperature, scientists reported Sunday. Researchers warned that this does not mean replacing Amazon forest or other natural vegetation with sugarcane fields. The benefit comes when sugarcane is introduced into existing agriculture, replacing pasture land or crops like soybeans. Sugarcane manages this win-win feat by its ability to reflect...
Canada: Cap-and-trade policy won’t ‘hoover up western resources,’ says Ignatieff
Posted by Edmonton Journal: Ryan Cormier on April 17th, 2011
Edmonton Journal: Any cap-and-trade program created by a potential Liberal government would not move Alberta resources to Eastern Canada, Michael Ignatieff promised at an Edmonton campaign stop Saturday.
The Liberal leader said any climate change policy must be fair among the provinces.
“You work with Alberta, you work with Saskatchewan, you work with resource-based provinces,” he said. “You can’t use a cap-and-trade system to hoover up western resources and transfer them down east. We will not do that. That’s...
Water wars? Thirsty, energy-short China stirs fear
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 17th, 2011
Associated Press: The wall of water raced through narrow Himalayan gorges in northeast India, gathering speed as it raked the banks of towering trees and boulders. When the torrent struck their island in the Brahmaputra river, the villagers remember, it took only moments to obliterate their houses, possessions and livestock.
No one knows exactly how the disaster happened, but everyone knows whom to blame: neighboring China.
"We don't trust the Chinese," says fisherman Akshay Sarkar at the resettlement site where...
Looking down on deforestation
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 17th, 2011
Scientific American: Brazil Sharpens Its Eyes in the Sky to Snag Illegal Rainforest Loggers
After reaching the lowest Amazon deforestation rate ever recorded, Brazil faces a its next hurdle: how to maximize the increasing resolution of satellite images to monitor small-scale forest destruction
Photo Album View the Slide Show Overview Satellites Present a Better Picture of Deforestation MP3 file Audio Malaria Increases with Deforestation in Brazil
Brazil's clear-cut deforestation rate led the world just five...
Answering the world’s growing water problem
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 17th, 2011
Christian Science Monitor: Answering the world's growing water problem
The number of people around the world without access to clean water is growing. The answer may not be huge dams but rainwater collection and other micro-projects involving families and communities.
A girl fills her plastic jugs with water from a tap, paying two pesos (4.6 cents) for each gallon, in the Philippines' slum area of Tondo, Manila, on March 21.
The portion of the global population living in conditions of at least moderate stress involving...