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Archive for April, 2011
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...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Canada: Cap-and-trade policy won’t ‘hoover up western resources,’ says IgnatieffWater 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...
Climate Change: Making The Nation’s Bears Hungry?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 16th, 2011
National Public Radio: National Parks Week kicks off Saturday, but the celebration comes at a rough time for National Parks. Harried by federal funding cuts and urban development, the nation's park system is also facing the rising threat of climate change.
Those effects are becoming most visible in Yellowstone, one of the best known of all national parks, according to Paul Solotaroff. He wrote about Yellowstone's climate challenge in April's issue of Men's Journal and tells Weekend All Things Considered guest host Noah...
South Africa’s photo-op penguins show signs of decline
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 16th, 2011
Agence France-Presse: Penguins waddle over giant boulders and dive into the shallow turquoise sea to the delight of camera-ready tourists near the tip of South Africa.
The birds are a top attraction in Simon's Town, a naval village in Cape Town where motorists yield to the seabirds, but their numbers are dwindling, a worrying factor that also points to wider threats to the world's oceans.
"The African Penguins have been decreasing, by 60 percent now, since 2004, so that's why we are all very worried," said Lorien...
Along Gulf, spill still defines state of mind
Posted by Associated Press: Adam Geller on April 16th, 2011
Associated Press: In the small brick church just across the road from the chocolate waters of Bayou Lafourche, the Rev. Joseph Anthony Pereira unbuttons his collar as the last parishioners pull out of the lot. Tonight, nearly a year after the BP oil spill began, he's asked his congregation of shrimpers and oil industry workers to think about lessons learned when survival is in jeopardy.
But Pereira doubts that many from the 5 p.m. Mass are ready to take his Lenten message to heart.
"You speak about this to them...
The coming storm
Posted by National Geographic: Don Belt on April 16th, 2011
National Geographic: We may be seven billion specks on the surface of Earth, but when you're in Bangladesh, it sometimes feels as if half the human race were crammed into a space the size of Louisiana. Dhaka, its capital, is so crowded that every park and footpath has been colonized by the homeless. To stroll here in the mists of early morning is to navigate an obstacle course of makeshift beds and sleeping children. Later the city's steamy roads and alleyways clog with the chaos of some 15 million people, most of them...
Bangladesh: Erosion by climate change biggest threat to Sunderbans
Posted by Daily Pioneer: Moushumi Basu on April 16th, 2011
Daily Pioneer: While the debate on the vulnerability of Sunderbans as one of the hot spots of climate change continues -- experts have predicted that at least a “dozen islands on the South-western part of the mangrove swamps are likely to lose an average of 65 per cent of their land by 2015.” These according to experts are “tangible impacts” of the climate change phenomenon being perceived here.
What adds to the concern is that of these 12 islands assessed to be the most vulnerable to accelerated erosion, five...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Bangladesh: Erosion by climate change biggest threat to SunderbansNatural gas emissions study draws fire
Posted by Nature: Richard Lovett on April 16th, 2011
Nature: In the calculus of global warming, natural gas is generally considered to be preferable to coal as a fuel. That's because, on a per-joule basis, burning methane, the primary constituent of natural gas, produces less carbon dioxide than burning coal.
But, earlier this week, the conventional wisdom was shaken by researchers from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who argue in a study to be published in Climate Change1 that, over a 20-year period, the use of natural gas extracted from 'gas shales',...