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Archive for May 19th, 2011
China warns of ‘urgent problems’ facing Three Gorges dam
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 19th, 2011
Guardian: Water being released from the Three Gorges Dam in central China's Hubei province. The state council has admitted the dam is creating a legacy of major environmental and social problems. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
The Three Gorges dam, the flagship of China's massive hydroengineering ambitions, faces "urgent problems", the government has warned.
In a statement approved by prime minister Wen Jiabao, the state council said the dam had pressing geological, human and ecological problems. The report...
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Conserving Threatened Species Despite Habitat Fragmentation
Posted by Epoch Times: Cassie Ryan on May 19th, 2011
Epoch Times: Plant species spread by birds may need a helping hand from humans due to fragmentation of forest habitats, according to a new study published in the April edition of the journal Ecology.
Deforestation creates forest fragments that can be separated by large tracts of inhospitable land. Some birds help to propagate certain plants by eating seeds and defecating them at a distance from the parent plant. However, if the seeds land in an area that does not promote growth, long-distance dispersal of...
EPA Admits Making Math Error in Mercury Proposal
Posted by Greenwire: Gabriel Nelson on May 19th, 2011
Greenwire: After being taken to task by critics in the utility industry, U.S. EPA conceded yesterday that it made mathematical errors in newly proposed limits on mercury from coal-fired power plants.
The Utility Air Regulatory Group, a coalition of power companies that often challenges new Clean Air Act rules, recently claimed that "egregious errors" by EPA led to estimates that the cleanest power plants are releasing 1,000 times less mercury than they actually are. The mercury limits are one of the key...
US southern forests face bleak future, but is sprawl or the paper industry to blame?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 19th, 2011
Mongabay: More people, less forests: that's the conclusion of a US Forest Service report for forests in the US South. The report predicts that over the next 50 years, the region will lose 23 million acres (9.3 million hectares) largely due to urban sprawl and growing populations amid other factors. Such a loss, representing a decline of over 10 percent, would strain ecosystem services, such as water resources, while potentially imperiling over 1,000 species. However, Dogwood Alliance, which campaigns for conservation...
Indonesia signs moratorium on new permits for logging, palm oil concessions
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 19th, 2011
Mongabay: After five-and-a-half months of delay due to lobbying and political debate, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono finally signed a two-year moratorium on the granting of new permits to clear rainforests and peatlands, reports Reuters.
But details of the moratorium, which was a condition under Indonesia's billion dollar forest conservation partnership with Norway and was supposed to be signed January 1, won't be released until Friday, leaving it unclear what types of forest will be protected...
Climate change is quite real
Posted by Daily Astorian: None Given on May 19th, 2011
Daily Astorian: Climate change holds all sorts of surprises, and especially for farmers. When our newspaper group committed itself in 2004 to a year-long series on climate change, our editors’ first interviews were with agricultural economists – from Oregon State University and the University of California at Davis. The most striking prediction those two scientists made was that the amount of precipitation might not change so much as when the rainfall comes. We are already observing that phenomenon. Our series...
Hauling Icebergs From the Poles to Slake Globe’s Growing Thirst
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 19th, 2011
New York Times: Every year, tens of thousands of icebergs containing billions of gallons of fresh water calve off the glaciers of Greenland and Antarctica into the ocean, where most eventually drift into warmer waters break up and melt.
Wouldn`t it be nice to haul a few icebergs to someplace short on water -- southern Spain, perhaps, or western Australia -- and melt them for drinking water?
It`s a seemingly outlandish idea that`s been around for decades and has never been successfully realized. But a small...
New paper stirs up controversy over how scientists estimate extinction rates
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 19th, 2011
Mongabay: A new paper in Nature negating how scientists estimate extinction rates has struck a nerve across the scientific community. The new paper clearly states that a mass extinction crisis is underway, however it argues that due to an incorrect method of determining extinction rates the crisis isn't as severe as has been reported. But other experts in the field contacted disagree, telling mongabay.com that the new the paper is 'plain wrong'. In fact, a number of well-known researchers are currently drafting...
Europe faces extinction of many species, EU says
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 19th, 2011
Associated Press: The Iberian lynx that prowls the grasslands of southern Spain. The Mediterranean monk seal swimming waters off Greece and Turkey. The Bavarian pine vole that forages in the high meadows of the Alps.
These are among hundreds of European animal species -- up to a quarter of the total native to the continent -- that are threatened with extinction according to a warning issued this month by the European Union.
"Biodiversity is in crisis, with species extinctions running at unparalleled rates,"...
Wildfires and no drought relief in sight for Southwest
Posted by Climate Central: Alyson Kenward on May 19th, 2011
Climate Central: Water, water, everywhere, but not a drop to spare. Across large parts of the Southwest, that is.
All along the Mississippi River, from Illinois to Louisiana, record floods continue to drown towns and farmland following the wettest April on record for several states in the Ohio River valley, which has in turn engorged the Mississippi. But while some areas remain under water, other regions have been suffering from the opposite extremes of drought and wildfire. In fact, tinder-dry conditions across...