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Archive for July 7th, 2011
Peru: Major Efforts Still Needed to Clean Up Lake Titicaca
Posted by Inter Press Service: Franz Chávez on July 7th, 2011
Inter Press Service: Efforts to combat pollution in Lake Titicaca, which straddles the borders of Peru and Bolivia high up in the Andes mountains, have shown slightly better results in Puno Bay on the Peruvian side, but have barely made a difference in Cohana Bay on the Bolivian side, according to local fishers and specialists interviewed by Tierramérica.
At 3,810 meters above sea level, Lake Titicaca is the highest commercially navigable lake in the world. It has a total surface area of 8,562 square kilometers, of...
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Greenland’s ice sheets face new threat
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 7th, 2011
ScienceNews: Scientists have uncovered a potentially potent risk to Greenland’s ice sheets during the next century and beyond: rapidly warming deep water. The subsurface ocean off Greenland is now expected to warm at roughly double the rate that is projected for such waters globally, including off the coast of Antarctica.
Calling the ocean “the 900-pound gorilla of global warming and climate change,” oceanographer Josh Willis of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., says he’s excited to finally...
Insect attacks among threat to US forests, worsened by drought, climate change
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 7th, 2011
Associated Press: When defoliated trees are added to those killed outright, the acreage significantly damaged by insects since 2003 totals about 50 million -- 8 percent of forest area in the lower 48 states, the report says. The victims range from Rocky Mountain pine forests hammered by bark beetles to ash stands in Northeastern and Upper Midwestern states, where authorities have struggled to contain an emerald ash borer invasion.
By comparison, about 13 million acres were scorched by fires during the same period,...
‘Radical’ changes needed to meet rising food demands: UN
Posted by Christian Science Monitor: Patrick Wall on July 7th, 2011
Christian Science Monitor: Current farming practices degrade the environment and contribute to global warming, which in turn reduces food production, according to the report. To feed a growing population, farmers around the world must increase food production by up to 100 percent by 2050 – but do so using sustainable methods, with a focus on small farming.
“The world now needs a truly green revolution in agriculture,” says the UN’s annual World Economic and Social Survey, which was released Tuesday.
Recent food shortages...
Phosphate: A Critical Resource Misused and Now Running Out
Posted by Yale Environment 360: Fred Pearce on July 7th, 2011
Yale Environment 360: If you wanted to really mess with the world’s food production, a good place to start would be Bou Craa, located in the desert miles from anywhere in the Western Sahara. They don’t grow much here, but Bou Craa is a mine containing one of the world’s largest reserves of phosphate rock. Most of us, most days, will eat some food grown on fields fertilized by phosphate rock from this mine. And there is no substitute.
The Western Sahara is an occupied territory. In 1976, when Spanish colonialists left,...
Chris Huhne: Climate change threatens UK security
Posted by Telegraph: James Kirkup on July 7th, 2011
Telegraph: The Energy Secretary predicted that UK will be "exposed to the shocking and alarming' consequences of a warmer world. Unchecked, climate change poses "a systemic threat' to the international order, he said.
Mr Huhne made the prediction in a speech to the Royal United Services Institute, a military think-tank.
The speech is meant to pave the way for a White Paper next week that will set out plans to boost the use of nuclear power and "renewable' energy sources like wind farms.
"With luck,...
Grizzly bear kills hiker in Yellowstone park
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 7th, 2011
Associated Press: A grizzly bear roams in Yellowstone national park, where a man has been mauled to death while hiking with his wife. A grizzly bear has killed a man who was hiking with his wife in Yellowstone national park after the couple apparently surprised the female bear and its cubs.
It was the park's first fatal grizzly mauling since 1986, but the third in the Yellowstone region in just over a year.
The attack happened on Wednesday morning, two days after a peak weekend for tourism in the park, on a...
Kenyan herders switch to farming as droughts worsen
Posted by AlertNet: Gitonga Njeru on July 7th, 2011
AlertNet: Kenyan herders switch to farming as droughts worsen
Cattle graze near thorn trees in Eremit in Kenya's southern Rift Valley on July 21, 2007.Frequent droughts are causing a share of Kenya's cattle herders to abandon their longstanding tradition of livestock farming in favour of growing crops, in an effort to increase their income.
Poor rainfall over the past several years, likely related to climate change, has resulted in increasing levels of hunger and poverty in the east African country,...
United Kingdom: Climate Change Forces Early Spring
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 7th, 2011
redOrbit: Spring is hailed as the season of rebirth, but if it comes too early, it can threaten the plants it is meant to welcome. A University of Alberta study shows that climate change over the past 70 years has pushed some of the province's native wildflowers and trees into earlier blooming times, making them more vulnerable to damaging frosts, and ultimately, threatening reproduction. U of A PhD candidate Elisabeth Beaubien and her supervisor, professor Andreas Hamann of the Department of Renewable Resources,...
Climate change and disaster in Montana
Posted by LA Times: Naomi Klein on July 7th, 2011
LA Times: "We're a disaster area," Alexis Bonogofsky told me, "and it's going to take a long time to get over it."
Bonogofsky and her partner, Mike Scott, are all over the news this week, telling the world about how Montana's Exxon Mobil pipeline spill has fouled their goat ranch and is threatening the health of their animals.
But my conversation with Bonogofsky was four full days before the pipeline began pouring oil into the Yellowstone River. And no, it's not that she's psychic; she was talking about...