RSS Feed
Archive for August 24th, 2011
Canadian Activist Arrested at White House Protest Tells Her Story
Posted by Treehugger: None Given on August 24th, 2011
Treehugger: Canadian activist Patricia Warwick fights climate change at Climate Action Now and went to Washington for the Keystone XL protest. She tells TreeHugger about her experience in this TreeHugger exclusive.
Back in June, when I heard about the protest being planned for Washington D.C. to convince President Obama not to approve the construction of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, I jumped at the chance to take a stand.
For the last two years I've been concerned about this proposed pipeline that...
Posted in 
Austin Plagued By Record Heat Wave
Posted by National Public Radio: John Burnett on August 24th, 2011
National Public Radio: MELISSA BLOCK, host: Today, at around 2:00 p.m. in Austin, Texas, an unhappy record was broken. This is the 70th day this year that temperatures there have exceeded 100 degrees. That broke the city's record of triple digit days set in 1925.
NPR's John Burnett sent us this postcard from the scorched streets of the Texas capitol.
JOHN BURNETT: It's always hot in Texas in the summer, but this one has been like no other in memory. The heat is like a malevolent force. People are sweaty, people are...
Study: Climate cycles may cause wars
Posted by Politico: Darius Dixon on August 24th, 2011
Politico: Studying conflicts occurring between 1950 and 2004, the probability of new violence throughout tropical regions of the world double during the hot, dry periods of El Niño years relative to cool, wet La Niña conditions. The data included 175 countries and 234 conflicts.
Overall, the team calculated that El Niño may have played a role in a fifth of civil wars worldwide during the span of the study.
"We believe that these findings represent the first major evidence that the global climate is a...
Peru passes landmark indigenous rights legislation
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 24th, 2011
Mongabay: A new administration in Peru is moving toward granting indigenous people long-sought legal rights, reports Survival International. Yesterday, the Peruvian congress approved new legislation that gives indigenous people free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) for any project on their land. If signed into law and enforced, the legislation would provide indigenous groups considerable clout in keeping industry off their lands if they choose.
The legislation still has to be signed by new President Ollanta...
Record-Setting Agricultural Disaster in Texas Gets ‘Worse by the Day’
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 24th, 2011
Climate Wire: After scanning the landscape surrounding this tiny (population 757) central Texas town, one immediately understands why the city's officials have decided to scratch the word "cotton" from the annual September Cotton Festival.
In normal years, these fields would be overflowing with lush cotton crops ripe for harvesting. The locals say that around this time, it's typical to see the Miles central collection point so overflowing with cotton it looks like someone tore open a giant pillow. But the drought...
Minnesota’s bass get a boost
Posted by Star Tribune: DOUG SMITH on August 24th, 2011
Star Tribune: Josh Tutland, 12, of St. Michael, caught this 5.3 pound, 21-inch largemouth bass on Pelican lake in Wright County, using a soft plastic bait. The DNR says warming temperatures have boosted bass populations in many Minnesota lakes.
Minnesota's walleye anglers might want to invest in some bass-fishing equipment.
Rising temperatures in recent years have boosted bass populations in many Minnesota lakes, say fisheries researchers with the Department of Natural Resources.
And if the climate change...
Protests are stern warning to Obama
Posted by Politico: Bob King and Talia Buford on August 24th, 2011
Politico: Three years ago, the Obama buttons and chants of "Yes We Can' would have been a sign that the crowd gathered in front of the White House had caught inspiration from a young Illinois senator's promise of change they can believe in.
On Monday, that was still true for some of the environmental activists who came to Pennsylvania Avenue to risk jail and speak out against a proposed Canada-to-Texas tar sands oil pipeline that they call a threat to the Earth's climate. But the 2008 campaign trappings...
Keystone XL: a line in the sand for Obama
Posted by Guardian: Amy Goodman on August 24th, 2011
Guardian: The White House was rocked Tuesday, not only by the 5.9 Richter-scale earthquake, but by the protests mounting outside its gates. More than 2,100 people say they'll risk arrest there during the next two weeks. They oppose the Keystone XL pipeline project, designed to carry heavy crude oil from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the US Gulf Coast.
A "keystone" in architecture is the stone at the top of an arch that holds the arch together; without it, the structure collapses. By...
Indian agribusiness sets sights on land in east Africa
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 24th, 2011
Guardian: Indian agribusiness companies are ready to spend $2.5bn buying, or renting for decades, several million hectares of cheap land in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda in what could be some of the largest farming deals struck in Africa in the last 50 years.
But in a separate development, plans for a US-based investment company to lease up to 1m hectares of South Sudan for only $25,000 a year appears to have stalled following protests by local communities over the potential "land grab".
A delegation...
How many species on Earth? 8.7 million give or take
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 24th, 2011
Reuters: Scientists have yet to discover, or classify, about 90 percent of the plant and animal species on Earth, which is estimated to be home to just under 9 million species, a study says.
The study, published in the open-access journal PLoS Biology on Wednesday, vastly increases the estimated richness of life on the planet. More than 1.2 million species have been formally described and named so far.
Scientists have long tried to classify life on Earth and to finally figure out how many species there...