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Archive for September 5th, 2011
Total Arctic sea ice at record low in 2010: study
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 5th, 2011
Reuters: The minimum summertime volume of Arctic sea ice fell to a record low last year, researchers said in a study to be published shortly, suggesting that thinning of the ice had outweighed a recovery in area.
The study estimated that last year broke the previous, 2007 record for the minimum volume of ice, which is calculated from a combination of sea ice area and thickness.
The research adds to a picture of rapid climate change at the top of the world that could see the Arctic Ocean ice-free within...
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Iranian greens fear disaster as Lake Orumieh shrinks
Posted by Guardian: Saeed Kamali Dehghan on September 5th, 2011
Guardian: The fate of a shrinking salt lake is the last thing you would expect football fans to chant about – but Iranians are doing all they can to stop a looming ecological disaster.
Lake Orumieh in north-west Iran, one of the world's largest salt lakes and a Unesco biosphere reserve, is disappearing due to drought and government mismanagement, and has become a major cause of concern for environmental activists and ordinary people in the Islamic republic.
Thousands of Iranians from Tabriz and Orumieh,...
In the world’s breadbasket, climate change feeds some worry
Posted by Reuters: Christine Stebbins on September 5th, 2011
Reuters: It can't happen here, can it? The United States, the breadbasket and supplier of last resort for a hungry world, has been such an amazing food producer in the last half-century that most Americans take for granted annual bounteous harvests of grain, meat, dairy, fruits, vegetables and other crops. When horrific images of drought or famine in Africa, Asia or other regions land in American media, America is usually first in line with food aid shipments, air drops, and other rescue efforts from its...
Kenya: Breweries persuade drought-hit farmers to switch crops
Posted by SciDev.Net: Zachary Ochieng on September 5th, 2011
SciDev.Net: A partnership between academics and a beer company, which sent sorghum prices soaring in East Africa, has been highlighted as a way of harnessing agricultural research to fight the effects of drought such as the one in the Horn of Africa.
The Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) linked up with Kenya-based East African Breweries Limited (EABL) in 2009 to address a missing link between research results and farmers' incomes.
Farmers had been planting maize, which is susceptible to drought,...
Climate change seems unfavourable for toxic blue algae
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 5th, 2011
Physorg: The earth is warming up due to rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. NWO-funded researchers have discovered that the increase in carbon dioxide can reduce the nuisance caused by toxic blue algae, a bacterium commonly found in swimming water throughout the Netherlands in the summer. At higher temperatures the blue algae grow better, but due to rising carbon dioxide concentrations the non-toxic variant of blue algae ousts its harmful little brother.
Researchers from the University...
US counts the cost of nine months of unprecedented weather extremes
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 5th, 2011
Guardian: As deadly fires continue to burn across bone-dry Texas and eight inches of rain from tropical storm Lee falls on New Orleans, the US is beginning to count the cost of nine months of unprecedented weather extremes.
Ever since a massive blizzard causing $2bn of damage paralysed cities from Chicago to the north-east in January, nearly every month has been marked by a $1b+-weather catastrophe. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric administration (Noaa), there have been 10 major disasters...
Encyclopedia of Life catalogues more than one-third of Earth’s species
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 5th, 2011
Guardian: An ambitious attempt to create an encyclopedia of every known species on Earth has reached a major new milestone.
The Encyclopedia of Life (EoL), a free and collaborative website, said on Monday it now has pages for each of 750,000 species, meaning more than one-third of all the planet's 1.9m species are now covered.
"EoL is the ultimate online field guide for citizen scientists," said Jennifer Preece, dean of the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland. "There are many...
On flood plain, pondering wisdom of rebuilding anew
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 5th, 2011
New York Times: For all the destruction and heartache left by Tropical Storm Irene in the Catskill Mountains, the storm was only the latest to cause catastrophic flooding in the region in recent years. With each one, residents have cleaned up, rebuilt and moved on, as resolutely as ever. Now, though, some are asking a once-unthinkable question: Should the rebuilding come to a halt? Even a local state assemblyman, Kevin A. Cahill, a Democrat, said that allowing this cycle to continue, at least in some places, seemed...
Renewable energy demand to push land grabs
Posted by Business Week: None Given on September 5th, 2011
Business Week: Rising demand for the dominant form of renewable energy worldwide - wood - could drive yet more acquisitions of land in developing countries where food insecurity is rising and land rights are weak, say researchers at the International Institute for Environment and Development.
The researchers warn that this new trend needs greater public scrutiny and debate.
Wood accounts for 67% of global renewable energy supplies, and many countries in the global North are increasing their use of it both...
In Greenland, lives are altered with the weather
Posted by Associated Press: Charles J. Hanley on September 5th, 2011
Associated Press: The old hunter was troubled by the foreigners encroaching on his Inuit people's frozen lands. "The Inuit say that they are going to heat the 'siku' (the sea ice) to make it melt. There will be almost no more winter," the elder says of the southerners in Jean Malaurie's "Last Kings of Thule," the French explorer's classic account of a year in the Arctic. The year was 1951. A lifetime later, another Inuit hunter looks out at Disko Bay from this island's rocky fringe and remembers driving his dogsled...