Archive for September 12th, 2011

Arctic ice cover hits historic low: scientists

Agence France-Presse: The area covered by Arctic sea ice reached its lowest point this week since the start of satellite observations in 1972, German researchers announced on Saturday. "On September 8, the extent of the Arctic sea ice was 4.240 million square kilometres (1.637 million square miles). This is a new historic minimum," said Georg Heygster, head of the Physical Analysis of Remote Sensing Images unit at the University of Bremen's Institute of Environmental Physics. The new mark is about half-a-percent...

Chefs aim to save the world

Guardian: They are more used to coming up with wild and wonderful recipes for their clientele in the world's leading restaurants. But now a gathering of top chefs has come up with a plan to save the planet, one dinner at a time, with an open letter to the next generation of cooks signed by the likes of Ferran Adriá and Heston Blumenthal. The so-called G9 meeting of nine of the world's top chefs, took place in Lima, Peru, at the weekend, where they tried to define what they believe should be the role of...

Health Worries Stalk Neighborhoods in Detroit’s ‘Sacrifice Zone’

Greenwire: A fire at the Marathon Petroleum Corp. refinery here late last month caused little structural damage, but its timing could not have been worse for the plant's owner. The blaze, which was quickly extinguished by the refinery's emergency personnel, occurred on the morning that U.S. EPA and advocacy groups were touring the plant's industrial neighborhood as part of a national environmental justice conference at a downtown conference center. Billowing smoke from Marathon's gas flare safety system stood...

Uganda’s tea trade threatened by rising temperatures

SciDev.Net: Some of Uganda's most lucrative tea plantations could be "wiped off the map" under the 2.3 degree Celsius temperature rise predicted for 2050, a study has said. Even with the expected one degree Celsius rise by 2020, the 60,000 small farmers who grow Uganda's high-quality tea could face a 30 to 48 per cent decline in output, scientists at the Colombia-based International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) have said. Yields are expected to shrink and optimum tea-producing zones will shift...

Natural Gas Exploration and Tea Party Politics Don’t Safely Mix

Yahoo!: Natural gas has been touted on a bipartisan level, but even this "wonder energy" has its drawbacks, especially in the area of global warming. According to the International Business Times, the National Center on Atmospheric Research cites that leakage of methane from natural gas that is 2 percent and above could prevent any real progress in addressing climate change. Leakage of methane from the shale gas industry has been as much as 7.9 percent per a Cornell University study, as reported by Fast...

Agency Takes New Approach To Save Everglades Land

National Public Radio: In Florida, federal officials have released plans for a new wildlife preserve just south of Orlando. The Everglades Headwaters National Wildlife Refuge will include at least 150,000 acres, but there's a twist "” most of it will remain under private ownership. Visitors mostly come to central Florida for its theme parks and beaches, but long before Walt Disney set his sights on the part of the state where he erected a castle at the Magic Kingdom, it was known for its lakes, rivers and grasslands....

Decades of Deforestation Have Contributed to Africa Famine, Group Says

Yale Environment 360: Decades of forest destruction have turned once-productive lands into desert across the Horn of Africa, worsening a devastating famine that has killed tens of thousands of people in Somalia and elsewhere, forestry experts say. A new study by the Center for International Forestry Research, conducted in 25 countries, shows that forests provide about one-quarter of household income for people living in or near them, offering a critical defense against poverty. In parched regions like the Horn of Africa,...

United Kingdom: Concerns over green spaces planning

Press Association: The Government was accused today of "fobbing off" calls to define sustainable development, which it has put at the heart of the controversial planning reforms. The changes which aim to simplify the planning process contain a "presumption in favour of sustainable development", which ministers say will boost growth while protecting the environment and countryside. But campaigners have raised fears the reforms will lead to a return to damaging development, by putting the emphasis in favour of building...

United States: How Dead Is Yucca Mountain?

New York Times: Protesters outside a town hall meeting held last spring by President Obama in Reno, Nev., demanded that he reverse his decision to shelve the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has voted to kill Yucca Mountain again, sort of. The project has become more complex than nuclear physics. Yucca Mountain, a volcanic structure 100 miles from Las Vegas, was the government’s lead candidate for a nuclear waste repository, but President Obama, making good on a campaign...

Tanzania issues early ban on food exports

AlertNet: Facing threats to its own food security at a time when famine is afflicting neighbouring countries in the Horn of Africa, Tanzania this year issued an early six-month ban on non-governmental exports of grain and maize. Extreme weather and unpredictable rainfall, believed to be associated with climate change, are affecting crops around the world, and some governments have limited trading of food in response. Last year, Russia banned wheat exports after a drought in that country. In Tanzania,...