Archive for September, 2011

Floods were unavoidable, but effect could be minimized

Daily Trust: Recent flood disasters which ravaged most parts of the country, leading to the submerging of houses, bridges, structures and farmlands is an unavoidable global phenomenon caused by climate change but steps capable of minimizing the effects of the disaster could have been taken by various local and state governments following early warnings given by the Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NIMET). Director-General of NIMET, Dr. Anthony Anuforom said his agency had in February this year predicted heavier...

Essay: Pipeline roulette

Daily Climate: What riveted my attention, lately, was not the looming juggernaut of the Keystone XL pipeline chugging sludge from Alberta to Texas, that pipeline that has been getting all the press, and getting protesters arrested in Washington, D.C. What got my attention was the news, in July, of the Silvertip Pipeline break underneath the Yellowstone River, near Laurel, Mont.: Some 50,000 gallons of crude - by industry estimates - poured into the river from a break in the 12-inch, 20-year-old pipeline feeding...

Fight climate change with climate-smart agriculture

Afrique en ligne: FAO, African leaders to fight climate change with 'Climate-smart agriculture' - The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and African leaders are working together to quickly adopt a 'climate-smart' approach to agriculture to fight the impacts of climate change and increasing scarcity of natural resources. 'Africa needs increased productivity in its agriculture and higher incomes in its rural areas, and rural communities and the agro-ecosystems on which they depend have to adapt to climate...

Famine in the Horn of Africa: Commons debate live

Guardian: Food security is set to remain high on the international agenda for months to come. Here are a few dates that might be worth putting in your diary: * next week, a ministerial mini-summit has been scheduled to discuss the Horn of Africa drought and famine on the sidelines of the UN general assembly in New York. Kenyan president Mwai Kibaki is reportedly heading to New York on Friday with plans to gather international support for a long-term solution to the crisis in Somalia that has led to an unprecedented...

Study says destroyed tropical rain forest never fully regenerate

Radio Australia: A new study says that once pristine tropical forest is cleared, it never fully regenerates. The study, in the latest issue of Nature, found that Southeast Asia has suffered the greatest loss of biodiversity of any tropical region in the world. Destruction of virgin forests through unsustainable logging practices has also been a serious concern in countries like Solomon Islands and PNG.

Green Groups Add Muscle in Texas, Gird for Uphill Battles

Greenwire: This famously "weird" city long has been seen as the Lone Star State's greenest. But in April, Dallas briefly stole that title when it played host to the nation's second-largest Earth Day celebration. Organizers attracted 48,000 people to their inaugural event, just shy of the 50,000 people who turned out for the celebration in New York City, according to the Earth Day Network. "Everybody said: 'Dallas? Texas? Earth Day? You've got to be kidding me,'" recalled Earth Day Dallas director Susan Brosin....

Brazil: Beating Drought in Semiarid Northeast

Inter Press Service: Violent clashes looked inevitable when some 1,500 desperately hungry peasants poured into this small Brazilian town. Riot police were staked out to prevent looting. It was the year 1993, and millions of people in Brazil's impoverished semiarid Northeast had been forced to the brink of starvation by three years of drought. The rising death toll from the famine was pushing large numbers of rural people into towns and cities, where crowds of starving people were raiding warehouses and stores. The...

West Bank villagers’ daily battle with Israel over water

Guardian: The South Hebron Hills, sweltering in 34C heat and in its second consecutive year of drought, is a landscape of brutal contrasts. There is enough water here to support lush greenhouses, big cattle sheds, even ornamental plants. It arrives in large, high-pressure lines. And there appears to be no limit to the bounty it can bring. Cheek by jowl with the water towers and red roofs of the Israeli settlers in this area of the West Bank is a landscape of stone boulders, tents and caves. The Palestinian...

Peru: Environmental Innovators Create Virtuous Circles

Inter Press Service: A method to revolutionise gold mining; biofuel from used cooking oil; a container where garbage and wastewater go in and four useful products and zero waste come out: Latin American science applied to the environment. Clean gold is possible Peruvian metallurgical engineer Carlos Villachica has devoted his life to seeking a balance between his country’s two greatest riches: the mineral deposits concentrated in the Andes mountains and Amazon basin, and its huge wealth of flora and fauna. Villachica...

Shift from Coal to Gas Will Not Appreciably Slow Warming, Study Says

Yale Environment 360: While a greater reliance on burning natural gas instead of coal would reduce carbon emissions worldwide, it would have a negligible effect on slowing the effects of climate change, according to a U.S. study. Using a series of computer simulations, scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) calculated that a partial shift from coal to natural gas worldwide would in fact slightly accelerate climate change through at least 2050. That’s because natural gas contains methane, a potent...