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Archive for September, 2011
Colombia: popular revolt against gold mining
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 5th, 2011
Rainforest News: The price of gold is rising for the tenth consecutive year. As a result, more and more investors, financial market operators and central banks are turning to gold as a safe haven in the face of global economic instability. This has troubling consequences, because gold mining is one of the most destructive and polluting of all mining activities.
Mining companies have set their sights on Latin America, and a genuine gold rush has broken out in Colombia. In response, popular opposition to mining...
Scientist ‘gob-smacked’ at glacier break-up
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 5th, 2011
BBC: New pictures have revealed the extent to which a huge glacier in northern Greenland has broken up in just two years, claims a glaciologist.
Dr Alun Hubbard of Aberystwyth University said he was "gob-smacked" by the scale of the Petermann Glacier's break-up since he last visited in 2009.
The glacier is 186 miles (300km) long and 3,280ft (1000m) high - over three times the height of the Eiffel Tower.
Last year, it shed a piece of ice measuring 77 square miles (200 sq km).
Dr Hubbard has...
Iran arrests salt-lake protesters
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 4th, 2011
BBC: Iranian officials say 60 people have been arrested in protests calling for the government to save a shrinking lake in the north-west of the country.
Lake Orumiyeh, one of the world's largest salt lakes, has lost more than half its surface area in 20 years due to drought and the damming of rivers.
A local MP says if the lake disappears it will leave behind 10bn tonnes of salt and displace millions of people.
An emergency rescue plan for the lake was rejected by parliament last month.
Correspondents...
A weird and disastrous US weather year: tornadoes, drought, flooding, Irene, blizzard, quakes
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 4th, 2011
Associated Press: Nature is pummeling the United States this year with extremes. Unprecedented triple-digit heat and devastating drought. Deadly tornadoes leveling towns. Massive rivers overflowing. A billion-dollar blizzard. And now, unusual hurricane-caused flooding in Vermont. If what’s falling from the sky isn’t enough, the ground shook in places that normally seem stable: Colorado and the entire East Coast. On Friday, a strong quake triggered brief tsunami warnings in Alaska. Arizona and New Mexico have broken...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on A weird and disastrous US weather year: tornadoes, drought, flooding, Irene, blizzard, quakesUnited States: New Orleans braces for Tropical Storm Lee
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 4th, 2011
Reuters: New Orleans, devastated by Hurricane Katrina six years ago, faced a new threat on Saturday from Tropical Storm Lee, which was set to challenge the city's flood defenses with an onslaught of heavy rain.
The storm was expected to bring up to 20 inches of rain to southeast Louisiana over the next few days, including to low-lying New Orleans, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
Lee's tidal surge could spur coastal flooding in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama before drenching a large swath...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on United States: New Orleans braces for Tropical Storm LeeTexas Wildfires Still Rage as Drought Conditions Worsen
Posted by Yahoo!: Vanessa Evans on September 3rd, 2011
Yahoo!: Along with sparking increased debate about climate change, the ongoing drought conditions in Texas have made the state ripe for wildfires this year. Meteorologists are predicting Texans will not see relief from the extreme weather until later this year, or even possibly not until well into 2012. Which means firefighters are likely to continue to see more of the blazes like the Possum Kingdom Lake fire, which began Tuesday and has claimed dozens of homes and thousands of acres of land. Here are some...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Texas Wildfires Still Rage as Drought Conditions WorsenUnited Kingdom: Bill Bryson joins fight in countryside planning row
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 3rd, 2011
Guardian: Britain's leading countryside campaigner, Bill Bryson, has joined a growing wave of opposition to government moves to shake up planning laws.
As groups from the National Trust to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds line up against proposals to ease new development across the country, Bryson told the Observer he was deeply concerned by the direction of policy.
"The government's good intentions risk being undermined by the talk of economic growth at any cost," said the American writer,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on United Kingdom: Bill Bryson joins fight in countryside planning rowCan the world still feed itself?
Posted by Wall Street Journal: Brian M. Carney on September 3rd, 2011
Wall Street Journal: As befits the chairman of the world's largest food-production company, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe is counting calories. But it's not his diet that the chairman and former CEO of Nestlé is worried about. It's all the food that the U.S. and Europe are converting into fuel while the world's poor get hungrier.
"Politicians," Mr. Brabeck-Letmathe says, "do not understand that between the food market and the energy market, there is a close link." That link is the calorie.
The energy stored in a bushel...
Keystone pipeline fight: Wall Street is watching
Posted by iwatch: Corbin Hiar on September 3rd, 2011
iwatch: Actresses Darryl Hannah and Margot Kidder and hundreds of less well-known activists are ending a two-week civil disobedience campaign focused on preventing Obama administration approval of a pipeline to ferry oil extracted from Canadian tar sands to U.S. refineries. They say it threatens forests, water supplies, and will radically worsen global warming. But climate scientists and oil industry analysts say more is at stake than the fate of the so-called Keystone XL project. It is among a handful...