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Archive for October, 2011
Pakistan tackles water crisis with rainwater harvesting
Posted by AlertNet: Saleem Shaikh and Sughra Tunio on October 25th, 2011
AlertNet: Wearing colourful traditional dresses with silver jewellery and bangles on their arms, the women of Tharparkar district look festive. But the empty earthen pots they carry tell a different story.
"Walking for three miles and (hoisting) a ... bucket filled with water through a wooden pulley from a 130-feet-deep well twice a day is toilsome work,' says Marvi Bheel, who lives in isolated Morry-je-Wandh village in this arid district of Sindh province, some 450 km (280 miles) south-east of Karachi....
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Pakistan tackles water crisis with rainwater harvestingChina’s glaciers in meltdown mode: Study
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 25th, 2011
Bangkok Post: Sharp increases in temperature driven by global warming are melting China's Himalayan glaciers, an impact that threatens habitats, tourism and economic development, says a study released Tuesday.
Tibetan women stand at the foot of a glacier in 2007. Sharp increases in temperature driven by global warming are melting China's Himalayan glaciers, an impact that threatens habitats, tourism and economic development, says a study released Tuesday.
Of 111 weather stations scattered across southwestern...
“We are people already sold” say voices from African rainforests
Posted by Green Peace: Susanne Breitkopf on October 25th, 2011
Green Peace: Approximately 40 million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo depend on the rainforest for their basic needs, such as medicine, food or shelter. In this image a local fisherman guides his boat through the waters of Lac Tumba (Lake Tumba). The lake area was identified by the Congo Basin Forest Partnership (CBFP) as a priority region for conservation. Expansion of logging into remaining areas of intact forests in the Democratic Republic of the Congo will destroy globally critical carbon reserves...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on “We are people already sold” say voices from African rainforestsChina’s glaciers in meltdown mode: study
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 25th, 2011
Agence France-Presse: Sharp increases in temperature driven by global warming are melting China's Himalayan glaciers, an impact that threatens habitats, tourism and economic development, says a study released Tuesday.
Of 111 weather stations scattered across southwestern China, 77 percent showed significant upticks in temperatures between 1961 and 2008, according to the study, published in a British peer-reviewed journal, Environmental Research Letters.
At the 14 monitoring stations above 4,000 metres (13,123 feet),...
Thailand calls holiday to allow escape from floods
Posted by Reuters: Panarat Thepgumpanat on October 25th, 2011
Reuters: Thailand announced a five-day holiday on Tuesday to give people the chance to escape floods closing in on Bangkok as authorities ordered the evacuation of a housing estate on the outskirts of the city after a protective wall gave way.
The cabinet declared October 27-31 a holiday in Bangkok and 20 provinces affected by the country's worst flooding in 50 years as weekend high tides in the Gulf of Thailand could complicate efforts to divert water from the low-lying capital.
Financial markets will...
Nebraska governor to consider legal challenge to Keystone XL pipeline route
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 24th, 2011
Reuters: Nebraska governor Dave Heineman said on Monday he will call a special session of the state legislature over TransCanada's proposed $7bn oil sands pipeline that would cross ecologically sensitive areas.
Heineman wants TransCanada to change the route of the Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL pipeline away from Nebraska's Sand Hills region, which sits atop the Ogallala aquifer, one of the largest sources of water for farms in the central United States. He does not oppose the pipeline outright.
"I believe...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Nebraska governor to consider legal challenge to Keystone XL pipeline routeRussian Heat Wave Statistically Linked to Climate Change
Posted by Wired News: Brandon Keim on October 24th, 2011
Wired News: A new method of crunching climate data could make it possible to put a figure on climate change`s contribution to freak weather events, something that`s been difficult to do with empirical precision.
The debut subject: the Russian heat wave of July 2010, which killed 700 people and was unprecedented since record keeping began in the 19th century. According to the analysis, there`s an 80 percent chance that climate change was responsible.
"With climate change, it`s going to happen five times...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Russian Heat Wave Statistically Linked to Climate ChangeIndia is the most likely place for the seventh billionth child to be born
Posted by Guardian: Jason Burke on October 24th, 2011
Guardian: The Madanpur Khadr colony is a tenement slum on the southern outskirts of Delhi, the Indian capital. A decade ago there was nothing here but green fields, buffaloes wallowing, goats grazing and the odd small dwelling.
Now an estimated 40,000 people live in ramshackle, five-storey, brick and concrete homes, 10 to a room, without sewers or a clean water supply – and often without jobs.
No one knows exactly who will be the seventh billionth person on Earth, to be born on the last day of this month,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on India is the most likely place for the seventh billionth child to be bornNASA to launch new Earth-observing satellite
Posted by Associated Press: Alicia Chang on October 24th, 2011
Associated Press: After a five-year delay, an Earth-observing satellite will be launched to test new technologies aimed at improving weather forecasts and monitoring climate change.
The $1.5 billion NASA mission comes in a year of weather extremes from the Midwest tornado outbreak to the Southwest wildfires to hurricane-caused flooding in New England.
"We've already had 10 separate weather events, each inflicting at least $1 billion in damages," said Louis Uccellini of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration....
Study Offers New Insights Into Planting Flood-Tolerant Crops
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 24th, 2011
Yale Environment 360: Scientists say they have identified the molecular mechanism that enables plants to detect and cope with low oxygen levels that occur when roots or shoots are inundated with water, a development they say University of NottinghamWater added to the Arabidopsis plant could help farmers breed high-yield, flood-tolerant crops as flooding becomes more common globally. In a study published in Nature, scientists from the University of California, Riverside and the University of Nottingham in the UK describe...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Study Offers New Insights Into Planting Flood-Tolerant Crops