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Archive for November 16th, 2011
UN Chief Calls for Support on Climate-Change Mitigation
Posted by Voice of America: Ron Corben on November 16th, 2011
Voice of America: U.N. Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon in Thailand to assess the country’s flood crisis says the global community needs to back funding for climate-change mitigation to follow up the promises made during the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference. Ban's call comes three weeks before a climate-change conference in Durban, South Africa.
The secretary-general, speaking to journalists Wednesday, renewed a plea to the global community to assist in meeting the financial costs of climate change on economies...
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Study: Triple threat paints grim future for frogs
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 16th, 2011
Associated Press: Frogs, salamanders and other amphibians may eventually have no safe haven left on the globe because of a triple threat of worsening scourges, a new study predicts.
Scientists have long known that amphibians are under attack from a killer fungus, climate change and shrinking habitat. In the study appearing online Wednesday in the journal Nature, computer models project that in about 70 years those three threats will spread, leaving no part of the world immune from one of the problems.
Frogs...
Bleak future for amphibians turns into ‘terrifying’ threat of extinction
Posted by Guardian: Camila Ruz on November 16th, 2011
Guardian: If the rapid extermination of animals, plants and other species really is the "sixth mass extinction" as scientists warn, then it is the amphibian of the tree of life that is undergoing the most drastic pruning.
In research described as "terrifying" by an independent expert, scientists now predict the future for frogs, toads, newts, salamanders and their kin is even more bleak than conservationists had realised.
Around half of amphibian species are in decline, while a third are already threatened...
“Alps under the ice” gives clues to global warming
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 16th, 2011
Reuters: The mystery of how a subglacial mountain range the size of the Alps formed up to 250 million years ago has finally been solved, scientists said on Wednesday, which could help map the effects of climate change.
The Gamburtsev subglacial mountains are buried 3 km below the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, the largest remaining body of ice on the planet.
Experts are trying to learn more about the frozen continent as even a small thaw could swamp low-lying coastal areas and cities. Antarctica contains...
EU biofuel target seen driving species loss: study
Posted by Reuters: Charlie Dunmore on November 16th, 2011
Reuters: A European Union target to promote the use of biofuels will accelerate global species loss because it encourages the conversion of pasture, savanna and forests into new cropland, EU scientists have warned.
The finding raises fresh doubts over the benefits of biofuels, which were once seen as the most effective way of cutting road transport emissions, but whose environmental credentials have increasingly been called into question.
The scale of species loss in areas converted into new cropland...
Scientists: NY must prepare for climate change now
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 16th, 2011
Associated Press: Devastating floods like those caused in upstate New York by the remnants of Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee are among the climate change effects predicted in a new report written by 50 scientists and released Wednesday by the state's energy research agency. The 600-page report called ClimAID, intended as a resource for planners, policymakers, farmers and residents, says New Yorkers should begin preparing for hotter summers, snowier winters, severe floods and a range of other effects on the...
Nebraska lawmakers vote to reroute oil pipeline
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 16th, 2011
Reuters: The Nebraska legislature on Wednesday voted 45-0 to advance a proposed law that would reroute the $7 billion TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline, avoiding the SandHills and Ogallala aquifer that environmental groups and many residents fear could be polluted by a spill.
Under the bill, the state would pay for a new environmental study for a new route for the pipeline, which would carry crude oil from Canada's oilsands area to Texas refineries.
On Monday, Nebraska and TransCanada Corp agreed to...
United Kingdom: Restoration of UK Peatlands Is Advocated by Conservation Group
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 16th, 2011
Yale Environment 360: The UK’s extensive peatlands and peatbogs must be protected and restored to avoid large-scale releases of carbon dioxide and to protect water supplies, according to a new study by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The report said that 80 percent of the peatbogs in Britain, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and islands such as the Hebrides have been damaged by overgrazing, burning, draining, or extraction for peat moss. These peatlands -- up to 40 feet thick in places...
Insight: Australia’s coal-seam gas industry feels political heat
Posted by Reuters: Rebekah Kebede on November 16th, 2011
Reuters: - On a recent spring day in the small Australian farming town of Gunnedah, an unlikely protestor takes the microphone to open a rally against the rapidly growing coal-seam gas industry: national radio talk-show host Alan Jones.
Jones, who broadcasts out of Sydney, has come to this remote community to show solidarity with a few hundred locals carrying yellow triangular signs reading "Farms Not Gas" and "Coal Seam Gas Stinks," part of a growing revolt against an industry spreading rapidly across...
Fish and rice flourish together in paddies
Posted by SciDev.Net: Jan Piotrowski on November 16th, 2011
SciDev.Net: A traditional farming technique that cultivates rice and fish side-by-side could help small farmers earn more money from their crops and reduce the impact on the environment, according to a study.
When fish were introduced into flooded paddy fields, farmers were able to grow the same amount of grain as in conventional rice monocultures -- but with more than two-thirds less pesticide and a quarter less fertiliser, found a six-year long study conducted in China.
These rice-fish co-cultures could...