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Archive for December, 2011
Mongolia: Helping wild horses and livestock survive extreme weather in Gobi desert
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 29th, 2011
ScienceDaily: Winters in the Gobi desert are usually long and very cold but the winter of 2009/2010 was particularly severe, a condition Mongolians refer to as "dzud." Millions of livestock died in Mongolia and the re-introduced wild Przewalski's horse population crashed dramatically. Petra Kaczensky and Chris Walzer from the Research Institute of Wildlife Ecology (FIWI) of the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna have used spatially explicit loss statistics, ranger survey data and GPS telemetry to provide...
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The Puzzle of Rising Methane
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 29th, 2011
New York Times: In an article the other day about thawing permafrost, I mentioned that no signal had emerged in the atmosphere to suggest a sharp rise in methane emissions from the Arctic. But that does not mean all is stable with methane in the air - quite the contrary, in fact.
It’s true that methane was stable for roughly a decade ending in 2006. That apparent stabilization occurred after a long rise in the methane content of the atmosphere related to human activities, so it came as a relief to scientists....
Q&A: Tuna Fisheries Must Make Short-Term Sacrifices
Posted by Inter Press Service: Julio Godoy Interviews Marine Biologist MARandamp;#205;A JOSandamp;#201; Juan JO on December 29th, 2011
Inter Press Service: For the last ten years, environmentalists and marine biologists have repeatedly warned that the world’s tuna populations, and particularly bluefin tuna, are being overfished to the verge of extinction.
Added to this are criticisms of the systems for controlling tuna fishing, including the annual quotas authorised for each country and the means of monitoring them, handled by the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT).
These complaints led ICCAT to admit in November...
Climate Change Endangers Millions In South Asia
Posted by Eurasia Review: Zafar Iqbal on December 29th, 2011
Eurasia Review: Millions of people in South Asia are vulnerable to climate change because of depleting glaciers, increasing coastal erosion, frequent floods and other natural disasters associated with global warming, warn environmentalists and development agencies. “We are extremely vulnerable to climate change threats.” Says Dr. Durga Poudel, Head of Department of Renewable Resources, University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He has extensively studied climatic patterns of South Asia. “Our coping mechanism/resources...
Canada: Oh, Canada’s become a home for record fracking
Posted by ProPublica: Nicholas Kusnetz on December 29th, 2011
ProPublica: Early last year, deep in the forests of northern British Columbia, workers for Apache Corp. performed what the company proclaimed was the biggest hydraulic fracturing operation ever.
The project used 259 million gallons of water and 50,000 tons of sand to frack 16 gas wells side by side. It was "nearly four times larger than any project of its nature in North America," Apache boasted.
The record didn't stand for long. By the end of the year, Apache and its partner, Encana, topped it by half...
Tanzania: Timber Logging in Rufiji Continue
Posted by Tanzania Daily News: Finnigan Wa Simbeye on December 29th, 2011
Tanzania Daily News: Remnants of torched farm huts suspended from the ground by burnt out logs mostly mangroves, are testimony that something went terribly wrong in Rufiji Delta. Ash is scattered all over the place and this was the site of brutal torching of farmers' temporary huts mainly used during the planting season.
Muscular youths brandishing machetes, petrol jerry cans hired as casual labourers by the Mangrove Management Project under Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism invaded the delta to enforce an...
Never Mind Solyndra: Fuel Cell Industry Growing with Government Support
Posted by Forbes: Erica Gies on December 28th, 2011
Forbes: So much political hay has been made over the collapse of Solyndra, which was supported by government funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Government isn’t qualified to pick technological winners and losers, said detractors; support for renewable energy is political, they said. But government has a long history of encouraging emerging technologies, and that continues, from energy storage to fuel cells.
Beginning in April 2009, the Department of Energy (DOE) invested...
In Drilling Safety Debate, Hydrofracking’s Not the Only Target
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 28th, 2011
New York Times: In the heated debate over fracking in New York, it is often forgotten that conventional natural gas drilling has been taking place in the state for decades.
Chemung County, a place I write about in Wednesday`s Times, has been a leader in gas production in the state and is now poised to become a leader in exploration of the Marcellus Shale. Drilling awaits the approval of new state rules governing horizontal drilling combined with high-volume hydraulic fracturing, or fracking – a controversial...
Frequency of extreme weather may escalate in 2012: Scientists
Posted by China Post: None Given on December 28th, 2011
China Post: From floods that crippled countries, to mega cyclones, huge blizzards, killer tornadoes to famine-inducing droughts, 2011 has been another record-breaker for bad weather. While it is too early to predict what 2012 will be like, insurers and weather prediction agencies point to a clear trend: the world's weather is becoming more extreme and more costly. Following are details of major weather disasters for 2011 and some early forecasts for 2012. 2011 overview Global reinsurer Munich Re says natural...
Evolution triggered by climate change
Posted by TG Daily: None Given on December 28th, 2011
TG Daily: Six distinct waves of mammal species diversity in North America over the last 65 million years were driven primarily by climate change, new research suggests.
Evolutionary biologists say that on each occasion warming and cooling periods, in two cases confounded by species migrations, marked the transition from one dominant grouping to the next.
"Although we've always known in a general way that mammals respond to climatic change over time, there has been controversy as to whether this can be...