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Archive for January 6th, 2012
Climate change and habitat loss threaten biodiversity, extinction rate underestimated
Posted by Bay Area Indymedia: None Given on January 6th, 2012
Bay Area Indymedia: Two new scientific papers have emphasised the threat to biodiversity from the impacts of climate change and habitat loss. A study by US ecologist Mark Urban identified that predictions of the loss of animal and plant diversity due to climate change may be greatly underestimated as most predictions of the rate of extinctions don't take into account species competition and movement. A second key global study by University of Queensland and Australian CSIRO scientists emphasised the link between current...
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Climate models may underestimate extinction rates
Posted by TG Daily: Kate Taylor on January 6th, 2012
TG Daily: We may be being grossly complacent about the scale of species extinctions caused by climate change, according to US scientists.
Predictions of the loss of animal and plant diversity around the world fail to account for species competition and movement, they say.
"We have really sophisticated meteorological models for predicting climate change," says ecologist Mark Urban of the University of Connecticut.
"But in real life, animals move around, they compete, they parasitize each other and...
Climate change ‘will boost British farmers’
Posted by Daily Telegraph: None Given on January 6th, 2012
Daily Telegraph: In a speech at the Oxford Farming Conference, she said that, although problems such as droughts would become more frequent, warmer weather would also mean a longer growing season and less frost damage, allowing the introduction of crops such as peaches, maize and sunflowers. Already 10,000 melons are expected to be harvested in Kent this year.
Mrs Spelman said farmers must "seize the opportunities' of increased production as well as preparing for more droughts and floods by building reservoirs...
Dozens of Texas Species in Line to Be Studied as Endangered this is a test application please ntrhhf
Posted by New York Times: KATE GALBRAITH on January 6th, 2012
New York Times: Near a glade of blackened pines, a Ph.D. student at Texas State University used microchip technology to search for an endangered Houston toad. Her device beeped as she held it over a carpet of pine needles, and after a bit of digging, a live toad emerged, half-buried in dirt. The creature was waiting for warmer, wetter weather before mating, but its species’ future is grim. The huge wildfires that swept through Bastrop County last fall may wipe it out. “That was an extinction-level event,” said...
EPA may retest PA. water near fracking
Posted by Reuters: Edward McAllister and Timothy Gardner on January 6th, 2012
Reuters: Federal regulators are considering retesting water supplies at a small town in Pennsylvania that residents say have been contaminated by natural gas drilling.
Just a month after declaring water in Dimock safe, officials from the Environmental Protection Agency are taking another look after new evidence provided by residents suggested that drinking water could be more polluted than originally thought.
"We believe that additional information is needed to better understand the situation in Dimock...