RSS Feed
Archive for February 14th, 2012
Agency: ‘Vermont is experiencing more extreme rain events’
Posted by Burlington Free Press: None Given on February 14th, 2012
Burlington Free Press: Vermont needs to pay more attention to its rivers and may need to rethink development along their banks, the state’s environmental agency said Monday in a report on lessons from the widespread flooding triggered by Tropical Storm Irene.
“Climate data show that Vermont is experiencing more extreme rain events, and that trend is predicted to continue,” according to the report from the Climate Change Team at the Agency of Natural Resources. More frequent heavy rainstorms are “expected to pose a recurrent...
Posted in 
EU vote on tar sands law expected on February 23
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 14th, 2012
Reuters: European Union officials are expected to vote on February 23 on a draft law that would label fuel produced from tar sands as more polluting than that from other forms of oil, according to a draft agenda seen by Reuters.
The proposal from the EU's executive to include tar sands in a ranking designed to enable fuel suppliers to identify the most carbon-intensive options has stirred up intense lobbying by Canada.
Home to the world's third-largest oil reserves, almost all of which are in the form...
Population is ‘our biggest challenge’ says government chief scientist Sir John Beddington
Posted by Ecologist: Tom Levitt on February 14th, 2012
Ecologist: The next world population milestone of 8 billion will come sooner than we think - perhaps as early as 2025 - yet we remain reluctant to debate the issue. A forthcoming Royal Society report may force us to
While many commentators look ahead to 9 billion by 2050 there is a more immediate statistic that 'frightens' the UK government's chief scientist: 1 billion extra people in the next 13 years.
Speaking at a WWF event last week, which looked ahead to the Rio+20 conference in June, John Beddington...
Model to predict cholera outbreaks earlier, better
Posted by SciDev.Net: Syful Islam on February 14th, 2012
SciDev.Net: A newly developed cholera prediction model can help warn against possible outbreaks of the water-borne disease 11 months in advance.
The model, tested by a team of scientists from Bangladesh and the US, was reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences last month (23 January).
Scientists now have a tool that can even predict the severity of a cholera outbreak, Mohammad Yunus, senior scientist at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, and a co-author...
Soil Erosion Increasing Global Warming Threat: UNEP
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 14th, 2012
Reuters: Global warming will get worse as agricultural methods accelerate the rate of soil erosion, which depletes the amount of carbon the soil is able to store, a United Nations' Environment Programme report said on Monday.
Soil contains huge quantities of carbon in the form of organic matter. which provides nutrients for plant growth and improves soil fertility and water movement.
The top meter of soil alone stores around 2,200 billion tonnes of carbon, which is three times the level currently held...
Australia: Climate change role in floods won’t be clear for a decade, say scientists
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 14th, 2012
Sydney Morning Herald: THE floods inundating northern NSW and Queensland are likely to have been driven in part by human-induced climate change - although the precise extent of this influence won't be known for another decade.
Leading climate researchers said the frequency of El Nino and La Nina events that bring drought and flood to Australia seems to have increased in the past 30 years, even though such events have been occurring independently of human influence for far longer.
''It's completely naive to exclude...
Ecosystems Respond to Climate Change Differently as the Seasons Pass
Posted by Planetsave: Joshua S. Hill on February 14th, 2012
Planetsave: Scientists studying the effect of drought and heat waves on grass growth have found that it matters when during the year these events take place, and that each month yields a different effect.
Scientists have found that U.S. midwest drought reduced prairie grass growth most in June.
"A major challenge in studying climate change is separating the effects of long-term trends from interannual variation," says Saran Twombly, program director for the National Science Foundation`s (NSF) Konza Prairie...
Ignoring forests won’t bring Rio+20’s ‘future we want’
Posted by The Conversation: None Given on February 14th, 2012
The Conversation: In June 2012 around 40,000 participants are expected to attend one of the most important environmental gatherings in a generation – Rio+20. A draft agenda has been released, bearing the slogan “The Future We Want”. It identifies seven critical issues for new sustainable development goals that will be released in Rio: jobs, energy, cities, food, water, oceans and disasters.
But with forests only mentioned briefly in the text and in isolation to other key issues, will Rio+20 really help develop...
Fracking study sends alert about leakage of potent greenhouse gas
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 14th, 2012
Christian Science Monitor: Fracking may lead to larger releases of methane into the air than previously estimated, according to a new study.
Scientists are now trying to find out if the underestimation is unique to the gas field they examined or whether rogue emissions from such fields are also being underestimated in other areas where there is hydraulic fracturing – or "fracking" – to collect natural gas form certain rock formations.
The study, conducted by researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's...