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Archive for August 6th, 2012
Hansen Study: Extreme Weather Tied to Climate Change
Posted by Climate Central: Andrew Freedman on August 6th, 2012
Climate Central: Extreme weather events, such as the heat waves that have broiled the High Plains and Midwest this summer, smashing thousands of temperature records, are a direct consequence of global warming, according to a new study led by prominent climate scientist, James Hansen of NASA. The study seeks to reframe how people view the links between manmade global warming and extreme weather events, going farther than ever before in making direct ties between the two.
The study by Hansen, who first warned of...
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U.S. to allow restart of Enbridge’s Line 14
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 6th, 2012
Reuters: Enbridge Inc plans to restart on Tuesday a pipeline that leaked more than 1,000 barrels of crude onto a Wisconsin field after receiving the greenlight from U.S. regulators.
U.S. pipeline regulators last week issued Enbridge a corrective action order, calling for measures to be taken before it would allow the resumption of flows along Line 14, which was halted after a leak was discovered on July 27.
The Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said...
Climate change blamed for heatwaves
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 6th, 2012
New Scientist: Another week, another row about blaming climate change for extreme weather events. A top climate scientist now says that the 2010 Russian heatwave, and last year's Texas drought, were both the result of global warming - and the current US drought probably is too.
James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and colleagues compared global temperatures between 1981 and 2010 to the cooler climes of 1950 to 1980. Extreme warming events, when temperatures were more than...
Rise in Extreme Heat Events Linked to Climate Change, Study Says
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 6th, 2012
Yale Environment 360: A new NASA study has found that extreme heat events are far more likely to occur than five decades ago, a phenomenon that researchers link to climate change. In an analysis of long-term statistical trends, a team of researchers led by James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies describes how “extremely hot” summers -- defined as abnormally high mean summer temperatures that affected less than 1 percent of the planet’s land area between 1951 and 1980 -- have become far more routine...
United Kingdom: Cuts to Scotland eco-farming schemes could mean species loss, RSPB warns
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 6th, 2012
Guardian: Scotland faces the loss of some of its most vulnerable bird species and habitats after ministers cut environment spending on farmland by £25m, a senior conservationist has warned.
Stuart Housden, the Scottish director of the RSPB, said ministers in Edinburgh were risking legal action by the EU after "raiding" the budget which was intended to conserve corncrakes, rare orchids, peatbogs and flower meadows in the face of modern farming techniques, climate change and habitat loss.
Despite the heavy...
Crop data gives drought-stricken farmers a leg up on getting by with less
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 6th, 2012
Guardian: The device keeping disaster away from Glenn Cox's farm in this summer's devastating drought could well be the laptop on his kitchen counter.
A few keystrokes and eventually his painfully slow dial-up connection pulls up graphs tracking temperature and moisture levels from his corn and peanut fields.
The real-time feed gives Cox an advantage over farmers across a vast swathe of the mid-west who are preparing to give up on their crops.
It's taken away the guess work. He knows where to water,...
Maya Lin’s ‘Last Memorial’ Honors ‘What is Missing’
Posted by Climate Central: Alex Kasdin on August 6th, 2012
Climate Central: Maya Lin is best known for the stunningly moving, but astoundingly simple Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., that she designed while she was still in college in 1981. Now she has created another poignant memorial, albeit this time it is not honoring lives lost in wartime, but rather it's attempting to honor the natural world, which is disappearing before our eyes. Lin's web-based multimedia memorial is called "What is Missing?' She has said the tribute to decreasing biodiversity is her "last...
Water shortages driving growing thefts, conflicts in Kenya
Posted by AlertNet: Gitonga Njeru on August 6th, 2012
AlertNet: As droughts become more frequent and water shortages worsen, Kenya is seeing an increase in water thefts and other water-related crime, police records show.
The most common crimes are theft, muggings and illegal disconnections of water pipes by thieves who collect and sell the water. Many of the crimes occur in urban slums, which lack sufficient piped water.
"Since 2003, we have made piped water available to at least half of the slum residents in the entire country, but we are faced with severe...
Mangrove conservation is ‘economic’ CO2 fix
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 6th, 2012
BBC: Protecting mangroves to lock carbon away in trees may be an economic way to curb climate change, research suggests.
Carbon credit schemes already exist for rainforests; the new work suggests mangroves could be included too.
But other researchers say the economics depend on the global carbon price.
Presenting their results in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the US-based team emphasises that protecting mangroves has important benefits for wildlife as well.
Mangrove...
Shrimp Farms’ Tainted Legacy Is Target of Certification Drive
Posted by Yale Environment 360: Marc Gunther on August 6th, 2012
Yale Environment 360: Carlos Perez, a well-to-do businessman, has been farming shrimp in Ecuador since 1979. He has seen the industry boom: Ecuador exported about $1.2 billion worth of shrimp last year, and its shrimp farmers employ about 102,000 people. He has also watched as shrimp farms have played a major role in the destruction of two-thirds of the country’s mangrove swamps -- rich ecosystems that serve as buffers against storms, store carbon, and support fish, birds, and small mammals.
There’s got to be a better...