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Archive for August, 2012
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...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Water shortages driving growing thefts, conflicts in KenyaMangrove 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...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Shrimp Farms’ Tainted Legacy Is Target of Certification DriveDroughts Bring Climate Change Home to Nepali Farmers
Posted by Inter Press Service: Naresh Newar on August 6th, 2012
Inter Press Service: Farmers in this fertile central district of south Nepal are convinced that an intense drought between May and early July that destroyed their maize crops is the result of climate change.
"Last year my farms produced over 20 quintals of maize, but this time I could barely harvest one quintal," 60-year-old farmer Padmakanta Poudel told IPS in the remote Jutpani village of the district.
Poudel explained that his family had taken bank a loan of over 500 dollars to invest on his maize farm. The...
Climate change in Alaska forces break with tradition
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 6th, 2012
Washington Post: Residents of Kotzebue and Point Hope, Alaska reflect on how climate change is affecting their way of life. They are trying to keep their generation-old traditions alive in the face of beach erosion, changing migration patterns and diverging Alaskan weather.
Alaskan Arctic villages hit hard by climate change
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 5th, 2012
Washington Post: Out late on a Friday night, teenage Inupiat Eskimos go ice-hopping on the Chukchi Sea, one of the rare distractions in Shishmaref, Alaska. The choice for the federal government — and state and local officials — is whether to try to preserve, if it is even possible, the heritage of the Inuit villages, their ice cellars, sod ancestral homes and cemeteries ringed with spires of whale bones. Or spend the hundreds of millions of dollars it would cost to move even one village.
Ocean acidification could disrupt marine food chains
Posted by Reuters: Jim Drury on August 5th, 2012
Reuters: Ocean acidification caused by climate change is making it harder for creatures from clams to sea urchins to grow their shells, and the trend is likely to be felt most in polar regions, scientists said on Monday.
A thinning of the protective cases of mussels, oysters, lobsters and crabs is likely to disrupt marine food chains by making the creatures more vulnerable to predators, which could reduce human sources of seafood.
"The results suggest that increased acidity is affecting the size and...
Eastern Montana farmers’ ability to manage soil key as climate changes
Posted by Billings Gazette: Tom Lutey on August 5th, 2012
Billings Gazette: On an afternoon when the air presses against his face like a hot iron, Mitch Auer grabs a shovel from his pickup and lumbers into an old wheat stand that hasn’t seen 3 inches of moisture this year.
It’s the last day in July and the National Weather Service has just confirmed that Yellowstone County is experiencing one of its hottest summers ever. A couple of weeks earlier, the same meteorologists were declaring the first six months of the 2012 the county’s driest on record. The misery in farm...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Eastern Montana farmers’ ability to manage soil key as climate changesExtreme heatwaves 50 to 100 times more likely due to climate change
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 5th, 2012
Mongabay: A recent rise in deadly, debilitating, and expensive heatwaves was caused by climate change, argues a new statistical analysis published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Climatologists found that extreme heatwaves have increased by at least 50 times during the last 30 years. The researchers, including James Hansen of NASA, conclude that climate change is the only explanation for such a statistical jump.
"This is not a climate model or a prediction but actual observations...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Extreme heatwaves 50 to 100 times more likely due to climate change