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Archive for September 5th, 2012
Concern about plans to close unique Canadian environmental project
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 5th, 2012
ScienceDaily: The Canadian government's plans to discontinue in 2013 a unique environmental research project that has yielded insights into water pollution, climate change and other topics for almost 40 years would be a "huge loss not only to science but to the scientific heritage of humanity."
That's the focus of a viewpoint article in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology.
J. G. Hering, D. L. Swackhamer and W. H. Schlesinger explain that the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) comprises 58 freshwater...
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500 firefighters battle blaze in California wilderness
Posted by MSNBC: None Given on September 5th, 2012
MSNBC: A 3,600-acre fire in the San Gabriel Mountains near Los Angeles chewed through thick brush in steep terrain that hadn't burned in two decades.
The weather was hot and dry but there were no significant winds to whip or push the fire toward Los Angeles suburbs to the south.
Because of the terrain and warm temperatures, it could take a week to contain the blaze, Incident Commander James Smith of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection told the Associated Press. It had burned...
Rising chemicals output a hazard, clean-up needed by 2020: U.N
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 5th, 2012
Reuters: Increasing misuse of chemicals is causing health and environmental damage especially in emerging economies and governments must do more to carry out a promised clean-up by 2020, a United Nations report said on Wednesday.
Production and use of chemicals - from plastics to pesticides - is shifting to developing nations where safeguards are often weaker, the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) said. Unsafe disposal and recycling adds to risks, it said.
Poisonings from industrial and agricultural...
The sixth extinction and cultural loss
Posted by Guardian: Jonathan Jones on September 5th, 2012
Guardian: In a cave in south-west France an extinct animal materialises out of the dark. Drawn in vigorous black lines by an artist in the ice age, a woolly mammoth shakes hairs that hide its face and vaunts slender tusks that reach almost to the ground.
Those tusks were not dangerous enough to save it. As human hunters advanced on its icy haunts, mammoths faced extinction between 4,000 and 10,000 years ago. The end of the ice age did for these shaggy cold-lovers, but humans helped: entire huts built from...
Climate change to hit poor through food price hikes: Oxfam
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 5th, 2012
Reuters: Climate change may pose a much more serious threat to the world's poor than existing research has suggested because of spikes in food prices as extreme weather becomes more common, Oxfam said on Wednesday.
More frequent extreme weather events will create shortages, destabilise markets and precipitate price spikes on top of projected structural price rises of about 100 percent for staples such as maize over the next 20 years, the charity said in a report.
Droughts in the US Midwest and Russia...
Tanzania: Food security concerns as climate change effects bite
Posted by IPP Media: None Given on September 5th, 2012
IPP Media: Tanzania has emphasised the need for Africa to identify initiatives that will improve food security in the continent.
The call was made on Monday by the chairman of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) Richard Muyungi who is also the assistant director for environment in the vice president office.
Speaking in Bangkok, the capital of Thailand, he said Africa needs also to needs support to organise itself in capacity building and adaptation of new technology without...