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Archive for September, 2012
Did climate change ‘ruin’ summer? Report links Michigan cherry loss to rise in extreme weather
Posted by Michigan Live: Jonathan Oosting on September 5th, 2012
Michigan Live: Has climate change ruined summer?
"It's certainly altering them in dramatic ways, and rarely for the better," according to a new report from the National Wildlife Federation.
The findings are based, in part, on research by James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who has earned praise for his climate change work even as some have criticized his political advocacy.
In a journal article published last month, Hansen and a colleague asserted that increasingly-warm summers,...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Did climate change ‘ruin’ summer? Report links Michigan cherry loss to rise in extreme weatherConservation Group Sounds Alarm for Asian Species
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 5th, 2012
LiveScience: Some of Asia's most magnificent animals are at a crossroads and may not survive if steps aren't taken to save them, an environmental group announced today (Sept. 5) at the World Conservation Congress in Jeju, Korea.
The Wildlife Conservation Society released a list of animals in danger of extinction, including tigers, orangutans, Mekong giant catfish, Asian rhinos, Asian giant river turtles and Asian vultures.
The group said the problem could be solved by following the "Three R's Approach":...
U.S. Points to ‘Gross Negligence’ by BP
Posted by Al Jazeera: None Given on September 5th, 2012
Al Jazeera: The U.S. justice department is blaming BP PLC for the massive 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, describing in new court papers examples of what it calls "gross negligence and willful misconduct". The court filing is the sharpest position yet taken by the U.S. government as it seeks to hold the British oil giant largely responsible for the largest oil spill, as well as the largest environmental disaster, in U.S. history. Gross negligence Gross negligence is a central issue to the case, scheduled...
Asia ‘will be hit hard by drought in 2020s’
Posted by SciDev.Net: T. V. Padma and Li Jiao on September 5th, 2012
SciDev.Net: Asia's wheat and maize production will be severely affected by climate change as early as the 2020s -- with potentially devastating impacts on food security, a report warns.
Previous climate change projections have covered long periods: for example, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change focuses on predicting changes for the period 2050--2100. The new report -- 'Food Security: Near future projections of the impact of drought in Asia' -- focuses on the 2020s, and highlights the areas...
Water in DRC More Often Cause of Death than Source of Life
Posted by Inter Press Service: Donat Muamba on September 5th, 2012
Inter Press Service: Despite the desperate lack of access to water for domestic use in Mwene Ditu, in the central Democratic Republic of Congo, Dieudonné Ilunga spent a good part of July blocking up residents` wells.
"They`ve dug them in old cemeteries, in newly-demarcated lots, next to toilets," said Ilunga, head of the Water Resources Research Department in the city, the second largest in DRC`s Kasaï-Orientale province.
Just ten percent of Mwene Ditu`s 600,000 residents are connected to the water supply network...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Water in DRC More Often Cause of Death than Source of LifeConcern 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...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Concern about plans to close unique Canadian environmental project500 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...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Rising chemicals output a hazard, clean-up needed by 2020: U.NThe 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...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Climate change to hit poor through food price hikes: Oxfam