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Archive for December, 2012
Climate Change Real & Gorgeous
Posted by Wired: None Given on December 29th, 2012
Wired: When "Chasing Ice" finished, my 10-year-old son, sitting next to me in the almost empty theater, said, "That was sobering." He was right: Sobering, but also beautiful and inspiring.
"Chasing Ice" documents both the earth`s current warming and one man`s obsessive efforts to show that warming in terms everyone can understand: visual, immediate, dramatic. National Geographic photographer James Balog says he was a bit of a climate skeptic himself until he took an assignment in 2005 and 2006 photographing...
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As Biodiversity Declines, Tropical Diseases Thrive
Posted by National Public Radio: Eliza Barclay on December 29th, 2012
National Public Radio: Global health advocates often argue that the tropical diseases that plague many countries, such as malaria and dengue, can be conquered simply with more money for health care - namely medicines and vaccines.
But a new paper is a reminder that ecology also has a pretty big say in whether pathogens thrive or die off. Using a statistical model, researchers predicted that countries that lose biodiversity will have a heavier burden of vector-borne and parasitic diseases. Their results appear this week...
Previous climate change drove Mesa people off Alaska’s North Slope
Posted by Alaska Dispatch: Ned Rozell on December 29th, 2012
Alaska Dispatch: Alaska was once the setting for an environmental shift so dramatic it forced people to evacuate the entire North Slope, according to Michael Kunz, an archaeologist with the Bureau of Land Management.
About 10,000 years ago, a group of hunting people lived on the North Slope, the swath of mostly treeless tundra extending north from the Brooks Range to the sea. These people, known as Paleoindians, used a chunky ridge of rock west of the Colville River as a hunting lookout. Michael Kunz first discovered...
United Kingdom: The rain falls – while the government pulls the plug on flood defences
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 28th, 2012
Guardian: Should the weather over the next three months be anything like normal, we are on course for Britain's soggiest winter since records began. In England, it is already the wettest year. Even people who like to deny climate change and wish to sweep away planning rules now understand that floods can strike almost anywhere at any time. Waterlogged homes are a regular feature of British life.
This year caps more than a decade of inundation. In 2012, 7,500 homes have been ruined, with one in six properties...
Fifty years after Silent Spring, are we any closer to saving the world?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 28th, 2012
Telegraph: It's the end of an important anniversary year. You already knew that? Sure, but I'm not thinking of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. For 2012, far less happily, also marks the 50th anniversary of the start of the great and growing environmental slanging match.
On June 16, 1962 -- half a century before this summer's vapid Rio Earth Summit -- the New Yorker started serialising one of those rare books that make history. Published three months later, Silent Spring -- by a shy, studious scientist, Rachel...
United Kingdom: Forest Canopy Color Reveals CO2 Uptake
Posted by Scientific American: Karen Hopkin on December 28th, 2012
Scientific American: When autumn rolls around, the leaf peepers come out in force. Armed with digital cameras, they record the most spectacular displays of fall foliage. Well according to a study in the journal Functional Ecology [Toshie Mizunuma et al, The relationship between carbon dioxide uptake and canopy colour from two camera systems in a deciduous forest in southern England], those images may be more than just pretty pictures. They may represent a new way to monitor climate change. Trees take carbon dioxide,...
African scientists call for climate change evidence
Posted by SciDevNet: Emeka Johnkingsley on December 28th, 2012
SciDevNet: African scientists urgently need to build more evidence on the impact of climate change on the continent, a conference has heard.
A joint statement issued at the eighth Annual Meeting of African Science Academies last month (12--14November) in Nigeria, notes that Africa lacks much home-grown data about the impacts of extreme weather events and sea level rise.
It says: "Actions required of science include contributions to the development of risk assessments and mapping for various anticipated...
Scientist at Work Blog: A Fish With Nowhere to Hide
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 28th, 2012
New York Times: The weather is much better, and we were able to do several dives and get a good grasp on just how bad the lionfish invasion in Belize really is. They are everywhere. We saw and collected them in all habitats we visited, including coral reef, sea grass and mangrove. Finding them in the last two is especially disheartening, as they are nursery habitats for many coral reef species. Lionfish are eating young reef fish before they can even get there.
In the morning we dove along the barrier reef to...
UK flooding: ‘It felt as if my house had died’
Posted by Guardian: Steven Morris on December 28th, 2012
Guardian: The days blur into one for pensioners Les and Sheila Seaton. They get up early, spend the day cleaning, scrubbing, organising and then collapse in front of the television on their borrowed armchairs.
"We get to see the first few seconds of the programme, then we fall fast asleep," said Les, a sprightly 79-year-old. "We wake up an hour or two later and go to bed, then it starts over again next morning. It's been hard work but we'll get there in the end."
The Seatons are just one of the tens...
Superstorm lessons for adapting to climate change
Posted by New Scientist: Hal Hodson on December 28th, 2012
New Scientist: PYRAMIDS of rubble still dominate the streets of Union Beach, New Jersey. Boats are parked in odd places, while a layer of glass and grit makes the sidewalks crunch. Down by the water everything is quiet. You can see Manhattan across the bay, framed by the skeletons of dwellings devoured by one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the US east coast. Superstorm Sandy killed more than 100 people last October, destroyed tens of thousands of homes and stranded millions without power or heat. The...