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Archive for March 13th, 2013
Preparing for drought cheaper than waiting for it – UN agencies
Posted by AlertNet: Megan Rowling on March 13th, 2013
AlertNet: U.N. agencies are calling on governments at a high-level meeting this week to start reacting more quickly to warnings of drought and put in place national policies to prepare for longer and worse droughts.
"In the next decade to come, drought will continue escalating in severity, in occurrence and in duration," Luc Gnacadja, executive secretary of the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), told AlertNet from the conference in Geneva. "Preparedness and risk management cost-wise are...
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Canada playing US for fools on Keystone, opposition leader says
Posted by The Hill: Zack Colman on March 13th, 2013
The Hill: Canada’s opposition leader will visit Washington, D.C., this week to counter statements by Canadian officials in a recent lobbying blitz supporting the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline.
The trip by Tom Mulcair, of Canada’s New Democratic Party, comes amidst a series of United States trips by Canadian officials to meet with Obama administration personnel and lawmakers about the pipeline.
According to Canada’s National Post, Mulcair’s message to the lawmakers and business executives with whom he...
Senate bill would boost funding for weather satellites
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 13th, 2013
Climate Central: Key weather and climate satellites would get a boost under a new Senate spending proposal.
The $984 billion measure, which Senate Appropriations Committee leaders introduced late Monday, would fund the federal government from March 27 until Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year.
The bill would increase the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) budget for satellite procurement to $1.814 billion, $117 million more than the agency received last year. NOAA's overall budget...
Antibiotics; If we don’t stop handing out antibiotics like sweets, even a cut finger could soon be fatal
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 13th, 2013
Daily Mail: They are turning up in our water, on our skin, in our public loos and in the food we eat. They are potentially lethal bacteria that resist our best antibiotic drugs, and these new super-infections are emerging because we have created them - through our own hypochondria and ignorance. Yesterday, the chief medical officer for England, Professor Dame Sally Davies, warned that the growing scourge of antibiotic-resistant infections is set to cause a human catastrophe on the same scale as international...
American Pipeline Will Diminish Energy Security, Prominent Canadian Says
Posted by InsideClimate: None Given on March 13th, 2013
InsideClimate: Prominent Canadian economist Robyn Allan [3] made waves in Canada last year with papers claiming that rapid oil sands growth would do more economic harm than good for her country. Allan's controversial analyses [4] focused on the Northern Gateway pipeline, a proposal to carry raw tar sands bitumen through British Columbia for shipment to Asia. One of her main points was that shipping raw crude for upgrading and refining in other countries also means exporting those industries—and jobs—abroad. ...
China river pig toll nears 6,000
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 13th, 2013
BBC: The number of dead pigs found floating in Shanghai's main river has risen to almost 6,000. The city authorities, still investigating where they have come from, say a number of the carcasses have tested positive for a common pig virus. John Sudworth reports from Shanghai.
Did Climate Change Spark the War in Syria?
Posted by Care2: Kristina Chew on March 13th, 2013
Care2: Could global warming have played a role in instigating the ongoing, and bloody, war that has been going on in Syria for nearly two years, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 70,000 and a million Syrians forced to flee from their homes, thousands to other countries?
“Unprecedented food price rises” were “fundamental triggers” for the Arab Spring, writes Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed in the Guardian. A 2008 global rice shortage led to a steep rise in prices, setting off food riots in the Middle East,...
Thieves blight Nigeria’s swamps with spilt oil
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 13th, 2013
Reuters: In a mangrove forest at the edge of a Nigerian swamp, a film of oil shimmers in rainbow colors for hundreds of meters around Royal Dutch Shell's Nembe creek pipeline.
The cause of this latest environmental catastrophe, Shell says, was an unprecedented level of oil theft targeting a pipeline pumping 150,000 barrels of oil a day to the Atlantic coast.
Nembe is one of the most important production routes for Africa's top energy producer, but it is also a frequent target for criminal gangs who...