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Archive for March 29th, 2013
Poll finds Americans favour adaptation to climate change
Posted by Nature: Lauren Morello on March 29th, 2013
Nature: A majority of people in the United States believe the planet is warming -- and they want coastal communities to start preparing for rising seas and stronger storm surges that will result, according to a new national poll.
Researchers at Stanford University in California say 82% of US adults believe climate change is already occurring. An equal percentage favor enacting policies to help coastal areas increase their resilience to rising waters and extreme weather.
Just over three-fifths of survey...
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California must put environment before fracking
Posted by Mercury: Editorial on March 29th, 2013
Mercury: Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper's new fracking regulations for the oil and gas industry have been hailed as a model for other states. The Colorado Democrat is so convinced that drilling will be safe that he actually drank fracking fluid. It wasn't "tasty," he said, "but I'm still alive."
Colorado's model may work along the geologically stable Rocky Mountains, but California's seismic issues set it apart from Midwest and East Coast states where oil companies use fracking -- shorthand for hydraulic...
Americans oppose paying for storm-ravaged beaches
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 29th, 2013
Associated Press: More than 4 out of 5 Americans want to prepare now for rising seas and stronger storms from climate change, a new national survey says. But most are unwilling to keep spending money to restore and protect stricken beaches.
The poll by Stanford University released Thursday found that only 1 in 3 people favored the government spending millions to construct big sea walls, replenish beaches or pay people to leave the coast.
This was the first time a large national poll looked at how Americans feel...
San Diego, bracing for climate change, studies its weaknesses
Posted by ClimateWire: Evan Lehmann on March 29th, 2013
ClimateWire: A collection of experts are assembling in San Diego to wrestle with the city's seesaw climate challenges that include heat-sparked wildfires on one side and increased floods from rising seas on the other.
The meeting will pull together insurers, real estate developers and officials from the area's largest infrastructure projects, like the airport and the city's sprawling seaport, to probe climate impacts on the city and identify ways to prepare for more. Climate scientists and city planners will...
Climate change threatens food security of urban poor – Report
Posted by GNA: None Given on March 29th, 2013
GNA: Policies to increase food security in developing countries focus too much on rural food production and not enough on ensuring poor people could access and afford food, especially in urban areas.
This is contained in a report published on Thursday by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and made available to the GNA. .
It warns that climate change would only make this policy gap worse because climate change impacts would affect not only harvests but also the systems...
Is global warming causing harsher winters?
Posted by Agence France-Presse: Richard Ingham, Claire Snegaroff on March 29th, 2013
Agence France-Presse: Millions of people in northern Europe are still battling snow and ice, wondering why they are being punished with bitter cold when - officially - spring has arrived and Earth is in the grip of global warming. Yet some scientists, eyeing the fourth year in a row of exceptionally harsh late-winter weather in parts of Europe and North America, suggest warming is precisely the problem. In a complex tango between ocean and atmosphere, warming is causing icy polar air to be displaced southwards, they...
Americans want sea level rise prep, not reaction
Posted by Inquirer: Sandy Bauers on March 29th, 2013
Inquirer: Sea level rise is happening. In the last century, it's gone up a foot in Delaware Bay, more along the Atlantic coast of New Jersey.
That changes everything, from the height of the twice-daily tides to what happens in storms like Sandy, which swept the coast and left more than $70 billion in property damage.
So should we prepare for more, or take our chances and simply react if it happens again?
An overwhelming majority of Americans -- 82 percent of those surveyed -- opt for preparation,...
Community thrives along a nearly forgotten slice of an urban river
Posted by Grist: None Given on March 29th, 2013
Grist: On the equinox, March 20, a mostly forgotten sliver of a city neighborhood, where Goldeneyes and Coots fly low and fast along the river, the stalks of last season’s brush still steeped in snow, hummed with the celebration of the season’s unfolding.
They gathered along the water’s banks, cutting back old growth, repairing paths and railings fashioned from tree branches. And when the day’s labor was done, the local chorus, calling themselves the Bullfrogs, sang songs bidding farewell to winter with...
Inhospitable Flows the Nile
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 29th, 2013
Inter Press Service: A 4,200-year-old relief in the Tomb of Mereruka in Sakkara depicts the staggering array of fish that once inhabited the Nile River and its wetlands. Ancient Egyptian fishermen with linen nets haul in their bounty, including the sacred Oxyrhynchus, a snub-nosed fish that was captured and nurtured but never eaten.
Anecdotes from the fishermen who inhabit the banks of the Nile today paint a different picture. Ibrahim Abdallah, a Nubian village elder, says many of the fish he remembers from his childhood...
Europe to be battered by Sandy-style superstorms
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 29th, 2013
New Scientist: BATTEN down the hatches, western Europe. Come the end of the century, superstorm Sandys could be battering your beaches. Hurricanes usually form in the western tropical Atlantic and head north-west to the US. Occasionally they make it to Europe by piggybacking on the jet stream. To simulate future hurricanes, Reindert Haarsma of the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute in De Bilt and colleagues ran a detailed climate model for 2094 to 2098, assuming modest future greenhouse gas emissions....