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Archive for November 1st, 2013
Obama Creates Interagency Council and Task Force on Climate
Posted by Environment News Service: None Given on November 1st, 2013
Environment News Service: To prepare the United States for the impacts of climate change already being felt across the country, President Barack Obama today established an interagency Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience, chaired by the White House and composed of more than 25 federal agencies.
In his Executive Order establishing the council, the President also created the State, Local, and Tribal Leaders Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience to advise the administration and the new interagency council...
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Panel Warns of Risks to Food Supply From Climate Change
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 1st, 2013
New York Times: An international scientific panel has found that climate change will pose sharp risks to the world's food supply in coming decades, potentially reducing output and sending prices higher in a period when global food demand is expected to soar.
That finding is by far the starkest warning that the United Nations-appointed group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has ever issued regarding the food supply. Its last report, in 2007, was more sanguine, essentially finding that climatic warming...
United Kingdom: Brent council seeks to ban fracking
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 1st, 2013
Independent: A local council is seeking to ban fracking in its area in what it claims is the first such move by a local authority in the UK against the controversial gas extraction procedure. Brent, in north London, said it was seeking to use “any legal avenues” available to prevent energy firms from being able to drill within its boundaries. The Government firmly backs action to exploit what are believed to be large reserves of shale gas in rocks beneath the UK, which it claims could help bring down energy...
Western Creeks & Streams Will Continue to Dry Up, Study Says
Posted by Nature World News: None Given on November 1st, 2013
Nature World News: A new study reports that drying climates in the American West will lead to a decrease in annual stream flow. In the Salt Lake City region, for example, researchers report the region could see as much as a 6.5 percent drop in the annual flow of streams that provide water to the city.
Writing in the journal Earth Interactions, a research team reports that by the middle of the century some of the streams that provide water to Salt Lake City will dry up several weeks earlier in the summer and fall....
Obama Administration Takes Action on Climate ‘Resilience’
Posted by Climate Central: Andrew Freedman on November 1st, 2013
Climate Central: President Obama issued an Executive Order on Friday establishing a new task force that will work to make U.S. communities more resilient to change-related impacts, such as heavy precipitation events, more frequent coastal flooding, and more severe and longer lasting heat waves.
The Executive Order enshrines the climate change buzzword of the post-Hurricane Sandy era -- "resilience' -- into the language of the federal bureaucracy by directing agencies to work with state, local, and tribal leaders...
Groups Combat Misleading Fracking Ads on NPR
Posted by EcoWatch: None Given on November 1st, 2013
EcoWatch: When members of Environmental Action became fed up with pro-fracking spots aired by the America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA) on National Public Radio (NPR), they set up a mock website NPR-Dont-Even-Thinkaboutit.org to collect their own messages highlighting the dangers of fracking. Dozens of comments and voices were then edited into a segment intended to serve as a counterweight to the pro-fracking messages on NPR. “Since the beginning, companies like Halliburton have been covering up the real...
Obama orders government to prepare for climate change
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 1st, 2013
Agence France-Presse: US President Barack Obama on Friday signed an executive order requiring government departments to take steps to prepare for "extreme weather" and other impacts of climate change.
The order set up a task force for recommendations on how American states and cities can best prepare for the environmental impacts of global warming.
"The impacts of climate change .... are already affecting communities, natural resources, ecosystems, economies and public health across the nation," Obama said in the...
Bangladesh biggest power plant will harm world’s biggest mangrove forest
Posted by Grist: None Given on November 1st, 2013
Grist: Burning coal is a surefire way of damaging the climate, and harming mangroves is a surefire way of worsening climate impacts. Which makes the planned construction of Bangladesh’s largest coal-fired power plant at the edge of the world’s biggest mangrove forest doubly troubling.
Construction is beginning on the 1,320-megawatt Rampal power plant less than 10 miles from the Sundarbans, the sweeping mangrove system that straddles Bangladesh and India, helping to protect an eastern chunk of the Subcontinent...
How Science Is Telling Us All To Revolt
Posted by Common Dreams: Naomi Klein on November 1st, 2013
Common Dreams: In December 2012, a pink-haired complex systems researcher named Brad Werner made his way through the throng of 24,000 earth and space scientists at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union, held annually in San Francisco. This year's conference had some big-name participants, from Ed Stone of Nasa's Voyager project, explaining a new milestone on the path to interstellar space, to the film-maker James Cameron, discussing his adventures in deep-sea submersibles.
But it was Werner's own...
Obama orders new plans to combat climate change
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 1st, 2013
CNN: President Barack Obama required federal agencies on Friday to present plans to combat climate change.
An executive order mandated steps to make it easier for communities "to strengthen their resilience to extreme weather and prepare for other impacts of climate change," according to a White House statement.
It also creates an interagency Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience, charged with overseeing federal efforts at fighting climate change.
Made up of representatives from across...