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Archive for December 14th, 2013
‘This is not a good place to live’: inside Ghana’s dump for electronic waste
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 14th, 2013
Guardian: The orange flesh of a papaya is like an oval gash in the landscape at Agbogbloshie, Ghana's vast dumping site for electronic waste, where everything is smeared and stained with mucky hues of brown and sooty black. A woman kneels among the carcasses of discarded computer monitors, scooping the fruit's flesh for workers hungry from a morning's work scavenging to eat.
If the appliances at Agbogbloshie were not being dismantled – plucked of their tiny nuggets of copper and aluminium – some of them...
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Storm packing heavy snow bears down on Midwest, Northeast
Posted by Reuters: Victoria Cavaliere on December 14th, 2013
Reuters: The Midwest and East Coast braced for another round of wintry weather on Saturday as a massive storm spanning more than 1,000 miles promised heavy snow, slick roads and travel delays.
Even before snow began piling up, airlines reported weather-related delays and cancellations, with major airports in Chicago, Cleveland, Washington, D.C., and Newark, New Jersey scrubbing dozens of flights, according to the Federal Aviation Administration and FlightStats.com.
The fast-moving snow storm will hit...
Why climate change threatens Peru’s poverty reduction mission
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 14th, 2013
Guardian: The Peruvian Amazon became a net emitter of carbon dioxide rather than oxygen for the first time in 2012, according to the UN Development Programme's (UNDP) latest human development country report.
The reversal of the rainforest's usual role as a carbon sink is a direct result of the droughts in the western Amazon in 2005 and 2010 – and a stark reminder, say scientists, that this mega-biodiverse country is highly vulnerable to climate change.
Peru, which has four of the five geographical areas...
India: Brahmaputra, Teesta count the cost of climate change
Posted by Dhaka Tribune: None Given on December 14th, 2013
Dhaka Tribune: The mighty rivers of Brahmaputra and Teesta have dried up at an alarming rate and almost turned into crop fields because of the adverse impacts of climate change.
The Brahmaputra has now the lowest water flow in some narrower channels that caused emergence of hundreds of shoals, hampering navigability throughout its courses both in the up and down stream.
At the same time, the Teesta has mostly dried up allowing its vast bed to wear a deserted look with only sand.
Hundreds of landless riverside...
Big insurers are brought into discussions on how to protect NYC against future storms
Posted by ClimateWire: Evan Lehmann on December 14th, 2013
ClimateWire: Some of the world's leading insurance companies assembled in a room on Wall Street this fall to hear the opening pitch for a massive undertaking, constructing a chain of coastal barriers to defend the New York City region from future flooding.
The ambitious vision differs from the $14 billion system completed recently by the federal government to protect New Orleans from hurricanes that might mimic Katrina. The East Coast project, a potential network of walls, gates and dunes, would be financed...
The tortoise and the drought
Posted by LA Times: Louis Sahagun on December 14th, 2013
LA Times: In recent years, California's Agassiz's desert tortoise population has been decimated by shootings, residential and commercial development, vehicle traffic, respiratory disease and predation by ravens, dogs and coyotes.
Now, dwindling populations of the reptiles with scruffy carapaces and skin as tough as rhino hide are facing an even greater threat: longer droughts spurred by climate change in their Sonoran Desert kingdom of arroyos and burrows, according to a new U.S. Geological Survey study....
Keystone XL’s true effect on emissions is Obama’s main issue
Posted by LA Times: Neela Banerjee on December 14th, 2013
LA Times: Can the Keystone XL pipeline be built without significantly worsening greenhouse gas emissions and climate change? For President Obama, that is the main criterion for granting a federal permit to allow the pipeline to cross from southern Alberta into the United States.
Canadian authorities and the oil industry say measures already in place or under consideration to cut greenhouse gases ensure that Keystone XL can pass that test.
"We absolutely think we can maintain growth in oil and gas, and...
Canada: Bitumen negates climate change efforts
Posted by Leader Post: Sheila Pratt on December 14th, 2013
Leader Post: It's Alberta's biggest environmental battle - to reduce rising greenhouse gases from the oilsands - and former oil executive Eric Newell is running a global search for some silver bullets.
Newell knows it's a race against time.
As the U.S. and other industrialized countries are reducing carbon emissions to combat global warming, Alberta's greenhouse gas emissions just keep rising.
Those emissions are a major reason why Canada won't meet its international target for 2020, a 17 per cent reduction...
Australian greenhouse gases barely hit by carbon price
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 14th, 2013
Sydney Morning Herald: Australia's greenhouse gas emissions were little changed in the first year of the carbon price, as emissions from sectors only partly covered by the tax nullified most of the cuts.
Emissions for the 12 months to June totalled 545.9 million tonnes, 300,000 tonnes lower than a year earlier, the government's National Greenhouse Gas Inventory figures say.
Emissions reductions from power plants fell, accelerating to an annual drop of 6.3 per cent - or cutting 12.2 million tonnes - from a 6.1 per...
Weather info project aims to help African farmers adapt
Posted by Reuters: Kizito Makoye on December 14th, 2013
Reuters: Farmers facing long periods of dry weather and floods have expressed hope that a new climate change adaptation initiative being rolled out in Tanzania and Malawi will spell an end to dismal crop yields.
The Climate Services Adaptation Programme launched in November 2013 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) presents a window of opportunity for African farmers to use scientific knowledge to battle weather challenges.
With $10 million in funding pledged by Norway, the pilot project is...