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Archive for March 23rd, 2014
Australia: Great Barrier Reef: govt faces second legal challenge on dumping
Posted by Guardian: Oliver Milman on March 23rd, 2014
Guardian: The federal government is facing a second legal challenge over its decision to allow excavated seabed to be dumped in the Great Barrier Reef marine park.
Documents will be lodged with Brisbane’s federal court on Monday to challenge the dredging and dumping project that will expand the Abbot Point port near the Queensland town of Bowen.
The Mackay Conservation Group, which is bringing the legal action, claims environment minister Greg Hunt has contravened his international obligations by allowing...
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Yes, Manmade Global Warming Worsening California Epic Drought
Posted by Climate Progress: Joe Romm on March 23rd, 2014
Climate Progress: California`s epic drought got even worse last week. The U.S. Drought Monitor reports that the area of California under moderate drought (or worse) rose from 94.6 percent of the state to a stunning 99.8 percent. The area under extreme or exceptional drought rose from 65.9 to 71.8 percent, encompassing the entire agriculture-rich Central Valley
Back in January, we interviewed 8 of the leading climate and drought experts in the country, who explained in great detail how climate change is worsening...
Asia likely to face worst effects of global warming, warn experts
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 23rd, 2014
Asian News International: People living in coastal regions of Asia could face the worst effects of global warming. Climate experts warned that flooding, famine and rising sea levels will put hundreds of millions at risk in one of the world’s most vulnerable regions. According to the Guardian, hundreds of millions of people are likely to lose their homes as flooding, famine and rising sea levels sweep the region. The report, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, revealed that for the first half of...
World energy use threatens water
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 23rd, 2014
Reuters: Rising demand for energy, from biofuels to shale gas, is a threat to freshwater supplies, according to a United Nations report released Friday.
The report urged energy companies to do more to limit their use of water in everything from cooling coal-fired power plants to irrigation for crops grown to produce biofuels.
"Demand for energy and freshwater will increase significantly in the coming decades," U.N. agencies said in the World Water Development Report. "This increase will present big...
We need three more planets sustain human life, says NASA scientist
Posted by Blue and Green: Tom Revell on March 23rd, 2014
Blue and Green: If the human race continues expanding, fuelling climate change, and using resources at its current rate, it will eventually need to colonise three more planets to sustain itself, a NASA scientist has claimed.
“The entire ecosystem is crashing”, Dennis Bushnell, chief scientist of NASA’s Langley Research Centre, said on Thursday.
“We have freshwater problems, deforestation, pollution, fish stocks, on and on and on […] Essentially, there’s too many of us. We’ve been far too successful as the...
UN climate scientists see grim future if no action
Posted by Agence France-Presse: Richard Ingham on March 23rd, 2014
Agence France-Presse: UN scientists are set to deliver their darkest report yet on the impacts of climate change, pointing to a future stalked by floods, drought, conflict and economic damage if carbon emissions go untamed.
A draft of their report, seen by Agence France-Presse, is part of a massive overview by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), likely to shape policies and climate talks for years to come.
Scientists and government representatives will meet in Yokohama, Japan, from Tuesday, March...
U.S.-Mexico experiment aims to resurrect the Colorado River delta
Posted by LA Times: Cindy Carcamo on March 23rd, 2014
LA Times: The mighty Colorado River, which over millenniums has carved the Grand Canyon, does an unusual thing when it gets south of the Arizona-Mexico border. It dies.
The Morelos Dam -- sitting on the international boundary -- serves as its headstone, diverting nearly all of the river water into an aqueduct that serves agriculture as well as homes in Tijuana.
South of the dam, the river channel travels about 75 miles to the Gulf of California. Except when filled by rains, the channel is bone dry. But...
IPCC Reports Climate Change Significant Threat To Australia
Posted by Almagest: Cody Chan on March 23rd, 2014
Almagest: A recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts Australia will continue to get hotter.
The researchers believe that in absence of major activities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the world will become warmer by more than two degrees Celsius, which potentially means whole ecosystems will come to an end.
The report details significant risks for Australia:
Impacts on Production
Mark Howden, chief research scientist at CSIRO, said that in a severe drying...
Welcome to the dead zone: Our planet’s greatest cities are facing major pollution crisis
Posted by Salon: Henry Grabar on March 23rd, 2014
Salon: Last week, Paris and Beijing had one of those feuds that city-watchers love so much. (Such head-to-head battles, like great inter-urban sporting events, fuel the illusion that cities are singular, indivisible, cultural entities.) In this case, it was a race to the bottom: Observers noticed, during the five-day air quality crisis in Paris last week, that there was more particulate matter in the Parisian atmosphere than in Beijing.
This was true, for a moment, but the comparison soon backfired on...
Spill response ‘inadequate’ for tar sands crude on Great Lakes
Posted by Cap Times: Kate Golden on March 23rd, 2014
Cap Times: Oil that sinks is hard to clean up.
That was the big lesson after energy giant Enbridge's pipeline burst, causing oil to flow into Michigan's Kalamazoo River in 2010, some 75 miles from where it empties into Lake Michigan. After more than three years and a billion dollars, oil remains in the river.
So a refinery's proposal to ship heavy crude oil from Superior across the Great Lakes has emergency responders gearing up to bolster gaps in current oil spill response plans.
And the gaps are...