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Archive for February 25th, 2015
UN: world must address water challenge or risk conflict
Posted by Blue and Green: Charlotte Malone on February 25th, 2015
Blue and Green: Without large new water-related investments many societies will soon confront “rising desperation and conflicts over life’s most essential resource”, according to a new report published by the UN. Population increases and climate change are expected to put more people at risk of extreme water scarcity in the coming decades. One study suggested that without climate change mitigation policies, half of the world could be faced with extreme water scarcity by the end of the century. The latest UN report...
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US tells Canada its climate goal may play Keystone role
Posted by Bloomberg: Jim Snyder and Jonathan Allen on February 25th, 2015
Bloomberg: U.S. climate negotiators have told their Canadian counterparts that Canada’s plan to cut carbon emissions could be one of the factors that President Barack Obama weighs as he considers whether to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, a U.S. official said.
The U.S. hasn’t suggested it might approve the $8 billion proposed project in exchange for climate commitments, the official said. Canada is developing a proposal as part of United Nations-sponsored talks aimed at cutting carbon emissions that governments...
Leak Is Disclosed at Nuclear Plant
Posted by New York Times: Martin Fackler on February 25th, 2015
New York Times: The operator of the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant said Tuesday that it had neglected to stop a leak of radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean since last May. The operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., said it had first detected the flow of contaminated rainwater nine months ago, but did not explain why it had been so slow in responding. The company, known as Tepco, said it would place sandbags to block the leak of water, which it said was too small to change radiation levels in the...
Lester Brown: ‘World is overusing resources on a scale that’s dangerous’
Posted by Guardian: Laurence Mathieu-Léger on February 25th, 2015
Guardian: Laurence Mathieu-Léger
The remote Alaskan village that needs to be relocated due to climate change
Posted by Washington Post: Chris Mooney on February 25th, 2015
Washington Post: This tiny and isolated town of 400 cannot be reached by road. It lies on a fragile barrier island along the Chukchi Sea, 83 miles above the Arctic circle. And for generations, the Iñupiat people of the region have hunted gigantic bowhead whales from camps atop the sea ice that stretches out from the town’s icy shores.
But in recent years, climate change has thinned the ice so much that it has become too dangerous to hunt the whales. Soon, the U.S. government says, it may be too dangerous to live...
Climate Change Will Hit America in Breadbasket, Scientists Say
Posted by NBC: None Given on February 25th, 2015
NBC: Climate experts have seen the future of America's breadbasket — and from their perspective, it doesn't look pretty.
"I don't want to be a wheat farmer in Kansas in the future," said Harold Brooks, a senior scientist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma.
Brooks isn't a wheat farmer. He's a researcher who has analyzed how climate change could affect the weather in America's midsection, based on historical data and computer modeling. Last year, he and his colleagues found...