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Archive for December 17th, 2015
Investors put pressure on miners to respond to climate change
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 17th, 2015
Reuters: An alliance of around 100 investors is calling on mining companies Anglo American Glencore and Rio Tinto to show that they are working to lessen the impact of climate change on their businesses.
The group of European fund managers and pension funds including Aviva, Amundi and Schroders, which together manage over $4 trillion in assets, will file shareholder resolutions to the firms this month, investor coalition "Aiming for A" said on Wednesday.
Shareholders will vote on the resolutions at...
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Polled Queenslanders want to phase out coal to save Great Barrier Reef
Posted by Sydney Morning Herald: Amy Remeikis on December 17th, 2015
Sydney Morning Herald: Queenslanders believe coal mining should be phased out to save the Great Barrier Reef, with concern over the impact mining is having on one of the world's greatest natural icons. But with Indian giant Adani moving forward with plans to build Australia's biggest coal mine in Queensland's Galilee Basin with the government's support, the state's reliance on coal as a commodity does not appear to be ending any time soon. The Essential Research poll, commissioned by environmental activists 350.org,...
More child marriage in drought-hit Ethiopia with risk of “full-blown disaster”
Posted by Reuters: Katy Migiro on December 17th, 2015
Reuters: Child marriage is on the rise in Ethiopia due to the worst drought in decades, the government and agencies said on Friday, as Oxfam warned of a "full-blown disaster" unless more than $1 billion in food aid is found for 10 million people. Agencies predict the El Niño weather phenomenon will cause record levels of malnutrition in Africa's second most populous nation, famed for war- and drought-induced famine in 1984. More than one in ten of Ethiopia's 92 million people, most of whom depend on rain-fed...
Greenland has lost a staggering amount of ice — and it’s only getting worse
Posted by Washington Post: Chris Mooney on December 17th, 2015
Washington Post: A massive new study by 16 authors has calculated just how much ice the Greenland ice sheet has lost since the year 1900. And the number, says the paper just out in the journal Nature, is astounding: 9,103 gigatons (a gigaton is a billion metric tons).
That’s over 9 trillion tons in total. And moreover, the rate of loss has been increasing, the research finds, with a doubling of annual loss in the period 2003 to 2010 compared with what it was throughout the 20th century.
The study was led by...
UK government hands out new fracking licences
Posted by Guardian: David Hellier on December 17th, 2015
Guardian: The government’s controversial attempt to establish a shale gas industry in the UK took another step forward on Thursday as it handed out new licences for onshore gas and oil exploration in 159 blocks, in a move campaigners say could open up swaths of the country to the controversial practice of fracking.
Before companies can go ahead and start producing oil and gas commercially, they have to submit to a series of safety and environmental checks, though campaigners have always maintained these...
Just how fast is Greenland melting?
Posted by Christian Science Monitor: Olivia Lowenberg on December 17th, 2015
Christian Science Monitor: A new study tracks how Greenland's ice structure has changed over time, including how the melting rate has accelerated in recent years.
This latest study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, tracks how Greenland’s ice mass and structure has changed over a 110-year period. This fills in crucial gaps in knowledge about Greenland’s role in sea-level rise, for which little data has existed until now.
“We have observation-based estimates that is new and super important,” Kristian Kjellerup...
Mercury decision boosts bid to kill climate rule – EPA foes
Posted by Greenwire: Robin Bravender on December 17th, 2015
Greenwire: U.S. EPA critics were dismayed as federal judges this week kept intact a major Obama administration rule to slash mercury emissions from power plants, but others saw a silver lining.
Having the mercury rule in place, they say, bolsters their arguments against another major rule, EPA's Clean Power Plan.
In the litigation over that landmark rule to limit power plants' greenhouse gas emissions, a central argument made by EPA's critics is that the agency lacks authority to issue the climate rule...
Three miles high: Using drones to study high-altitude glaciers
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 17th, 2015
ScienceDaily: While some dream of the day that aerial drones deliver their online purchases, scientists are using the technology today to deliver data that was never available before. About 5,000 meters high in the Peruvian Andes, the scientists are mapping glaciers and wetlands in the Cordillera Blanca mountain range with 10-centimeter precision to gauge how climate change will affect the half-million local residents who rely in part on those glaciers for their water supply. Their strategy provides a template...
Greenland Ice Sheet during the 20th Century — a missing link in IPCC’s climate report
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 17th, 2015
ScienceDaily: For the first time, climate researchers from the Centre for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, together with a national and an International team of researchers, have pubished in the scientific journal Nature their direct observations of the reduction and melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet during the latest 110 years. All previous estimations have been based on computer models, which although valuable do not provide the same level of insight as direct observations. In this paper,...
Researchers discover six new African frog species, uncover far more diversity
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 17th, 2015
ScienceDaily: Researchers have discovered half a dozen new species of the African clawed frog, and added back another to the list of known species, in the process uncovering striking new characteristics of one of the most widely studied amphibians in the world. The discovery increases the number of known clawed frog species from 22 to 29 -- a 30 percent increase. Each of the new species is documented online today in the journal PLOS ONE. "Because the African clawed frog is used as a model organism for biological...