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Archive for February, 2016
Malawi to import 50,000 tonnes of maize after drought worsens
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 29th, 2016
Reuters: Malawi will import 50,000 tonnes of the staple maize from Tanzania to avert hunger after a drought that affected 2.8 million people in the southern African nation, state officials said on Monday.
Agriculture is Malawi's mainstay, accounting for a third of the economy and providing livelihoods for 80 percent of the population of about 15 million people.
"With the 30,000 tonnes coming in from Zambia, we expect to add on another 50,000 tonnes from Tanzania that we have authorized (state-owned...
Posted in 
India: Groundwater Governance in Andhra Pradesh
Posted by Inter Press Service: Shyam Bahadur Khadka on February 29th, 2016
Inter Press Service: India is the largest user of ground water in the world. But reliance of this overexploited resource has reached its limits in many parts of the country. Nowhere is this more evident than in the drought-prone districts of Rayalseema, uplands of Prakasam, Krishna, East-West Godavari, parts of Nellore, Vizianagaram and Srikakulam in the state of Andhra Pradesh (AP). Forty per cent of the state's irrigation needs are met through groundwater. In the drought-prone Rayalseema region - which comprises Chittoor,...
Climate change ‘most existential crisis civilisation has known’, says DiCaprio
Posted by Guardian: Nigel M Smith on February 29th, 2016
Guardian: Leonardo DiCaprio won his first Oscar on Sunday, after being nominated four times previously. The actor was expected to win after dominating the best actor race all season, winning a number of precursor awards including a Bafta. Still, he said the industry-wide support he’s received over the past few months “feels incredibly surreal”.
“This year in particular I was overwhelmed by the support from fans and people in the industry,” he said backstage at the ceremony, shortly after winning his best...
On Native Ground OIL Drilling in the Arctic: Ecological Disaster Waiting to Happen
Posted by American Reporter: Randolph T. Holhut on February 29th, 2016
American Reporter: Are we so desperate for one last big fix of oil, that we're willing to destroy one of the world's last pristine and unspoiled regions?
The answer seems to be yes.
The U.S. Geological Survey released a report last week stating that the region inside the Arctic Circle contains about one-fifth of the world's undiscovered, recoverable oil.
The USGS report, the most comprehensive survey ever of energy resources in the Arctic, found that there is an estimated 90 billion barrels of oil - or about...
Climate change is wreaking havoc on our mental health, experts
Posted by Toronto Star: None Given on February 28th, 2016
Toronto Star: As a provincial coroner and past palliative care physician, Dr. David Ouchterlony has seen suffering and death up close, experiences that have occasionally led to brief moments of sadness. But Ouchterlony describes such emotions as “trivial” compared to the dread he feels when thoughts about climate change linger, as they often do. He worries almost obsessively about a future he won’t see. How will younger generations be affected? Why are we failing to act on the threat?
“I was completely blind...
For normally stoic farmers, stress of climate change can be too much to bear
Posted by Toronto Star: None Given on February 28th, 2016
Toronto Star: The wind was unusually strong, and it swept across Saskatchewan farmland without warning or mercy to canola farmers who had just cut and laid out their crops to dry. Kim Keller, 31, remembers the mid-September day clearly. It was 2012, her first year working back on the family’s 4,900-hectare grain farm in Gronlid, a hamlet about 200 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon. An auto insurance adjuster for the previous six years, Keller realized after a decade away that the farm is where she yearned to...
Emissions Could Make Earth Uninhabitable
Posted by Climate News Network: Tim Radford on February 28th, 2016
Climate News Network: Greenhouse gases could tip the Earth-or at least a planet like Earth, orbiting a star very like the Sun-into a runaway greenhouse effect, according to new research.
The new hothouse planet would become increasingly steamy, and then start to lose its oceans to interplanetary space. Over time, it would become completely dry, stay at a temperature at least 60°C hotter than it is now, and remain completely uninhabitable, even if greenhouse gas levels could be reduced.
Max Popp, postdoctoral researcher...
Climate change map shows regions to be hit hardest
Posted by Comment: Faith Castro on February 27th, 2016
Comment: By developing this method, the global team of researchers has been able to map which areas are most sensitive to climate variability across the world. In a new study, a team of scientists developed a map that reveals which regions on Earth are more sensitive to climate variability.
He further mentions that over the last 14 years these areas have shown great sensitivity to climate variability, with amplified responses over time. Called the Vegetation Sensitivity Index (SV), the metric allows a...
The many signs of climate change in the far north
Posted by News-Miner: Ned Rozell on February 27th, 2016
News-Miner: In anticipation of an arctic science conference happening next month in Fairbanks, an editor asked me to write a column on climate change in the North.
I told her climate stability would be the bigger story, since basswood trees used to grow in Fairbanks and redwoods once dropped their cones into the Porcupine River. Climate is always changing.
But we have gotten much better at measuring those changes. We people and our scientific instruments have now occupied the top of the globe for long...
Scientists warn of the dangers of salt pollution of freshwaters if preventive measures are not taken
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 27th, 2016
ScienceDaily: An article published today in the journal Science warns of the dangers of increasing water salinity for human health and freshwater ecosystems (rivers, lakes, etc.) and the economic cost arising from a lack of public policies to tackle this problem. The study, prepared by an international team of scientists coordinated by the researcher Miguel Cañedo-Argüelles, of the BETA research group of the University of Vic -- Central University of Catalonia (UVic-UCC) and the FEM research group of the University...