Backyard
Nature's Direct Feed from |
Last updated on November 21st, 2009
| Genetically modified food for thought: Click here |
| Independent (UK): The prospect of a hungry century looms. On our present course, we are caught in a pincer. Climate change is likely to turn much farmland around the globe into desert. And the growth of the global population will increase demand for food. Yields will fall and prices will rise. That is a recipe for starvation. Professor Robert Watson, the chief scientific adviser at the Department for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs, argues in an interview with this newspaper today that the ... |
| Australia: Bushfires rage as country swelters through heatwave: Click here |
| Herald Sun: |
| Australia: Heatwave 'connected to climate change': Click here |
| Special Broadcasting Service: There's a 'high chance' a heatwave sweeping Australia's southern and eastern states is related to climate change, a scientist at the Bureau of Meteorology says. Climate Meteorologist Harvey Stern says the scorching weather effecting parts of South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales at this time of the year is rare. "This (the heatwave) is a truly extreme event," Dr Stern says. "Many places have established all-time records for the first half of November." The ... |
| Wildfires Spreading as Temperatures Rise: Click here |
| Inter Press Service: Future firefighters have their work cut out for them. Perhaps nowhere does this hit home harder than in Australia, where in early 2009 a persistent drought, high winds, and record high temperatures set the stage for the worst wildfire in the country's history. On Feb. 9, now known as "Black Saturday", the mercury in Melbourne topped 115 degrees Fahrenheit (46.4 degrees Celsius) as fires burned over one million acres in the state of Victoria - destroying more than 2,000 homes and ... |
| Listen to the Earth, Say Indigenous Peoples: Click here |
| Inter Press Service: The idea of wilderness is "an interesting concept; it is a Western concept. Our people have always lived and interacted in the environment," said Illion Merculieff, an environmental activist from the Aleut community in the north-western U.S. state of Alaska. The Aleuts have inhabited the islands and coastal areas of the Bering Sea, in the northern Pacific, for more than 10,000 years, having adapted to the extreme climate. "Adaptation is absolutely essential," according to ... |
| New Zealand's 'Kyoto forests' sow seeds for emissions surge: Click here |
| Guardian: The government of New Zealand responded with some irritation to my column last week, which castigated a national strategy for meeting its Kyoto climate targets by allowing greenhouse gas emissions to rise by 22% from 1990 to 2007. All was well, it said. The 600,000 hectares of forests that were planted in the 1990s would soak up all the excess CO2 – around 90m tonnes of it between 2008 and 2012. In fact, the country was likely to be ahead of its Kyoto target of stabilising emissions ... |
| MT logging projects challenged over bears: Click here |
| Associated Press: An environmental group is seeking to stop three logging projects on several thousand acres in northwest Montana, arguing that the timber sales would harm the area's fledgling grizzly bear population. The Alliance for the Wild Rockies filed a federal lawsuit Monday to block the projects in the Kootenai National Forest, which are designed in part to reduce fire danger and provide commercial logging opportunities. The suit alleges that 14 miles of proposed new logging roads could ... |
| Higher Temperatures May Be Behind Pine Growth: Click here |
| National Public Radio: Ancient bristlecone pine trees found in certain parts of California and Nevada have been growing at an unprecedented rate in the last 50 years. According to a recent study, this growth has most likely been caused by warmer temperatures. Malcolm Hughes, one of the study's lead researchers and a professor of dendrochronology at the University of Arizona's Laboratory for Tree-Ring Research, offers his insight. |
| U.S. boosts coal mining oversight to fight pollution: Click here |
| Reuters: The U.S. Interior Department said on Wednesday it would immediately strengthen oversight of surface coal mining programs and draw up new regulations to protect streams polluted by mining operations. The action comes after a U.S. court in August blocked an attempt by the Obama administration to overturn a Bush administration rule that made it easier for coal mining companies to dump mountaintop debris into valley streams. The court said the department should have followed ... |
| Kenya evicts thousands of forest squatters in attempt to save Rift valley: Click here |
| Guardian: Several thousand people who had settled illegally in Kenya's most important forest have left their homes at the beginning of an eviction plan designed to end rampant environmental degradation in the Rift valley. Security officers this week entered the Mau forest, the country's largest water catchment basin, in the first stage of a government operation that will eventually see up to 30,000 families leave. More than a quarter of the 400,000-hectare forest has been lost because of human ... |
| Forest Service says trees can slow climate change: Click here |
| Associated Press: National forests can be used as a carbon "sink" with vast numbers of trees absorbing carbon dioxide to help slow global warming, the Forest Service chief said Wednesday, but that goal must be balanced. He's also concerned about the risk of catastrophic wildfires that produce massive amounts of carbon dioxide. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell said his agency is trying to manage forests to combat climate change while still easing the risk of wildfires that have increased in ... |
| Indiana Dunes threatened by climate change, report warns: Click here |
| Chicago Tribune: About a decade ago, the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore had one of the country's largest populations of the Karner blue butterfly. The nickel-size insects feasted on the national park's bountiful wild lupine and relied on northwest Indiana's heavy snowfall to protect its eggs in winter for spring hatching. But the butterfly's population has declined in recent years, and some researchers are pointing to, among other things, warmer winters, less snowfall and other weather-related ... |
| US businessman campaigns for Argentine marsh ecology: Click here |
| Telegraph: This US multi-millionaire and former businessman co-founded the North Face and Esprit clothing brands. He is taking on farmers whom he accuses of polluting the nation's vast northern sweet-water marshes in Corrientes province, which is near the Paraguayan and Brazilian borders. He bought 1,390 square kilometers (540 square miles) of land around these marshes in 1998 and is trying to persuade the authorities to turn the rich tropical ecosystem into a 13,000 square kilometer ... |
| Colo. company starts work on biofuel facility: Click here |
| Associated Press: A Colorado company that has developed a process to convert wood to fuel is starting construction of what will eventually be a commercial-scale production plant. Lakewood-based ZeaChem Inc. is working with Hazen Research of Golden to build the first units of its biofuels refinery. ZeaChem President and CEO Jim Imbler says the company will transfer the modular units to Boardman, Ore., where it will eventually run a commercial refinery. ZeaChem plans to start production at a ... |
| United States: Poet reduces cellulosic ethanol production costs: Click here |
| Associated Press: Poet LLC, the nation's top ethanol producer, says it is has reduced its cellulosic ethanol production cost during the past year from $4.13 per gallon to $2.35 per gallon. The Sioux Falls-based company plans to produce 25 million gallons of ethanol each year from plant waste typically left behind in farmers' fields at its corn ethanol plant in Emmetsburg, Iowa. A pilot-scale plant in Scotland, S.D., has produced about 20,000 gallons of cellulosic ethanol since it began ... |
| The cleaner alternatives to America's asphalt jungle: Click here |
| Guardian: In the 40 years since Joni Mitchell sang about paving paradise, putting up parking lots remains an American obsession. Scientists estimate that up to 10% of land in US cities is now devoted to car parks, causing environmental damage whether they are used by Humvees or hybrids. Stormwater run-off from roads, drains and parking dumps the equivalent of more than a dozen Exxon Valdez tankers of oil directly into US rivers each year, in addition to dangerous levels of heavy metals, ... |
| Australia: 'Code Red' as heat intensifies: Click here |
| SAPA: Australian officials issued their first ever "catastrophic" wildfire evacuation warning on Tuesday, as a parching heatwave intensified over the country's south. Created in the wake of February's devastating Black Saturday firestorm, which killed 173 people, the new warning urges residents to flee due to conditions being at their most extreme. It replaced a "stay or go" policy allowing homeowners to remain and fight extremely risky blazes, which came under heavy criticism after ... |
| Fighting climate change by turning CO2 to stone: Click here |
| Physorg: While politicians debate the best ways to cut global carbon dioxide emissions, researchers at Idaho National Laboratory's Center for Advanced Energy Studies are charging ahead on a strategy to defuse the CO2 the world already produces. They want to inject the greenhouse gas deep underground, where it would react with rocks and remain, entombed, for thousands of years. CAES scientists have been studying this novel approach -- called mineral sequestration -- for years. They have ... |
| Increase In GM Crops Leads to Jump in Herbicide Use: Click here |
| Environment 360: The widespread use of genetically modified crops engineered to tolerate herbicides has led to a sharp increase of the chemicals in the U.S. and is creating herbicide-resistant "super weeds" and an increase in chemical residues in U.S. food, according to a new report. As more farmers have adopted variations of corn, soy beans, and cotton bred to tolerate weed killer in recent years, the use of herbicides has increased steadily, with herbicide use growing by 383 million pounds from 1996 to ... |
| Climate Change Likely to Increase African Hunger Woes: Click here |
| Inter Press Service: Africa, the continent already most affected by hunger and food scarcity, is likely to see its woes increased due to climate change and the changing rain patterns it provokes, experts and scientists say. According to data gathered by the German Institute for Meteorology and Climate Research, variability in the rain patterns in Africa, especially in the Western region, has substantially increased since the early 1980s. Harald Kunstmann, director of the institute, says that while ... |
| United Kingdom: John Healey unveils proposal to do away with planning permission for wind turbines: Click here |
| Times (UK): Wind turbines standing as high as 15 metres (50ft) will be allowed on farmland and industrial estates without planning permission, under proposals to boost renewable energy. The turbines will be approved across large areas of the countryside, provided they meet noise and impact restrictions. John Healey, the housing minister, also announced plans to fast-track applications for solar panels on stadiums, schools, railway stations and offices, as part of proposals to achieve ... |
| Australia: Report details coastal climate change risks: Click here |
| Australian Broadcasting Corporation: The Federal Government has released a new report titled Climate Change Risks to Australia's coasts. It is the first risk assessment done by the Commonwealth to gauge which areas on the eastern seaboard are most at risk from a sea level rise. Professor Bruce Thom worked on the report and says parts of the New South Wales north coast face an uncertain future. "There's more and more properties that are low-lying around our estuaries and our lakes, of course we do have some ... |
| Warming brings early demise to Bolivian glacier: Click here |
| Independent (UK): Once home to the highest ski resort in the world and now reduced to a rocky mountainside, Bolivia's Chacaltaya range bears powerful witness to the precipitous melting of glaciers. The rusting remains of a ski lift now dominate what was once the highest ski-run in the world perched on the Chacaltaya glacier at some 5,300 meters (17,390 feet) high. Only a snowy ice cap of some 50 square meters (538 square feet) remains of the magnificent Chacaltaya glacier which spread over 1,600 ... |
| Zambia: Worries Ahead of Flood Season: Click here |
| Inter Press Service: The Zambezi is home to the fishing community on Mbeta Island. But after the river rose and swallowed their homes last year, they have learned to fear it as well. Mulemwa Kalaluka is a renowned fisherman on the island. He says he prefers catching fish the traditional way, using a spear and fish trap as he expertly navigates the river in his fishing boat. He is happy and says this season the fish is plentiful as he has managed to catch enough to feed his family and sell ... |
| Sea rises threaten Australian homes: govt report: Click here |
| Reuters: Nearly a quarter of a million homes along Australia's coastline could be submerged by 2100 unless action is taken to stop sea levels rising, a government report said on Saturday. Debate on climate change -- and a government proposal to introduce a carbon trading scheme -- are the very focal point of political debate, with parliament due to reopen on Monday. With Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's Labour Party far ahead in polls and the conservative opposition divided on the issue ... |
| Australia: Waters keep rising, and so does worry: Click here |
| Sydney Morning Herald: SCIENTISTS say Lake Macquarie is the area in the state most vulnerable to rising sea levels. Gordon and Marie Richardson, who have lived there for 42 years, need no convincing. In the past 20 years two storms have transformed their street into a tributary of the nearby lake, with water deep enough to float shoes off the veranda. "If we get big storms, heavy rain, big tides, we do have a problem," Mr Richardson said. "We've had [40 centimetres] of water in our backyard. ... |
| Australia: Dykes may be vital: Click here |
| Sydney Morning Herald: DYKES, seawalls and other barriers may have to be built to save thousands of coastal properties, many of them in Sydney and Melbourne, according to a landmark study. The first attempt to assess the risk that climate change poses to the nation's coastal communities estimates that between 22 and 35 per cent of 711,000 coastal properties around Australia are at risk. Sixty per cent of those vulnerable houses are in NSW and Queensland. The report, Climate Change Risks to ... |
| Global warming a growing threat to Arctic reindeer: Click here |
| Independent (UK): |
| Climate change compounds Ethiopia's food crisis: Click here |
| Agence France-Presse: Standing amidst a group of scrawny fellow Ethiopian farmers, Tuke Shika points to the scorching sun when asked why his food reserves have dwindled this year. "The weather has changed, it's not as it used to be before," he laments. "The rains are increasingly erratic, and we are getting less and less yields." In Loke, 350 kilometres (215 miles) south of Addis Ababa, massive expanses of land that were once lush with healthy maize stalks are now replaced with burnt out twigs, ... |
| Climate Rage: Click here |
| Rollingstone: Climate Rage The only way to stop global warming is for rich nations to pay for the damage they've done - or face the consequences One last chance to save the world -- for months, that's how the United Nations summit on climate change in Copenhagen, which starts in early December, was being hyped. Officials from 192 countries were finally going to make a deal to keep global temperatures below catastrophic levels. The summit called for "that old comic-book sensibility of uniting ... |
| Global Warming Hits Reindeer Of Norway Hard: Click here |
| redOrbit: The penalty of the global climate change has hit Norway's reindeer populace as warming temperatures harm food stocks and industry expansion gobbles up grazing land for the creatures. "Over the past three years, I've had to give some hay to my 800 reindeer during the coldest months. It's more expensive and it gives me more work," Jan Egil Trasti, a Norwegian reindeer herder, told AFP. This occurs because the lichen the animals feed on is becoming scarce as winter temperatures ... |
| Conservation Group Sees a Win for Obama on Climate Change: Click here |
| U.S. News and World Report: Despite pessimistic signs on Capitol Hill and internationally regarding action by the United States on climate change initiatives, the head of the World Wildlife Fund today predicted that the December climate summit in Copenhagen will draw up a framework for action that will prompt Congress to move on the critical issue. "It's time for us step up and play a leadership role," says Carter Roberts, CEO of the WWF, one of the first conservation groups in the nation to begin pushing for action to ... |
| United Kingdom: To pee or not to pee: Click here |
| Guardian: Have you heard of a "pee bale"? It's the latest measure adopted at the National Trust property Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire to both save water and ensure efficient composting. As the name suggests, a 3m-long series of straw bales has been installed alongside the compost heaps in the walled gardens so workers (well the male ones anyway) can relieve themselves. Urine has been long-established as a free compost "activator" (aka "liquid gold"), because it's full of nitrogen, but there ... |
| Global warming a growing threat to Arctic reindeer: Click here |
| Agence France-Presse: On Norway's border with Russia, the consequences of climate change are affecting the reindeer population as rising temperatures hit food stocks and industry growth eats into vital grazing land. "Over the past three years, I've had to give some hay to my 800 reindeer during the coldest months. It's more expensive and it gives me more work," said Jan Egil Trasti, a reindeer herder from the native Sami people. The reason: the lichen his animals graze on has become tougher to find ... |
| Japanese utility eyes wood waste as fuel for coal-burning power plant: Click here |
| Business Green: Japanese utility Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO) has said that it plans to use wood waste as a biomass fuel source for one of its coal-fired plants. TEPCO announced this week that starting in 2012, its power station in the Japanese village of Tokai, Ibaraki prefecture, will use wood waste alongside coal. Wood from forest thinning and waste from lumber mills will be made into pellets, which will then be crushed and mixed with coal. TEPCO said the process, which will use about ... |
| United Kingdom: Should gardeners urinate outdoors?: Click here |
| Telegraph: Comments 40 | Comment on this article The National Trust is actively encouraging male members of staff to urinate on a "pee bale" at Wimpole Estate in Cambridgeshire. The straw bale will eventually be spread on fields and flower beds around the stately home. Although it might be a surprise to see such a pillar of the establishment urging people to urinate outdoors, the idea is not new. Environmentalists have long encouraged men and even women to nip out into the garden ... |
| Cow dung to power more Dutch homes: Click here |
| Reuters: A plant that converts cow dung into energy for homes opened in the Netherlands on Friday. Manure from cows at a nearby dairy farm will be fermented along with grass and food industry residues, and the biogas released during the process will be used as fuel for the thermal plant's gas turbines. The heat generated will be distributed to around 1,100 homes in the area around Leeuwarden in the north of the Netherlands, the plant's operator Essent said in a statement. Firms ... |
| Canada: Trees in far north provide biggest climate benefit: Click here |
| New Scientist: CHAMPIONS of carbon offsetting may have been barking up the wrong tree. It is generally assumed that the tropics are the best place to plant forests in order to sequester carbon and cool the planet, but a study of the effects of tree planting is casting doubt on this idea. To maximise climate benefits we should be planting trees at higher latitudes, the study suggests. Alvaro Montenegro at St Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, Canada, and colleagues used high-resolution ... |
| Fast-tracked solar project could speed Mojave Desert's demise: Click here |
| Greenwire: The federal government's determination that a 400-megawatt solar thermal power plant will not cause significant harm to a pristine strip of the Mojave Desert is a victory for those who want to place dozens of solar arrays on federal land in Southern California. But a closer look at a federal draft environmental impact statement released last week reveals that even with extensive mitigation, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System project would destroy rare plants and permanently ... |
| Canada's tar sands are the future of oil production: Total: Click here |
| Agence France-Presse: The era of oil gushing from ground wells is over and can only be replaced by costly and complex refining of deposits such as Canada's oil sands to satisfy rising global energy needs, said a senior oil executive. Pressed about the high cost of oil sands extraction and attacks by environmentalists worried about its contribution to global warming, Jean-Michel Gires, president of French-based Total's Canadian subsidiary, told AFP he is optimistic specifically about the future of Canada's ... |
| Farmers v greens: Click here |
| Economist: AMERICA will not pass a cap-and-trade law in time for the global climate-change summit in Copenhagen next month. To understand why, it helps to ask a farmer. Take Bruce Wright, for example, who grows wheat and other crops on a couple of thousand acres near Bozeman, Montana. His family has tilled these fields for four generations. His great-grandfather built the local church. He loves his job and the rural way of life. But he fears that higher energy prices will endanger both. To grow ... |
| New visualisations: how green could our cities be?: Click here |
| Guardian: You may never have seen Liverpool or Hackney look exactly like this. Instead of houses, there are gardens; instead of roads, there are parks. The images – produced for the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (Cabe) – show what happens when everything made of concrete, brick and tarmac is removed from an urban environment. Published today, the not-to-scale aerial shots of Liverpool, Gloucester and the inner London boroughs of Hackney and Islington have been ... |
| United States: Groups sue to make rare flying squirrel endangered: Click here |
| Associated Press: Environmental groups are suing the federal government to return a type of flying squirrel to the endangered species list. The small nocturnal squirrel is only found in higher elevations of West Virginia and one county in Virginia. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed it from the list under the Bush Administration after a count found 1,200 of the animals. That was up from 10 animals spotted in 1985. The groups say they filed the lawsuit because they claim the agency did ... |
| Seychelles struggles to adapt to climate change in a losing battle: Click here |
| Xinhua: This season Jacques Matombehad to burn 14,300 U.S. dollars worth of pumpkin that he spent months growing on his farm in Seychelles. There was no other way to stop the disease spreading to his crop. "It was out of control," he said, standing in a field of crispy pumpkin plants. "You have to burn it." Disease and pests have become a problem for Matombe and other locals who farm the Aseroyale Plateau on Mahe, Seychelles' main island. Once cool, trade winds are now warmer, ... |
| Study Links Climate Change to California Droughts: Click here |
| U.S. News and World Report: California experienced centuries-long droughts in the past 20,000 years that coincided with the thawing of ice caps in the Arctic, according to a new study by UC Davis doctoral student Jessica Oster and geology professor Isabel Montañez. The finding, which comes from analyzing stalagmites from Moaning Cavern in the central Sierra Nevada, was published online Nov. 5 in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters. The sometimes spectacular mineral formations in caves such as ... |
| Argentina: Desperately Dry: Click here |
| Inter Press Service: The persistent drought affecting some 90 percent of Argentine territory has slain cattle in the hundreds of thousands and caused forest fires, drastic restrictions on water use and local disputes over water. The area around Tostado, a town in the northeastern province of Santa Fe, is one of the worst hit. Over the last two years, heat and drought have silently killed off cattle and bankrupted farmers on small and medium sized ranches. "This area normally gets between 800 and ... |
| Canada: Signs and Portents of a Hostile New World: Click here |
| Inter Press Service: Lawrence Amos travelled from the Arctic at the top of the world to the tropical middle to recite in a soft voice the ongoing destruction of his home by climate change. The ice is rougher and not as thick, and melts in May instead of June. There is less snow, more coastal erosion, and permafrost is melting, threatening to swallow homes, said Amos, an Inuit who lives in Sachs Harbour in Canada's High Arctic, one of the remotest communities on the planet. Amos was speaking here on ... |
| Boreal forests store carbon, need help: Canada study: Click here |
| Reuters: The world needs to do more to protect boreal forests and peatlands, which store more carbon than any other ecosystem and help mitigate the effects of climate change, a Canadian report issued Thursday said. Boreal forests, found in northern areas like Canada, Russia, Scandinavia and parts of the United States, cover 11 percent of the earth and store 22 percent of all carbon on the land surface in soil, permafrost, peatlands and wetlands. "Action is needed to conserve a region ... |
| SKorea launches 19 bln dlr river project despite protests: Click here |
| Independent (UK): South Korea on Tuesday launched a 19 billion dollar project to dredge and restore its four major rivers despite protests over the feared environmental impact. Excavators started shifting soil to build temporary dams on two of the rivers after the environment ministry gave the green light following a four-month survey. Under the plan the Han, Nakdong, Geum and Yeongsan rivers will be dredged, given new banks and equipped with dams along a total length of some 3,200 kilometres ... |
| China: Yangtze delta warned to prepare for effects of climate change: Click here |
| Guardian: China's most populous river needs massive investment and careful planning to ease the impact of climate change, which is causing floods, droughts and storms to intensify, a new report (pdf) said today. The Yangtze delta, which is home to about 400 million people, has been warming far faster than the global average for more than a decade and the implications for food security and biodiversity will worsen without remedial action, according to the study led by WWF China. The ... |
| Koalas could be extinct in 30 years: conservationists: Click here |
| Agence France-Presse: Australia's koalas could be extinct in 30 years, conservationists warned Tuesday, calling for the iconic creatures to be declared an endangered species. The Australian Koala Foundation said a recent survey indicated numbers may have plunged by more than half in the past six years due to climate change, disease and over-development. The study showed there were between 43,000 and 80,000 koalas on mainland Australia, down from an estimated 100,000 in 2003, said Foundation chief ... |
| A Hunt for Seeds to Save Species, Perhaps by Helping Them Move: Click here |
| New York Times: Pitcher's thistle, whose fuzzy leaves and creamy pink puffs once thrived in the sand dunes along several of the Great Lakes, was driven by development, drought and weevils into virtual extinction from the shores of Lake Michigan decades ago. But in the 1990s, seeds collected from different parts of the thistle's range were grown at the Chicago Botanic Garden and planted with the help of the Morton Arboretum along the lake, in Illinois State Beach Park, north of Chicago near the ... |
| China ivory demand bodes ill for Africa's elephants: Click here |
| Reuters: Tucked into a grimy building in Guangzhou, a small band of Chinese master carvers chip away at ivory tusks with chisels, fashioning them into the sorts of intricate carvings that were prized by Chinese emperors. A passion for ivory ornaments such as these is what helped decimate African and Asian elephant populations until a 1989 ban on ivory trade. Today, China's economic rise, and along with it a seemingly insatiable appetite for status symbols by its nouveau riche, has spurred ... |
| The new dust bowl: Click here |
| Mother Jones: When I meet Javier Vaca on a dusty strip of blacktop, he's been walking for three days. The skinny 18-year-old is being carried along in a procession of 7,000 farmworkers and farmers as it crosses California's Central Valley, his baggy jeans and hoodie standing out amid the work boots and button-downs. He's been told only one thing that matters: Marching 50 miles might earn him a job. "I don't want to jack nobody," Vaca says, as though the thought had crossed his mind. When the ... |
| United States: As seas rise, planning starts: Click here |
| Savannah Now: Sea level rise could put as much as 50-100 square miles of currently dry land - an area about 20-40 times the size of Tybee Island - under water in Georgia this century, a new report points out. But the study, published in Environmental Research Letters, indicates Georgia is in a better position than many states to plan for this inundation. That's because Georgia has a good portion of its low lying land - including most of the state's barrier islands - in conservation. In fact, ... |
| Ethiopia: Saving the world's rarest wolf: Click here |
| Mongabay: Saving the Ethiopian wolf in face of habitat loss, diseased dogs, and climate change, an interview with Claudio Sillero-Zubiri, founder of the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Programme. Living on the roof of Africa, the Ethiopian wolf is one of the world's rarest carnivores, if not the rarest! Trapped on a few mountain islands rising over 4,000 meters above sea level on either/both sides of the Great Rift Valley, this unique canid has so far survived millennia of human-animal interactions ... |
| Britain bins £12bn of food and drink every year, report reveals: Click here |
| Guardian: More than £12bn worth of food and drink that could have been consumed is thrown out every year by householders, according to new figures today that reveal the scale of the UK's food waste mountain. The new statistics from Wrap, the body set up to advise the government on reducing waste and packaging, are the first to include liquid waste – including vast amounts of milk, soup and soft drinks – which are being poured down the sink. They are published in a new report – Household ... |
| India 'arrogant' to deny global warming link to melting glaciers: Click here |
| Guardian: A leading climate scientist today accused the Indian environment ministry of "arrogance" after the release of a government report claiming that there is no evidence climate change has caused "abnormal" shrinking of Himalayan glaciers. Jairam Ramesh, India's environment minister, released the controversial report in Delhi, saying it would "challenge the conventional wisdom" about melting ice in the mountains. Two years ago, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), ... |
| United States: DOE's Carbon Sequestration Test Reaches 1m-Ton Milestone: Click here |
| Greenwire: An Energy Department-sponsored carbon dioxide sequestration project in Mississippi has become the first in the nation to inject more than 1 million tons of the greenhouse gas into an underground rock formation. The project passed the mark in August at the oil-producing Cranfield site near Natchez, DOE announced yesterday. Only four other projects -- in Norway, Canada and Algeria -- have reached that milestone. The Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership -- one of ... |
| India: Tea farmers struggle for survival in fields of gold: Click here |
| Guardian: The villagers of Thatarber Manihatty in south India knew they had no choice but to mortgage their small plots of farmland when they found they could not afford to bury dead relatives or send children to school without the generosity of neighbours. Six thousand feet up in the breathtaking Nilgiri hills of Tamil Nadu, hope was thin on the ground until Sumani Subramani, a 30-year-old former office clerk, drew a line in the brick-red soil. Quitting her desk job, Subramani organised ... |
| United Kingdom: Flood victims suffer as insurance costs rise: Click here |
| Guardian: Flood victims continue to face spiralling costs for home insurance as excesses for flood cover rise to levels that are making their properties virtually impossible to sell. Many have invested thousands to protect their homes from flooding, but these efforts are rarely rewarded by insurers. "People are coming to us with huge premiums and flood excesses of up to £30,000, which is as good as having no insurance at all and makes their property virtually worthless," says Mary ... |
| Britain's nuclear strategy threatens destruction of Kalahari: Click here |
| Guardian: The hidden cost of Britain's new generation of nuclear power could be the destruction of the Kalahari desert in Namibia and millions of tonnes of extra greenhouse gas emissions a year, the Observer has discovered.= The desert, with its towering sand dunes and spectacular lunar-like landscapes, is at the centre of an international uranium rush led by Rössing Uranium, a subsidiary of the British mining giant Rio Tinto, and the French state-owned company, Areva, which part-manages the ... |
| Canada signs on to continent-wide wilderness protection deal: Click here |
| Canadian Press: The federal government has agreed to what's being billed as an unprecedented commitment to wilderness conservation in North America. Enviroment Minister Jim Prentice today announced he's signed a memorandum of understanding with the United States and Mexico that binds the three countries together in defending uninhabited spaces. Much of the recent debate over the environment has been framed around climate change and Prentice says the Conservative government and Canada as a ... |
| S Korea to plant trees in China to reduce 'yellow dust': Click here |
| Independent (UK): The Seoul city government will help fund a tree-planting project in a Chinese desert to reduce the amount of harmful "yellow dust" blowing over South Korea, officials said Wednesday. The city government signed an accord Tuesday to invest 50 million won (42,000 dollars) in the planting project led by Future Forest, a South Korean environmental group operating in China for the past 10 years. The investment will be used to purchase and plant some 72,000 poplar and desert willow ... |
| Is environmentalism a religion? A British court fight: Click here |
| Time Magazine: The case involved Tim Nicholson, 42, who was laid off last year from his job as head of sustainability at Grainger Plc, Britain's largest residential-property company. Nicholson contended he was laid off because his views on the environment were not shared by Grainger executives, and he sued the company for unfair dismissal under Britain's six-year-old Religion and Belief Regulations, which make it unlawful to discriminate against a person on the grounds of their religious or philosophical ... |
| Gone with the wind: Click here |
| Sydney Morning Herald: A COLLECTION of humble plants clinging to 600 million-year-old rocks on a distant mountain range and a small dragon given to promiscuous sex under a hot sun have forced planners to redraw the map for the southern hemisphere's biggest wind farm. The discovery that spinifex - normally an inhabitant of the red dirt plains below - is living on sediment probably deposited in the last Ice Age and has red mallee and gum coolibah trees for neighbours is so strange and rare that the Silverton ... |
| Canada: Scientists warn caribou collapse not unlike disappearance of cod stocks: Click here |
| Canadian Press: Once, caribou wandered over the Arctic tundra in herds that took days to pass. So great were their numbers - even 20 years ago - that they were able to shake off man's puny imprint on the great barren lands like so many flies on a rump. "There was so much caribou all over that even our plane, our scheduled flights, couldn't land on the airstrip," recalled Alfonz Nitsiza of Wha Ti, a tiny aboriginal community northwest of Yellowknife. "The caribou were on the airstrip. It ... |
| Australians throw out $4.7bn worth of food each year: Click here |
| Business Green: Australia's 8.5 million households throw out more than A$5.2bn (US$4.7bn, £2.8bn) worth of food annually, generating more carbon emissions than the country's iron and steel industries, according to a new report. The total sum -- which amounts to A$616 worth of food per household per year -- exceeds the amount spent by households on digital equipment as well as the cost of running the national army, according to the study What a Waste, which was released yesterday by The Australia ... |
| Canada: How 'spirit bears' use their appearance to fish successfully: Click here |
| BBC: On a few islands in western Canada, white 'spirit bears' walk the woods. Now scientists have discovered why these striking animals, a race of black bear, survive. White bears are less visible to fish than their black counterparts, making them 30% more efficient at capturing salmon in the islands' rivers. Elsewhere, similar white bears appear rarely, probably because those that do become vulnerable to predators such as grizzly bears and wolves. The researchers have ... |
| Wind industry faces 'prairie rebellion' in Kansas county: Click here |
| Greenwire: Local governments are beginning to flex their permitting authority to challenge commercial-scale wind farms, a trend some industry observers say could impede broader federal efforts to expand renewable energy production. The latest round in the emerging battle between local governments and wind-energy developers occurred last week in Kansas, where the state Supreme Court upheld a Wabaunsee County zoning ordinance banning industrial-scale wind development across 791-square miles of ... |
| United Kingdom: Butterflies and beetles blow hot and cold as climate change makes mark: Click here |
| Scotsman: BUTTERFLY species that usually like warmer climates south of the Border have been found in growing numbers in parts of Scotland, a 15-year study has shown. Scientists believe that some species of butterflies are migrating north as climate change causes warmer temperatures. The same research has revealed certain types of beetle known to prefer colder weather have started to decline in the Cairngorms. ADVERTISEMENTThe scientists behind the study monitored species living at 12 sites ... |
| Potential problems at 20 W.Va. coal ash dams: Click here |
| Associated Press: The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection may change its policy for inspecting coal ash impoundments after a survey uncovered more problems -- and dams -- than expected. A report detailing the survey shows engineers found three of the state's 20 coal ash impoundments are in poor condition and two that the state had no idea existed were rated unsatisfactory. The rest of the state's impoundments rated satisfactory or fair, though engineers turned up potential ... |
| Study says dogs have larger carbon footprint than SUV: Click here |
| Physorg: Thanks for killing the planet, dog owners. Well, that's a rough paraphrase of a New Zealand study that claims a medium-size dog leaves a larger ecological footprint than an SUV. In "Time to Eat the Dog? The Real Guide to Sustainable Living," authors Robert and Brenda Vale argue that resources required to feed a dog -- including the amount of land needed to feed the animals that go into its food -- give it about twice the eco-footprint of, say, building and fueling a Toyota Land ... |
| Climate Change, Nitrogen Loss Threaten Plant Life in Arid Desert Soils: Click here |
| Physorg: In the Mojave Desert winds howl across this hottest place in North America, blowing sands across Death Valley and through empty ghost towns, swirling across treeless land for hundreds of miles. But even in the otherworldly Mojave, life thrives. The Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia), an indicator species for this desert, defines the Mojave's boundaries. In spring when the rains come, brightly colored flowers bloom in profusion--nature's paintbrush on an otherwise monotone landscape. Now ... |
| Permafrost's future in Alaska looks poor, but the forecast isn t all bad: Click here |
| Fairbanks Daily News-Miners: Alaska will probably see most of its surface permafrost vanish by the end of this century, but researchers believe vast areas of frozen soil will remain deeper underground even as air temperatures increase. The future of Alaska's permafrost is being closely watched by scientists because of the implications it may have on the climate as a whole. Vladimir Romanovsky, a professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute, discussed evolving permafrost research this week ... |
| Study: Nitrogen pollution worsens in Rockies lakes: Click here |
| Associated Press: Airborne nitrogen pollution from vehicle exhaust and farm fertilizer is turning algae in the alpine lakes of Rocky Mountain National Park into junk food for fish, a study says. A similar phenomenon is occurring in Sweden and Norway, according to the study of about 90 high-elevation lakes set to be published in the journal Science on Friday. Arizona State University professor James Elser, the study's lead author, said the effect of airborne nitrogen on once-pristine lakes is ... |
| NASA satellite image reveals extent of drought in East Africa: Click here |
| Mongabay: A new image from NASA shows the severity of the drought in East Africa, which impacted Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia. Three failed rains in a row brought the region to its knees: four million people were reported to be going hungry in Kenya alone; lakes and rivers dried up entirely; withered crops drove farmers into slums; wildlife, from elephants to hippos, perished; there were even reports of camels dying. Northwest Kenya, as shown in the image, was hit the hardest. ... |
| Canada to investigate disappearing Pacific salmon: Click here |
| Reuters: Canada will launch an investigation into why far fewer sockeye salmon than scientists had predicted returned to the Fraser River on the Pacific Coast this summer. Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced the judicial inquiry on Thursday, saying the federal government was concerned about the declining sockeye population. Federal government scientists had predicted that as many as 13 million sockeye salmon would return to the river this year to breed, but it is now estimated that ... |
| Farmers Skirt Rules on Gene-Altered Crops, Report Says: Click here |
| New York Times: As many as 25 percent of the American farmers growing genetically engineered corn are no longer complying with federal rules intended to maintain the resistance of the crops to damage from insects, according to a report Thursday from an advocacy group. The increase in farmers skirting the rules, from fewer than 10 percent a few years ago, raises the risk that insects will develop resistance to the toxins in the corn that are meant to kill them, the report says. And it raises questions ... |
| United Kingdom: Wood pellets lead biomass energy rise: Click here |
| Carbon Positive: Europe is leading rapid growth in the wood biomass energy sector with demand for wood pellets seen growing at 8 to 10 per cent annually in coming years, according to Wood Resources Quarterly. Wood pellets are made mainly from wood waste – bark, sawdust and wood chips – from forestry operations. Compressing wood waste into pellets creates a more efficient-burning fuel than wood chips. Wood biomass fuel is seen as a valuable source of renewable energy and, if produced sustainably, ... |
| California Water Overhaul Caps Use: Click here |
| New York Times: California lawmakers on Wednesday approved a series of bills that would vastly overhaul the state's troubled water system. The water package is the most comprehensive to emerge from the state since the 1960s, when California last upgraded its system for what was a far smaller population of users. Prompted by a protracted drought – which has reduced water supply, harmed the fishing industry and contributed to crop loss – environmentalists and agricultural interests have agreed to broad ... |
| Mining for Algae: Could Abandoned Mines Help Grow Biofuel?: Click here |
| Greenwire: Backers of algae-based biofuels tout the simplicity of their feedstock. Sunlight and water are all that's needed to convert carbon dioxide into fuel. Now, some scientists are testing the notion that sunlight might be optional. Researchers at the Missouri University of Science and Technology are planning to grow algae for fuel in abandoned mines using light-emitting diodes, or LEDs. "About this time in the conversation, someone usually raises their hand and says, 'But ... |
| Farmers have been told to go green or face the financial consequences: Click here |
| Times (UK): English farmers have been given a last chance to adopt greener practices that benefit wildlife and help to combat climate change or face deductions from their state hand-outs of cash. The Government has set a tough new target which requires that the area of arable fields covered by environmental schemes should double within three years. Every farmer has also been told that he or she should fund some environmental improvements on their land without any financial support from ... |
| Bangladesh: Combating climate change impacts: Click here |
| Daily Star: THE European Union (EU) parliamentary delegation's commitment that the EU will be on Bangladesh's side in spite of the outcome of the upcoming climate change conference in Copenhagen is a hope giving one. Especially, we are reassured at the concern and empathy it expressed for us in the event of any catastrophe befalling the country, for example, in the form of triggering an exodus of climate refugees. As a frontline state in the fight for survival against the impact of global ... |
| Forests in the desert: the answer to climate change?: Click here |
| Guardian: Some talk of hoisting mirrors into space to reflect sunlight, while others want to cloud the high atmosphere with millions of tonnes of shiny sulphur dust. Now, scientists could have dreamed up the most ambitious geoengineering plan to deal with climate change yet: converting the parched Sahara desert to a lush forest. The scale of the ambition is matched only by the promised rewards – the scientists behind the plan say it could "end global warming". The scheme has been thought up by ... |
| United Kingdom: Climate change 'will raise bills': Click here |
| BBC: Property insurance could become more expensive and harder to obtain as a result of climate change, an insurance body has said. The Association of British Insurers said the cost of flood and windstorm damage would rise for insurers as global temperatures increased. This would lead to higher premiums for consumers and a restriction of cover as insurers would need more reserves. Wales and the south-west of England would be worst hit, the report said. Financial ... |
| United Kingdom: Golf courses can help save Britain's threatened birdies, says RSPB: Click here |
| Guardian: Mark Twain called it a good walk spoiled. But the game of golf is often accused of wrecking more than the mood of its participants. With heavily watered fairways and greens saturated with weed-killing chemicals, the sport has become a symbol of environmental wastefulness and an apparent conservation disaster. Now, the RSPB aims to change that view and wants to recruit Britain's 2,600 golf courses to the fight to save rare species. The rough and out-of-bounds areas of golf courses can ... |
| Global protocol could limit Sub-Saharan land grab: Click here |
| Guardian: Aggressive moves by China, South Korea and Gulf states to buy vast tracts of agricultural land in sub-Saharan Africa could soon be limited by a new global international protocol. A scramble for African farmland has in recent years seen the equivalent of Italy's entire arable land hoovered up by businesses from emerging economies. The Food and Agriculture Organisation, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the World Bank are now discussing a new code of conduct ... |
| China seeds clouds in wheat-growing areas to ease drought: Click here |
| Reuters: Many Chinese wheat-growing provinces in the north seeded clouds over the weekend to help end a persistent drought and encourage the growth of winter wheat. In Shandong, one of the country's major wheat-growing areas, jets and rockets were used to bring rain and ease the drought that had hit 800,000 hectares of farmland by the end of October, the China Meteorological Administration said. Cloud seeding brought Anhui province as much as 40 mm of rain over the weekend, easing ... |
| Devastating drought alters life for Kenya nomads: Click here |
| Associated Press: When 64-year-old Jimale Irobe was a young man, he guided his herds of cows and camels through knee-high grass. These days the scrubby blades barely reach his ankles even in the rainy season, and there is never enough grass to go around. The cattle cannot feed, and the nomadic families that depend on them for milk and meat cannot survive. So Irobe scrapes out a living by selling charcoal made from burning the trees in the fields where his father's herds once grazed. "Now ... |
| Higher temperatures will harm many crops, report says: Click here |
| Associated Press: Global warming would be bad news for all those amber waves of grain, and for the corn and soybeans that are plentiful throughout the Midwest. "The grain-filling period" - the time when the seed grows and matures - "of wheat and other small grains shortens dramatically with rising temperatures. Analysis of crop responses suggests that even moderate increases in temperature will decrease yields of corn, wheat, sorghum, bean, rice, cotton and peanut crops," according to "Global Climate ... |
| Kenya: Climate change will melt snows of Kilimanjaro 'within 20 years': Click here |
| Independent (UK): The snows of Mount Kilimanjaro -- the highest mountain in Africa -- may soon be falling on bare ground following a study showing that its ice cap is destined to disappear entirely within 20 years, due largely to climate change. The vast ice fields of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania are melting at a faster pace than at any time over the past 100 years and at this rate they will be gone completely within two decades or even earlier according to one of the world's leading glaciologists. A ... |
| Australia: Toxic Contaminants:The Other Scourge: Click here |
| Inter Press Service: As the world focuses on the impact of climate change, little attention is being paid to yet another environmental bane: increasing contamination of air, water and soil. The combined effects of this environmental scourge have contributed to global epidemics of cancers, lung and other degenerative diseases, and costing health systems across the world millions of dollars, experts say. Forty-two years after she was exposed to asbestos in the Pambula beach hamlet, 470 kilometres ... |
| United Kingdom: Is it time to remove meat from our diet?: Click here |
| Times (UK): Going low-carbon at the table to save the planet need not be so very painful. The climate change guru Lord Stern of Brentford called yesterday for Times readers to turn vegetarian to slow global warming. But most authorities -- including the head of the United Nations climate change programme -- agree that we could make a good start merely by dropping meat one day a week. This is what the citizens of the Belgian city of Ghent have been doing, voluntarily, all this year, without noticeable ... |
| Britain heading for record 70°F 'balmy autumn': Click here |
| Metro: Britain is basking in a late autumn heatwave that will send temperatures soaring 10ºC (18ºF) above average this week. The half-term heat haze, sparked by warm winds from the Mediterranean, could break records for this time of year and make it feel more like the start of summer than the beginning of the cold season. As holidaymakers lap up the unseasonal sunshine on beaches and in parks, tourism officials in Blackpool are hoping for a busy week late in the season. 'This ... |
| Britain's rare birds back from the brink: Click here |
| Guardian |
| Rare birds 'faring better' in UK: Click here |
| BBC: Rare birds in the UK have been faring far better than their more common counterparts over the last decade, according to a new assessment. The research shows almost 60% of the 63 rare birds that breed in the UK have increased over the last 10 years. By contrast, only about one third of common species have increased over the same period. Just 28% of rare birds have decreased over the same period, compared with four out of every 10 common birds. The rare birds ... |
| United States: Gas Company Won't Drill in New York Watershed: Click here |
| New York Times: Bowing to intense public pressure, the Chesapeake Energy Corporation says it will not drill for natural gas within the upstate New York watershed, an environmentally sensitive region that supplies unfiltered water to nine million people. The reversal seems to signal a more conciliatory tone from the gas industry, which is facing mounting opposition in New York to its drilling practices. The decision also increases the pressure on state regulators to reverse their decision to allow ... |
| Coastal homes in Australia at risk from rising sea levels: Click here |
| Independent (UK): Australia's love affair with the beach is in danger of being rudely terminated. A parliamentary report released yesterday suggests that the government may have to force people to abandon prime oceanfront homes along thousands of miles of coastline vulnerable to rising sea levels. The report, published in the run-up to the Copenhagen summit on climate change in December, sent a shiver through a country where 80 per cent of the population lives on the coast. With more than 700,000 homes ... |
| Experts plea for global action to save tigers: Click here |
| Independent (UK): Tigers will become extinct unless the international community unites urgently to find new strategies to ensure their survival, campaigners and scientists in Nepal said Tuesday. Nepalese Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal told the opening of a conference of 200 delegates from 20 countries that action by individual countries would not succeed. "Global and regional solidarity and collective strategies armed with concrete actions are more necessary now than ever," he said, adding ... |