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Archive for November 26th, 2010
UN in the last chance saloon
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 26th, 2010
Agence France-Presse: Global talks on climate change resume in the Mexican resort of Cancun on Monday, facing a clamour for results or the prospect of limbo. The 12-day meeting climaxes an 11-month effort to pick up the pieces after last December's trauma in Copenhagen.
More than 120 leaders jetted to the Danish capital, expecting to bless a pact that would slow, halt and then reverse the threat to Earth's climate system.
Instead, they were plunged into a nightmare where they had to haggle over a horribly complex,...
In Australian politics, climate change equals grief
Posted by Globe and Mail: Effrey Simpson on November 26th, 2010
Globe and Mail: Australia is green again. Fields baked dry for so long are verdant; ponds and river basins have filled. Water restrictions on urbanites are gone; farmers are hauling in bumper crops. The world's driest continent has been given a bath.
From 1997 to 2007, Australia suffered through the Big Dry or the Millennium Drought. Those 10 years changed everything, at least temporarily. The drought crushed farmers, reminded city-dwellers of the brutality of the country's geography, turned Australia's only...
Is the stage being set for new water wars in Africa?
Posted by Guardian: Claire Provost on November 26th, 2010
Guardian: With diarrhoea the biggest killer of children in Africa, the urgency of the water and sanitation crisis on the continent is hard to question. But while
some NGOs are calling on African governments to make water and sanitation integral parts of their national public health strategies, and fund them accordingly, the African Development Bank (AfDB) announced this week that closing the continent's multi-billion dollar infrastructure gap requires new investors and paying customers.
Leading a special...
A climate journey: From the peaks of the Andes to the Amazon’s oilfields
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 26th, 2010
Guardian: Last month I went on an extraordinary, epic journey through the Andes mountains of Peru and Ecuador. The aim was to record the stories of the largely hidden people on the frontline of climate change, and see how communities and governments are trying to adapt.
I began at 16,000ft on the snows of Mount Cayambe in Ecuador where the glaciers are in full retreat, and ended in the oilfields of the Amazon. In between, I came across water conflicts, deserts growing, rivers shrinking, extreme temperatures...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on A climate journey: From the peaks of the Andes to the Amazon’s oilfieldsLake Tahoe warming rapidly, satellites find
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 26th, 2010
San Francisco Chronicle: The world's largest lakes, including Lake Tahoe, have been warming rapidly for 25 years as the global climate changes, NASA scientists report. And throughout the Northern Hemisphere, surface water temperatures of many lakes have been rising even faster than the warming air above them, according to observations by ultra-sensitive satellites. In a report just published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, Philipp Schneider and Simon Hook of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena say...
World warmer, short-term trends need study: report
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 26th, 2010
Reuters: The global average temperature has increased over the past 160 years, but short-term trends in temperature and sea ice seem to be at odds with each other and need more research, the UK Met Office's Hadley Center said.
In a report on long and short-term climate trends, the Hadley Center found several factors that indicate a warming world and said 2010 has been one of the warmest years on record.
The report drew on the work of more than 20 institutions worldwide and used a range of measurements...
Scientists find eyeless cave fish in Indonesia
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 26th, 2010
Agence France-Presse: Eyeless cave fish and a frog that carries its offspring on its back are among the new species a team of scientists have discovered in Indonesia's eastern Papua region.
The researchers from the Institute of Research and Development (IRD) in Montpellier, southern France, studied caves, underground rivers and jungles in the remote Lengguru area of New Guinea island.
"In terms of discoveries almost everything remains to be done in this area, which is very difficult to access but which has exceptionally...