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Archive for January 5th, 2011
Global food prices at ‘record high’
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 5th, 2011
BBC: Global food prices rose to a new high in December, according to the UN's Food and Agricultural Organisation. Its food price index went above the previous record of 2008 that saw prices spark riots in several countries. The report says soaring sugar, cereal and oil prices have driven the rise.
Blunders Abounded Before Gulf Spill, Panel Says
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 5th, 2011
New York Times: The Deepwater Horizon blowout and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was an avoidable accident caused by a series of failures and blunders by the companies involved in drilling the well and the government regulators assigned to police them, the presidential panel named to study the accident has concluded. The companies — BP, Transocean and Halliburton, and several subcontractors working for them — took a series of hazardous and time-saving steps without adequate consideration of the risks involved,...
Panel: Massive oil spill could happen again
Posted by Associated Press: Dina Cappiello and Harry R. Weber on January 5th, 2011
Associated Press: The presidential panel investigating the BP oil well blowout says that a series of risky decisions that saved time and money caused the disaster -- and the incident could happen again without significant reforms.
That conclusion is the final word on what led to the massive Gulf oil spill from the seven-member panel appointed by President Barack Obama to investigate it.
In a 48-page excerpt obtained by The Associated Press, the commission says that the largest offshore oil spill in history can...
Lawmakers protect natgas from new drilling regulations
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 5th, 2011
Reuters: A bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers pressed the Obama administration on the first day of the new Congress not to impose regulations curtailing drilling technique that taps hard-to-get natural gas reserves but has generated criticism about potential water pollution.
Thirty-two members of the Congressional Natural Gas Caucus called on the Interior Department on Wednesday not to hinder producers who use hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas from underground rock formations.
U.S. Interior...
Floods can help Australia rise toward adaptation to climate change
Posted by Christian Science Monitor: Editorial on January 5th, 2011
Christian Science Monitor: The Queensland floods and other recent record-breaking weather events can help push Australia further toward becoming a world leader in adapting to the predicted effects of global warming.
Australians have long talked of their continent as “a land of droughts and flooding rains,” a geographic fact that also accounts for their high resiliency during a weather crisis.
But record rainfalls in the northeast, coming after a long drought in the south, are pushing this nation to do more than talk...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Floods can help Australia rise toward adaptation to climate changeWhy we need a law on ecocide
Posted by Guardian: Polly Higgins on January 5th, 2011
Guardian: Sophie Scholl, a Munich University student, was executed for revealing the truth about the activities of the Nazi authorities; today 20 brave Ratcliffe whistleblowers have been sentenced at Nottingham crown court for plotting to draw attention to the truth of the activities of another German entity. This time, replace the tyranny of the Nazis with the tyranny of the energy giant E.ON.
Scholl and 20 others stood up and took direct non-violent action. Their crime was the dissemination of leaflets...
Climate change impact worsened last year
Posted by International Business Times: None Given on January 5th, 2011
International Business Times: The number of weather-related natural calamities rose last year, showing further proof of the growing impact of climate change.
Weather-related disasters such as storm, floods or heat waves occupied nine tenths of total 950 natural disasters recorded in 2010, said Munich Re, a global reinsurance firm.
"The high number of weather-related natural catastrophes and record temperatures both globally and in different regions of the world provide further indications of advancing climate change," the...
A ‘Bulge’ in Atmospheric Pressure Gives Us a Super-Cold Winter Amid Global Warming
Posted by ClimateWire: Christa Marshall AND Tiffany Stecker on January 5th, 2011
ClimateWire: Icicle-covered oranges in Florida. The United Kingdom swamped with its coldest December in more than a century. Travelers stranded in airports surrounded by snowy fortresses. These have been some of the dominant images this winter, and now one forecaster says it's going to get colder. Yesterday, an AccuWeather meteorologist predicted that January could be the chilliest for the nation as a whole since the 1980s. "More waves of Arctic air will invade the country, starting late this week and continuing...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on A ‘Bulge’ in Atmospheric Pressure Gives Us a Super-Cold Winter Amid Global WarmingWorld food prices enter ‘danger territory’ to reach record high
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 5th, 2011
Guardian: Soaring prices of sugar, grain and oilseed drove world food prices to a record in December, surpassing the levels of 2008 when the cost of food sparked riots around the world, and prompting warnings of prices being in "danger territory".
An index compiled monthly by the United Nations surpassed its previous monthly high – June 2008 – in December to reach the highest level since records began in 1990. Published by the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the index tracks the prices...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on World food prices enter ‘danger territory’ to reach record highResilient plants could hold key to adapting agriculture
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 5th, 2011
Inter Press Service: A vision of "the Apocalypse, everything burnt, turned black from ashes and smoke," was what photographer Mila Petrillo saw when she returned in October to what had been her Eden in the Brazilian municipality of Alto Paraiso, 230 km from Brasilia.
The fires had raged around her home, in a forested area of the Chapada dos Veadeiros, or Veadeiros tableland, a vast area of mountains, rivers and waterfalls, in "many lines of high flames," as the fire roared through the treetops and the ground vegetation....
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Resilient plants could hold key to adapting agriculture