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Archive for January, 2011
Eggs show arctic mercury cycling may be linked to ice cover
Posted by Science Centric: None Given on January 21st, 2011
Science Centric: An international research team working with National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) scientists at the Hollings Marine Laboratory (HML) in Charleston, S.C., has suggested for the first time that mercury cycling in the flora and fauna of the Arctic may be linked to the amount of ice cover present. Their study is the latest work reported from the Seabird Tissue Archival and Monitoring Project (STAMP), a multiyear joint effort of NIST, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the U.S....
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Eggs show arctic mercury cycling may be linked to ice coverIceland may reverse Magma bid for HS Orka: Björk
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 21st, 2011
Agence France-Presse: Pop megastar Bjork told a Canadian newspaper Friday that Iceland's government is prepared to reverse Canada's Magma Energy Corp's takeover of geothermal energy producer HS Orka.
Bjork made the comments after last week presenting Iceland's prime minister and finance minister with a petition calling for a referendum on foreign ownership of the country's natural resources.
"They told us they want to reverse the (Magma) deal and make sure Iceland?s energy companies and the access to its energy...
UC Davis study shows plants moved downhill, not up, in warming world
Posted by Science Centric: None Given on January 21st, 2011
Science Centric: In a paper published today in the journal Science, a University of California, Davis, researcher and his co-authors challenge a widely held assumption that plants will move uphill in response to warmer temperatures.
Between 1930 and 2000, instead of colonising higher elevations to maintain a constant temperature, many California plant species instead moved downhill an average of 260 feet, said Jonathan Greenberg, an assistant project scientist at the UC Davis Centre for Spatial Technologies and...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on UC Davis study shows plants moved downhill, not up, in warming worldHow can we feed the world and still save the planet?
Posted by Guardian: Madeleine Bunting on January 21st, 2011
Guardian: Food has become subject to one of the sharpest global debates, with rising anxiety about how the world's growing population is going to feed itself. Increasingly, Olivier de Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, is establishing himself as one of its key protagonists with an unapologetically radical agenda.
In London this week to give evidence to a UK parliamentary working group on food and agriculture, he explained the challenge he is putting to the donors and the international...
Assessing the health of the Gulf, post-spill
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 21st, 2011
National Public Radio: IRA FLATOW, host:
This is SCIENCE FRIDAY, from NPR. I'm Ira Flatow. Last week, President Obama's National Oil Spill Commission released its final report on the BP Deep Water Horizon oil well explosion in the Gulf of Mexico and the eventual release of about five million barrels of oil.
This week, a whole bunch of scientists, engineers and policy wonks are meeting here in Washington at a conference of the National Council for Science and the Environment, and they're here to talk about the report's...
Plants’ global warming dilemma: Climb to escape heat or stoop for water?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 21st, 2011
Christian Science Monitor: For years, scientists have recorded the gradual march of plants and animals up mountain slopes and toward higher latitudes as global warming has forced them to chase their climatic comfort zones.
A new study suggests that for plants, however, a warming climate can send them downhill as well – a result several researchers say has important implications for efforts to conserve the biological richness of mountain habitats in the face of long-term global warming.
Other researchers have noted that...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Plants’ global warming dilemma: Climb to escape heat or stoop for water?Uganda: Climate Change Affecting Nation’s GDP
Posted by New Vision: Gerald Tenywa on January 21st, 2011
New Vision: UGANDA annually loses 15% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) due to the destruction of forests, land and water resources.
According to Simon Thuo, the director of Global Water Partnership (GWP) in eastern Africa, the 2008 state of environment report for Uganda put the annual environmental degradation cost arising out of biodiversity loss at sh506b and soil degradation at sh225b.
Other costs stated in the report are rangeland degradation at sh815m, wetland destruction at sh2b, water hyacinth...
Climate change assumption could need tinkering, study finds
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 20th, 2011
LA Times: A common assumption in models that game out what a warming planet will mean for plants and trees presumes they would migrate upward toward cooler mountain temperatures, such as the snowy peaks of California's Sierra Nevada. That has sparked concern that some species may die off when they cannot migrate higher.
It turns out that decades of old and new data show that many Sierra species have tended to migrate downhill over many decades, largely because of higher precipitation levels in central and...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Climate change assumption could need tinkering, study findsUnited States: Mountain plant communities moving down despite climate change, study finds
Posted by LA Times: Bettina Boxall on January 20th, 2011
LA Times: Predictions that climate change will drive trees and plants uphill, potentially slashing their range to perilous levels, may be wrong, suggests a new study that found vegetation in California actually crept downhill during the 20th century.
The research, published in the Jan. 21 issue of the journal Science, challenges widely held assumptions about the effect of rising temperatures on shrubs and trees that play a critical role in mountain environments.
Various studies in recent years have predicted...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on United States: Mountain plant communities moving down despite climate change, study findsCan Europe benefit from shale gas?
Posted by BBC: Damian Kahya on January 20th, 2011
BBC: In a field near Kirkham, between Preston and Blackpool, they are preparing to drill a well that many say could change our energy outlook.
Up until recently, most economists had forecast gas prices rising sharply as supplies become scarce. Production in the North Sea is already falling fast.
But the recession saw prices fall and now the process of getting gas out of rocks , shale gas as it's known, could bring huge new supplies.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that "unconventional"...