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Archive for September, 2012
Report: The Age of Western Wildfires
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 18th, 2012
Climate Central: The 2012 wildfire season isn't over yet, but already this year is shaping up to be the one of the worst on record in the American West. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, with nearly two months still to go in the fire season, the total area already burned this year is 30 percent more than in an average year, and fires have consumed more than 8.6 million acres, an area larger than the state of Maryland.
Annual number of wildfires greater than 1,000 acres on U.S. Forest Service Land...
New Plans to Protect Nature
Posted by Inter Press Service: Amantha Perera on September 18th, 2012
Inter Press Service: At the close of the ten-day World Conservation Congress that ran from Sept. 6-15 on the South Korean island of Jeju, members of the convening International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) agreed on an ambitious four-year action plan for protecting global natural resources.
Taking the form of a 24-page document, the four-year programme focuses on the two main themes that dominated discussions among 10,000 participants at Jeju last week - that natural resources are stretched dangerously...
United Kingdom: Push to create a million UK ponds
Posted by BBC: Roger Harrabin on September 18th, 2012
BBC: Details of a plan for a million healthy ponds in the UK are being announced to combat decades of neglect.
The charity Pond Conservation says ponds offer more species diversity than any other habitat per square metre.
But 80% of them are polluted - mostly by fertilisers and pesticides from farms, and also by run-off from streets and homes in towns and villages.
Pond Conservation say it is so hard to clean a pond fed by polluted streams that it is better to start afresh.
It wants to create...
Arctic expert predicts final collapse of sea ice within four years
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 18th, 2012
Guardian: One of the world's leading ice experts has predicted the final collapse of Arctic sea ice in summer months within four years. In what he calls a "global disaster" now unfolding in northern latitudes as the sea area that freezes and melts each year shrinks to its lowest extent ever recorded, Prof Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University calls for "urgent" consideration of new ideas to reduce global temperatures. In an email to the Guardian he says: "Climate change is no longer something we can aim...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Arctic expert predicts final collapse of sea ice within four yearsClimate change will transform the bush … and we’ll have to think big to cope
Posted by Conversation: None Given on September 18th, 2012
Conversation: Within decades, environments across Australia will be substantially different from those that currently exist.
CSIRO research released today suggests that, by 2030, climate change stress on our natural environments will be significant. By 2070, the impacts will be more widespread and, in many places, more extreme. Many parts of Australia will have environments that do not exist today anywhere on this continent. Ecological stress
In a scientific first, we investigated how climate change will...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Climate change will transform the bush … and we’ll have to think big to copeHuge Greenland iceberg starts to go to pieces
Posted by NBC: Douglas Main on September 18th, 2012
NBC: Off the coast of northwest Greenland, an enormous iceberg is beginning to go to pieces.
The huge ice chunk, named PII-2012, was originally part of the Petermann Glacier, but broke away from the glacier in mid-July in a process called calving.
By the end of July the Manhattan-size chunk of ice had nearly reached the mouth of a fjord that opens on the Nares Strait, a narrow stretch of ocean that separates Greenland from Canada.
Science news from NBCNews.com OneWorld via YouTube Science can...
Voters must press both parties to address climate change
Posted by Morning Sentinel: Richard Thomas on September 17th, 2012
Morning Sentinel: This summer, flooding, hot spells, drought and firestorms are beginning to show us that climate change will be the defining issue of this century.
The drought in middle America already has caused a 10 percent rise in food prices.
Unfortunately, it appears that the impact of climate change will become much more extreme for a number of reasons. Individually, we have little control over this, but we do have a chance during the coming elections to push our government to face this issue more responsibly....
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Voters must press both parties to address climate changeEl Salvador in battle against tide of climate change
Posted by Independent: Simeon Tegel on September 17th, 2012
Independent: The forest of towering, dead mangrove trees stretches along the beach as far as the eye can see. As the crashing waves rise and fall, short stumps emerge and vanish beneath the Pacific Ocean. Climate change has come early to the Bajo Lempa region of western El Salvador.
A tiny rise in the sea level has, according to local people, seen about 1,000ft of the mangroves on which they depend vanish beneath the ocean since 2005. Another 1,500ft remains between the Pacific and their village, La Tirana....
World shows prudence as drought boosts food prices: USDA
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 17th, 2012
Reuters: World leaders have shown prudence in the face of rising food prices by avoiding harmful steps such as export embargoes, the United States said on Monday after France called an emergency meeting of G20 farm ministers.
Scorching drought in the United States, the world's largest farm exporter, and in the wheat-exporting Black Sea region of Europe has driven commodity prices to record levels this summer. It was the third price surge since 2007. High prices pushed tens of millions of people into hunger...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on World shows prudence as drought boosts food prices: USDACompanies Calculate Their Debt to Planet Earth
Posted by Inter Press Service: Amantha Perera on September 17th, 2012
Inter Press Service: As ravenous consumers of natural resources, companies are beginning to recognise that they owe a monetary debt to the planet, and are sharpening their pencils to calculate it.
In 2004, when the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) held its four-yearly World Conservation Congress in Bangkok, Thailand, there were only two major business leaders attending it, recalled Peter Bakker, the current president of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD).
"In 2008,...