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Archive for October 11th, 2012
Saving the world’s species from oblivion will cost around $80 billion a year, but still a good deal
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 11th, 2012
Mongabay: If the world is to conserve its wealth of life-species great and small, beautiful and terrible, beloved and unknown-it will cost from $3.41-4.76 billion annually in targeted conservation funds, according to a new study in Science. But that's not all, the cost of protecting and managing the world's conservation areas was estimated at an additional $76.1 billion a year.
If these numbers seem daunting, the researchers write that in fact it's a wise investment. The total costs are only about 1-4 percent...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Saving the world’s species from oblivion will cost around $80 billion a year, but still a good dealCost of saving endangered species £50bn a year, say experts
Posted by Guardian: Ian Sample on October 11th, 2012
Guardian: Spending on conservation projects must rise by "an order of magnitude" if governments are to meet their pledges to manage protected areas and halt the spectacular rate of extinctions caused by human activity.
A stark assessment from an international collaboration of conservation groups and universities reveals the enormous shortfall in funds required to save species, and warns that costs are likely to increase, the longer action is delayed.
To reduce the risk of extinction for all threatened...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Cost of saving endangered species £50bn a year, say expertsBiodiversity data gaps ‘need bridging’ to meet global targets
Posted by SciDevNet: T. V. Padma on October 11th, 2012
SciDevNet: Global biodiversity targets are in danger of being missed because of inadequate capacity and tools to gather and assess data, an international conference has heard.
The information "is still not there", Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), told a session on scientific approaches to biodiversity at the CBD's 11th Conference of Parties (COP 11) in Hyderabad, India, this week (9 October).
The lack of data may affect the fourth Global...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Biodiversity data gaps ‘need bridging’ to meet global targetsReport calls for using ecosystems in disaster prevention
Posted by SciDevNet: Mico Tatalovic on October 11th, 2012
SciDevNet: More research is needed to understand how ecosystems can help reduce disaster risks around the world, according to a report launched in Brussels, Belgium, today. The World Risk Report 2012 says that human development activities have "massively raised the hazard potential". It cites the destruction of coral reefs and mangrove forests in South-East Asia -- which has reduced protection against flooding and tidal waves -- and increased deforestation, which has led to worsening soil erosion and the...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Report calls for using ecosystems in disaster preventionRun-off from Greenland may weaken carbon sink
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 11th, 2012
New Scientist: More fresh water isn't always a good thing. The volume of fresh water gushing into the Atlantic from Greenland has increased in the past few decades. The water will interfere with Atlantic currents and may even reduce the ocean's ability to store carbon.
"Greenland has been losing increasing amounts of mass," says Jonathan Bamber of the University of Bristol in the UK. What had been unclear was how much of that was due to losing water to the ocean, as opposed to factors like reduced snowfall....
Drought persists, hits wheat growers hard – report
Posted by Reuters: Carey Gillam on October 11th, 2012
Reuters: Drought conditions in the United States grew even worse over the last week as historic drought conditions crept north and threatened new winter wheat planting in several states.
September was the driest in 118 years of U.S. record keeping for North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana and was the third-driest September for Nebraska and Oregon, said Mark Svoboda, a climatologist with the University of Nebraska's National Drought Mitigation Center.
Farmers trying to plant the nation's new winter...
Global warming causing Antarctic ice to expand
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 11th, 2012
Associated Press: The ice goes on seemingly forever in a white pancake-flat landscape, stretching farther than ever before. And yet in this confounding region of the world, that spreading ice may be a cockeyed signal of man-made climate change, scientists say. This is Antarctica, the polar opposite of the Arctic. While the North Pole has been losing sea ice over the years, the water nearest the South Pole has been gaining it. Antarctic sea ice hit a record 7.51 million square miles in September. That happened just...
Oil sheen near Deepwater Horizon site from Macondo, U.S. says
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 11th, 2012
Reuters: An oil sheen spotted on the Gulf of Mexico near the site of the sunken Deepwater Horizon rig matches samples from BP Plc's ill-fated Macondo well, the U.S. Coast Guard said.
BP reported a sheen on September 16 in block 252 of the Mississippi Canyon, about 50 miles off the Louisiana coast. Test samples indicate that "the sheen correlates to oil that originated from BP's Macondo Well", the Coast Guard said in a statement late on Wednesday.
Swiss-based Transocean Ltd owned the Deepwater Horizon...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Oil sheen near Deepwater Horizon site from Macondo, U.S. saysAs US presidential election nears, a new debate over ‘clean coal’
Posted by StateImpact: Susan Phillips on October 11th, 2012
StateImpact: Imagine a chart tracking U.S. greenhouse gas emissions since 2005. Do you imagine a line heading up, or down? It’s down actually. Emissions are decreasing, thanks to the weak economy, more use of wind and solar power, and the sudden influx of cleaner burning natural gas.
So where does that leave Pennsylvania’s former energy titan, king coal? If you’re watching TV or riding down the turnpike, you’ll notice the coal industry is working hard to polish its reputation.
The clean...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on As US presidential election nears, a new debate over ‘clean coal’Global warming may shift summer weather patterns
Posted by Climate Central: Andrew Freedman on October 11th, 2012
Climate Central: By altering the heat balance between land and sea, manmade global warming may be altering summer weather patterns in the Northern Hemisphere, a new study found. The study, published on Sept. 30 in Nature Geoscience, shows that the sprawling high pressure areas that set up shop over the Western North Atlantic and North Pacific Oceans during the summer months have become larger and stronger during the past 40 years, and these trends are likely to continue during the next several decades as temperatures...