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Archive for December, 2012
Erratic Environment May Be Key to Human Evolution
Posted by LiveScience: Charles Choi on December 26th, 2012
LiveScience: At Olduvai Gorge, where excavations helped to confirm Africa was the cradle of humanity, scientists now find the landscape once fluctuated rapidly, likely guiding early human evolution.These findings suggest that key mental developments within the human lineage may have been linked with a highly variable environment, researchers added.
Olduvai Gorge is a ravine cut into the eastern margin of the Serengeti Plain in northern Tanzania that holds fossils of hominins -- members of the human lineage....
Indonesia: Paper giant breaks pledge to end rainforest logging in Sumatra
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 26th, 2012
Mongabay: Pulp and paper giant Asia Pacific Resources International Limited (APRIL) continues to destroy large areas of rainforests and peatlands despite a commitment to end natural forest logging by 2009, says a new report issued by a coalition of Indonesian environmental groups.
The Eyes on the Forest report [PDF] finds that APRIL and its suppliers cleared at least 140,000 hectares (346,000 acres) of natural forest between 2008 and 2011 in Riau, accounting for 27 percent of all forest loss in the province...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Indonesia: Paper giant breaks pledge to end rainforest logging in SumatraRestoring Democracy in the Fight Against Fracking
Posted by EcoWatch: Thomas Linzey, Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund on December 26th, 2012
EcoWatch: Same story. Different day.
People are threatened by an activity that will injure them, and they work overtime to pass a law that bans the activity.
An affected corporation--or industry association--then sues the municipality, contending that the community can’t prohibit what the state allows, and that the ban violates the “rights” of the corporation.
The upshot of these machinations is that the municipality then either repeals the ban or is bankrupted trying to defend it. Most likely, the...
Climate change may have driven evolution, scientists believe
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 26th, 2012
Telegraph: The early landscape shifted between woodland to grassland half a dozen times over 200,000 years, meaning man had to adapt to survive.
Experts from Penn State university say that this may have set the tone for the rapid evolution which then took place.
Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Clayton Magill said: "The landscape early humans were inhabiting transitioned rapidly back and forth between a closed woodland and an open grassland about five to six times during...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Climate change may have driven evolution, scientists believeSwitzerland: From Carbon Sink To Carbon Source, Bogs Lose Effectiveness Dues To Increasing Shrub Cover
Posted by redOrbit: Brett Smith on December 26th, 2012
RedOrbit: Bogs and mires are important ecosystems that also play an important role the storage of global atmospheric carbon emissions.
According to a study in Nature Climate Change, the peat mosses, which are found in boglands and drive the production of peat, are being outcompeted by vascular plants, resulting in bog degradation.
In the study, researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) closely observed four Swiss bog sites at different altitudes, from...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Switzerland: From Carbon Sink To Carbon Source, Bogs Lose Effectiveness Dues To Increasing Shrub CoverMississippi River water levels lowest in decades, threaten shipping
Posted by Chicago Tribune: Ryan Haggerty on December 26th, 2012
Chicago Tribune: Tim Cox was supposed to be steering an 800-foot string of barges through the twists and turns of the Mississippi River in southern Illinois last week, moving tons of grain and coal toward downstream ports.
Instead, Cox's towboat and about a half-dozen others spent nearly 15 hours sitting in the drought-starved river about 115 miles south of St. Louis.
The boats, each pushing thousands of tons of cargo, were forced to stop while crews dredged downstream in a desperate attempt to keep the shipping...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Mississippi River water levels lowest in decades, threaten shippingMississippi Receding Faster Than Expected, Shippers Say
Posted by Bloomberg: Jim Snyder on December 26th, 2012
Bloomberg: Water levels in the Mississippi River south of St. Louis are falling faster than anticipated, requiring more urgent action to keep the nation’s busiest waterway open, according to a group of shipping companies.
Debra Colbert, senior vice president of the Waterways Council Inc., said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers now projects river levels may fall to a point at which many tugboats can’t operate by Jan. 3 or Jan. 4. Previous estimates indicated that the river would remain navigable until at least...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Mississippi Receding Faster Than Expected, Shippers SayStorm brings tornadoes, white Christmas to parts of South
Posted by Reuters: Kaija Wilkinson on December 26th, 2012
Reuters: A major winter storm system swept through the southern United States on Tuesday, spawning tornadoes, including one that struck downtown Mobile, Alabama, and bringing a rare white Christmas to a number of states.
The National Weather Service said a tornado struck Mobile, a U.S. city with a population of about 200,000, at about 5 p.m. local time (2300 GMT). There were reports of damage to trees and widespread power outages, along with some structural damage.
"Right now our initial reports are...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Storm brings tornadoes, white Christmas to parts of SouthPark City Film series examines climate change with ‘Chasing Ice’
Posted by Park Record: None Given on December 26th, 2012
Park Record: When Katharine Wang became executive director of the Park City Film Series last month, she understood the organization wanted to elevate the level of dialog in the community by using film as that platform.
She reviewed the schedule and saw Jeff Orlowski's "Chasing Ice" would be screened Dec. 28 through Dec. 30.
The film is a documentary about National Geographic photographer James Balog who embarks on a quest to photograph climate change through multi-year, time-lapse photography.
The film,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Park City Film series examines climate change with ‘Chasing Ice’Texas Man Takes Last Stand Against Keystone XL Pipeline
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 25th, 2012
National Public Radio: An east Texas landowner was so determined to block the Keystone XL pipeline from coming through his forest that he took to his trees and built an elaborate network of treehouses eight stories above the ground.
"It popped into my head a long time ago, actually," says 45-year-old David Daniel. "If I had to climb my butt on top of a tree and sit there, I would. It started with that."
It turned out to be Daniel's last stand in a long battle against the Keystone XL, a pipeline project that would...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Texas Man Takes Last Stand Against Keystone XL Pipeline