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Archive for April, 2013
Coelacanth genome informs land vertebrate evolution
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 17th, 2013
ScienceDaily: An historic fish, with an intriguing past, now has had its genome sequenced, providing a wealth of information on the genetic changes that accompanied the adaptation from an aquatic environment to land. A team of international researchers led by Chris Amemiya, PhD, Director of Molecular Genetics at the Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI) and Professor of Biology at the University of Washington, will publish "The African coelacanth genome provides insights into tetrapod evolution"...
Voice Your Concerns About Keystone XL Pipeline: Six Days Left to Comment
Posted by EcoWatch: May Boeve, 350.org on April 17th, 2013
EcoWatch: From the beginning, we`ve known that Keystone XL pipeline would be a climate disaster. We took James Hansen`s words seriously when he said that exploiting the tar sands would mean "essentially game over" for the climate.
Yesterday, a new report showed that it could be worse than we thought.
The report--the most comprehensive study of Keystone`s climate impacts yet--shows that the pipeline would carry 181 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, equal to 51 coal plants worth of carbon....
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Voice Your Concerns About Keystone XL Pipeline: Six Days Left to CommentLand ‘grabs’ expand to Europe as big business blocks entry to farming
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 17th, 2013
Guardian: Vast tracts of land in Europe are being "grabbed" by large companies, speculators, wealthy foreign buyers and pension funds in a similar way to in developing countries, according to a major new report.
Chinese corporations, Middle Eastern sovereign wealth and hedge funds, as well as Russian oligarchs and giant agribusiness have all stepped up land acquisitions in the past decade in a process that the report says is preventing ordinary people farming, and concentrating agriculture and land wealth...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Land ‘grabs’ expand to Europe as big business blocks entry to farmingKenya: Small farmers take the stage to sway climate justice debate
Posted by AlertNet: Megan Rowling on April 17th, 2013
AlertNet: In northern Kenya's impoverished and drought-prone Turkana region, a group called Kenya Climate Justice Women Champions is encouraging local women to grow hardy, nutritious crops like amaranth, sorghum and cassava, to improve their own health and that of their children. The vitamins and minerals from these foods means mothers are less likely to die in childbirth and can better breastfeed their babies. The micronutrients help kids avoid growing up stunted and give them the energy to attend school....
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Kenya: Small farmers take the stage to sway climate justice debateScientists Raise Questions on Drought and Climate
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 17th, 2013
Climate Central: When the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued a report on April 11 that seemed to exonerate global warming as a cause of last summer's historic drought, a reasonable person might conclude that global warming had been exonerated. After all, NOAA is a highly respected organization, and the report's lead author, meteorologist Martin Hoerling, is a widely respected scientist.
Judging by the reactions of other respected scientists, though, the idea that global warming is off the hook...
Half of Tamiflu prescriptions went unused during 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic, UK sewage study
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 17th, 2013
ScienceDaily: A new study concludes that approximately half of the prescriptions of Tamiflu during the 2009-10 influenza pandemic went unused in England. The unused medication represents approximately 600,000 courses of Tamiflu at a cost of around £7.8 million to the UK taxpayer. The novel scientific method used in the study could help measure and improve the effectiveness of future pandemic flu strategies.
The finding, published online in the open access scientific journal PLOS ONE, comes from the first study...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Half of Tamiflu prescriptions went unused during 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic, UK sewage studyOutdated Management, Drought Threaten Colorado River, Report Says
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 17th, 2013
Yale Environment 360: Drought, mismanagement, and over-exploitation of its waters have made the Colorado River -- the lifeblood of the arid Southwest and drinking water source for 36 million people -- among the most vulnerable rivers in the U.S., according to the group American Rivers. In its annual report on “America’s Most Endangered Rivers,” the organization placed the 1,400-mile Colorado at the top of the list of threatened rivers, saying the iconic river “is so dammed, diverted, and drained that it dries to a trickle...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Outdated Management, Drought Threaten Colorado River, Report SaysHow Science Can Predict Where You Stand on Keystone XL
Posted by Climate Desk: Chris Mooney on April 17th, 2013
Climate Desk: On February 17, more than 40,000 climate change activists--many of them quite young--rallied in Washington, DC, to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline, which will transport dirty tar sands oil from Canada across the heartland. The scornful response from media centrists was predictable. Joe Nocera of the New York Times, for one, quickly went on the attack. In a column titled "How Not to Fix Climate Change," he wrote that the strategy of activists "who have made the Keystone pipeline their line in the...
Judge halts military-backed dam assessment in Brazil’s Amazon
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 17th, 2013
Mongabay: A federal court in Brazil has suspended the use of military and police personnel during technical research on the controversial São Luíz do Tapajós Dam in the Brazilian Amazon. The military and police were brought in to stamp down protests from indigenous people living along the Tapajós River, but the judge decreed that impacted indigenous groups must give free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) before any furter studies can be done on the proposed dam. However, the decision is expected to be appealed....
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Judge halts military-backed dam assessment in Brazil’s AmazonExtinction debt suggests endangered species are doomed
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 17th, 2013
New Scientist: From dragonflies to bears, when it comes to lost species we ain't seen nothing yet.
Biologists are getting rattled about growing evidence of "extinction debt" - the idea that there is a delay of decades or even centuries between humans damaging ecosystems and the demise of species that live there.
In the largest extinction debt study to date, Stefan Dullinger of the University of Vienna, Austria, ranked 22 European countries according to the proportion of domestic species classed as endangered...