RSS Feed
Archive for May, 2013
Climate Change vs Terrorism and the Costs of Inaction
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 19th, 2013
Energy Collective: At the turn of this century drought set in in the American Southwest, which persists to this day.
Without water, all living things cease to exist.
Even as the Southwest and other parts of the planet are parched by a warming planet, other parts are saturated by moisture that originally was evaporated from overheating dry latitudes and the oceans.
The resultant storms and flooding also extinguishes lives.
September 11, 2001, four passenger airliners carrying 227 passengers and crew were...
Tar sands exploitation would be game over climate, warns leading scientist
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 19th, 2013
Guardian: Major international oil companies are buying off governments, according to the world's most prominent climate scientist, Prof James Hansen. During a visit to London, he accused the Canadian government of acting as the industry's tar sands salesman and "holding a club" over the UK and European nations to accept its "dirty" oil.
"Oil from tar sands makes sense only for a small number of people who are making a lot of money from that product," he said in an interview with the Guardian. "It doesn't...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Tar sands exploitation would be game over climate, warns leading scientistRebuilding the coastline, but at what cost?
Posted by New York Times: Jenny Anderson on May 19th, 2013
New York Times: When a handful of retired homeowners from Osborn Island in New Jersey gathered last month to discuss post-Hurricane Sandy rebuilding and environmental protection, L. Stanton Hales Jr., a conservationist, could not have been clearer about the risks they faced. “I said, look people, you built on a marsh island, it’s oxidizing under your feet — it’s shrinking — and that exacerbates the sea level rise,” said Dr. Hales, director of the Barnegat Bay Partnership, an estuary program financed by the Environmental...
Forget pipelines – Canada must prepare for a post-carbon world
Posted by Globe and Mail: Danny Harvey on May 19th, 2013
Globe and Mail: The expansion of oil-sands operations and various pipeline proposals to get bitumen to market have incraseingly been topics of conversation in Canada, from debates in the House of Commons to discussions around the dinner table. Much of the discussion has focused around tangible things that we can see – devastation of the Alberta landscape from surface mining operations, pollution of downstream rivers, the threat of pipeline spills, and the danger of accidents involving supertankers along the British...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Forget pipelines – Canada must prepare for a post-carbon worldClouds ‘Cool Earth Less Than Once Thought’
Posted by Climate News Network: Paul Brown on May 19th, 2013
Climate News Network: Extra cloud cover caused by emissions of industrial pollutants is known to reduce the effects of global warming, but its impact in reducing temperatures has been over-estimated in the climate models, new research has found.
This is particularly significant for China and India, because it has been believed that these two giant countries would be partly shielded from the effects of climate change by their appalling industrial pollution. The Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany believes...
Fluoridated water? Not all Portlanders will drink to that
Posted by LA Times: Kim Murphy on May 18th, 2013
LA Times: Proponents of fluoridating Portland's water supply had no trouble getting the local Urban League on board. Here in the biggest city in the country that still doesn't treat its water to prevent tooth decay, studies show that low-income children and kids of color have been hit hardest by untreated cavities.
"Do we really want our children to be suffering from something we could prevent? Why would we not want to be involved?" said Jerome Brooks, an Urban League advocacy contractor who has helped...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Fluoridated water? Not all Portlanders will drink to thatInvasive species: ‘away-field advantage’ weaker than ecologists thought
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 18th, 2013
ScienceDaily: For decades, ecologists have assumed the worst invasive species -- such as brown tree snakes and kudzu -- have an "away-field advantage." They succeed because they do better in their new territories than they do at home. A new study led by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center reveals that this fundamental assumption is not nearly as common as people might think.
The away-field advantage hypothesis hinges on this idea: Successful invaders do better in a new place because the environment...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Invasive species: ‘away-field advantage’ weaker than ecologists thoughtSyria: Without Water, Revolution
Posted by New York Times: Thomas L. Friedman on May 18th, 2013
New York Times: I just spent a day in this northeast Syrian town. It was terrifying — much more so than I anticipated — but not because we were threatened in any way by the Free Syrian Army soldiers who took us around or by the Islamist Jabhet al-Nusra fighters who stayed hidden in the shadows. It was the local school that shook me up. As we were driving back to the Turkish border, I noticed a school and asked the driver to turn around so I could explore it. It was empty — of students. But war refugees had occupied...
Study quantifies sea level rise from melting glaciers
Posted by Summit Voice: None Given on May 18th, 2013
Summit Voice: The world`s major ice sheets -- on Greenland and Antarctica -- haven`t really started a major meltdown yet. But the rest of the world`s glacial regions have been losing ice at a rate of about 260 billion metric tons annually, raising sea level by about 0.03 inches per year -- about a third of the observed sea level rise.
The biggest ice losses are happening in Arctic Canada, Alaska, coastal Greenland, the southern Andes and the Himalaya. Combined, the areas contribute as much to sea level rise...
Experts: Increased rate of weather disasters in Ohio linked to global warming
Posted by Central Oho: Benjamin Lanka on May 18th, 2013
Central Oho: Weather disasters aren’t just a big deal in the South or along the coasts, according to a new report from Environment Ohio. They also occur with some frequency in Ohio.
The report, “In the Path of the Storm,” stated seven of 10 Ohioans suffered from a weather disaster in the past six years. The report compiled by the Federal Emergency Management Agency designated disasters in each of Ohio’s counties, excluding tornadoes, which haven’t been linked to global warming.
Julian Boggs, state policy...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Experts: Increased rate of weather disasters in Ohio linked to global warming