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Archive for December, 2013
Why climate change threatens Peru’s poverty reduction mission
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 14th, 2013
Guardian: The Peruvian Amazon became a net emitter of carbon dioxide rather than oxygen for the first time in 2012, according to the UN Development Programme's (UNDP) latest human development country report.
The reversal of the rainforest's usual role as a carbon sink is a direct result of the droughts in the western Amazon in 2005 and 2010 – and a stark reminder, say scientists, that this mega-biodiverse country is highly vulnerable to climate change.
Peru, which has four of the five geographical areas...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Why climate change threatens Peru’s poverty reduction missionIndia: Brahmaputra, Teesta count the cost of climate change
Posted by Dhaka Tribune: None Given on December 14th, 2013
Dhaka Tribune: The mighty rivers of Brahmaputra and Teesta have dried up at an alarming rate and almost turned into crop fields because of the adverse impacts of climate change.
The Brahmaputra has now the lowest water flow in some narrower channels that caused emergence of hundreds of shoals, hampering navigability throughout its courses both in the up and down stream.
At the same time, the Teesta has mostly dried up allowing its vast bed to wear a deserted look with only sand.
Hundreds of landless riverside...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on India: Brahmaputra, Teesta count the cost of climate changeBig insurers are brought into discussions on how to protect NYC against future storms
Posted by ClimateWire: Evan Lehmann on December 14th, 2013
ClimateWire: Some of the world's leading insurance companies assembled in a room on Wall Street this fall to hear the opening pitch for a massive undertaking, constructing a chain of coastal barriers to defend the New York City region from future flooding.
The ambitious vision differs from the $14 billion system completed recently by the federal government to protect New Orleans from hurricanes that might mimic Katrina. The East Coast project, a potential network of walls, gates and dunes, would be financed...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Big insurers are brought into discussions on how to protect NYC against future stormsThe tortoise and the drought
Posted by LA Times: Louis Sahagun on December 14th, 2013
LA Times: In recent years, California's Agassiz's desert tortoise population has been decimated by shootings, residential and commercial development, vehicle traffic, respiratory disease and predation by ravens, dogs and coyotes.
Now, dwindling populations of the reptiles with scruffy carapaces and skin as tough as rhino hide are facing an even greater threat: longer droughts spurred by climate change in their Sonoran Desert kingdom of arroyos and burrows, according to a new U.S. Geological Survey study....
Keystone XL’s true effect on emissions is Obama’s main issue
Posted by LA Times: Neela Banerjee on December 14th, 2013
LA Times: Can the Keystone XL pipeline be built without significantly worsening greenhouse gas emissions and climate change? For President Obama, that is the main criterion for granting a federal permit to allow the pipeline to cross from southern Alberta into the United States.
Canadian authorities and the oil industry say measures already in place or under consideration to cut greenhouse gases ensure that Keystone XL can pass that test.
"We absolutely think we can maintain growth in oil and gas, and...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Keystone XL’s true effect on emissions is Obama’s main issueCanada: Bitumen negates climate change efforts
Posted by Leader Post: Sheila Pratt on December 14th, 2013
Leader Post: It's Alberta's biggest environmental battle - to reduce rising greenhouse gases from the oilsands - and former oil executive Eric Newell is running a global search for some silver bullets.
Newell knows it's a race against time.
As the U.S. and other industrialized countries are reducing carbon emissions to combat global warming, Alberta's greenhouse gas emissions just keep rising.
Those emissions are a major reason why Canada won't meet its international target for 2020, a 17 per cent reduction...
Australian greenhouse gases barely hit by carbon price
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 14th, 2013
Sydney Morning Herald: Australia's greenhouse gas emissions were little changed in the first year of the carbon price, as emissions from sectors only partly covered by the tax nullified most of the cuts.
Emissions for the 12 months to June totalled 545.9 million tonnes, 300,000 tonnes lower than a year earlier, the government's National Greenhouse Gas Inventory figures say.
Emissions reductions from power plants fell, accelerating to an annual drop of 6.3 per cent - or cutting 12.2 million tonnes - from a 6.1 per...
Weather info project aims to help African farmers adapt
Posted by Reuters: Kizito Makoye on December 14th, 2013
Reuters: Farmers facing long periods of dry weather and floods have expressed hope that a new climate change adaptation initiative being rolled out in Tanzania and Malawi will spell an end to dismal crop yields.
The Climate Services Adaptation Programme launched in November 2013 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) presents a window of opportunity for African farmers to use scientific knowledge to battle weather challenges.
With $10 million in funding pledged by Norway, the pilot project is...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Weather info project aims to help African farmers adaptMore than 4,000 evacuated from Gaza ‘disaster area’ floods
Posted by Reuters: Nidal al-Mughrabi on December 14th, 2013
Reuters: More than 4,000 people have been evacuated from flood-damaged homes in northern Gaza in what the United Nations has called "a disaster area", officials said on Saturday.
Flooding has been so severe that access to many homes is by rowing boat and water is reported to be two meters (more than six feet) high in some places. Many people have been trapped inside inundated homes by rising waters.
The flooding is the result of four days of torrential rains.
"Large swathes of northern Gaza are a...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on More than 4,000 evacuated from Gaza ‘disaster area’ floodsFracking hell: what it’s really like to live next to a shale gas well
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 14th, 2013
Guardian: Veronica Kronvall can, even now, remember how excited she felt about buying her house in 2007. It was the first home she had ever owned and, to celebrate, her aunt fitted out the kitchen in Kronvall's favourite colour, purple: everything from microwave to mixing bowls. A cousin took pictures of her lying on the floor of the room that would become her bedroom. She planted roses and told herself she would learn how to garden.
What Kronvall did not imagine at the time – even here in north Texas,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Fracking hell: what it’s really like to live next to a shale gas well