Archive for February, 2014

Emma Watson fell ill on Noah set after Darren Aronofsky banned bottled water

Guardian: Watson, who plays Noah's adopted daughter Ila in the big budget fantasy, said the Black Swan director banned plastic bottles in an effort to echo the film's environmental concerns. But with some shoots taking place from 4am, the actor often found herself "tired and delirious" on set and in need of rehydration. On one occasion Watson was so thirsty that she accidentally drank a mug of stagnant water. "Because of the storm, Douglas [Booth] and I ended up shooting most of our scenes between 4am and...

United Kingdom: Cameron vows visit every flood-hit part of country to ‘learn lessons’

Guardian: The prime minister, David Cameron, will aim to visit every flood-hit area around the country "to try and learn lessons" after speaking with residents in one of the country's most flooded towns. Cameron defended the government's handling of the crisis and hit back at criticism that he was visiting places such as Upton-upon-Severn in Worcestershire, where the army was deployed after the town was cut in two by floodwaters, only after the damage had already been done. Earlier, he described the...

UK storms & flooding set back rail repairs

Guardian: Weekend storms have caused further damage to the railways and set back repair schedules, but engineers have restored many of the train services most disrupted by floods on the Great Western main line. Despite the severe weather abating, rising groundwater has caused fresh problems, with a tunnel blocked by water on the main London to Brighton line. Network Rail said water levels in the tunnel at Patcham were 48.1 metres (157ft) above average, leaving tracks more than 1 metre under water. Rail...

UK weather: changing jet stream linked to flooding crisis

Blue and Green: The system of winds that is responsible for bringing weather to Northern Europe and North America may be changing, new research has found. A study suggests that the jet stream, a high-speed air current that carries weather around the globe, is taking a longer, more meandering route than usual. This means that weather patterns will remain the same in some areas for longer periods. If accurate, these findings could explain the recent stormy spell that has brought devastating flooding to many...

Russia: Sochi weathers warm temperatures but struggles with fog

Reuters: Organizers of the Sochi Olympics defied the odds when they battled unusually warm temperatures for a week but they were helpless against a winter fog that caused events to be postponed on Monday. The men's biathlon 15km mass start was called off for a second straight day and thick fog also forced the postponement of the men's snowboard cross competition. "I think it is actually quite ironic that the biggest issue we've had so far is due to winter fog and that's led to the biggest postponement...

Brazil land disputes spread as Indians take on wildcat miners

Reuters: As Brazil struggles to solve land disputes between Indians and farmers on the expanding frontier of its agricultural heartland, more tensions over forest and mineral resources are brewing in the remote Amazon. The government of President Dilma Rousseff gave eviction notices to hundreds of non-Indian families in the Awá-Guajá reserve in Maranhão state in January and plans to relocate them by April, with the help of the army if necessary, Indian affairs agency Funai says. The court order to clear...

United Kingdom: Miliband wades into climate change and flooding row

BusinessGreen: Labour leader Ed Miliband has made his boldest intervention to date in the long-running debate over the UK's climate policy, warning that floods have highlighted how the UK risks "sleepwalking into a national security crisis on climate change". In an interview with the Observer newspaper, conducted while he toured flood hit areas last week, Miliband argued that the country's political class urgently needs to rebuild the political consensus on climate policy that held sway in the run up to the...

Climate change: Tibet wettest in 2010 in 3,500 years

Indo-Asian News Service: Recent decades have likely been the wettest on record in the semi-arid Tibetan plateau, researchers say, warning that any further large-scale warming might lead to even greater rainfall in Tibet, the birthplace for Asia's great rivers. The wettest individual year reconstructed in 3,500 years in northeastern Tibet is 2010, say climate researchers at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in an online paper in US academic journal Proceedings of the National Academy...

Methane, friend and foe for climate change

Washington Post: A STUDY in the journal Science finds that the United States is putting a lot more methane, a potent contributor to global warming and the primary compound in natural gas, into the air than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has estimated. But the report also shows that the problem is fixable -- and not a reason to shut down the controversial extraction method known as fracking. Natural gas, as a transitional fuel, remains an important response to climate change. Methane is a powerful driver...

United Kingdom: On climate change, Ed Miliband must match his bold words with real action

Guardian: 'Either denial or dither on climate change will damage the country," says Ed Miliband, perhaps going a bit too heavy on the alliteration. The science, he reminds us, is clear, and he wants to somehow rebuild a national consensus. Time, then, for another "D" word: "decent" Tories and Liberal Democrats, he says, will be expected to muck in. He wants us to understand the true meaning of the recent floods and restore climate change to the prominence it enjoyed before the anti-climax of 2009's UN Copenhagen...