Archive for June 29th, 2014

Kenya Carbon Credit Tree Protection Program to Grow Fivefold

Bloomberg: Wildlife Works Carbon LLC, a U.S.- based business selling carbon credits in the voluntary market generated by forest conservation, plans to expand fivefold the biodiversity-rich areas it protects in Kenya. Disappearing forests deprive the East African economy of as much as $75 million of income a year, about five times the amount the country earns from forestry and logging, the United Nations Environment Programme and state-run Kenya Forest Service said in 2012. Deforestation has also disrupted...

Scientists find evidence of long-term warming inside Greenland’s ice sheet

Alaska Dispatch: In the mid-20th century, when Carl Benson was traveling Greenland gathering data he would use to write his Ph.D. thesis on the temperature, structure and composition of the hard-packed snow that covers that island, conditions deep beneath the surface were fairly consistent: white, firm, cold and dry. “If you could imagine cutting a wall of Styrofoam, that’s what it was like,” said Benson, now a professor emeritus with the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Geophysical Institute. Related: How dust...

Hotter and larger tropics more vulnerable to climate change

Channel NewsAsia: Covering some 130 countries and territories around the Equator and situated between the Tropic of Cancer in the north and the Tropic of Capricorn in the south -- the tropics is expanding as climate change heats up the earth, turning more and more countries into a hot zone. It is a growing concern and Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has called for people to be better carers of the environment as she launched the State of the Tropics Report in Myanmar. She said: "I'd like this report to be...

Lagos govt warns residents stop building structure on drainage

WorldStage: Lagos State Government has debunked reports that there will be no flood in the state, warning residents to stop building structures on drainage channels. State Commissioner for the Environment, Mr. Tunji Bello, gave the warning at the weekend said the state government will no-longer tolerate acts that tend to frustrate government's efforts aimed at solving problem of flooding. Bello who harped flood control mechanism of the government said, "it is not for us as a government to say that there...

Study: Salamanders in the Appalachians are smaller

Associated Press: Some scientists suggest it could be still another sign of climate change: Salamanders in the Appalachian Mountains are getting smaller, they say, because in a drier, warmer climate, the little cold-blooded creatures use more energy to stay alive. "As their temperature rises, all their physiological rates increase," said Michael Sears, a Clemson University biologist. "All else being equal, that means there is less energy for growth." In a study earlier this year in the journal Global Change...

Coastal Warning Issued for Vital Atlantic Habitats

Climate News Network: Rising temperatures, increasingly acidic seas and human destruction will drastically change the nature of the coastal seas of the north-east Atlantic over the next century, scientists predict. According to new research in the journal Ecology and Evolution, it will completely alter the forests of kelp and the maerl beds of coralline algae that serve as shelter and nurseries for baby cod and juvenile scallops. These are some of the most productive habitats on Earth -- habitats that also soak up...