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Archive for the ‘Water Conservation’ Category
The miracle of Kolkata’s wetlands – and one man’s struggle save them
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 9th, 2016
Guardian: The trees on the streets of Kolkata in January are dusty, like neglected pot plants. At traffic lights, salesmen offer feather dusters for drivers to wipe their grimy cars. Shrubs are planted on the central reservation of the city’s new flyovers, surrounded by the implausible boasts on signs proclaiming a “clean and green” city. But the most frequently recurring poster, above almost every street corner, appeals for investors to “Come to Bengal – Ride the Growth”.
Kolkata, a famously cultured city...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on The miracle of Kolkata’s wetlands – and one man’s struggle save themIndian guru’s festival on Delhi floodplain riles greens, worries police
Posted by Reuters: Tommy Wilkes on March 9th, 2016
Reuters: Environmentalists are aghast at the hosting of a huge cultural festival on the floodplain of Delhi's main river that begins on Friday, warning that the event and its 3.5 million visitors will devastate the area's biodiversity.
The "World Culture Festival", organised by one of India's best-known spiritual gurus, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, spreads across 1,000 acres (400 hectares) on the banks of the Yamuna. It features a 7-acre stage for 35,000 musicians and dancers, newly built dirt tracks and 650...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Indian guru’s festival on Delhi floodplain riles greens, worries policeLocals eating radioactive food 30 years after Chernobyl: Greenpeace tests
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 9th, 2016
Reuters: Economic crises convulsing Russia, Ukraine and Belarus mean testing in areas contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear disaster has been cut or restricted, Greenpeace said, and people continue to eat and drink foods with dangerously high radiation levels.
According to scientific tests conducted on behalf of the environmental campaigning group, overall contamination from key isotopes such as caesium-137 and strontium-90 has fallen somewhat, but lingers, especially in places such as forests.
People...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Locals eating radioactive food 30 years after Chernobyl: Greenpeace testsClimate scientists step up search ‘holy grail’ million-year-old ice
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 9th, 2016
Guardian: The time capsule is ice that froze 1.5m years ago, capturing tiny bubbles of air, bringing a sample of the ancient atmosphere through time to the present day.
There are already dozens of ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland. They are tubes of ice, sometimes several kilometres long, drilled from the ice sheet, which reveal a timeline of what the atmosphere was like over hundreds of millennia.
Together those cores paint a detailed picture of the history of our atmosphere and climate. They’ve...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Climate scientists step up search ‘holy grail’ million-year-old iceUS lawmakers seek independent review coal cleanup subsidy
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 8th, 2016
Reuters: Federal auditors should examine a program that has allowed leading coal companies to lower cleanup insurance costs and could leave taxpayers on the hook if the miners declare bankruptcy, Democratic lawmakers said on Tuesday.
Coal companies are responsible for spent mines and they typically use cash, bonds or other financing to cover future cleanup costs.
But some of the largest producers use self bonds, which are not backed by concrete collateral, to insure such costs. Regulators worry those...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on US lawmakers seek independent review coal cleanup subsidyEastern US forests more vulnerable to drought than before 1800s
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 8th, 2016
ScienceDaily: Over thousands of years, most forests in the eastern United States evolved with frequent fire, which promoted tree species and ecosystems that were both fire and drought resistant. In little more than a century, humans upset that balance, suggest researchers, who blame the change, in part, on the well-meaning efforts of Smokey Bear. Since the 1930s, the composition of forests in the region has changed markedly, according to Marc Abrams, professor of forest ecology and physiology at Penn State. Drought-sensitive,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Eastern US forests more vulnerable to drought than before 1800sSea level rise threatens larger number of people than earlier estimated
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 8th, 2016
ScienceDaily: More people live close to sea coast than earlier estimated, assess researchers in a new study. These people are the most vulnerable to the rise of the sea level as well as to the increased number of floods and intensified storms. By using recent increased resolution datasets, Aalto University researchers estimate that 1.9 billion inhabitants, or 28% of the world's total population, live closer than 100 km from the coast in areas less than 100 meters above the present sea level.
By 2050 the...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Sea level rise threatens larger number of people than earlier estimatedEven Plant-Supporting Soil Fungi Affected by Global Warming, UCI Study Finds
Posted by Newswise: None Given on March 8th, 2016
Newswise: On a cool, fog-shrouded mountain of Costa Rica, University of California, Irvine biologist Caitlin Looby is finding that warming temperatures are becoming an increasing problem for one of the most ecologically diverse places on Earth. Seeking to determine how shifts in the tropical mountain cloud forest ecosystem would affect resident fungal species in Monteverde, Looby and fellow ecology & evolutionary biology graduate student Mia Maltz and their adviser, Kathleen Treseder, found that as the moist...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Even Plant-Supporting Soil Fungi Affected by Global Warming, UCI Study FindsBill McKibben Arrested + 56 Others Against Proposed Gas Storage Seneca Lake
Posted by EcoWatch: None Given on March 7th, 2016
EcoWatch: The fight over the fate of the Finger Lakes received national attention today when best-selling author, environmentalist and founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben, joined the opposition. McKibben, 55, was arrested this morning with 56 area residents as part of an ongoing civil disobedience campaign against proposed gas storage in Seneca Lake’s abandoned salt caverns.
This is a developing story, but at this time all arrestees have been released except for McKibben who is still in custody at the Schuyler...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Bill McKibben Arrested + 56 Others Against Proposed Gas Storage Seneca LakeWhy Leo DiCaprio is just another climate hypocrite
Posted by New York Post: Karol Markowicz on March 7th, 2016
New York Post: Like most A-list celebrities in Hollywood, Leonardo DiCaprio is frequently in the news.
There’s DiCaprio, in Cannes, France, on David Geffen’s mega yacht, alone. And there he is on a different yacht in St. Tropez with his blonde of the month.
There he is getting off a private plane in the celebrity uniform of sunglasses and hoodie. And there he is getting on one again.
And last week, there he was in Davos, Switzerland, lecturing us all and blaming corporate greed for causing global climate...