Impacts of climate change coming faster and sooner: UNEP

  Washington/Nairobi, 24 September 2009 -The pace and scale of climate change may now be outstripping even the most sobering predictions of the last report of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC). An analysis of the very latest, peer-reviewed science indicates that many predictions at the upper end of the IPCC’s forecasts are becoming […]

Dust over Eastern Australia viewed from orbit

A wall of dust stretched from northern Queensland to the southern tip of eastern Australia on the morning of September 23, 2009, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image. The dust is thick enough that the land beneath it is not visible. The storm, the worst in 70 […]

Ancient glaciers are disappearing faster than ever

  By Michael McCarthy environment editor Melting ice is pouring off Greenland and Antarctica into the sea far faster than was previously realised because of global warming, new scientific research reveals today. The accelerating loss from the world’s two great land-based ice sheets means a rise in sea levels is likely to happen even more […]

Graph of the Day: Louisiana Land Loss, 1932-2050

Coastal Louisiana has lost an average of 34 square miles of land, primarily marsh, per year for the last 50 years. From 1932 to 2000, coastal Louisiana lost 1,900 square miles of land, roughly an area the size of the state of Delaware. If nothing more is done to stop this land loss, Louisiana could […]

Dust storm blankets Sydney as drought bites

  By Michael Perry SYDNEY (Reuters) – A huge outback dust storm swept eastern Australia and blanketed Sydney on Wednesday, disrupting transport, forcing people indoors and stripping thousands of tonnes of valuable farmland topsoil. The dust blacked out the outback town of Broken Hill on Tuesday, forcing a zinc mine to shut down, and swept […]

Natural disasters displacing millions: U.N. study

LONDON (Reuters) – Floods, storms, drought and other climate-related natural disasters drove 20 million people from their homes last year, nearly four times as many as were displaced by conflicts, a new U.N. report said Tuesday. The study tried to quantify for the first time the number of people forced to flee their homes because […]

Indonesia carbon emissions to rise 50% by 2030

A report released by the Indonesian government shows the country is the world’s third largest greenhouse gas emitter, largely as a result of the destruction of rainforests and carbon-dense peatlands. Indonesia accounts for 8 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. The ‘National Council on Climate Change’ report reveals that degradation and destruction of peatlands (45 […]

Islands warn of extinction at UN climate week

New York (AFP) Sept 21, 2009 – As world leaders gather for key climate talks here, small island nations Monday warned they were running out of time with rising seas threatening to wipe them off the map. Spread across the Earth’s oceans, the planet’s tiniest members grouped together in the Alliance of Small Islands States […]

Somalia faces worst food crisis in 18 years: UN

Rome (AFP) Sept 21, 2009 – Drought, conflict and displacement are causing the worst humanitarian crisis in war-torn Somalia in 18 years, the UN food agency warned Monday. Some 3.6 million people, about half the Somali population, need emergency aid including 1.3 million people displaced by fighting in the Horn of Africa country, the Food […]

Graph of the Day: Population Change of Athabasca River Caribou, 1993-2004

Woodland caribou is one of the species likely to be extirpated from regions subjected to Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) development. Caribou declines across Alberta have been correlated with the level of industrial development within their ranges.43 In the past ten years, the East Side Athabasca River caribou herd, whose range overlaps much of the […]

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