By Lucy Jordan 7 May 2013 BRASÍLIA, BRAZIL (The Rio Times) – The federal government said Monday it would not negotiate with indigenous groups which on Tuesday entered their sixth day of occupying the controversial Belo Monte dam construction site. In the inflammatory statement, the Secretariat General of the Presidency accused some indigenous leaders of […]
By MICHELLE FAUL7 May 2013 JOHANNESBURG (AP) – Scientists say a disease destroying entire crops of cassava has spread out of East Africa into the heart of the continent, is attacking plants as far south as Angola and now threatens to move west into Nigeria, the world’s biggest producer of the potato-like root that helps […]
TELESCOPE, Grenada (AP) – The old coastal road in this fishing village at the eastern edge of Grenada sits under a couple of feet of murky saltwater, which regularly surges past a hastily-erected breakwater of truck tires and bundles of driftwood intended to hold back the Atlantic Ocean. For Desmond Augustin and other fishermen living […]
By Joanna M. Foster 7 May 2013 (Takepart.com) – On the southern edge of Louisiana, there is almost as much water as land. You can’t drive to anyone’s house, you have to travel by boat, and sometimes there are hours of water between neighbors. It takes a special breed to make a home here, in […]
By Joe Wertz 6 May 2013 (NPR) – “Extreme” and “exceptional” drought persists throughout much of the state, especially in southwestern Oklahoma. Low reservoir levels have forced city officials in Altus to issue emergency water restrictions, and Oklahomans throughout the region are worried about the future. Associated Press reporter Sharon Cohen interviewed Kent Walker, a […]
By Dr. Jeff Masters3 May 2013 (wunderground.com) – The water content of the snowpack in the Southern Sierra Mountains of California, from San Joaquin through Kern and Owens, was 9% of average for the date on 2 May 2013 (and 7% of the average for April 1.) The snowpack is usually not this thin until […]
GLOUCESTER POINT, 5 May 2013 (Richmond Times-Dispatch) – For years, computer simulations have predicted that climate change will cause East Coast sea levels to rise at an increasingly rapid rate. In a 2010 study, Virginia Institute of Marine Science oceanographer John Boon looked at decades of tide-gauge readings for evidence of this ever-faster-rising water. Boon […]
By Alexander Zaitchik 5 May 2013 (Salon) – On the opening morning of the inaugural National Adaptation Forum, I was eating breakfast at a stand-up table in the exhibition hall when a mustachioed man of middle age plopped his cherry Danish next to my pile of conference literature, a mess of pamphlets and reports with […]
By Dr. Jeff Masters 3 May 2013 (wunderground.com) – A highly unusual jet stream pattern is bringing a bizarre combination of heavy May snows, flooding, extreme fire danger, and well below average severe thunderstorm activity to the U.S. A strong “blocking” high pressure system has set up over Greenland, blocking the normal west-to-east progression of […]
By Jeremy Hance 6 May 2013 (mongabay.com) – In the last four years, invading land speculators and peasants have destroyed 150,000 hectares (370,000 acres) of rainforest in Nicaragua’s Bosawás Biosphere Reserve, according to the Mayangna and Miskito indigenous peoples who call this forest home. Although Nicaragua recognized the land rights of the indigenous people in […]
