BBC video: Russia permafrost melt – ‘We have no opportunity to stop it’

Russian scientists travel to Siberia to measure output of methane from permafrost lakes. BBC goes along. “It’s taking place now, and we are too late, to my mind, for decision making. This process has started, and we have no opportunity to stop it. We have only a time to delay it, to make the results […]

World running out of new places to fish: study

By Allan Dowd; editing by Peter GallowayThu Dec 2, 2010 5:50pm EST VANCOUVER (Reuters) – The world’s fishing industry is fast running out of new ocean fishing grounds to exploit as it depletes existing areas through unsustainable harvesting practices, according to a study published Thursday. Expansion into unexploited fishing grounds allowed global catches to increase […]

Will dumping mining waste in peatlands help mitigate climate change?

www.mongabay.comDecember 02, 2010 Indonesia’s national climate change strategy document includes text suggesting that dumping mining waste in peatlands could be used as an approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. According to Indonesia’s National Council on Climate Change, degradation of peatlands accounted for 41 percent of Indonesia’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2005, making the sector the […]

Latin America suffers intense and deadly rainy season

BOGOTA, Colombia, November 30, 2010 (ENS) – The government of Colombia has declared a state of national catastrophe due to the intense rains that have inundated much of the country, causing more than 160 deaths and affecting more than 1.4 million people. This declaration, which applies to 28 of Colombia’s 32 departments, allows the country […]

Deep-water dive reveals spilled oil on Gulf floor

  By Richard HarrisNovember 29, 2010 When the BP oil well blew out earlier this year, the 4 million barrels that flowed into the sea didn’t simply vanish. There’s growing evidence that a good portion of it sunk to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, where some of it remains. To get to the […]

2010 to be among three warmest years, U.N. says

By Alister Doyle and Timothy Gardner; editing by Philip BarbaraThu Dec 2, 2010 1:02pm EST CANCUN, Mexico (Reuters) – This year is on course to be among the top three warmest since records began in 1850, and the past decade was the warmest, in a new sign of man-made climate change, the United Nations said […]

Desdemona at 2: The Environmentalist’s Paradox

Of the many important results published during Desdemona’s second year of blogging, one stood out: a BioScience paper titled “Untangling the Environmentalist’s Paradox: Why Is Human Well-being Increasing as Ecosystem Services Degrade?” This question is central to the Desdemona Thesis.  Essentially, the authors of this paper (Ciara Raudsepp-Hearne, et al.) challenge us to reconcile the […]

Andes: Water conflicts, growing deserts, shrinking rivers, extreme temperatures, and spreading diseases

By John Vidal, www.guardian.co.uk Friday 26 November 2010 16.52 GMT Last month I went on an extraordinary, epic journey through the Andes mountains of Peru and Ecuador. The aim was to record the stories of the largely hidden people on the frontline of climate change, and see how communities and governments are trying to adapt. […]

Africa to fall short on water Millennium Goals: UN

By Staff WritersNov 26, 2010 Nairobi (AFP) – Most African countries will fail to attain the United Nation’s Millennium Goals on access to water and sanitation, the world body’s environment agency said on Friday. “Only eight countries in Africa are expected to attain the MDG target of reducing by half the proportion of the population […]

Rising sea threatens coastal Norfolk: ‘No one who has a house here is a skeptic’

By LESLIE KAUFMANNovember 25, 2010 NORFOLK, Va. — In this section of the Larchmont neighborhood, built in a sharp “u” around a bay off the Lafayette River, residents pay close attention to the lunar calendar, much as other suburbanites might attend to the daily flow of commuter traffic. If the moon is going to be […]

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