Blogging the End of the World™
By SYLVIA THOMPSON FORGET PEAK OIL. Forget climate change. Peak water is where it’s at, according to Scottish journalist and broadcaster, Alexander Bell, who has just written a fascinating book, Peak Water (Luath Press, Scotland). “It’s the coming issue of our age,” says Bell. “Civilisation is thirsty. It has never stopped to think about what […]
By Andrew BuncombeFriday, 22 January 2010 At times, the moonscape land of Ladakh can appear as dry as a desert. In this most northerly part of India, tucked high in the Himalayas, there is virtually no rainfall and almost 75 per cent of the local farmers rely on meltwater from the glaciers to irrigate their […]
By Michael McCarthy, Environment EditorSaturday, 23 January 2010 One of Britain’s most attractive songbirds has vanished from most of southern England in a dramatic population decline, new research shows. The whinchat is a summer visitor from Africa with an orange breast and a prominent white eyestripe. It was widely scattered across the country 20 years […]
Threat to native species from alien invaders is growing and posing one of the greatest threats to wildlife around the world, conservationists say By Press Associationwww.guardian.co.uk, Friday 22 January 2010 11.14 GMT Hundreds of invasive species – from rats to diseases – are posing one of the greatest threats to wildlife around the world, conservationists […]
In the 66-month period analyzed, the water stored in the combined Sacramento and San Joaquin Basin decreased by more than 31 cubic kilometers, or nearly the volume of Lake Mead. Nearly two-thirds of this came from changes in groundwater storage, primarily from the Central Valley. NASA Data Reveal Major Groundwater Loss in California’s Heartland Technorati […]
By Staff WritersNairobi (AFP) Jan 20, 2010 The livelihood of hundreds of thousands of Kenyans around the world’s largest desert lake will be wrecked by an Ethiopian dam on the lake’s main tributary, conservationists said Wednesday. “The Ethiopian dam project is going to bring nothing but tragedy and harm to Kenya,” warned renowned archeologist and […]
A sweeping 15-year study of pH levels in the Pacific Ocean confirmed that upper reaches of the sea are becoming increasingly more acidic. By Sandi Doughton, Seattle Times science reporter The most extensive survey of pH levels in the Pacific Ocean confirms what spot measurements have suggested: From Hawaii to Alaska, the upper reaches of […]
On Thinner Ice Technorati Tags: glacier,deglaciation,Himalayas,Asia,global warming,climate change
GRACE measures groundwater level variations, including groundwater depletion in northwest India. Since 2002, groundwater has been lost from that region at a rate of 17.7 km3 per year, largely due to pumping for irrigation. GRACE Can Monitor Human-induced Groundwater Depletion Technorati Tags: freshwater depletion,drought,agriculture,India,GRACE
Once plentiful eel disappears from London’s river By Paul Eccleston, Jan 21st 2010 The eel is fast disappearing from London’s River Thames and may soon be gone completely. New research by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) shows that numbers have crashed by 97 per cent in the past five years. In 2005 1500 eels […]
