Weak climate deal would jeopardize new development goals – ‘Zero poverty and zero emissions within a generation’

By Laurie Goering; editing by Megan Rowling15 May 2015 LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – The world’s chances of achieving new international development goals will be slim without more ambitious action to curb climate change, researchers said. Pakistan, for example, is unlikely to be able to end poverty by 2030 if accelerating climate change brings worse […]

Video: Forest fire in Spain – Portugal and Spain bake in record heat wave

Incendio en una zona montañosa de Alicante By HAROLD HECKLE15 May 2015 MADRID (Associated Press) – Sunny Spain and Portugal are seeing record high temperatures for May, hitting levels normally only reached in mid-summer. Up to 20 Spanish cities have been hit by scorching temperatures and several regional governments are worried about the effects the […]

Graph of the Day: Global increase in herbicide-resistant weeds, 1957-2015

15 April 2015 (weedscience.org) – The International Survey of Herbicide Resistant Weeds is a collaborative effort between weed scientists in over 80 countries.  Our main aim is to maintain scientific accuracy in the reporting of herbicide resistant weeds globally.  This collaborative effort is supported by government, academic, and industry weed scientists worldwide.  This project is […]

California looks to Australia for drought advice – ‘Their advice to us was: Conserve, conserve, conserve early to avoid pain later on’

By Chris Nichols9 May 2015 SACRAMENTO (UT San Diego) – Severe dry spells aren’t unique to California. Just ask Australia, where the Millennium Drought stretched from 1997 to 2009, devastating the southeastern portion of the country and forever changing how it uses water. For months now, water experts in California have asked their counterparts Down […]

English wine’s record year: Production soars to 6.3 million bottles as global warming allows Chardonnay and pinot noir grapes to grow

By Richard Marsden11 May 2015 (Daily Mail) – English wine production soared to a record 6.3 million bottles last year – buoyed by climate change. Vintners say similar conditions now exist in England to those in parts of France ten to 20 years ago, allowing types of grapes such as chardonnay and pinot noir – […]

Forbidden data: Wyoming just criminalized citizen science – First state to enact a law so expansive that it criminalizes taking pictures on public land

By Justin Pidot 11 May 2015 (Slate) – Imagine visiting Yellowstone this summer. You wake up before dawn to take a picture of the sunrise over the mists emanating from Yellowstone hot springs. A thunderhead towers above the rising sun, and the picture turns out beautifully. You submit the photo to a contest sponsored by […]

Graph of the Day: Global food production projected to the year 2050

By R. Quentin Grafton, John Williams, Qiang Jiang8 March 2015 (Food Security) – This graph shows a set of projections of surplus or deficit in food production (billions kcalories) for eight scenarios for dryland and irrigated cropping based on 19 countries. In all scenarios we adopted an irrigation regime of 200 mm of water. In […]

Afghanistan has 400,000 football fields worth of opium – UN estimates Afghan opium cultivation increased by 7 percent in 2014

By Lucy Westcott 11 May 2015 (Newsweek) – Afghanistan has the equivalent of 400,000 football fields of opium fields, despite significant efforts and money spent by the United States on curbing the development of the country’s drug supply. The country’s enormous drug reserve is one of several issues holding back the U.S.’s Afghanistan reconstruction efforts, […]

Iran drought: The empty river of life – ‘We live in the dust’

By Thomas Erdbrink5 May 2015 TEHRAN (The New York Times) – Every day, when I walk to our supermarket in the western part of Tehran to buy the groceries my wife tells me to get, I pass a long row of plane trees, neatly planted decades ago according to the design of ambitious city planners. […]

Graph of the Day: Growth in agricultural groundwater use in selected countries, 1940-2010

20 March 2015 (UNESCO) – Any consideration of the quality and quantity of available water supplies in the region must examine groundwater, which is critical to several economic sectors. Experts estimate that groundwater irrigation contributes US$10 to US$12 billion per year to the Asian economy. When also including earnings from groundwater sales for irrigation, that […]

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