Climate change: Africa is most affected

By Catherine Mwesigwa Kizza30 November 2012 Meeting after meeting, 18 times later, the world’s climate experts are at it once again in Doha, Qatar, to discuss climate change, but the problem continues unabated. “Climate change is the biggest challenge to humanity this century,” says Fanuel Tolo, the director of programmes of Climate Network Africa. He […]

UN climate boss: No support for tough climate deal

By By KARL RITTER30 Nov 2012 DOHA, Qatar (AP) – The United Nations climate chief is urging people not to look solely to their governments to make tough decisions to slow global warming, and instead to consider their own role in solving the problem. Approaching the half-way point of two-week climate talks in Doha, Christiana […]

Rising acidity levels threaten ocean food chain, study finds

26 November 2012 (SMH) – The shells of some marine snails in the seas around Antarctica are dissolving as the water becomes more acidic, threatening the food chain, a study published in the journal Nature Geoscience said on Sunday. The tiny snails, known as ‘‘sea butterflies’’, live in the seas around Antarctica and are left […]

Photos reveal destruction of Cameroon rainforest for palm oil

By Jeremy Hance26 November 2012 (mongabay.com) – Newly released photos by Greenpeace show the dramatic destruction of tropical forest in Cameroon for an oil palm plantation operated by SG Sustainable Oils Cameroon (SGSOC), a subsidiary of the U.S. company Herakles Farm. The agriculture company is planning to convert 73,000 hectares to palm oil plantations on […]

Melting permafrost ‘will double carbon and nitrogen levels in the atmosphere’

By Damien Gayle26 November 2012 As much as 44 billion tons of nitrogen and 850 billion tons of carbon could be released into the environment as permafrost thaws over the next century, U.S. government experts warn. The release of carbon and nitrogen in permafrost could make global warming much worse and threaten delicate water systems […]

90 percent of oil palm plantations came at expense of forest in Kalimantan

By Jeremy Hance8 October 2012 (mongabay.com) – From 1990 to 2010 almost all palm oil expansion in Kalimantan came at the expense of forest cover, according to the most detailed look yet at the oil palm industry in the Indonesian state, published in Nature: Climate Change. Palm oil plantations now cover 31,640 square kilometers of […]

Graph of the Day: Oceanic pH, 24 million years BP – Present

The oceans absorb large amounts of carbon dioxide emissions each day. As a result, their pH has declined by 30 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. This rapid change in ocean chemistry, called ocean acidification, is already threatening habitats like coral reefs, and the future of shellfish like oysters, clams, and mussels is […]

President Obama won the third presidential debate, but what about climate change?

By Stephen Stromberg23 October 2012 In their last presidential debate Monday night, the two presidential candidates began with Libya and stayed in the Islamic world for almost the entire evening. They talked about “divorcing” Pakistan, arming Syrian rebels and rallying allies against Iran. In this exchange, Romney offered few serious counterproposals to Obama’s current policy, […]

More greenhouse gas per grain of rice

22 October 2012 (Trinity College Dublin) – More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and rising temperatures cause rice agriculture to release more of the potent greenhouse gas methane (CH4) for each kilogram of rice it produces, new research published recently in the online edition of Nature Climate Change reveals. “Our results show that rice agriculture […]

Romney and Obama ignore coal’s dark side

By the Editors 17 October 2012 Mitt Romney and Barack Obama have traded barbs over coal in both their debates, each accusing the other of failing to champion the fuel. It’s a shame that neither U.S. presidential candidate acknowledges the difficult economic reality coal now faces, or mentions that this form of power still produces […]

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