While it’s probably still too soon to celebrate, BP appears to finally be getting the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico under control. But many of the world’s greatest environmental catastrophes continue, with no end in sight. BY JOSHUA E. KEATING | JULY 16, 2010 Disaster: Oil spills Going since: Around 1966 Damage done: […]
Loss of sea ice is unlikely to enable Arctic waters to mop up more carbon dioxide from the air. By Hannah Hoag As climate scientists watched the Arctic’s sea-ice cover shrink year after year, they thought there might be a silver lining: an ice-free Arctic Ocean could soak up large amounts of CO2 from the […]
By Stephen Messenger, Porto Alegre, Brazil on 07.12.10 If you thought unscrupulous logging practices were the only threat to the world’s largest rainforest, then think again. According to a new study, one extremely powerful storm in 2005 resulted in the deaths of an estimated 441 million to 663 million trees along the Amazon basin […]
By Jeff Hecht 09 July 2010 12:20 With carbon dioxide levels close to our own, the Arctic of the Pliocene epoch may have warmed much more than previously thought – and the modern Arctic could go the same way. Ashley Ballantyne at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and colleagues analysed 4-million-year-old Pliocene peat samples from […]
In Indonesia, forests cover 463,000 square miles, which ranks behind only Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo in size. But rampant illegal logging has made those forests among the most endangered on the planet and has depressed timber prices worldwide. In the 1960s, about 82 percent of Indonesia was forested. By 1995, forest cover […]
If you think the stars of Pixar’s Finding Nemo had it rough, spare a thought for the plight of real clownfish. These popular fish may struggle to survive in oceans that are becoming enriched with carbon dioxide. High levels of CO2 dissolved in the water can muddle a clownfish’s sense of smell, preventing it from […]
Washington DC (SPX) Jul 06, 2010 As atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise, so does the pressure on the plant kingdom. The hope among policymakers, scientists and concerned citizens is that plants will absorb some of the extra CO2 and mitigate the impacts of climate change. For a few decades now, researchers have hypothesized about one […]
ScienceDaily (July 1, 2010) — The emission of the greenhouse gases methane and nitrous oxide has been structurally underestimated, as a result of the measuring methods used. This is the conclusion of the scientist Petra Kroon, who carried out research for the Energy research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) and Delft University of Technology […]
By Fayen Wong Thursday June 24, 2010 05:40:03 AM GMT PERTH, June 22 (Reuters) – Asia’s thermal coal imports are set to hit a record high next year, nearing 500 million tonnes, as economies in the region extend their recovery over the next 18 months, an official Australian forecast showed on Tuesday. Asian exporters, such […]
Time series of (top) atmospheric CO2 and surface ocean pCO2 and (bottom) surface ocean pH at the atmospheric Mauna Loa Observatory (MLO) on the island of Hawai‘i and Station ALOHA in the subtropical North Pacific north of Hawai‘i, 1988–2008. Doney, 2010, adapted from Dore et al, 2009. Ocean acidification is documented clearly from ocean time-series […]
