Beijing to melt snow to address water shortage

By Staff WritersNov 12, 2010 Beijing (AFP) Nov 12, 2010 – Beijing will collect and melt snow this winter in a bid to quench the water shortage that has plagued the Chinese capital for years, state media reported Friday. Two vehicles with high-powered heaters capable of processing around 100 cubic metres (3,500 cubic feet) of […]

China’s dream for rare earths rests on grim costs

By Chris Buckley, with additional reporting by David Gray in Baotou and Sabrina Mao in Beijing; editing by Ken Wills and Jonathan ThatcherWed Nov 3, 2010 2:22am EDT BAOTOU China (Reuters) – China’s quest for a green future built on rare earths metals seems a world away from Ren Limin as he casts lumps of […]

China’s soaring demand for luxury wood fuels destruction of Madagascar’s forests

By Staff WritersNagoya, Japan (UPI) Oct 26, 2010 China’s soaring demand for luxury wood furniture is fueling the destruction of Madagascar’s forests, says a new report launched Tuesday at the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity meeting in Nagoya, Japan. The report from Global Witness and the Environmental Investigation Agency shows that about 98 percent of […]

Image of the Day: Smog over China, 8 October 2010

Caption by Michael Carlowicz, with interpretation from Nickolay Krotkov.October 14, 2010 In early October 2010, a high-pressure weather system settled in over eastern China, and air pollution began to accumulate locally for nearly a week. By October 9 and 10, China’s National Environmental Monitoring Center declared air quality “poor” to “hazardous” around Beijing and in […]

Australia oil spills are ‘inevitable,’ report on coal ship grounding says

By James PatonOct 5, 2010 8:16 PM PT Future oil spills off the coast of Australia’s Queensland state are “inevitable” as ship traffic increases, according to a report analyzing the April grounding of a Chinese coal carrier on the Great Barrier Reef. The incident involving the vessel Shen Neng 1 “highlights the vulnerability of Queensland’s […]

China water diversion mega-project poses risks

[Desdemona remembers when it was the Martians who were building desperate canal mega-projects to save their world…] Beijing (UPI) Sep 30, 2010 – China’s $62 billion South-North Water Transfer Project is forcing the relocation of 330,000 people and may not even deliver clean water. The system, designed to supply 45 trillion gallons of water for […]

Little-known gibbons face imminent extinction

By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.com September 19, 2010 It’s not easy to be a gibbon: although one of the most acrobatic, fast, and marvelously loud of the world’s primates, the gibbon remains largely unknown to the global public and far less studied than the world’s more ‘popular’ apes. This lack of public awareness, scientific knowledge, and, […]

Tanzania ivory seized in Hong Kong

By Zephania Ubwani, Arusha11 September 2010 10:30 A huge consignment of ivory shipped from Tanzania has once again been seized by customs officials in Hong Kong.The contraband ivory is worth $ 1.4 million (nearly Sh2 billion) or 10.85m Hong Kong dollars, according to reports from the Far East country yesterday. Reports said customs officers impounded […]

World’s last remaining tigers clustered in 6 percent of available habitat

ScienceDaily (Sep. 14, 2010) — Researchers have revealed an ominous finding: most of the world’s last remaining tigers — long decimated by overhunting, logging, and wildlife trade — are now clustered in just six percent of their available habitat. The securing of the tiger’s remaining source sites is the most effective and efficient way of […]

Graph of the Day: Levels of Five World Lakes, 1993-2009

Lake level products from the NASA/USDA/FAS. Topex/Poseidon (blue), Jason-1 (red), and Jason-2 (purple) radar altimeters. The lakes reside in the USA (Michigan), Argentina (Chiquita), Iran (Urmia), Tanzania (Rukwa), and China (Hulun). State of the Climate in 2009, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Climatic Data Center, as appearing in the June 2010 issue (Vol. 91) […]

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