By Andrew Freedman 1 April 2013 (Climate Central) – The insurance industry had its third-most expensive year on record in 2012, with global economic losses from natural catastrophes and manmade disasters totaling $186 billion, according to a report released March 27 by the reinsurance giant Swiss Re. The total insured losses for the year was […]
By MICHAEL WINES28 March 2013 BAKERSFIELD, California (The New York Times) – A mysterious malady that has been killing honeybees en masse for several years appears to have expanded drastically in the last year, commercial beekeepers say, wiping out 40 percent or even 50 percent of the hives needed to pollinate many of the nation’s […]
By FELICITY BARRINGER26 March 2013 CARLSBAD, NEW MEXICO (The New York Times) – Just after the local water board announced this month that its farmers would get only one-tenth of their normal water allotment this year, Ronnie Walterscheid, 53, stood up and called on his elected representatives to declare a water war on their upstream […]
4 March 2013 (NIWA) – February rainfall totalled less than 15 mm (and also less than 15 percent of February normal) in parts of Northland, Auckland, and the Bay of Plenty. It was the driest February on record for Leigh (north Auckland), and Milford Sound. In the case of Leigh, it was also the driest […]
By Ben Aulakh22 March 2013 (The Westport News) – A West Coast farming expert says he is seeing first-hand the pressures being put on farmers battling to combat the effects of the big dry. CRT technical feed specialist for the West Coast, Tasman and Marlborough, Andrew Mitchell said he’d seen a significant increase in demand […]
By John Eligon and Matthew L. Wald16 March 2013 MACON, Missouri (The New York Times) – Five years ago, rural America was giddy for ethanol. Backed by government subsidies and mandates, hundreds of ethanol plants rose among the golden fields of the Corn Belt, bringing jobs and business to small towns, providing farmers with a […]
By Emma Farge; Editing by Alison Williams15 March 2013 GENEVA (Reuters) – U.N. agencies want to strengthen national drought policies after warnings that climate change would increase their frequency and severity. Droughts cause more deaths and displacement than floods or earthquakes, making them the world’s most destructive natural hazard, according to the Food and Agriculture […]
NAIROBI, Kenya, 15 March 2013 (Associated Press) – Human-induced climate change contributed to low rain levels in East Africa in 2011, making global warming one of the causes of Somalia’s famine and the tens of thousands of deaths that followed, a new study has found. It is the first time climate change was proven to […]
13 March 2013 (Fairfax) – The Wellington region’s water supply is at ‘crisis’ level, while even the typically wet West Coast is experiencing a big dry as New Zealand’s summer drought extends. Rural communities throughout the North Island are already reeling from extremely dry conditions. The Government has declared Northland, Auckland, Waikato, Bay of Plenty […]
By Matthew Campbell and Chris V. Nicholson 7 March 2013 (Bloomberg) – Investing in climate change used to mean financing the fight against global warming. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., and other firms took stakes in wind farms and tidal-energy projects, and set up carbon-trading desks. Then, as efforts to curb greenhouse-gas emissions faltered, […]
