Nation suddenly realizes this is just going to be a thing that happens from now on

NEW YORK, 31 October 2012 (The Onion) – Following Hurricane Sandy’s destructive tear through the Northeast this week, the nation’s 300 million citizens looked upon the trail of devastation and fully realized, for the first time, that this is just going to be something that happens from now on. Gradually comprehending that this sort of […]

Australia pumps $1.83 billion into food bowl river

Sydney, 26 October 2012 (AFP) – The government Friday pledged Aus$1.77 billion (US$1.83 billion) to pump more than 450 billion litres of water into the ailing Murray-Darling River and help rejuvenate a crucial system supplying Australia’s food bowl. The river and its basin stretches thousands of kilometres from Queensland state to South Australia and crosses […]

Graph of the Day: Water Storage at O. H. Ivie Reservoir in Texas, 1991-2012

Reservoir stage data are collected every day from USGS, IBWC, and USACE websites. These data are preliminary and subject to revision. Reservoir storage (in acre-feet) is derived from these stage data (elevation in feet above mean sea level), by using the latest rating curve datasets available to TWDB. TWDB Reservoir Stage Summary Technorati Tags: North […]

In aftermath of drought, U.S. corn movement turns upside down

By Julie Ingwersen, with additional reporting by Karl Plume and K.T. Arasu in Chicago; Editing by Dale Hudson29 October 2012 CHICAGO (Reuters) – The devastating U.S. drought and ensuing crop disease are upending traditional grain movement patterns, with dozens of trains and barges shipping North Dakota or Mississippi corn into the Corn Belt rather than […]

Impoverished Niger creates fund to fight desert spread

NIAMEY, 23 October 2012 (Reuters) – Niger said on Monday it will launch a $110 million project to counter the impact of rapid expansion of deserts and increasingly unpredictable rains in one of the world’s poorest countries. “The programme aims to test strategies that will help us integrate climate risk and adapt climate change into […]

Dead Sea’s record loss grows with potash makers demand

By Gwen Ackerman 23 October 2012 The Dead Sea is shrinking at a record rate, prompting calls for Israel and Jordan to stop fertilizer makers from siphoning so much of the water whose restorative powers have attracted visitors since biblical times. The salty inland lake bordering the nations dropped a record 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) […]

State of the Earth: Still seeking Plan A for sustainability

By David Biello 12 October 2012 NEW YORK CITY (Scientific American) – The state of the planet is grim, whether that assessment is undertaken from the perspective of economic development, social justice or the global environment. What’s known as sustainable development—a bid to capture all three of those efforts in one effort and phrase—has hardly […]

UN warns of rising food costs after year’s extreme weather – ‘It’s been soul-destroying for the farmers’

By John Vidal, Rebecca Smithers, and Shiv Malik 10 October 2012 (The Guardian) – The UN has warned of increasing meat and dairy prices in the wake of extreme weather in the United States and across large parts of Europe and other centres of global food production. According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) […]

Dry summer helps push Lake Michigan water levels to near-record lows

By Cynthia Dizikes, Chicago Tribune reporter19 October 2012 As Lake Michigan water levels have dipped lower and lower this year, so too has shoreline fisherman Patrick Finley. A leisurely stand, cast and reel routine will no longer do. Actually catching a fish in such shallow water calls for methods more extreme. “You literally have to […]

If extreme weather becomes the norm, starvation awaits

By George Monbiot, The Guardian 15 October 2012 I believe we might have made a mistake: a mistake whose consequences, if I am right, would be hard to overstate. I think the forecasts for world food production could be entirely wrong. Food prices are rising again, partly because of the damage done to crops in […]

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