BLANCHE This is Desdemona News for Friday, March 12th, 2010. Melting Arctic ice could cost global agriculture, real estate, and insurance anywhere from 2.4 trillion to $24 trillion by 2050, in damage from rising sea levels, floods, and heat waves, according to a report released last Friday. EDDIE Severe forest fires in Vietnam’s northern mountainous […]
Reporting by Enrique Andres Pretel; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Eric BeechCARACASWed Mar 10, 2010 10:12am EST CARACAS (Reuters) – President Hugo Chavez is confident that God and nature will pull Venezuela out of a power crisis battering both the economy and his popularity. Rationing and blackouts have afflicted the South American oil exporter […]
By Margaret Munro, Canwest News ServiceMarch 9, 2010 From the balmy Arctic, to the open water of the St. Lawrence and snowless western fields, this winter has been the warmest and driest in Canadian record books. Environment Canada scientists report that winter 2009/10 was 4C above normal, making it the warmest since nationwide records were […]
By COURTNEY TRENWITHMarch 8, 2010 Brisbane’s dam capacity has surpassed 90 per cent for the first time in almost nine years. Wivenhoe, Somerset and North Pine dams are at a combined capacity of 93.8 per cent this morning, according to SEQWater. Only three years ago, the capacity was sitting at a mere 16 per […]
By Martha Ann Overland / Hanoi Thursday, Mar. 04, 2010 Every year, even at the peak of Vietnam’s dry season, when the Red River is at its lowest, Hanoi’s skilled captains manage to negotiate their flat-bottomed boats through its shallow waters. But this year, with a drought gripping the entire country and water levels at […]
Time series of rainfall in southwest Western Australia between May to July and between August to October. South-west Western Australia has experienced significant climate change since the mid-1970s which has impacted on surface water and groundwater yields, and water dependent ecosystems. Over central and northern parts of the project area, the mean annual rainfall has […]
By NICKY PHILLIPSMarch 11, 2010 FOR most of the year Ethabuka Reserve, which abuts the Simpson desert in the far corner of western Queensland, is a dry, hostile place. But for the past week, since torrential rains fell across much of the middle of the state, the desert plains have looked more like an inland […]
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent; Editing by Robin PomeroyWed Mar 10, 2010 7:12pm EST OSLO (Reuters) – A “doomsday” vault storing crop seeds in an Arctic deep freeze is surpassing 500,000 samples to become the most diverse collection of food seeds in history, managers said on Thursday. Set up on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard […]
By Jeremy Hance, www.mongabay.comMarch 10, 2010 Heavily polluted and shrinking, Lake Naivasha is in dire trouble. Environmentalists say the cause is clear: flower farms. Some 60 flower farms line the entire lakeside, growing cut flowers for export largely to the EU. While the flowers industry is Kenya’s largest horticultural export (405.5 million last year) it […]
By Charlie Devereux, Joshua Schneyer in Caracas; Editing by Cynthia OstermanPOTOSI, VenezuelaWed Feb 24, 2010 3:49pm EST POTOSI, Venezuela (Reuters) – For most Venezuelans, the El Nino-linked drought that has struck the country this year means inconveniences like power and water rationing. But for some, the extreme dry spell is stirring up bittersweet memories. The […]
