By Rachel Morris, www.motherjones.com, November/December 2009 Issue IT’S A BRIGHT, BALMY SUNDAY afternoon and I’m driving through the western outskirts of Auckland, New Zealand, the kind of place you never see on a postcard. No majestic mountains, no improbably green pastures—just a bland tangle of shopping malls and suburbia. I follow a dead-end street, past […]
PARIS, Nov 29 (AFP) Nov 29, 2009 — The UN refugee agency says some 24 million people worldwide have fled their homes due to environmental factors, and warns their ranks could grow tenfold by mid-century, spurred greatly by climate change. Sheer numbers and the lack of legal status under international law mean a vicious humanitarian […]
Annual emissions of carbon from changes in land use (Note P = 1015).20 Virtually all of the carbon released to the atmosphere from land use changes now comes from the tropics. Tropical deforestation, including logging and the permanent and temporary conversion of forests to croplands and pastures, releases about 1-2 PgC/yr. This is 15-35% of […]
Australia, already the driest inhabited continent on Earth, is drying up for good. The state of New South Wales is particularly hard-hit, with catastrophic mega-fires destroying the eucalyptus forests, major rivers reduced to muddy streambeds, and dams drained to nothing but algae-filled ponds. Wyangala Dam is an example of how it will end. Now down […]
By PATRICK REYNOLDS, www.IrishCentral.com Staff WriterPublished Friday, November 27, 2009, 9:23 PMUpdated Friday, November 27, 2009, 10:44 PM Ireland’s massive flooding has almost certainly been the result of climate change, says Nobel Prize-winner and Ireland’s leading climatologist, Prof. John Sweeney. “We have reaped what we have sown,” he said. Devastating floods have swept large parts […]
The extraordinary forced relocation of illegal settlers from Kenya’s Massai Mau Forest Complex foreshadows the plight of climate refugees for the rest of the 21st century and beyond. Expect this kind of tragedy to be repeated many times in upcoming decades. In this case, settlers have defied Kenya law and encroached deeply into the forest […]
Historic efficiency improvements would meet only a fraction of the projected gap Agricultural yields in both rain-fed and irrigated areas grew at an annual rate of about 1 percent between 1990 and 2004, a major driver of overall water productivity improvements. A similar rate of improvement occurred in industry. Were agriculture and industry to sustain […]
Arctic sea ice conditions are even worse than feared after a survey found that ice detected as older and thicker by satellites is actually thin and fragile, a prominent Canadian researcher reported Friday. University of Manitoba researcher David Barber said experts around the world believed the ice was recovering because satellite images showed it expanding, […]
By BRIAN ROBINSNovember 28, 2009 LOW water levels will force the shutdown of the large Wallerawang power station near Lithgow over Christmas, as efforts are made to to take pressure off local water supplies. The move is the clearest impact yet of the dry weather conditions on the state’s electricity industry. A continuing lack of […]
By Josephine Tovey, November 28, 2009 FISH lie belly-up on the cracked bed of Lake Cargelligo. Like the lake it is built around, the town is drying out. Lake Cargelligo, a settlement of 1300 in the geographical heart of NSW, was once a holiday haven for swimmers and waterskiers. Now empty shops line the […]
