Koalas face extinction within 30 years

  Researchers Deborah Tabart and Hugh Possingham on the demise of koalas Australia’s koalas could be wiped out within 30 years unless urgent action is taken to halt a decline in population, according to researchers. They say development, climate change and bushfires have all combined to send the numbers of wild koalas plummeting. The Australian […]

Nitrogen loss threatens desert plant life

By Krishna Ramanujan Ithaca NY (SPX) Nov 10, 2009 – As the climate gets warmer, arid soils lose nitrogen as gas, reports a new Cornell study. That could lead to deserts with even less plant life than they sustain today, say the researchers. As the climate gets warmer, arid soils lose nitrogen as gas, reports […]

Las Vegas gambles with an uncertain water future

By LAUREN MORELLO of ClimateWirePublished: November 10, 2009 For more than 70 years, its massive walls have tamed the flows of the Colorado River, fueling the growth of cities like Las Vegas that depend on it to supply water and power from its generating station. But these days, what’s most striking is the lack of […]

Threatened Maldives urges joint action at climate talks

By Maryam Omidi MALE (Reuters) – The Maldives, threatened by rising sea levels because of global warming, on Monday pleaded with developed nations to reduce carbon emissions and said developing nations could change the outcome at climate talks in Copenhagen. The appeal by the Indian ocean archipelago came at a climate change summit grouping Bangladesh, […]

As oceans fall ill, Washington bureaucrats squabble

By Les Blumenthal | McClatchy Newspapers • Published November 07, 2009 WASHINGTON — Off the coast of Washington state, mysterious algae mixed with sea foam have killed more than 8,000 seabirds, puzzling scientists. A thousand miles off California, researchers have discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a swirling vortex roughly twice the size of Texas […]

Floods threaten up to 750,000 in Kenya

Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Matthew Jones GENEVA (Reuters) – Up to 750,000 people in Kenya, nearly half of them Somali refugees, could be caught up in flooding and landslides from heavy rains expected to peak in November, the United Nations warned on Friday. … An estimated 4,600 people along the Indian Ocean coast […]

Graph of the Day: Total Ice Area on Kilimanjaro, 1912-2007

Outlines of the Kibo (Kilimanjaro) ice fields 1912, 1953, 1976, and 1989 (1), 2000 (2) and updated with Ohio State University aerial photographs taken October 15, 2007. (Inset) Areal extent (km2) versus time with a linear fit (R2 = 0.98). An ice cover map was produced by using the 2007 photos and combined with four […]

Global warming could create 150 million 'climate refugees' by 2050

Environmental Justice Foundation report says 10% of the global population is at risk of forced displacement due to climate change By John Vidal in Barcelona, guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 3 November 2009 00.05 GMT Global warming will force up to 150 million “climate refugees” to move to other countries in the next 40 years, a new report […]

Study finds vital peatlands neglected

By Gerard Wynn BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) – Draining and burning of the world’s peat bogs accounts for about 5.5 percent of global carbon emissions but are currently excluded from governments’ climate targets and U.N. talks, a study found on Wednesday. Peat stores around twice as much carbon as all the world’s trees, but compared with […]

Illegal wells lower Yemen water table by 60 feet per year

By ROBERT F. WORTHPublished: October 31, 2009 JAHILIYA, Yemen — More than half of this country’s scarce water is used to feed an addiction. Even as drought kills off Yemen’s crops, farmers in villages like this one are turning increasingly to a thirsty plant called qat, the leaves of which are chewed every day by […]

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