By Alister Doyle, Environment CorrespondentWed Sep 29, 2010 3:50pm EDT OSLO (Reuters) – The world’s rivers are in crisis including in North America and Europe where governments have invested trillions of dollars to clean up freshwater supplies, a study showed Wednesday. “Threats to human water security and biological diversity are pandemic,” Charles Vorosmarty of the […]
The NAWQA trends assessment for nutrients in streams reflects periodic measurements of concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorus from 1993 to 2003 (yellow vertical shaded area). This was a period of relatively small changes in nitrogen fertilizer use, which followed a more than 10-fold increase in fertilizer use between about 1950 and the early 1980s. There […]
AGU Release No. 10–3023 September 2010For Immediate Release WASHINGTON—In recent decades, the rate at which humans worldwide are pumping dry the vast underground stores of water that billions depend on has more than doubled, say scientists who have conducted an unusual, global assessment of groundwater use. These fast-shrinking subterranean reservoirs are essential to daily life […]
By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLFSeptember 23, 2010, 8:12 am Few images in the climate change debate have stirred as much controversy as the storied “hockey stick” graph, which shows average temperatures in the northern hemisphere holding roughly steady for 900 years or so, until the 20th century, when they rise sharply. First unveiled in 1998 by […]
Carbon dioxide emissions produced by UK shipping could be up to six times higher than currently calculated, according to new research from The University of Manchester. (Full report, pdf) As the shipping industry’s emissions are predicted to continue to grow in the future, the UK will fail to meet its commitment to avoid dangerous climate […]
By Ben CubbySeptember 24, 2010 THE company about to start coal seam gas drilling around southern Sydney and the Illawarra plans to use the controversial ”fracking” technique to mine directly beside Warragamba Dam, which holds much of the city’s drinking water. Fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, involves pumping a mixture of water, sand and chemicals deep […]
Mountain Pine Beetle in BC (1981-2005) 2, 3 The area of BC forest affected by the Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB) has more than doubled, from 4 million hectares in 2003 to 8.7 million hectares in 2006, with much of this in the Fraser Basin. The MPB reduces trees’ nutrient and water uptake, resulting in defoliation […]
By Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune Monday, September 20, 2010, 11:15 PM Despite serious questions raised by federal regulators about the project’s environmental impacts, Louisiana coastal officials will continue to build six barrier berms to capture oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill, a building effort that will result in about 25 miles of 6-foot-high sand and […]
29 August 2010 (PBSG) – A status table was first discussed and published at the 11th meeting of the Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) in Copenhagen in 1993. The present table was discussed and concluded upon in Copenhagen in 2009, and some small updates on the comments was done in March 2010. Summary of polar […]
By Joe RommSeptember 14, 2010 Last week, National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) director Mark Serreze said, “Every bit of evidence we have says the ice is thinning.” Monday, NSIDC scientist Julienne Stroeve sent me this figure from a forthcoming article using data provided by J. Maslanik and C. Fowler. This is the end-of-winter […]
