Amnesty International: Flawed data used to exonerate oil firms in Niger Delta

By Paul Ohia with agency report 24 August 2010 Human rights organisation, Amnesty International (AI) yesterday challenged the credibility of data cited by the United Nations in an ongoing investigation of oil-impacted sites in Ogoniland which will almost entirely exonerate Royal Dutch Shell for 40 years of oil pollution in the oil rich region. Amnesty […]

Disaster at the Top of the World

By THOMAS HOMER-DIXON, Aboard the Louis S. St-LaurentAugust 22, 2010 STANDING on the deck of this floating laboratory for Arctic science, which is part of Canada’s Coast Guard fleet and one of the world’s most powerful icebreakers, I can see vivid evidence of climate change. Channels through the Canadian Arctic archipelago that were choked with […]

Gulf of Mexico still in crisis four months after BP explosion

By Kierán Suckling, (520) 275-5960August 20, 2010 NEW ORLEANS— Today marks the end of the fourth month since BP’s negligence and lack of government oversight caused the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig to explode, sending more than 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. To assess how much damage was done and […]

Lion populations plummet in Uganda parks

www.mongabay.comAugust 19, 2010 Lion populations across Uganda’s park system have declined 40 percent in less than a decade, according to the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). “Conserving Uganda’s last remaining lions is a global responsibility,” WCS Senior Carnivore researcher Tutilo Mudumba said in a statement. “If we outlive this iconic African species, we will have to […]

Russian forest fires pose major threat to bats

Bonn (Germany), 18 August 2010 – The catastrophic wildfires that have swept across Russia this summer have killed at least 50 people and could cost the country’s economy an estimated US$15 billion. But among the hidden victims of the fires are small, nocturnal animals that are fast losing their habitats. Russia’s bat population – which […]

Graph of the Day: Sea Ice Area in the Northern Route of the Northwest Passage, July 2010

Early clearing in the Northwest Passage Stephen Howell, Tom Agnew, and Trudy Wohlleben from Environment Canada report that sea ice conditions in the Northwest Passage are very light. Ice is still present at the mouth of the M’Clure Strait, in central Viscount-Melville Sound, and in Larsen Sound, as of early August. As a result, neither […]

New satellite data reveal true decline of world’s mangrove forests

Loss rate for mangrove forests is higher than the loss of inland tropical forests and coral reefs By Ben Norman, Lifesciencenews@wiley.com 18-Aug-2010 New satellite imagery has given scientists the most comprehensive and exact data on the distribution and decline of mangrove forests from across the world. The research, carried out by scientists from the U.S […]

Corals bleached and dying in overheated South Asian waters

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia, August 16, 2010 (ENS) – The rapidly rising temperature of south Asia’s Andaman Sea has triggered coral bleaching and die-off that scientists working in Indonesia are calling one of the most rapid and severe coral mortality events ever recorded. The coral die-off was indentified though monitoring by marine ecologists from the Wildlife […]

Global warming slows coral growth in Red Sea

ScienceDaily (July 16, 2010) — In a pioneering use of computed tomography (CT) scans, scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have discovered that carbon dioxide (CO2)-induced global warming is in the process of killing off a major coral species in the Red Sea. As summer sea surface temperatures have remained about 1.5 degrees Celsius […]

Giant hydroelectric dams pushing tribes to extinction

By JOHN VIDALAugust 10, 2010 Giant hydroelectric dams being built or planned in remote areas of Brazil, Ethiopia, Malaysia, Peru and Guyana will devastate tribal settlements by forcing people off their land or destroying hunting and fishing grounds, according to a report by Survival International. The first global assessment of its kind suggests 300,000 indigenous […]

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