Russia will not cut carbon emissions under extended Kyoto climate pact

By Nastassia Astrasheuskaya; Editing by Alister Doyle and Pravin Char13 September 2012 Moscow says Kyoto extension ineffective Says developing nations must be involved in emissions deal MOSCOW, 13 September 2012 (Reuters) – Russia confirmed on Thursday it would not make cuts in greenhouse gas emissions from 2013 under the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol, joining Canada and […]

Twenty more Nile rivers needed to feed growing world population – ‘The future political impact of water scarcity may be devastating’

By Alister Doyle; Editing by Alison Williams11 September 2012 OSLO (Reuters) – The world needs to find the equivalent of the flow of 20 Nile rivers by 2025 to grow enough food to feed a rising population and help avoid conflicts over water scarcity, a group of former leaders said on Monday. Factors such as […]

Asia faces water scarcity as coal-fired power generation expands

By Natalie Obiko Pearson 10 September 2012 Inner Mongolia’s rivers are feeding China’s coal industry, turning grasslands into desert. In India, thousands of farmers have protested diverting water to coal-fired power plants, some committing suicide. The struggle to control the world’s water is intensifying around energy supply. China and India alone plan to build $720 […]

Smugglers reap large profits from banned ozone-destroying coolant

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL and ANDREW W. LEHREN7 September 2012 MIAMI – The chief executive of the century-old company from America’s heartland shifted nervously on the witness stand here as he tried to explain how a trusted senior vice president had been caught on a wiretap buying half a million dollars in smuggled merchandise, much of […]

The driest season: Global drought causes major worries

By Tim Lister8 September 2012 (CNN) – Hurricane Isaac may have inundated the parishes of Louisiana, but for thousands of American farmers, it was a blessing, a reprieve from the most torrid summer on record. In much of North America, July was the hottest month since such a record was first taken. Crop yields have […]

Crops in India wilt in a weak monsoon season

By VIKAS BAJAJ3 September 2012 MURUMA, India – Vilas Dinkar Mukane lives halfway around the world from the corn farmers of Iowa, but the Indian sharecropper is at risk of losing his livelihood for the same reason: not enough rain. With the nourishing downpours of the annual monsoon season down an average of 12 percent […]

Graph of the Day: Cumulative mass balance for Himalaya glaciers, 1975-2010

Above, Cumulative mass balance for 11 glaciers in 2006–2010 (Supplementary Table S6 and Figs S3–S13). Below, Cumulative mass balance for the three longest time series of glacier mass-balance measurements along transect 1 (Supplementary Table S7 and Figs S14 and S15). ABSTRACT: The Tibetan Plateau and surroundings contain the largest number of glaciers outside the polar […]

World nuclear electric production peaked in 2006 and is already declining

By Gail the Actuary 27 August 2012 The issue of nuclear electricity is a complex one. In this post, I offer a few insights into the nuclear electric situation based on recent reports and statistical data. Nuclear Electric Production Is Already Declining According to BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy, the highest year of nuclear […]

Millions suffer from late monsoons in India – Crops are so dry ‘even our cattle won’t eat it’

By Muneeza Naqvi, Associated Press27 August 2012 KATHURA, India (AP) – The farmer walks past muddy fields of stunted sugarcane and damaged rice paddies as a light drizzle falls. “Too late, too late,” he says of the rains he has been praying for since many weeks ago. For nearly two months, Satyavan Narwal’s eyes scoured […]

Graph of the Day: Global Groundwater Extraction Footprints of Aquifers

Aquifers are major groundwater basins with recharge of >2 mm yr−1 in the global inventory of groundwater resources20 (see Supplementary Information). At the bottom of this figure, the areas of the six aquifers (Western Mexico, High Plains, North Arabian, Persian, Upper Ganges and North China plain) are shown at the same scale as the global map; the […]

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