Wichita Eagle: Attorney General Steve Six has joined Kansas with 10 other states in an effort to head off federal regulation of greenhouse gases. They seek to block federal courts from proceeding with a trial that Six says could lead to more restrictions on carbon emissions by utilities and other industries. Six announced late last week that he has joined the state to a friend-of-the-court brief filed by Indiana in the case Connecticut v. American Electric Power Co. The brief asks the ...
Chico Enterprise Record: In windy areas of California, motorists can drive past wind farms where towering structures with propeller-type blades capture the wind to generate electricity. But in poor and remote areas of the world, where energy is needed for the most basic of resources, it's not very likely trucks with windmill building supplies will be rapidly rolling in. Students from Chico State University had these realities in mind when they designed a 15-foot tall windmill that could be built in ...
Asian News International: Ten of the planet's eighteen penguin species have experienced further serious population decline, warn Penguin biologists from around the world. Among the major factors contributing to the decline are, climate change, over fishing, chronic oil pollution and predation by introduced mammals.ore than 180 penguin biologists, government officials, conservation advocates, and zoo and aquarium professionals from 22 nations have convened in Boston for the five day International Penguin ...
Times of India: In the near future, Goa could avail of funds under the national agriculture innovation project to tide over instances of saline water entering agricultural land. The project, which is aimed at making farming more resilient to climate change, could also apply to the state as salinity in its seven major rivers is likely to increase due to a rise in temperatures. Anil Kumar Singh, deputy director general (NRM), ICAR, New Delhi, announced this to the press on the sidelines of a seminar on ...
AHN: More than 80 percent of new farmlands in tropical countries have come from the felling of trees, increasing the release into the atmosphere of carbon that causes global warming, a study has found. The expansion of farmlands is expected to increase due to growing global demand for agricultural products. More than half a million square miles of new farmland created in tropical countries, such as Brazil and Indonesia, between 1980 to 2000 was due to the felling of forests which in turn, ...
BBC: World leaders may pay a heavy price in history if they fail to tackle global warming, Tony Blair has warned. He said politicians did not have to wait for chaotic climate change in order for them to act. The risks of not cutting emissions, given the potentially massive consequences, was enough to justify action, he told BBC Radio 4. The former prime minister added that it had always been a struggle to explain the uncertainties in climate science. He told Radio 4's ...
Financial Times: As global growth picks up after the economic crisis, carbon emissions are going back up too. With China and India back on track to double their gross domestic product every decade, and with coal providing nearly 30 per cent of global energy, the chances of stabilising and reducing emissions are low. Indeed, little progress has been made in the last two decades. Only recessions lower emissions – and then only for a short time. This is partly due to the failed strategy for carbon ...
Mongabay: Singapore's Golden Agri-Resources, a holding of the embattled Sinar Mas Group, said it will form a partnership with the government of Liberia to establish a 220,000-hectare plantation in the West African nation, reports the Jakarta Globe. The 25-year $1.6 billion joint venture will establish oil palm estates in southeastern Liberia. Golden VerOleum, a subsidiary of Golden Agri-Resources, is leading the project, which is seeking additional outside investors. The announcement ...
New York Times: A bone from a bowhead whale skull rests on the Arctic shore near Barrow, whose Inupiat residents center their culture around whaling and their livelihoods, often, around the oil industry. On Thursday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar had a meeting with the only people outside the gulf region whose waters had been opened to offshore oil exploration. He was in Barrow, Alaska, the capital of the North Slope Borough, where people have the same conflicted feelings about the oil industry as ...
New York Times: Spanish trains whisk passengers from Madrid to Barcelona in little more than two and one-half hours. Japan has bullet trains. China is building a vast network of high-speed rail routes, including the recently opened line between Guangzhou and Wuhan, which covers 1,070 kilometers at the world's fastest average speed. Soon, perhaps, the United States, with the world's largest economy will also clamber on board. So far, the United States – in spite of or perhaps because of its vast ...
Mongabay: Protection of forests for their carbon value through Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) schemes has been increasing in recent years. These schemes concentrate on preserving forest cover, and thus have great potential for the conservation of natural biodiversity. Some (REDD+) initiatives already specifically take biodiversity protection into account. There has been debate about the potential impacts of REDD schemes on biodiversity, given its potential to ...
AFP: Bjoern Lomborg, the bad boy of the climate debate who has rejected for years "alarmist" prophecies from environmentalists, stresses in a new book the need to invest billions to fight global warming. In "Smart Solutions to Climate Change," Lomborg lashes out at current policies to curb greenhouse gas emissions but also highlights the need to spend 100 billion dollars a year on intelligent research and green technologies. By spending billions in a smart way, the world could ...
Guardian: Transocean, the American rig owner at the centre of BP's Gulf of Mexico oil spill, has been accused of compromising safety in the North Sea by "bullying, harassment and intimidation" of its staff. The allegations, in a damning report by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) seen by the Guardian, will deeply embarrass Transocean, which on Tuesday appears before a House of Commons investigation into the lessons to be learnt from the Deepwater Horizon spill. The offshore and ...
AFP: Australia's environmental lobby is celebrating an unprecedented "Greenslide" in national elections, but it remains unclear whether new political power will translate into action on climate change. The Greens, a left-wing minority party, emerged as the big winners from the country's cliffhanger polls, doubling their share of the national vote to a record 11.5 percent and taking a critical seat in the deadlocked lower house. Jubilant leader Bob Brown called it a "Greenslide", ...
Telegraph: They rise up high above the sun-scorched countryside, looking out over hilltop villages, palm trees, neatly-tended vineyards and olive groves. But for all their promises of a clean, green future, Italy's windfarms have now acquired a somewhat dirtier whiff - as the latest industry to be infiltrated by the country's mobsters. Attracted by the prospect of generous grants designed to boost the use of alternative energies, the so-called "eco Mafia" has begun fraudulently creaming ...
AFP: UN climate chief Christiana Figueres has warned that a string of weather calamities showed the deepening urgency to forge a breakthrough deal on global warming this year. Speaking on Thursday before some 40 countries were to address finance, an issue that has helped hamstring UN climate talks, Figueres said that floods in Pakistan, fires in Russia and other weather disasters had been a shocking wakeup call. "The news has been screaming that a future of intense, global climate ...
Lexington Herald Leader: The landscapes of Eastern and Western Kentucky have little in common, but the areas share at least two things: an abundance of coal and a pivotal role in the U.S. Senate race. That means coal policies, such as the controversial "cap and trade" approach to cutting greenhouse gas emissions, are a key issue in the contest between Republican Rand Paul and Democrat Jack Conway. In Western Kentucky, one concern is that cap and trade would cause higher rates for electricity produced ...
Asian Age: Newly detected rising sea levels in parts of the Indian Ocean have led Indian scientists to conclude that the Indian Ocean is rising faster than other oceans. Dr Satheesh C. Shenoi, director, Indian National Centre for Ocean Infor-mation Services, speaking at a workshop on "Coasts, Coastal Populations and their Concerns" o rganised by the Centre for Science and Environment, warned that sea surface measurements and satellite observations confirm that an anthropogenic climate ...
BBC: Researchers have demonstrated tiny solar cells just billionths of a metre across that can repair themselves, extending their useful lifetime. The cells make use of proteins from the machinery of plants, turning sunlight into electric charges that can do work. The cells simply assemble themselves from a mixture of the proteins, minute tubes of carbon and other materials. The self-repairing mechanism, reported in Nature Chemistry, could lead to much longer-lasting solar ...
Inter Press Service: Every year, more than a million Amazonian turtle eggs do not make it to the hatching period, nor do they serve as food for humans in the Tabuleiro de Embaubal, a series of beaches along the final stretch of Brazil's Xingú River. Thousands of turtles lay 1.8 million eggs each year in Embaubal, in the eastern Brazilian Amazon. But about 70 percent are destroyed by flooding or by the mothers themselves, which dig up sand where eggs have already been laid, explained biologist Juarez ...