By Environment News Service “If we fail today to make water an instrument of peace, it might become tomorrow a major source of conflict,” warns UNESCO director-general Irina Bokova in her foreword to the UN World Water Development Report released today at the opening of the World Water Forum in Marseilles. “Freshwater is a core … Continue reading Global water scarcity threatens nearly one billion people→
By Bari Bates Our oceans face a grim outlook in the coming decades. Ocean acidification, loss of marine biodiversity, climate change, pollution and over-exploitation of resources all point to the urgent need for a new paradigm on caring for the earth’s oceans—”business as usual” is simply not an option anymore, experts say. The extreme rate … Continue reading Scientists warn that oceans will die if “business as usual” continues→
By Jeremy Hance / Mongabay Environmentalists have targeted the oil-producing tar sands in Canada in part because its crude comes with heftier carbon emissions than conventional sources. Now, a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has found an additional source of carbon that has been unaccounted for: peatlands. Mining … Continue reading Tar sands project could emit up to 47.3 million tons of carbon by devastating peatlands→
By Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research The Greenland ice sheet is likely to be more vulnerable to global warming than previously thought. The temperature threshold for melting the ice sheet completely is in the range of 0.8 to 3.2 degrees Celsius of global warming, with a best estimate of 1.6 degrees above pre-industrial levels, … Continue reading Study: Greenland ice sheet may melt completely with 1.6 degrees warming→
By Paul Chapman / The Independent In what could be the world’s first climate-induced migration of modern times, Anote Tong, the Kiribati president, said he was in talks with Fiji’s military government to buy up to 5,000 acres of freehold land on which his countrymen could be housed. Some of Kiribati’s 32 pancake-flat coral atolls, … Continue reading Threatened by rising sea levels, island nation of Kiribati plans retreat→
By Rob Edwards / The Guardian As many as 12 of Britain’s 19 civil nuclear sites are at risk of flooding and coastal erosion because of climate change, according to an unpublished government analysis obtained by the Guardian. Nine of the sites have been assessed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) … Continue reading Twelve UK nuclear sites in danger of flooding due to climate change→
By The State Column A new study conducted by NASA finds that Arctic ice is melting at a rate far faster than previously expected, increasing the rate of release of a number of deadly chemicals. The study, published and conducted by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, finds the oldest and thickest arctic sea ice is … Continue reading Arctic ice melt may cause “bromine explosion,” depleting ozone and releasing mercury→
By Agence France-Presse High levels of pollution may be turning the planet’s oceans acidic at a faster rate than at any time in the past 300 million years, with unknown consequences for future sea life, researchers said Thursday. The acidification may be worse than during four major mass extinctions in history when natural pulses of … Continue reading Ocean acidification may be worse now than during last four major mass extinctions→
By Stephen Leahy / Inter Press Service Rising temperatures are drying out northern forests and peatlands, producing bigger and more intense fires. And this will only get much worse as the planet heats up from the use of ever larger amounts of fossil fuels, scientists warned last week at the end of a major science … Continue reading Global warming likely to double or triple incidence of forest fires→
By Katharine Gammon The oceans have already absorbed about one-third of the 500 billion tons of carbon dioxide that human activity has added to the atmosphere since the industrial revolution. Absorbing carbon dioxide reduces the pH of seawater, indicating an increase in its acidity. While more attention has been focused on the ecological fragility of … Continue reading Oceans becoming increasingly acidic as carbon emissions are absorbed→
