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Invasive insects evidence of climate change
Press Republican: The photo provided is courtesy of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. It shows a coal miner in the early 1900s with a canary in a cage.
These birds, preferred over mice, were used to alert underground miners to the presence of carbon monoxide, a toxic gas. The birds became visibly distressed in the presence of small amounts of this gas and provided a warning to the miners.
Today, observations suggest we have the equivalent of a new canary in a cage, this one for detecting climate change:...
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Making climate change appealing
Financial Chronicle: The famous ?Keeling Curve? graph, which shows the increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the earth?s atmosphere from 1958 to 2006, had set off alarm bells in the scientific community that continues to ring loudly even today. Yet somehow, this same graph does not communicate the immediacy of the climate change problem to lay audiences. Instead, it may actually convey the message that the buildup of carbon dioxide in the earth?s atmosphere has been taking place over a long period, thereby, erroneously...
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Congo invites Indian companies to invest in timber
Economic Times: Home to one of Africa's largest forest expanses, the Republic of Congo wants Indian companies to invest in the timber industry, the second biggest money-spinner after oil in the central African country, says its Forestry and Environment Minister Henri Djombo.
"We have a big timber industry and would want Indian private companies to come and invest in the our timber companies," Djombo said in an interview here.
The country, also informally known as Congo-Brazzaville to differentiate it from...
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"Global Warming Has Stopped"? How to Fool People Using "Cherry-Picked" Climate Data
Forbes: The current favorite argument of those who argue that climate changes isn?t happening, or a problem, or worth dealing with, is that global warming has stopped. Therefore (they conclude) scientists must be wrong when they say that climate change is caused by humans, worsening, and ultimately a serious environmental problem that must be addressed by policy makers.
The problem with this argument is that it is false: global warming has not stopped and those who repeat this claim over and over are...
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Tree rings may underestimate climate response to volcanic eruptions
EurekAlert: Some climate cooling caused by past volcanic eruptions may not be evident in tree-ring reconstructions of temperature change because large enough temperature drops lead to greatly shortened or even absent growing seasons, according to climate researchers, who compared tree-ring temperature reconstructions with model simulations of past temperature changes.
"We know these tree rings capture most temperature changes quite well," said Michael Mann, professor of meteorology and geosciences and director...
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Tanzania: Land-cover changes do not impact glacier loss
EurekAlert: The composition of land surface ? such as vegetation type and land use ? regulates the interaction of radiation, sensible heat and humidity between the land surface and the atmosphere and, thus, influences ground level climate directly. For the first time, the Innsbruck climate scientists quantitatively examined whether land-cover changes (LCC) may potentially affect glacier loss. "We used Kilimanjaro in East Africa as a test case, where a significant decrease of forests at elevations between 1,800...
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Fire at Moscow nuclear institute, Russia says no risk
Reuters: There was no risk of a radiation leak after a fire broke out at a Moscow nuclear research center housing a non-operational 60-year-old atomic reactor Sunday, said officials, but Greenpeace Russia expressed serious concern about the incident.
The fire broke out early Sunday in a part of the Alikhanov Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics in southwestern Moscow that contains a research collider, institute officials said in a statement on its website.
There were no radiation sources...
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Europe's cold snap claims more victims, travel hit
Reuters: Bitterly cold weather sweeping across Europe claimed more victims Sunday, brought widespread disruption to transport services, and left thousands without power with warnings that low temperatures would continue into next week.
Hundreds have lost their lives in eastern Europe as freezing weather sweeps across the continent westwards, while major airports warned that services would be delayed or cancelled.
Steven Keates, a weather forecaster at Britain's Met Office, said the severe wintry conditions...
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Sierra Club Received Millions from Natural Gas Industry
Yahoo!: According to a blog post from Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune, the environmentalist organization accepted millions of donated dollars from the natural gas industry to fight against coal-fired plants nationwide. Here are the details.
* Brune stated he became aware of the $26 million in donations from individuals and subsidiaries of Chesapeake Energy, one of the largest natural gas companies in the U.S., shortly after he became executive director in 2010. The funding began in 2007,...
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Price of gorilla permit increases to $750/day
Mongabay: Rwanda has raised the price of a permit to see mountain gorillas to $750 per day starting June 1, 2012, up from $500.
While the price is steep, the program each year raises millions of dollars in revenue for gorilla conservation, including $8 million in Rwanada alone in 2008, according to a 2011 study published in PLoS ONE. The number of permits available each day is limited to reduce the impact of gorilla tourism on the endangered apes. Around 20,000 visited Rwanda's gorillas in 2008.
The...
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Expert speaks out on impact of logging in PNG
Radio Australia: One of the world's leading tropical biologists says clear felling of forests on Papua New Guinea's controversial Special Agricultural and Business leases is likely to have profound impact on PNG's environment.
As you heard earlier in the program, logging on SABLs has pushed PNG's log exports into record territory.
In 2011, 650,000 cubic metres of logs were exported from SABLs.
A prominent scientist in tropical biology says the environmental impact of this sort of logging is very significant....
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Ssssscotland here we come!
Scotland Herald: The first firm evidence that the grass snake is now living in the wild north of the Border has been uncovered by a naturalist, upsetting decades of conventional wisdom.
It was believed the grass snake, a non-poisonous creature native to England, has never colonised Scotland. A few kept as pets had escaped, but there was no proof that any lived here in the wild, or had spread north naturally.
But now Chris Cathrine, a member of the Clyde Amphibian and Reptile Group and director of the Caledonian...
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Euro Parliament backs low-carbon road map
United Press International: A European Parliament committee this week approved an EU "road map" to a low-carbon economy that seeks to go beyond current greenhouse gas reduction targets.
The European Parliament's Committee on the Environment Tuesday passed a report written by British MEP Chris Davies that backs the European Commission's "Road map for Moving to a Competitive Low Carbon Economy in 2050," giving it a key legislative victory.
The plan seeks to boost renewable energy sources from providing 20 percent of Europe's...
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United Kingdom: Cutting carbon is one way of creating jobs
Halifax Courier: THE council is ready to endorse an ambitious £366 million scheme to create 450 jobs, slash energy costs and help save the planet.
If the Energy Future Strategy works properly, it should pay for itself and slash Calderdale?s carbon emissions by 40 per cent by 2020.
Senior Lib Lab councillors have already given the strategy the green light and Calderdale Council as a whole will be asked to back the plan at its meeting on February 15.
Economy and environment spokesman Barry Collins (Lab, Illingworth...
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United States: Quincy residents wary of height of wind turbine
Boston Globe: As Wednesday?s public hearing on the joint Quincy-Boston plan to build a nearly 400-foot wind turbine on Quincy?s Moon Island draws near, some Quincy residents are questioning the value of the project to their city and the cost in intangibles they may have to pay for it.
Quincy Planning Board member William Geary said his panel doesn?t have a good idea of how big the turbine will appear from the city?s Squantum neighborhood, complaining at an information session last month that the simulation...
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United States: A solar farm's slow going
Philadelphia Inquirer: When Bob Keares proposed building Pennsylvania's largest solar farm in the heart of Chester County, he expected a warm reception, certainly from environmentalists.
With 35,000 panels arrayed on a steep slope in Caln Township, the farm would generate 10 megawatts of energy, pollution-free. It could power 2,000 homes, he asserted, while reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 200,000 tons over 40 years - equivalent to planting eight million trees.
Keares' green dream did not end there.
He envisioned...
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United States: Report: Power plants pollute
MetroWest Daily News: Power plants throughout eastern Massachusetts are the largest industrial sources of greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change in the state, according to new data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The information comes from a website the EPA unveiled in January, publicly detailing for the first time emissions reported by the largest producers of carbon dioxide and related greenhouse gases in nine major industries.
All the top 10 sources of carbon dioxide emissions...
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India: Why Jog Falls have been reduced to a trickle
Daily News and Analysis: "It should be called Joke Falls, not Jog Falls,' says a disgusted Yoav Masiach. The 31-year-old Israeli tourist had visited India's largest waterfall in the Western Ghats around the same time in the mid 90s and was enthralled by the four waterfalls -- Raja, Roarer, Rocket and Lady. This year, he brought his 22-year-old girlfriend Dianne Solares all the way from Goa on a motorcycle, but they were shocked to see what had become of one of the top ten falls in the world.
Locals like Siddhaiah Gowda,...
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VIDEO: Birds' paradise lost in Kashmir?
BBC: A suitable climate and the easy availability of food make the Hokersar wetland reserve in Indian-administered Kashmir a favourite destination for nearly a million migratory birds every winter. This year, however, heavy snowfall and below freezing temperatures have frozen the water in some parts of the reserve, making it difficult for the birds to feed. Mehvish Hussain reports.
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New transportation bill proposes big changes
Living on Earth: Congressman John Mica(FL-R)(in shirt sleeves) chairs the House Transportation Committee.(Courtesy of the House Transportation Committee)
The chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has proposed a sweeping, new transportation bill. The legislation would encourage private companies to build their own toll roads and pay for infrastructure with money from oil companies. The author of the 800 page-long bill, Congressmen John Mica, highlights some of the bill's biggest proposals...
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