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Arctic climate changing faster than expected
February 5th, 2010 
Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin
Reuters: Climate change is transforming the Arctic environment faster than expected and accelerating the disappearance of sea ice, scientists said on Friday in giving their early findings from the biggest-ever study of Canada's changing north. The research project involved more than 370 scientists from 27 countries who collectively spent 15 months, starting in June 2007, aboard a research vessel above the Arctic Circle. It marked the first time a ship has stayed mobile in Canada's high Arctic ...
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Bluefin tuna international trade ban proposal backed by UN agency
February 5th, 2010 Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin
Guardian: A UN scientific agency today backed a proposal to ban international trade in Atlantic bluefin tuna, saying the species prized by sushi lovers needed to recover from commercial overfishing. Monaco had proposed protecting bluefin tuna, which can fetch up to $100,000 (£64,000) in Japan, by listing it under appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites). "In our opinion, international commercial trade in bluefin tuna should be prohibited," said ...
United States: The battle for Cape Wind
February 5th, 2010 Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin
Living on Earth: YOUNG: It's Living on Earth, I'm Jeff Young. For wind energy enthusiasts, Cape Wind in Massachusetts is probably the most famous and frustrating proposal in the U.S. What could be the country's first offshore wind farm has been without a permit for construction for nine years--blocked by those who want to protect the ocean view off Cape Cod. U.S. Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar wants an end to the delay. He recently boarded a boat to go see the Cape Wind site and hear from both ...
Arctic warming will cost world billions: Pew study
February 5th, 2010 Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin
CBC: Climate warming in the Arctic will cost the global economy billions of dollars in 2010 alone, according to a study by the U.S.-based Pew Environment Group released Friday. The environmental advocacy organization held a news conference in Iqaluit -- where G7 finance ministers and central bank governors are meeting to discuss global economic reform -- to emphasize its view that protection of the environment should also be on the agenda. A study by the Pew Environment Group ...
Arctic ice melting faster than feared: study
February 5th, 2010 Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin
CBC: The head of the largest climate change study ever undertaken in Canada says the Arctic sea ice is thinning faster than expected. "It's happening much faster than our most pessimistic projections," said University of Manitoba Prof. David Barber, the lead investigator of the Circumpolar Flaw Lead study. A flaw lead is the term for open water between pack ice and coastal ice. The study aboard the Canadian Coast Guard research ship Amundsen began in July 2007 and involved 370 ...
Scant Arctic ice could mean summer ‘double whammy.’
February 5th, 2010 Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin
Reuters: Scant ice over the Arctic Sea this winter could mean a "double whammy" of powerful ice-melt next summer, a top U.S. climate scientist said on Thursday. "It's not that the ice keeps melting, it's just not growing very fast," said Mark Serreze, director of the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center. In January, Arctic sea ice grew by about 13,000 square miles (34,000 sq km) a day, which is a bit more than one-third the pace of ice growth during the 1980s, and less than the ...
Seals are hot at chilly G7 Canadian Arctic meeting
February 5th, 2010 Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin
Reuters: Seals are hot at the G7 meeting in Canada's Arctic this weekend, whether it's the sealskin mitts artisans are trying to sell, or the raw seal meat on the menu at a community feast on Saturday. But officials and locals insist that hunting here is an essential livelihood for a community that already faces high prices for basic goods. Iqaluit, a town of 6,000 some 200 miles south of the Arctic Circle, is only accessible by air in winter, when Frobisher Bay freezes into a jagged shoreline ...
Sweden seeks answer on ‘waste’
February 5th, 2010 Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin
BBC: The Russian military allegedly dumped nuclear waste into the Baltic Sea in the early 1990s, according to a report on Swedish television. Radioactive material from a military base in Latvia is thought to have been thrown into Swedish waters. For many the biggest shock is that the Swedish government may have known at the time and done nothing about it. The partly enclosed Baltic Sea is known as one of the most polluted seas in the world. But now it seems it was also ...
Netherlands adds to UN climate report controversy
February 5th, 2010 Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin
Agence France-Presse: The Netherlands has asked the UN climate change panel to explain an inaccurate claim in a landmark 2007 report that more than half the country was below sea level, the Dutch government said Friday. According to the Dutch authorities, only 26 percent of the country is below sea level, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will be asked to account for its figures, environment ministry spokesman Trimo Vallaart told AFP. The incident could cause further ...
Is there enough food out there for nine billion people?
February 4th, 2010 Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin
New Republic: Sometime around 2050, there are going to be nine billion people roaming this planet--two billion more than there are today. It's a safe bet that all those folks will want to eat. And that's... an incredibly daunting prospect. Right now, an estimated one billion people go hungry each day. So add two billion more people, a limited supply of arable land, plus the fact that rising incomes will boost demand for meat and dairy products, plus the fact that many key natural resources (fisheries, ...
