Archive for the ‘Ocean’ Category
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 ...
Climate change likely to make it harder to feed 1 billion hungry: CIDA chief
February 5th, 2010 Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin
Canadian Press: Poor countries are still gripped by the food crisis of two years ago and climate change will only make things tougher in the coming years, says the head of Canadian International Development Agency. CIDA President Margaret Biggs offered that candid assessment of the state of the undeveloped world and what Canada can to do help, in a speech Thursday to University of Ottawa students. Biggs, who rarely speaks publicly, also said a tough road lies ahead in rebuilding ...
Posted in Ocean 
Comments Off on Climate change likely to make it harder to feed 1 billion hungry: CIDA chiefScant 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 ...
Defusing the Methane Greenhouse Time Bomb
February 5th, 2010 Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin
Scientific American: Methane trapped in Arctic ice (and elsewhere) could be rapidly released into the atmosphere as a result of global warming in a possible doomsday scenario for climate change, some scientists worry. After all, methane is 72 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide over a 20-year timescale. But research announced at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union this December suggests that marine microbes could at least partially defeat the methane "time bomb" sitting ...
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 ...
Arctic melt to cost up to $24 trillion by 2050: report
February 5th, 2010 Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin
Reuters: Arctic ice melting could cost global agriculture, real estate and insurance anywhere from $2.4 trillion to $24 trillion by 2050 in damage from rising sea levels, floods and heat waves, according to a report released on Friday. "Everybody around the world is going to bear these costs," said Eban Goodstein, a resource economist at Bard College in New York state who co-authored the report, called "Arctic Treasure, Global Assets Melting Away." He said the report, reviewed by more ...
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 ...
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 ...
