Monthly Archives: January 2009

Japan to set new reduction target for greenhouse gases by June

By | Published: January 31, 2009
window.document.getElementById(‘post-7932′).parentNode.className += ‘ adhesive_post’;Mainichi Daily News: Japan will set a new reduction target for greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 sometime by June, Prime Minister Taro Aso was to announce at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. The government has never specified a deadline for setting the reduction target until now. In his [...]
Posted in Blogroll | Comments closed

Giant Antarctic ice sheet hangs by an icy thread

By | Published: January 31, 2009
Asian News International: The Wilkins Ice Shelf, a giant Antarctic ice sheet, is literally hanging by an icy thread, and can break-off anytime. According to a report in stuff.co.nz, if it goes, the Wilkins Ice Shelf, which is the size of Jamaica, would become the 10th Antarctic ice shelf to recede or vanish into [...]
Posted in Blogroll | Comments closed

Why climate change matters in the downturn

By | Published: January 31, 2009
Times (UK): I’ve been at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week and there has been much talk of leadership and what we need to do to get out of this economic crisis. Oxfam’s solution, at first glance, may seem kind of counter-intuitive. Because, at a time when many people are worrying about whether [...]
Posted in Blogroll | Comments closed

What Is to Be Done About Global Warming? McKinsey Has an Answer

By | Published: January 31, 2009
ClimateBiz: The very brainy people at McKinsey & Co. have figured out how we can to cope with global warming. All we have to do is: 1. Make buildings, cars, trucks, trains planes and factories a whole lot more energy efficient. 2. Generate 70 percent of global electricity from low-carbon fuels, including [...]
Posted in Blogroll | Comments closed

Australia heatwave eases a little, fires burning

By | Published: January 31, 2009
Reuters: A heatwave blamed for raging bushfires and a spate of deaths eased a little in Australia’s densely populated southeast on Saturday, but a ban on lighting fires in the open remained in force. Temperatures slipped below 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in most major centers for the first time in several days, [...]
Posted in Blogroll | Comments closed

United States: Utilities turn their customers green, with envy

By | Published: January 31, 2009
New York Times: A frowny face is not what most electric customers expect to see on their utility statements, but Greg Dyer got one. He earned it, the utility said, by using a lot more energy than his neighbors. "I have four daughters; none of my neighbors has that many children," said Mr. [...]
Posted in Blogroll | Comments closed

Help wanted for green jobs

By | Published: January 31, 2009
Nation: "I said, ‘I see windmills,’ and everyone kind of gave me a strange look." Vicky Sloan, a humanities professor at Clinton Community College, which serves a rural region in upstate New York, is describing a "visualization" session with a touchy-feely outside consultant, forced on the faculty several years ago by the administration. The consultant [...]
Posted in Blogroll | Comments closed

United States: What’s emitted in Tahoe, stays in Tahoe

By | Published: January 31, 2009
Sierra Sun: It’s like they say, "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas." The same is true for pollutants in the Tahoe Basin, says Thomas Cahill, the air quality expert for the Environmental Protection Agency’s Region 9 Sierra Nevada Public Land Management Association, and member of the University of California at Davis "Delta Group" [...]
Posted in Blogroll | Comments closed

New nuclear reactor’s waste is seven times more hazardous, Greenpeace exposes

By | Published: January 31, 2009
Greenpeace: Greenpeace has uncovered evidence that nuclear waste from the European Pressurised Reactor (EPR), the flagship of the nuclear industry, will be up to seven times more hazardous than waste produced by existing nuclear reactors, increasing costs and the danger to health and the environment. The revelation comes soon after President Sarkozy’s decision to [...]
Posted in Blogroll | Comments closed

Internal Brazil fight may hamper Amazon protection

By | Published: January 31, 2009
Associated Press: A global counterculture gathering dedicated partly to preserving the world’s rain forests has become a bureaucratic battleground for two Brazilian officials squabbling over what to do with the vast Amazon region. Environment Minister Carlos Minc used the World Social Forum that ends Sunday to take shots at Agriculture Minister Reinhold Stephanes, who [...]
Posted in Blogroll | Comments closed

Fewer Days Of Extreme Cold And More Days Of Extreme Heat In Europe

By | Published: January 31, 2009
ScienceDaily: Scientists from the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM) have selected 262 European observatories which analysed the series of minimum and maximum daily temperatures from 1955 to 1998 to estimate trend variations in extreme temperature events. According to the study, in Europe days of extreme cold are decreasing and days of extreme heat increasing. From [...]
Posted in Blogroll | Comments closed

NASA mission to help unravel climate mysteries

By | Published: January 31, 2009
Xinhua: NASA’s first spacecraft dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide is in final preparation for a Feb 23 launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Carbon dioxide is the leading human-produced greenhouse gas driving changes in Earth’s climate. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) will provide the first complete picture of human and natural [...]
Posted in Blogroll | Comments closed

What Is a Green Job, Anyway?

By | Published: January 31, 2009
AlterNet: Barack Obama has been busy talking about one of his primary pre-election goals, energy independence, in mid-recession terms, with the creation of millions of proposed "green jobs." The phrase suggests two elements long considered at odds with each other — the economy and the environment — may in fact have a common and even [...]
Posted in Blogroll | Comments closed

Science loses out when ice caps melt

By | Published: January 31, 2009
Science News: It’s hard to imagine a mountain range without snow-covered peaks. But that may soon be the case in countries in or near the tropics. Studies show that the ice that sits atop the world’s highest mountains is vanishing at an alarming rate, threatening to leave the summits bare. The accelerated melting of [...]
Posted in Blogroll | Comments closed

Abu Dhabi looks to the sun to go green

By | Published: January 31, 2009
MarketWatch: My walk to work on Saturday mornings takes me by three- and four-story apartment blocks and three- and four-story single-family villas, some of which are landscaped and others that have been given over to nature. Giving a lawn over to nature in North America is an invitation to weeds and clover. Here, it’s an [...]
Posted in Blogroll | Comments closed