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Biodiversity
Panthera Foundation Buys 400,000 Acres Near Pantanal, Brazil Dr. Thomas Kaplan, executive chairman of the foundation Panthera, an emerging force in big cat conservation, said that Panthera’s plan was to continue running cattle on the ranches while testing a broad range of techniques for reducing livestock-jaguar interactions. The results, he hopes, will encourage others to adopt range management practices that encourage co-existence over conflict. >Story >Post Comments >Related Blogs Deep-Sea Species' Loss Could Lead to Oceans' Collapse The loss of deep-sea species poses a severe threat to the future of the oceans, suggests a new report in the January 8th issue of Current Biology. In a global-scale study, the researchers found some of the first evidence that the health of the deep sea, as measured by the rate of critical ecosystem processes, increases exponentially with the diversity of species living there. >Story >Post Comments >Related Blogs Effects of Protected Lands on the Development and Conservation of Their Surroundings The study found no evidence that proximity to protected areas correlates with a reduced rate of nearby land development. This suggests that each conservation action should be justified and valued largely for what is protected on the targeted land, without much hope of broader conservation leverage effects. >Story >Post Comments >Related Blogs More Evidence for New Species Hidden in Plain Sight Two articles in the online open access journals BMC Evolutionary Biology and BMC Biology provide further evidence that we have hugely underestimated the number of species with which we share our planet. Today sophisticated genetic techniques mean that superficially identical animals previously classed as members of a single species, including the frogs and giraffes in these studies, could in fact come from several distinct ‘cryptic’ species. >Story >Post Comments >Related Blogs Species Watch Gulf of California Porpoise Focus of New Research Report Ukrainian Mussel Spreading in California Rwanda Introduces 'Gorilla Tax' Japan Drops Humpback Whale Hunt Philippines Works to Save Giant Clams Two New Species Of Soft Coral Discovered In Caribbean African Giraffes Highly Endangered: Study New Species of Butterfly Discovered Large Group of Endangered Chinese White Dolphins Spotted Business
Corporations and
Finance
GEF Pledges $20M US to Protect Hotspots Conservation International and the World Bank have signed an agreement for 20 million dollars of funding to protect bio-diverse hotspots. Ten new conservation projects will be funded, including programs in Micronesia, Polynesia, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean Basin, and temperate forests in South Africa. The funds are being provided by the Global Environmental Facility, which brings together 178 governments to support global environmental initiatives. >Story >Post Comments >Related Blogs Marine Algae Get Green Light From Shell Shell is to become the first major oil company to produce diesel fuel from marine algae. >Story >Post Comments >Related Blogs Total to Capture and Store Carbon in Indonesia The Indonesian government has signed an agreement with energy giant Total E&P Indonesia on a carbon capture and storage scheme that could eventually lead to the development of carbon negative bioenergy production in the southeast Asian country. The question remains open as to how carbon negative bioenergy in Indonesia will undermine the carbon credits-for-forests scheme introduced by the Bali roadmap. >Story >Post Comments >Related Blogs 'Big Five' Oil Companies Limit Exploration >Story >Post Comments >Related Blogs Wal-Mart Outlines Environmental Efforts Progress Wal-Mart Stores Inc released a report outlining the progress it is making in meeting its so-called "sustainability" goals, such as cutting waste and reducing energy at the discount retailer's stores. >Story >Post Comments >Related Blogs Climate
FTC to Examine Use of Carbon Offset Funds Corporations and shoppers in the United States spent more than $54 million last year on carbon offset credits toward tree planting, wind farms, solar plants and other projects to balance the emissions created by, say, using a laptop computer or flying on a jet. But where exactly is that money going? The Federal Trade Commission, which regulates advertising claims, is holding hearings to find out. >Story >Post Comments >Related Blogs Normalized Hurricane Damage in the United States: 1900–2005 The most damaging single storm is the 1926 Great Miami storm, with $140–157 billion of normalized damage: the most damaging years are 1926 and 2005. Unless action is taken to address the growing concentration of people and properties in coastal areas where hurricanes strike, damage will increase, and by a great deal, as more and wealthier people increasingly inhabit these coastal locations. >Story >Post Comments >Related Blogs Thunder, Hail, Fire: What Does Climate Change Mean for the U.S.? The regional effects range from more wildfires in the west to stronger storms in the east. >Story >Post Comments >Related Blogs Research Discredits Geoengineering Fix to Global Warming Scientists have revealed an important discovery that raises doubts concerning the viability of plans to fertilize the ocean to solve global warming, a projected $100 billion venture. >Story >Post Comments >Woods Hole Climate Research Watch Climate Change Allowed Humans to Migrate Out of Africa Ozone Suppresses Global Carbon Sink Will the Atlantic Circulation Switch Off, Chill Europe? Effects of Permafrost Melt on Global Warming CO2 Did Not End the Last Ice Age 1000 Year Series Shows Climatic Forcing of Locust Dynamics World's Largest Active Archive of Weather Data is Online On-Line Shopping Reduces CO2 Emissions Impact of CO2 Fluctuations on Ecosystem Evolution Ecological Consequences of Heinrich Events Meteor No Longer Prime Suspect in Great Extinction Antarctic Ozone Hole Shrinks Due to Mild Weather, Not Recovery Hurricane Katrina's Carbon Footprint on U.S. Gulf Coast War Frequency and Population Changes Follow Climate Change Small Group of US Experts Insist Global Warming Not Man-Made Increased Concerns About Climate Model Reliability Energy
and
Transportation
Is World Oil Production Peaking? The eminent environmentalist Lester Brown investigates this important question. >Story >Post Comments >Related Blogs Electricity Feed Laws, Feed-in Tariffs, and Advanced Renewable Tariffs So far in the US the Renewable Portfolio Standard has been the policy instrument of choice for promoting clean energies. Evidence from around the world is suggesting that there may be more effective policies available. >Story >Post Comments >Related Blogs Nuclear Power Worldwide: Status and Outlook The IAEA makes two annual projections concerning the growth of nuclear power, a low and a high. The low projection assumes that all nuclear capacity that is currently under construction or firmly in the development pipeline gets completed and attached to the grid, but no other capacity is added. In this low projection, there would be growth in capacity from 370 GW(e) at the end of 2006 to 447 GW(e) in 2030. (A gigawatt = 1000 megawatts = 1 billion watts). >Story >Post Comments >Related Blogs Increased Domestic Production Won't Make US Self-Sufficient in Natural Gas A new report by the Energy Forum at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy finds that the United States will continue to rely on imported natural gas even if areas that are currently restricted are opened up to drilling. >Story >Post Comments >Related Blogs Hydroelectric Watch 50 GWatts Could be Released by Damming The Red Sea Efforts to Harvest Ocean’s Energy Open New Debate Front New Paper Examines Dams' Effects on California Salmon Hydroelectric Blaze Kills 5 Workers in Colorado Forests and
Agriculture
World Bank Launches Forest Defense Scheme It consists of two separate mechanisms. The Readiness Mechanism, to eventually be worth US$100M, will assist 20 countries to reduce emissions from deforestation and degradation, including establishing proper monitoring systems. The Carbon Finance Mechanism, with a target size of US$200M, will then enable these countries to 'sell' their emissions reductions to developed countries on the global carbon market. >Story >Post Comments >Related Blogs "C4" Grasses Thrive With Lower CO2 Changes in global carbon dioxide levels probably had an important influence on the emergence of a specific group of plants, termed C4 grasses, which includes major cereal crops, plants used for biofuels, and species that represent important components of grasslands across the world. This implies that a reversal of the CO2 conditions that favored C4 plants could potentially lead to their demise—a startling prospect if one considers the human race’s reliance on C4 crops like corn, sugarcane, sorghum, and millets. >Story >Post Comments >Related Blogs Rainforest Destruction Increasingly Driven by Enterprises, Not Poverty Tropical deforestation is increasingly enterprise-driven rather than the result of subsistence agriculture, a trend that has critical implications for the future of the world's forests, says Dr. Thomas Rudel, a researcher from Rutgers University. >Story >Post Comments >Related Blogs Carbon Sink Capacity in Northern Forests Reduced by Global Warming An international study investigating the carbon sink capacity of northern terrestrial ecosystems discovered that the duration of the net carbon uptake period (CUP) has on average decreased due to warmer autumn temperatures. >Story >Post Comments >Related Blogs | |
