Reporter’s Journal: Times are getting dark
By Mongabay Special Reporting Initiative Fellow Ruxandra Guidi. Photo by Roberto Guerra. This is the season of hurricanes and heavy storms. But the archipelago of Kuna Yala, located south of the hurricane belt, is typically spared the damage and strong winds that hit islands further north in the Caribbean, year after year. In recent years, however, rains have forced the people living in these islands — an estimated 30,000 — to start...
Bumble Bees of North America – book review
By Gabriel Thoumi Bumble bees are remarkable. Domesticated bee colonies used for agriculture pollination is a global industry worth at least tens of billions annually. Roughly 20 percent to 30 percent of all food consumed in North America relies upon bumble bee pollination. About 80 percent of European crop species require insect pollination. In parts of China, because of the disappearance of bumble bees, pollination of apple and pear...
Change on the roof of the world: new book explores climate change and the Tibetan Plateau
Excerpt from the new book Meltdown: China’s Environmental Crisis by Sean Gallagher Adapted By Caroline D’Angelo With soaring mountains and vast grasslands, the Tibetan Plateau covers approximately one quarter of China. The plateau’s glaciers hold the largest store of freshwater on earth outside the North and South Poles. Though remote and sparsely populated, the plateau is of crucial importance to China and its downstream...
Does boreal deforestation help slow global warming?
A big fuss is being made about a new study published in Nature that suggests clearing of forests north of 45 degrees latitude cools climate — the opposite effect of deforestation in the tropics. But the findings aren’t much of a surprise — the same conclusions were reached in papers published in 2005, 2006, and 2007. In fact the same story seems to come out around this time — late November to early December...
Connecting the climate dots (video)
This video is based on an op-ed by Bill McKibben, author and founder of 350.org, with narration and illustration by Stephen Thomson of Plomomedia.com. To see additional coverage of the connections between climate change and extreme weather: Burning up: warmer world means the rise of megafires (05/12/2011) Megafires are likely both worsened by and contributing to global climate change, according to a new United Nations report. In the...
Cincinnati zoo turns on the solar (video)
With 6,400 solar cells producing 1.56 megawatts, the Cincinnati Zoo says its new solar parking lot the largest publicly accessible urban solar array in the US. The zoo says that on average the solar array with cover 1/5 of its total energy use and on some days will actually send clean energy back to the grid. “Innovative projects like this solar canopy showcase the benefits of public and private investment working together to provide...
Will food dominate 21 century geopolitics? (radio)
One billion people in the world are going hungry–more than any other time in history. Yet food security remains a pretty low concern in most industrialized countries. That may not last long according to renowned environmentalist, Lestor Brown, who says that climate change, population growth, rising consumption of meat and dairy, and water issues could soon make food a flashpoint worldwide. Already, high food prices this year...
Carl Safina on the gulf spill (video)
Last month on the one year anniversary of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (dubbed the US’s worst environmental disaster), author Carl Safina spoke about the impacts of the spill and the even bigger disaster that the media has overlooked. Safina has recently come out with a book called: A Sea in Flames: The Deepwater Horizon Oil Blowout. For a recent interview with Carl Safina: The ocean crisis: hope in troubled waters, an...
Bill McKibben at Powershift: “there is no one else: it’s you”
Bill McKibben speaking at Powershift. Selection from the speech: “Twenty-two years ago, I wrote the first book about climate change and I’ve gotten to watch it all, and I know that simply persuasion will not do. We need to fight. Now, we need to fight non-violently and with civil disobedience. […] One thing you need to make sure that you manage to get across in your witness is that you are not the radicals in this fight....
Coral reefs in 55 years (video)
It’s 2065, and something has happened to the world’s coral reefs… A video produced by Earth-Touch in association with the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), EDGE, and Global International.
Earth Hour on Saturday: will you turn out the lights?
A red sunset in Kenya. Photo by: Rhett A. Butler. On Saturday, March 26th at 8:30 PM lights will go out across the world in the 5th annual Earth Hour. Will you join in? To date this will be the biggest Earth Hour yet with 131 countries and territories signed up to participate on all seven continents. Yes, that’s right, people working in Antarctica will be turning out their lights too. “Earth Hour is a chance for people and...
Which came first the forest or the rain?
By: Douglas Sheil Repost from Bwindi Researchers on Wildlife Direct During the rainy season in the Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, Uganda, there’s an impressive storm and our water tanks overflow nearly every day. We’re in the equatorial rain forest after all: we have the location, trees and weather to prove it. But is the forest here because of the rain or is it the other way around? Being in a highland area we probably get...
Iracambi – Protecting the Beauty of the Atlantic Rainforest
A few weeks ago on Mongabay we featured an interview with Robin and Binka LeBreton, Directors of a Research Centre situated in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. The following is an excerpt from the diary kept by Clare Emily Raybould, a volunteer in January 2010…
Chinese Whispers in Indonesian Conservation
Why do we measure deforestation rates in number of football fields lost? This is causing major confusion.
Another Look at An Inconvenient Truth Part 3
Well, it’s a week after I started this little series and I’m still only part of the way through. Seems that it will take me a little longer than planned to write, but rest safe in the knowledge that that simply means there’s research happening behind the scenes here at Casa de Hill. The second article published in the delayed September edition of GeoJournal is written by Roy W. Spencer, who serves as a principal...
Another Look at An Inconvenient Truth: Part 2
I now feel qualified to take the next step in our look through GeoJournal’s AIT forum, having just heard back from author Eric Steig about an aspect of his entry “Another look at An Inconvenient Truth” that had me baffled. Steig, who teaches environmental earth science, isotope geochemistry and paleoclimatology as associate professor at the Earth and Space Sciences department, University of Washington, was first off...
Another Look at An Inconvenient Truth
Despite what some may attempt to have you believe, not everyone is an expert on global warming or climate change. In fact, you’ll know how to spot an actual expert when you hear someone say “we simply don’t know.” Reality is a cold splash of water, and when it comes to Earth’s current environmental crisis, no one has a full idea of what is going on. That may be a surprise to some of you, especially if you...
The Antarctic/Arctic Dilemma
The Arctic has received a great deal of attention over the past couple of years, due to a diminishing summer ice-sheet that is expected to be all but gone within a few years. Climate fear-mongers are crying that the end of the world is nigh, sighting the opening of the Northwest Passage for the first time in known history as its proof. However, take a trip down to the southern hemisphere – which I know, for many, is a weird...
