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Enviva bankruptcy fallout ripples through biomass industry, US and EU - Mongabay (Apr 2) |
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Apr 2 · Mongabay Series: Bioenergy, Circular economy, Planetary Boundaries
The bankruptcy filing in March by Maryland-based Enviva - the world’s largest maker of wood pellets from forest biomass - is rattling a European Union that relies heavily on biomass as a significant though contested renewable energy source.
The bankruptcy is also invigorating U.S. forest advocates determined to keep the Biden Administration from using new renewable energy credits to bail out the flailing company. On March 21, officials from five federal agencies visited North and South Carolina to see an Enviva pellet-making plant firsthand and hear environmental justice complaints over the impacts it is ... Read more ...
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Climate change brews trouble for tea industry, but circular solutions await - Mongabay (Mar 14) |
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Mar 14 · Mongabay Series: Circular economy
It’s estimated that we drink around 5 billion cups of tea every day. Producing this vast quantity of leaves to quench global thirst for black, green and other varieties is an industry that spans more than 60 tropical and subtropical countries and largely depends on smallholder farmers.
Globally, agriculture plays a large part in driving our planet’s “triple crisis”: climate change, biodiversity destruction and releasing chemical pollution into oceans and waterways. Like many other agricultural crops, tea has an impact, implicated in deforestation of tropical areas (both historic and present), and heavy use of chemical pesticides and ... Read more ...
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Squeezed-out Amazon smallholders seek new frontiers in Brazil's Roraima state - Mongabay (Mar 12) |
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Mar 12 · Mongabay Series: Amazon Conservation
CAROEBE, Brazil - Onésio Nascimento has worked the land his whole life, moving from one Brazilian farming frontier to the next.
During the coronavirus pandemic, he sold 20 hectares (50 acres) of land in northwest Mato Grosso state and used the money to buy 100 hectares (250 acres), more than 1,500 kilometers (900 miles) deeper north into the Amazon, in south Roraima state.
Today, he grows cassava and bananas on his land, an hour’s drive down a bumpy dirt road, flanked by small herds of cattle, which turns to mud during the rainy season and that loggers use to extract valuable Amazon hardwoods from nearby pristine ... Read more ...
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Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest continues to plunge - Mongabay (Sep 08, 2023) |
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Sep 08, 2023 · Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon - Earth’s largest rainforest - is on a continued downward trajectory, according to data released today by Brazil’s national space research institute, INPE.
INPE’s deforestation alert system, known as DETER, indicates that forest clearing in Brazil’s section of the Amazon totaled 563 square kilometers in August 2023. This is a 66% decline - equating to nearly 1,100 square kilometers - compared to the same month the previous year.
Deforestation detected by DETER for the first eight months of 2023 amounted to 3,712 square kilometers. This is a 48% drop compared to the previous year and the lowest figure since ... Read more ...
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A tale of two biomes as deforestation surges in Cerrado but wanes in Amazon - Mongabay (Aug 23, 2023) |
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Aug 23, 2023 · Mongabay Series: Amazon Conservation
Protecting the Amazon has garnered significant international attention, and for good reason, given its pivotal role in regulating the global climate and harboring immense biodiversity. However, with the world focused on the rainforest’s preservation, a neighboring biome faces an alarming surge in destruction: the Cerrado.
This biodiverse savanna sprawls over 20% of Brazil’s territory - an area the size of Mexico - making it the second-largest biome in the country, dwarfed only by the Amazon. Known as the “cradle of waters,” it plays a vital role in replenishing the main Brazilian and South American watersheds, as well as providing ... Read more ...
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Activists slam coal pollution from Indonesia's production of ‘clean' batteries - Mongabay (Aug 23, 2023) |
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Aug 23, 2023 · JAKARTA - As Indonesia positions itself to become a key global hub for electric vehicle batteries, it’s also putting people and the environment at harm through the coal-fired plants powering its nickel smelters, activists say.
These coal plants aren’t connected to the national grid. Instead, they exclusively serve the industrial estates cropping up across the country, mostly on the island of Sulawesi, to refine the nickel, cobalt, aluminum and other metals needed to make EVs and their batteries. And according to the Indonesian Forum for the Environment (Walhi), the country’s largest green group, these so-called captive coal plants are polluting the air, water and community lands. Read more ...
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Seaweed farmers in eastern Indonesia struggle in a changing climate - Mongabay (Jul 23, 2023) |
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Jul 23, 2023 · Mongabay Series: Indonesian Fisheries
WEST SERAM, Indonesia - It’s a sunny day off the coast of Piru village on the island district of West Seram, in Indonesia’s Maluku province. La Samiun and his wife are out on their wooden boat, along with a cargo of three sacks of seaweed seedlings.
Over the course of the day, they’ll attach the seaweed to a single nylon rope strung between two piles, then lower the line underwater where the seaweed will grow until it’s ready for harvest.
La Samiun says he hopes it takes the usual 45 days or so until he can harvest the seaweed. But he’s well aware, like many other seaweed farmers in this region, that he may have to harvest it ... Read more ...
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Mycorrhizal fungi hold CO2 equivalent to a third of global fossil fuel emissions - Mongabay (Jun 13, 2023) |
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Jun 13, 2023 · Plants and fungi struck a deal way back when. More than 400 million years ago, plants began trading sugar made from sunlight (a.k.a. carbon) for some of the soil nutrients gathered by mycorrhizal fungi. Nearly 90% of all land plants are now part of this arrangement, so scientists estimated that the amounts of carbon flowing through underground fungi must be significant. However, they didn’t realize how much carbon was in the system until now.
According to a recently published study in Current Biology, more than 13 billion metric tons of CO2 is passed from plants to mycorrhizal fungi each year - equivalent to around 36% of all annual global fossil fuel ... Read more ...
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Rewilding animals could be key for climate: Report - Mongabay (Mar 30, 2023) |
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Mar 30, 2023 · When it comes to climate solutions, your first thought may not be the wildebeest. But in the Serengeti, these buffalo-looking antelopes are the key to carbon capture.
Wildebeest eat large amounts of grass and recycle it back into the soil as dung. So when their population plummeted in the early 1900s due to a disease transmitted from domestic cattle, the loss of natural grazing led to more frequent and intense wildfires, turning the Serengeti into a carbon source.
Efforts to bring back or “rewild” the wildebeest population through disease management were a huge success, helping reduce the frequency and intensity of wildfires, and restoring the Serengeti back into a ... Read more ...
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As UN members clinch historic high seas biodiversity treaty, what's in it? - Mongabay (Mar 08, 2023) |
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Mar 08, 2023 · Mongabay Series: Oceans
A landmark agreement for a legally binding treaty aimed at protecting biodiversity and ensuring the sustainable use of resources in international waters has at last been reached by U.N. member states.
The deal, more than 15 years in the making, was finalized on the evening of March 4 at U.N. headquarters in New York. Talks had overrun the two-week schedule into a final, grueling 36-hour negotiation marathon.
“The ship has reached the shore,” a visibly exhausted Rena Lee of Singapore, president of the Intergovernmental Conference on Marine Biodiversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, said in the final plenary, eliciting a standing ... Read more ...
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Recent seismic activity in Indian Ocean likely led pilot whales to beach on Sri Lanka shores - Mongabay (Feb 15, 2023) |
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Feb 15, 2023 · Kalpitiya, SRI LANKA: The Feb. 11 beaching of 14 pilot whales in Kalpitiya, about 172 kilometers (107 miles) from the capital, Colombo, may have occurred due to the recent seismic activity in the Indian Ocean, marine experts say.
The whales beached on Sri Lanka’s northwestern Kudawa beach in Kandakuliya, Kalpitiya, prompting 15 and a half hours of strenuous efforts from authorities to send the mammals back into sea.
“We launched efforts to send these whales back into the sea at around 4 a.m. after we received a tipoff from a fisherman,” Upali Kumarathunga, the wildlife ranger who was in charge of the rescue operation, told Mongabay.
“It was challenging for us ... Read more ...
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President Lula’s first pro-environment acts protect Indigenous people and the Amazon - Mongabay (Jan 02, 2023) |
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Jan 02, 2023 · Mongabay Series: Amazon Conservation, Indigenous Peoples and Conservation
BRASÍLIA, Brazil - In the first day of his third mandate as Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, issued measures to protect the Amazon and Indigenous people, acts highly celebrated by environmentalists and activists as a reversal of an anti-environment-and-Indigenous era from predecessor Jair Bolsonaro.
Effective Jan. 2, six decrees revoked or altered measures imposed by Bolsonaro’s administration, including the annulment of a decree that encouraged mining in Indigenous lands and protected areas, the resumption of plans to combat deforestation in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes and the ... Read more ...
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Australia rejects forest biomass in first blow to wood pellet industry - Mongabay (Dec 21, 2022) |
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Dec 21, 2022 · Forest advocates in Australia - the world’s 13th largest economy - say they scored a major environmental victory on December 15 when the ruling Labor Party revised a key regulation, rejecting the renewable energy classification of wood harvested from native forests and burned to make energy. Previously, under the country’s renewable energy policy, woody biomass had been classified as a renewable energy source.
The impact of this regulatory change is perhaps most significant for the setback it may pose to the biomass industry globally, hindering the multibillion-dollar wood pellet industry from getting started Down Under at a time when pellet production is rising in the U.S. ... Read more ...
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East Africa should promote renewable energy, not oil pipelines - Mongabay (Nov 01, 2022) |
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Nov 01, 2022 · On October 18, 2022, Ugandan President H.E. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni delivered a keynote address during African Energy Week which took place in Cape Town, South Africa between October 18 and 21.
During his address, President Museveni discussed the September 14, 2022 European Parliament resolution that urged TotalEnergies to stop development of the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP) project for a year while studying an alternative route that is less environmentally- and socially-destructive.
The EACOP is a planned 1,443 km pipeline that is expected to be built between oil fields in western Uganda to the port of Tanga in Tanzania. At peak production, the pipeline is ... Read more ...
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Brazil faces two contrasting legacies for the Amazon in October's elections - Mongabay (Sep 09, 2022) |
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Sep 09, 2022 · Brazil has lost a Belgium-sized swath of the Amazon Rainforest since Jair Bolsonaro took office as the country’s president at the start of 2019. Deforestation has soared under his administration, which critics accuse of slashing funding for environmental agencies and pushing an agenda of undisguised climate change denialism and anti-Indigenous policies. According to official data released in August, the rate of deforestation in Earth’s largest rainforest is on track to rival last year’s 15-year high.
Bolsonaro is running for reelection in October, where he’s expected to face off against former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the second round. Polls show Lula in the ... Read more ...
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Crimes against the Amazon reverberate across Brazil, analysis shows - Mongabay (Aug 31, 2022) |
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Aug 31, 2022 · The Brazilian Amazon covers nine of the country’s 27 states, but environmental crimes committed in the rainforest have rippled out to nearly every single state, a new analysis shows.
Activities such as illegal logging, gold mining and illegal occupation of public lands are linked directly to a range of crimes that are widespread throughout the country, according to the analysis conducted by the Igarapé Institute. These include tax evasion, money laundering, corruption, criminal association, fraud, and wildlife trafficking.
It found these crimes are present in 24 of the 27 states, with Alagoas, Paraíba and Pernambuco the only exceptions. That translates into a total of ... Read more ...
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As the Amazon burns, only the weather can ward off a catastrophe, experts say - Mongabay (Jul 26, 2022) |
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Jul 26, 2022 · Smoke from fires in parts of the Brazilian Amazon are getting closer to cities. The combination of the highest number of forest fires in 15 years and highest ever deforestation rate recorded in the month of June, this year’s dry season is off to a fiery start, raising concerns about its peak over the next few months. With poor enforcement of environmental laws, scant funding for firefighting brigades, and a widespread sense of impunity for those responsible for the clearing and burning, researchers say the weather is the only chance to halt the forest fires.
There were 2,562 major fires detected this past June, the highest for any June since 2007, and an 11.14% increase over ... Read more ...
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We're winning with climate activism, ‘just not fast enough,' says Goldman Prize winner - Mongabay (Jun 24, 2022) |
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Jun 24, 2022 · If you can read, hear or feel this, you have power.
It was as if I were being let in on a secret. Obviously, I’d already heard of global warming and knew a bit about it. But there, in 2001, in a cold lecture theater on the outskirts of Melbourne, scientists who worked on the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports were giving us the unfiltered - and scientifically detailed - version of events.
Never before in human history had the energy balance of the Earth been altered so rapidly. Not in hundreds of thousands of years had carbon dioxide levels been so high. And without rapid action to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, we were about to inflict some ... Read more ...
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As biomass burning surges in Japan and South Korea, where will Asia get its wood? - Mongabay (May 19, 2022) |
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May 19, 2022 · Mongabay Series: Covering the Commons, Planetary Boundaries
This is part two of a two part series on the Asian biomass expansion. Part one can be found here.
Under the guise of “carbon neutral” energy, Japan and South Korea’s appetite for woody biomass for electricity generation has increased exponentially over the past decade and continues to grow. The two nations’ biomass subsidies are spurring an increase in the production of wood for burning in Southeast Asia and North America, putting pressure on forests in those regions.
Burning woody biomass for electricity takes stored CO2 out of trees and puts it back into the atmosphere. However, United Nations carbon ... Read more ...
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Missing the emissions for the trees: biomass burning booms in East Asia - Mongabay (May 18, 2022) |
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May 18, 2022 · Mongabay Series: Covering the Commons, Planetary Boundaries
The European Union and the United Kingdom are ramping up controversial wood burning to generate energy and heat as they follow legal mandates to phase out coal. But this practice is leaving smokestack carbon emissions uncounted and the atmosphere in arguably worse shape.
Now, on the other side of the world, two industrial Asian giants are following Europe’s lead, though with less media scrutiny to date.
Japan and South Korea, the world’s third- and 10th-largest economies, have been increasingly relying on burning wood for energy since 2012, taking advantage of a United Nations-tolerated loophole that ... Read more ...
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Village uses Indigenous seeds to slow down cerrado deforestation - Mongabay (May 16, 2022) |
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May 16, 2022 · RIPÁ, Brazil - One muggy morning last December, eight women and their chief drove out of the Indigenous Xavante village of Ripá across a forested savanna in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso. After a few miles, the road petered out. They walked on in single file through the knee-high grass.
They got little shade from the savanna’s slight trees, but the fervor of their mission helped them press on through the heat.
“Listen to me carefully,” the daughter of the chief of Ripá, Neusa Rehim’Watsi’õ Xavante, told us. “The love we feel for the plants and the seeds make us walk under the scorching sun without complaint.”
Most of the 20,000 surviving Xavante people ... Read more ...
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China-funded dam could disrupt key Argentine glaciers and biodiversity - Mongabay (May 12, 2022) |
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May 12, 2022 · A hydroelectric dam complex in southern Argentina, one of the country’s largest energy projects, is facing backlash from conservationists and Indigenous communities who are worried about its impact on the surrounding glaciers.
The mega project, which includes the Néstor Kirchner and Jorge Cepernic dams, is expected to supply around 5% of Argentina’s national energy needs. But it may also flood vital wetlands, disrupt the trajectory of some of the world’s largest glaciers found outside of the poles, and destroy ancestral Mapuche land.
Despite protests, lawsuits and court orders to pause construction so that adequate environmental studies can be carried out, work on the ... Read more ...
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More than half of activists killed in 2021 were land, environment defenders - Mongabay (Apr 07, 2022) |
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Apr 07, 2022 · At least 358 human rights defenders were killed in 2021, according to an analysis by Front Line Defenders (FLD) and the international consortium Human Rights Defenders Memorial. Of the total, nearly 60% were land, environment or Indigenous rights defenders, and more than a quarter were themselves Indigenous. Researchers who worked to compile the data said the high proportion of activists killed while fighting against threats to community land and natural resources represented a continuation of a years-long trend.
“Unfortunately, in most if not all of the places where this is happening, there’s just flat-out impunity for these attacks,” said Andrew Anderson, the director of ... Read more ...
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Coal power plants flourish in the Philippines despite 'climate emergency' - Mongabay (Oct 28, 2019) |
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Oct 28, 2019 · In 1996, when a community in the Philippine municipality of Pagbilao agreed to house a coal power plant a few hours' drive from Manila, the residents had high hopes. The fishing town saw in the dominating edifice full-time jobs and food on the table, says Warren Puno of the Catholic diocese of Lucena, the provincial capital.
What they didn't expect, however, was for additional coal plants to follow suit.
After Pagbilao, another power station mushroomed in the nearby municipality of Mauban in 2000; the two plants have a combined generating capacity of 1,594 megawatts, earning the region the title of the "coal corridor" of the Philippines as it's the only province to house ... Read more ...
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$85 million initiative to scale up agroforestry in Africa announced - Mongabay (Oct 08, 2019) |
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Oct 08, 2019 · Amid a deluge of news during the U.N. Climate Summit last month, one major announcement went largely uncovered, yet is among the most important initiatives aimed at reducing the effects of climate change revealed during the events in New York City.
A group of NGOs announced there that they have joined forces in what they're calling "the biggest land restoration project ever seen." They reported securing funding from G9 Ark to implement the initial phase of their first initiative, an $85 million project dubbed the Grand African Savannah Green Up.
The Green Up project is envisioned as a massive scaling-up of Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) — the encouragement of ... Read more ...
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‘The Blob’ is back: Pacific heat wave already second-largest in recent history - Mongabay (Sep 24, 2019) |
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Sep 24, 2019 · Mongabay Series: Covering Climate Now, Sea Change
“The Blob” is back in the Pacific Ocean.
The original Blob was a vast expanse of unusually warm water in the northeast Pacific that persisted from 2014 to mid-2016. (The unusual moniker came about because the marine heatwave appeared as a giant red blob on ocean surface temperature maps.) It eventually stretched all the way from the Gulf of Alaska to the coast of Mexico and had a number of adverse effects, contributing to a global coral bleaching event and impacting coastal salmon fisheries.
The new Blob resembles the first in extent and location, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ... Read more ...
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Yanomami Amazon reserve invaded by 20,000 miners; Bolsonaro fails to act - Mongabay (Jul 12, 2019) |
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Jul 12, 2019 · An estimated 20,000 illegal goldminers (garimpeiros) have entered Yanomami Park, one of Brazil's biggest indigenous reserves, located in Roraima and Amazonas states, near the border with Venezuela.
The miners are well funded, likely by entrepreneurs, who pay workers and provide them with earthmoving equipment, supplies and airplanes. Three illegal air strips and three open-pit goldmines are in operation within the Yanomami indigenous territory.
Indigenous leaders blame President Bolsonaro, with his incendiary anti-indigenous language, and his administration, with its policies that have defunded and gutted agencies responsible for law enforcement in the ... Read more ...
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Despite a decade of zero-deforestation vows, forest loss continues: Greenpeace - Mongabay (Jun 13, 2019) |
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Jun 13, 2019 · Nearly a decade after the Board of the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) passed a resolution to achieve zero net deforestation by 2020 when sourcing commodities such as soya, palm oil, beef, and paper products, these commodities continue to drive widespread deforestation, a new report from Greenpeace says.
Greenpeace contacted 66 companies, asking them to demonstrate their progress in ending deforestation by disclosing their cattle, cocoa, dairy, palm oil, pulp and paper and soya suppliers. Of the companies that did respond, most came back with only partial information.
The report concludes that not a single company could demonstrate "meaningful effort to eradicate ... Read more ...
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Extreme weather puts traditional livelihoods in peril in Sri Lanka, studies warn - Mongabay (May 17, 2019) |
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May 17, 2019 · New assessments identify Sri Lanka's northern region as a hotspot for climate change impacts, with the district of Jaffna named the top hotspot.
The Global Climate Risk Index 2019 lists Sri Lanka as the second most impacted country in 2017 for having faced extensive losses due to climate catastrophes in a single year.
With extreme weather events predicted to increase with rising levels of impact, the assessments call for rapid adaptation, particularly in terms of livelihoods vulnerable to an increasingly unpredictable climate.
JAFFNA, Sri Lanka — For Nataraja Kumar, 47, a fisherman from Guru Nagar, a sleepy coastal village in Sri Lanka's north, it's no longer ... Read more ...
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Natural forests best bet for fighting climate change, analysis finds - Mongabay (Apr 09, 2019) |
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Apr 09, 2019 · Natural forests store more carbon for longer compared to plantations and agroforestry.
The carbon sequestration potential of natural forests is 40 times greater than that of plantations, a new analysis has found.
But countries like Brazil, China and Indonesia are relying more on expanding plantations to meet their regreening goals.
About 66 percent of forest restoration commitments in tropical and subtropical countries involve planting some kind of agricultural crop.
Natural forests are 40 times more effective than plantations for storing carbon, making them the best option for slowing the global average temperature rise, a group of scientists ... Read more ...
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American retirement funds contribute to deforestation and climate change - Mongabay (Nov 22, 2016) |
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Nov 22, 2016 · Last July, two US-based NGOs, Friends of the Earth and As You Sow, launched a "transparency tool," called Deforestation Free Funds, to help investors find information on which global mutual funds have holdings in palm oil producers with links to deforestation.
As of June 2016, Friends of the Earth and As You Sow said in a statement, U.S. mutual funds had a net investment of more than $5 billion dollars in palm oil producers.
A focus of the groups' campaign is one of the largest investment firms in the U.S., TIAA (formerly known as TIAA-CREF), which manages retirement funds for many academic and cultural institutions, from museums and universities to nonprofits and ... Read more ...
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Economic impacts of climate change on global fisheries could be worse than we thought - Mongabay (Oct 14, 2016) |
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Oct 14, 2016 · Previous research has shown that global warming will cause changes in ocean temperatures, sea ice extent, salinity, and oxygen levels, among other impacts, that are likely to lead to shifts in the distribution range and productivity of marine species, the study notes.
In all, the UBC researchers found that global fisheries could lose approximately $10 billion in annual revenue by 2050 if climate change continues unchecked — a 10 percent decrease, which is 35 percent more than has been previously estimated.
Countries that are most dependent on fisheries to feed their populations will experience the biggest impacts, according to the study.
Marine fisheries have been ... Read more ...
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Mother Nature and a hydropower onslaught aren't the Mekong Delta's only problems - Mongabay (Oct 13, 2016) |
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Oct 13, 2016 · Vietnam's Mekong Delta, home to nearly 20 million people, is one of the most highly productive agricultural environments in the world, thanks in part to an elaborate network of canals, dikes, sluice gates and drainage ditches.
On the strength of Delta agriculture, Vietnam has gone from a chronic importer of rice to a major exporter.
But farmers in the region are critical of the government's food security policies, which mandate that most of the Delta's land be devoted to rice production. And many of them are taking measures to circumvent those rules, in ways that aren't always friendly to the environment.
That's just one example of how water and land-use policy in ... Read more ...
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Beef consumers’ role in causing deforestation in South America - Mongabay (Sep 14, 2016) |
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Sep 14, 2016 · This week the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released a report — "Cattle, Cleared Forests, and Climate Change: Scoring America's Top Brands on their Deforestation-Free Beef Commitments and Practices" — authored by myself and UCS analyst Lael Goodman, which revealed that some of the largest U.S. consumer goods companies are failing to ensure their beef products are not fueling tropical deforestation.
Beef production has proven to be a top driver of tropical deforestation in South America and globally. In South America, land ultimately used for cattle ranches frequently replaces tropical forests. Many U.S. companies operate in South America and sell beef from the region to ... | By Asha Sharma Read more ...
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New study - Mongabay (Aug 24, 2016) |
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Aug 24, 2016 · Human activities have taken a heavy toll on our environment. But there may be some hope, researchers say.
Although human pressures continue to expand across our planet, their overall rate of increase is slower than the rates of population and economic growth, a new study published in Nature Communications has found.
Using data from satellites and on-ground surveys, scientists have created maps that show how the impacts of human activities on the environment (or human footprint) have changed over a 16-year period, between 1993 and 2009.
The team found that while human population increased by 23 percent and the world economy grew by 153 percent during this period, ... Read more ...
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New discovery may be key to saving trees in a warming world - Mongabay (Aug 11, 2016) |
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Aug 11, 2016 · A new discovery has forced ecologists to shift how they think about forest systems from hotbeds of competition to cooperative, interdependent structures. A five-year experiment, the first of its kind, shows that tall healthy trees share resources, specifically carbon, with trees of different species. This carbon-trading is driven by collaborative underground networks of mycorrhizal fungi which exist in almost all of the world's forests. Researchers believe this resource sharing may play a significant role in the survival of forests as they increasingly come under stress from climate change.
"The entire finding was a surprise, my co-author didn't believe it at first, we thought ... Read more ...
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NASA images show the Amazon could be facing an intense wildfire season this year - Mongabay (Jul 18, 2016) |
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Jul 18, 2016 · Conditions created by the strong El Niño event that warmed up Pacific waters in 2015 and early 2016 altered rainfall patterns around the world. In the Amazon basin, that meant reduced rainfall during the wet season, plunging some parts of the region into severe drought.
According to NASA, the Amazon is the driest it's been at the start of the dry season since 2002 — and that probably means the rainforest is in for a particularly nasty wildfire season, according to Doug Morton, an Earth scientist with the U.S. agency and a co-creator of the Amazon fire forecast, which uses climate observations and active fire detections by NASA satellites to predict fire season ... Read more ...
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Intact Amazon forests show possible signs of global warming impact - Mongabay (Jun 04, 2014) |
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Jun 04, 2014 · OSLO, Dec 14 (Reuters) - KLP, Norway's largest life insurer, will exclude from its portfolio firms that derive 30 percent or more of revenues from the extraction of oil sands, in the latest example of an investor looking at the carbon footprint of its investments.
KLP, which has 641.5 billion crowns ($76.64 billion) of assets under management, said the move was an extension of its 2014 policy to exclude companies that derive 30 percent or more of its revenues from coal.
Oil sands, also called tar sands, contain oil that is too thick to be refined without being heated or diluted first. The process to treat it before it goes to a refinery produces more carbon emissions ... Read more ...
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