EcocentricWater
Anybody who has been visiting coral reefs for the past 20 years or so will tell you that the scene underwater pales – quite literally – in comparison to what it used to be.
New research published in PLoS ONE yesterday shows that coral bleaching in the Atlantic and the Caribbean in 2005 was the worst bleaching event ever …
EcocentricEcocentric
I’m back from vacation (I’m sure I was missed), but I didn’t go home. I’m out in rather lovely Sacramento today and tomorrow, to moderate a couple of panels at the third Governor’s Global Climate Summit. The meeting is outgoing California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s annual gathering of governors and other subnational …
EcocentricTransportation
Welcome aboard the cruise ship of the future: shuffle board, casino, ballroom, and….nuclear reactor?
Today Lloyd’s Register, the international standards organization for the classification and design of ships, announced that it has begun a two-year project with a consortium of companies to look into the feasibility of …
EcocentricGeoengineering
Just in case you missed it, have a look at Bjorn Lomborg’s essay for TIME this week on why we should use geoengineering to stave off the immediate effects of global warming until greener energy sources are practically integrated into the global economy. (Watch a Q&A with Lomborg.)
What do you think? Are man-made fixes — like …
EcocentricOil
Here’s an interesting piece of news from Tim Webb at the Guardian about Greenland’s latest pitch to the oil industry: pay us $2 billion dollars, and then you can drill. Greenland — which is divided on whether the recent interest of global companies in its oil and gas resources is a blessing or a curse — has evidently been …
EcocentricOceans
Full disclosure: I don’t ‘cruise.’ The idea of boarding a moveable city and being forced to share every meal for a week with friendly strangers does not sound like fun to me. Add ship morgues, and the fact that U.S. ships are now required to have sexual assault forensic specialists on board, and I think we’re dealing with …
EcocentricEndangered Species
Later this month, heads of state and diplomats from 11 countries will meet in St. Petersburg, Russia for a “tiger summit” to discuss how to stop tigers from going extinct.
It’s the first time heads of state have gathered for a meeting about a single species. But to many conservationists, the meeting shouldn’t have been needed at all.
EcocentricTechnology
Another blueprint for the Green Green Revolution was announced today at the 3rd International Rice Congress, and this time it’s all about — you guessed it — rice. Well, according to rice types anyway (the corn guys might have a different theory). But the scientists that unveiled the Global Rice Science Partnership (GRiSP), a …
EcocentricEndangered Species
Getting out of harm’s way isn’t easy when you’re a plant. If the water is rising or a fire is approaching, anything that can run, fly or slither can at least move to higher ground. But trees and other vegetation are pretty much stuck. That’s at least true with high-speed, real-time dangers like floods, but a slow motion disaster—global …
EcocentricWildlife
All along the northern coast of Sicily there is evidence of organized crime: empty tonnaros, or tuna canneries, that went out of business last century when the massive blue fin tunas they hauled from the Mediterranean for generations finally disappeared. Sicily’s ghostly tonnaros may not have much to do with the Corleones or the
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