USE ME! Essentially, this is a catch all for everything. This is probably the ONLY category where things that are not directly related to Rising Tide affiliates/allies should go. For example if a coal company goes out of business (and we didn’t directly cause it) it should probably only go here.
Sun May 11, 2008 11:51am EDT
Deadly tornadoes hit U.S.
OKLAHOMA CITY (Reuters) – At least 19 people were killed in Missouri and Oklahoma when tornadoes and violent storms ripped through the central and southeastern United States, devastating neighborhoods and injuring hundreds, officials said on Sunday.
The National Weather Service reported six deaths in Oklahoma and 13 in Missouri but those tolls may rise.
Published on Friday, May 9, 2008 by The San Francisco Chronicle
Depleted Groundwater Threatens Food Chain
by Daniel Pepper
Hands clasped and head bowed, he offers a short prayer to a Sufi saint and asks for a bountiful supply of groundwater. He then cranks up a wheezing diesel engine, lines up the drill over the offerings and releases a lever that brings an iron cylinder crashing into the earth.
“Business is growing each year,” said Kumar. “But we’ve placed about as many tube wells as we can in this area.”
On either side of Kumar’s drill, the calm beauty of emerald rice patties belies a quiet catastrophe brewing hundreds of feet beneath the surface. As the water table in Punjab drops dangerously low, farmers across the state are investing – and often going into debt – to bore deeper wells with more powerful pumps.
Global cooling theories put scientists on guard
Fri May 9, 2008 1:44pm EDT By Gerard Wynn
LONDON (Reuters) – A new study suggesting a possible lull in manmade global warming has raised fears of a reduced urgency to battle climate change.
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of hundreds of scientists, last year said global warming was “unequivocal” and that manmade greenhouse gas emissions were “very likely” part of the problem.
And while the study published in the journal Nature last week did not dispute manmade global warming, it did predict a cooling from recent average temperatures through 2015, as a result of a natural and temporary shift in ocean currents.
The IPCC predicted global temperature increases this century of 1.8 to 4 degrees Celsius.
Sahara dried out slowly, not abruptly: study
Thu May 8, 2008 5:46pm EDT
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
OSLO (Reuters) – The once-green Sahara turned to desert over thousands of years rather than in an abrupt shift as previously believed, according to a study on Thursday that may help understanding of future climate changes.
And there are now signs of a tiny shift back towards greener conditions in parts of the Sahara, apparently because of global warming, said the lead author of the report about the desert’s history published in the journal Science.
The study of ancient pollen, spores and aquatic organisms in sediments in Lake Yoa in northern Chad showed the region gradually shifted from savannah 6,000 years ago towards the arid conditions that took over about 2,700 years ago.