Category: RT Newswire

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.

Rain and Snow Help Great Lakes Water Volume Recovery

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Rain and snow spell relief for Great Lakes
Fri May 2, 2008 1:26pm EDT  By Jonathan Spice

TORONTO (Reuters) – Twice as much autumn rain and early winter ice helped Lake Superior, the biggest of North America’s Great Lakes, bounce back from record low water levels reached last year.

The deep, cold lake on the Canada-U.S. border — the largest freshwater body of water in the world by surface area — rose about 31 cm (1 foot) in seven months, with half of that in April alone as the spring thaw melted heavy winter snowfall that arrived late in the season.

The turnaround in the uppermost of the Great Lakes could literally trickle down to its four lower cousins, spelling relief for shippers who use the major waterway and residents concerned over shallow channels and receding shorelines.

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“Big Dry” Hits Australian Farmers

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‘Big Dry’ hits Australian farmers 
By Nick Bryant
BBC News, Sydney 

The drought has forced 10% of farmers off the land in just five years

More than 10,000 Australian farming families have had to leave their land as a result of the country’s ongoing drought, new figures reveal. There has been a 10% drop in the number of farmers in the past five years, the figures released by the Australia Bureau of Statistics revealed.

Australia is presently in the grip of the what’s known locally as the “Big Dry” – the worst drought in a century. The figures reveal its impact on the nation’s farming communities. They show that the number of farmers in Australia has dropped by a third in just 20 years.

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Arctic Sea Ice Forecast: Another Record Low in 2008

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Arctic sea ice forecast: another record low in 2008
Arctic ice seen melting faster than anticipated
Thu May 1, 2008 1:43am EDT
24 Apr 2008
 
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Arctic sea ice, sometimes billed as Earth’s air conditioner for its moderating effects on world climate, will probably shrink to a record low level this year, scientists predicted on Wednesday.

In releasing the forecast, climate researcher Sheldon Drobot of the University of Colorado at Boulder called the changes in Arctic sea ice “one of the more compelling and obvious signs of climate change.”

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Federal Judge: Bush Admin Has 16 Days to Decide Polar Bear Listing

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Published on Wednesday, April 30, 2008 by The Guardian/UK
Bush Has 16 Days To Decide Whether Polar Bears Are Endangered
by Elana Schor

The Bush administration has 16 days to decide whether polar bears are now an endangered species because of climate change, a California judge ruled today.

The US court handed a victory to three environmental groups that sued to protect polar bears threatened by melting sea ice, rejecting a plea by the government to postpone its decision until June 30.

An agency of the US interior department was supposed to have ruled by January 9 on whether to designate the polar bear an endangered species. But the agency failed to act, angering green activists who attributed the delay to the Bush administration’s sale of oil and gas drilling leases near polar bear habitats in Alaska.

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