Killing Asian Forests for Food and Fuel

EXCHANGE MORNING POST : Business, Economics, Education, Entrepreneurs,
Environment, Science and Technology

April 29, 2008
http://www.exchangemagazine.com/morningpost/2008/week18/Tuesday/042809.html

Asia’s Rainforests Vanishing As Timber, Food Demand Surge: Experts.

“Asia’s rainforests are being rapidly destroyed,
a trend accelerated by surging timber demand in
booming China and India, and record food, energy
and commodity prices, forest experts warn.

The loss of these biodiversity hot spots, much of
it driven by the illegal timber trade and the
growth of oil palm, biofuel and rubber
plantations, is worsening global warming, species
loss and poverty, they said…at the Asia-Pacific
Forestry Week conference in Hanoi. …

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Nevada Public Lands Threatened by Massive Fossil-Fuel Drilling Operations

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 28, 2008
1:10 PM

 CONTACT: Center for Biological Diversity
Rob Mrowka, Center for Biological Diversity, (702) 249-5821
 
 
Federal Proposal to Open 1.7 Million Acres of Nevada Public Land to Oil and Gas Development Would Worsen Global Climate Change and Imperil Species
 
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – April 28 – Today the Center for Biological Diversity submitted comments urging the federal Bureau of Land Management to scrap its proposal to open 1.7 million acres of public lands in Lander and Nye counties to oil and gas development because the drilling would exacerbate global climate change and further threaten imperiled species.

At the heart of the Center’s complaint is the Bureau’s failure to analyze or even acknowledge the environmental impacts from the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the development and consumption of oil and gas produced from the area, despite the National Environmental Policy Act’s mandate to fully disclose the environmental impacts from federal actions.

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Warming Shifting Crop Zones Northward

Warming shifts gardeners’ maps
By Elizabeth Weise, USA TODAY

Every gardener is familiar with the multicolor U.S. map of climate zones
on the back of seed packets. It’s the Department of Agriculture’s
indicator of whether a flower, bush or tree will survive the winters in
a given region.

It’s also 18 years old. A growing number of meteorologists and
horticulturists say that because of the warming climate, the 1990 map
doesn’t reflect a trend that home gardeners have noticed for more than a
decade: a gradual shift northward of growing zones for many plants.

The map doesn’t show, for example, that the Southern magnolia, once
limited largely to growing zones ranging from Florida to Virginia, now
can thrive as far north as Pennsylvania. Or that kiwis, long hardy only
as far north as Oklahoma, now might give fruit in St. Louis.

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False Solution: More on Sulfate Infusion

Climate ‘fix’ could deplete ozone
By Helen Briggs  Science reporter, BBC News

Research has cast new doubt on the wisdom of using
Sun-blocking sulphate particles to cool the planet.

Sulphate injections are one of several
“geo-engineering” solutions to climate change being
discussed by scientists.

But data published in Science journal suggests the
strategy would lead to drastic thinning of the ozone
layer.

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