By Mike Cohen and Frank Jomo Dec. 18 (Bloomberg) — The death toll from a cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe has risen to 1,111, while 20,581 people are suspected to have contracted the disease, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. “Major causes for the current outbreak continue to be a [...]
Archive for December, 2008 ↓
World’s oceans turning acidic faster than expected
Acidification caused by carbon emissions could bring some oceans to a tipping point. By Peter N. Spotts | Staff writer/ December 18, 2008 Parts of the world’s oceans appear to be acidifying far faster than scientists have expected. The culprit: rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere pumped into the air from cars, power [...]
Water Footprint Network Launched
On 16 December 2008, the Water Footprint Network was launched at the Corporate Water Footprint Conference, in London (UK). Scientific Director Arjen Hoekstra presented the partner organisations and companies. This initial group organisations have fully endorsed the mission of the Water Footprint Network. The Water Footprint Network and its partners strive to develop and apply [...]
Volcanoes Killed The Dinosaurs, New Evidence Suggests
Huffington Post | Nicholas Graham | December 16, 2008 Accepted theory holds that the dinosaurs became extinct after a large asteroid crashed into Earth, rending the environment uninhabitable. However, that theory is facing a serious challenge as evidence mounts that it may have been massive volcanic eruptions in India that ended the species: … Read [...]
More than 2T tons of ice melted in artic since '03
WASHINGTON – More than 2 trillion tons of land ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted since 2003, according to new NASA satellite data that show the latest signs of what scientists say is global warming. More than half of the loss of landlocked ice in the past five years has occurred in Greenland, [...]
India quakes over China's water plan
By Sudha Ramachandran BANGALORE – Even as India and China are yet to resolve their decades-old territorial dispute, another conflict is looming. China’s diversion of the waters of a river originating in Tibet to its water-scarce areas could leave India’s northeast parched. This is expected to trigger new tensions in the already difficult relations between [...]
Drought forces Australian state to purchase water
TANALEE SMITH | December 4, 2008 | AP SYDNEY, Australia — Australia’s driest state has been forced to purchase water for the first time to ensure adequate supplies in the midst of a drought, a government official said Friday. Karlene Maywald, state water security minister, said South Australia has purchased 61 billion gallons (231 gigaliters) [...]
The machine creating water out of thin air
By Grace Wong for CNN LONDON, England (CNN) — As Zimbabwe battles a cholera epidemic that has already killed hundreds, one company thinks it may have found a potential solution to the world water crisis. Element Four, a small Canadian firm, has applied its water technology to create the WaterMill, a novel electricity-powered machine that [...]
Clean Future for World's Dirtiest River
MANILA, PHILIPPINES – Indonesia’s efforts to clean up the Citarum River, often called the world’s most polluted river, today received a major boost following the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) approval of a $500 million multi-tranche loan package. The first loan tranche is for $50 million. The Citarum River Basin Territory supports a population of 28 [...]
