Scientific debate sparked over carbon sink data
Physorg, November 18 – According to research published this week in Nature Geoscience, emissions of carbon dioxide continue to outstrip the ability of the world’s natural ‘sinks’ to absorb carbon. The new report follows another study published only ten days earlier by Dr Wolfgang Knorr in Geophysical Research Letters, which concludes that a decline in the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO2 cannot be detected within the available data.

[ @Turboblocke: oops, typo...]

People all over the world are being deeply affected by something that many of us don’t really consider in our day-to-day lives. In Peru, whole families of farmers depend on the water running off glaciers and into rivers. But because of the changes in temperature caused by global carbon emissions, the glaciers are retreating and the rivers are running dry. The farmers live on the crops they grow in the mountains and the yarn they spin from the coats of their alpaca herds. But they can no longer predict the seasons and the alpacas are leaving – it is almost as if they can sense the disaster faster than we can.

They’re called PEConsulting, out of San Luis Rey.

Report details ‘coal’s assault on human health’
Charleston Gazette, November 18 – Coal pollution is assaulting human health through impacts on workers, residents near mining operations and power plants, and the environment in coalfield communities, according to a new report by a group of physicians.

Green technologies in peril as rich nations dither on climate deal
The Guaridan, November 18 – Uncertainty over investing in green technologies more dangerous than lack of Copenhagen treaty says Achim Steiner, the head of the UN environment programme.

Climate Change Likely to Increase African Hunger Woes
IPS, November 18 – Africa, the continent already most affected by hunger and food scarcity, is likely to see its woes increased due to climate change and the changing rain patterns it provokes, experts and scientists say.

‘Code Red’ as heat intensifies
News24, November 17 – Australian officials issued their first ever “catastrophic” wildfire evacuation warning on Tuesday, as a parching heatwave intensified over the country’s south.

Fighting climate change by turning CO2 to stone
PhysOrg.com, November 17- While politicians debate the best ways to cut global carbon dioxide emissions, researchers at Idaho National Laboratory’s Center for Advanced Energy Studies are charging ahead on a strategy to defuse the CO2 the world already produces. They want to inject the greenhouse gas deep underground, where it would react with rocks and remain, entombed, for thousands of years.
(…) Though mineral sequestration shows a great deal of promise, research into the approach is still in its early stages, and many complicating factors remain. Chief among these is cost, a problem for all forms of CCS technology.

Fossil fuel CO2 emissions up by 29 percent since 2000; carbon sinks on land and in the oceans diminishing
Physorg.com, November 17 – The strongest evidence yet that the rise in atmospheric CO2 emissions continues to outstrip the ability of the world’s natural ’sinks’ to absorb carbon is published this week in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Also see here and here.