Harvested News

In 2012, typhoon Haikui battered the megacity of 12mn people for eight days, but when tropical storm Ondoy hit Manila in 2009 and a month’s worth of rain fell in a few hours, the city came close to catastrophe. Nearly 80% was flooded, 246 people died and hundreds of thousands had to be evacuated. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN’s…

"We were astonished that biodiversity changes were so strongly affected by soil texture and that it was such an overriding factor," said Thomas Crowther, a postdoctoral fellow at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies and lead author of the study. "Texture overrode the effects of all the other variables that we thought might be important, including temperature, moisture, nutrient concentrations, and soil pH."…

Below are some of the costliest impacts, according to a 49-page summary from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which met in Yokohama near Tokyo this week. — ENERGY Demand for residential air conditioning in the summer will rise from 300 terawatt hours a year in 2000 to about 4,000 terawatt hours in 2050 and more than 10,000 terawatt hours in 2100. Rising incomes will…

Greenpeace demands governments to come to the climate summit of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in September with serious offers that will help achieve a 100-percent RE system. Solar, wind and other clean energy are already challenging the old system, but governments must accelerate the transition, the group said. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), for its part, said the latest IPCC report “gives…

In 2012, typhoon Haikui battered the megacity of 12 million people for eight days, but when tropical storm Ondoy hit Manila in 2009 and a month’s worth of rain fell in a few hours, the city came close to catastrophe. Nearly 80 per cent was flooded, 246 people died and hundreds of thousands had to be evacuated. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change…

In that time, climate change has ceased to be a distant threat and made an impact much closer to home, the report's authors say. "It's about people now," said Virginia Burkett, the chief scientist for global change at the US geological survey and one of the report's authors. "It's more relevant to the man on the street. It's more relevant to communities because the impacts…

These are some of the vulnerable groups who will feel the brunt of climate change as its effects become more pronounced in the coming decades, according to a game-changing report from the UN's climate panel released on Monday. Climate change is occurring on all continents and in the oceans, the authors say, driving heatwaves and other weather-related disasters. And the changes to the Earth's climate…

While rising carbon dioxide levels have led to 'global greening' in past decades and improved agricultural technology has increased crop yields, research has indicated that both of these trends are already beginning to reverse. While plants like carbon dioxide, they don't like heat waves, droughts, and floods. Likewise, economist Richard Tol has argued that farmers can adapt to climate change, but adaptation has its costs…

It's part of a massive report on how global warming is affecting humans and the planet and how the future will be worse unless something is done about it. The report is being finalized at a meeting this weekend by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. They assembled the list to "make it understandable and to illustrate the issues that have the greatest potential to…

The report analyzes ten "gap areas" that measure a country's capability or incapability to fend for itself in a warming environment. These areas include: social protection, food crisis aid, food stocks, gender, crop irrigation, crop insurance, weather monitoring, public agricultural investment, adaptation finance, and agricultural research. "Climate change is the biggest threat to our chances of winning the fight against hunger," Winnie Byanyima, executive director…

She will be asking President Benigno Aquino III to make a pitch during a leader-level climate change summit in New York in September. The summit will be convened by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. "This is a very important platform for President Aquino and the Philippines because you bring such direct experience of what a wild climate does to people and lives," Clark said Thursday…

A rise in sea levels is leading to increasing damage from storm surges and coastal flooding, as demonstrated by Typhoon Haiyan, the agency's Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said. The typhoon in November killed at least 6,100 people and caused $13 billion in damage to the Philippines and Vietnam. Australia, meanwhile, had its hottest year on record. "Many of the extreme events of 2013 were consistent with…

In its yearly climate report, the World Meteorological Organization said that 2013 was the warmest year in Australia ever recorded, furthering an alarming trend of global warming. "Many of the extreme events of 2013 were consistent with what we would expect as a result of human-induced climate change," said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud, as reported by the AP and other media. One example is Typhoon…

The survey, which was conducted by the National Climate Change Secretariat (NCCS), found that about 70 per cent of respondents were concerned about climate change, down from 74 per cent in 2011 when a similar study was conducted. Also, fewer feel that individuals are responsible for taking action to tackle the issue. Only about 39 per cent — down from 56 per cent in a…

In fact, they will say, the dangers of a warming Earth are immediate and very human. "The polar bear is us," says Patricia Romero Lankao of the federally financed National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., referring to the first species to be listed as threatened by global warming due to melting sea ice. She will be among the more than 60 scientists in…

"We saw heavier precipitation, more intense heat, and more damage from storm surges and coastal flooding as a result of sea level rise -- as Typhoon Haiyan so tragically demonstrated in the Philippines," he added. The WMO also pointed to data from Australia showing that the country's record heat last year would have been "virtually impossible" without human emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Other weather…

Thailand had earlier proposed the promotion of crop resilience to adverse climate, which was subsequently adopted by the ASEAN Technical Working Group on Agriculture and Research Development (ATWGARD) To mitigate the threats of climate change in the region, conference participants agreed to advance the ASEAN Integrated Food Security and ASEAN Multi-Sectoral Framework on Climate Change: Agriculture and Forestry towards Food Security programs Gemany’s Deutsche Gesellschaft…

The secretary general appealed to the international community to “pledge to develop the policies needed to ensure that sustainable water and energy are secured for the many and not just the few”. The theme of this year’s World Water Day is “Water and Energy”. In 2014, the UN is focussing attention on the water-energy nexus, particularly addressing inequities, especially for the ‘bottom billion’ who live…

The latest report of the United Nations panel, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), looked at the growing threat of climate change and on how human and natural systems are expected to address the “widespread and consequential” impacts. The leaked document, which is yet to be finalized by hundreds of international scientists and is scheduled to be release by end of March 2014, is…

The discussion was held under the cooperation framework on National Appropriate Mitigation Action (NAMA) and Joint Crediting Mechanism (JCM), an agreement which the Lao and Japanese reached last year, aiming to build the another cooperation project alongside the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). “We are about to build the facilities for sharing experience between the businesses from Laos and Japan, aiming to build more joint cooperation…