EU/ERBD News
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A global legally binding deal on climate change is likely to be “beyond our reach – for now”, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon told delegates at climate talks in Durban, The Guardian said. Saying he was looking for only “incremental advances”, Ban cited “grave economic troubles in many countries”, as well as “abiding...
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The world is getting hotter, with 2011 one of the warmest years on record, and humans are to blame, the World Meteorological Organisation said. In a statement released to coincide with UN climate talks under way in Durban, South Africa, the WMO said the warmest 13 years of average global temperatures have all occurred since 1997, contributing to extreme weather...
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As governments prepare to gather in Durban for the latest round of UN-led climate change negotiations, new figures cited by AP showed global warming gases in the world’s atmosphere have hit record levels. Concentrations of heat-trapping carbon dioxide are up 39% since the start of the industrial era and have now hit 389 parts per million, the World Meteorological...
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Global daily temperature extremes are “virtually certain” to become warmer this century, a panel of about 200 UN scientists said in a draft of their most comprehensive study of weather-related natural disasters to date, Bloomberg reported. The 18-page document said downpours, storm surges and other events could make parts of the planet “marginal”...
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Australia, one of the world’s worst per-capita carbon emitters, approved landmark laws to introduce a tax on polluting industries, The Independent reported. The final senate vote makes Australia only the second country outside the European Union (after New Zealand) to embrace a nationwide carbon-capping scheme. The legislation’s impact will be felt...
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Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was responsible for the biggest discharge of radioactive material into the ocean in history, Bloomberg News cited a study from a French nuclear-safety institute as saying. The Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety found that the cesium that flowed into the sea in March was 20 times the plant...
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Sixty per cent of the earth’s population currently lives in Asia, but Africa is now the world’s population growth centre, according to the UN’s State of World Population 2011 report. Among contradictory trends, The Australian said, countries experiencing high fertility are unable to develop fast enough and those with an ageing population...
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Final-stage data from a major clinical trial across sub-Saharan Africa has shown that an experimental vaccine halved the risk of children getting malaria, Reuters reported. The results – published in the New England Journal of Medicine – make it likely that the RTS,S vaccine will become the world’s first inoculation to help control the deadly...
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As fears grew that a container ship wedged on a reef off New Zealand may break up, spilling more fuel oil, the ship’s Philippine captain was charged with “operating a vessel in a manner causing unnecessary danger or risk”, Reuters reported. An estimated 300 tonnes of oil have escaped from the “Rena”, some of it washing up on...
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Two ice shelves that existed before Canada was settled by Europeans diminished significantly this summer, one nearly disappearing altogether, the Associated Press reported scientists at Canada’s Carlton and Ottawa universities as saying. The rapid loss, recorded in new research, is considered important as a marker of climate change and underscores...
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