Australia Seeks
Backing for Deforestation Fund
by Bob Taylor, ENN
CANBERRA -- Australia, which refuses
to sign the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, will ask other nations
to contribute to a new fund to combat deforestation and global
warming, Prime Minister John Howard said on Thursday.
Howard said his government would give
A$200 million ($161 million) over five years to the World
Bank-backed fund to help stop forest destruction.
Opposition and environmental groups
dismissed the scheme as vote-getting ploy and hit out at the
conservative government for refusing to ratify the global Kyoto
pact, which sets goals for lowering greenhouse gas emissions blamed
for global warning.
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Some Rethinking Nuke Opposition
by William M.
Welch, USA Today
"No Nukes" was once a familiar
rallying cry for environmentalists opposed to nuclear power and
all its scary risks.
With global warming a rising concern,
some environmentalists are rethinking nuclear power because it emits
zero greenhouse gases.
"You can't just write nuclear off,"
says Judi Greenwald, director of innovative solutions with the Pew
Center on Global Climate Change, an environmental research and
advocacy group. "I think everybody feels you have to at least look
again" at nuclear power...
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Mount St. Helens May
Erupt for Decades, Scientists Suggest
by John Roach, National Geographic
News
Mount St. Helens may continue its
current slow eruption for decades, eventually rebuilding the dome
that was blasted away when the volcano erupted in 1980, according to
a geologist.
But the volcano, located in Washington
State, could also stop erupting today (see
Washington State map).
Daniel Dzurisin with the Cascades
Volcano Observatory in Vancouver, Washington, is one of many
scientists trying to understand when
Mount St. Helens's most recent eruption, which began in October 2004,
will end.
Several lines of evidence, he said,
suggest the volcano's magma chamber a few miles below the surface is
consistently resupplied with magma from an even greater depth...
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River Dolphin Closer to
Extinction Despite Reports, Experts Say
by Stephan
Lovgren, National
Geographic News
Asia's critically endangered Irrawaddy
river dolphin may be in greater danger of extinction than ever,
scientists say—and not less, as the government of
Cambodia recently announced.
According to Touch Seang Tana, chair
of Cambodia's Commission for Mekong Dolphin Conservation, there are
now about 160 dolphins in the upper Mekong River, up from only 90
when the Cambodian government banned the practice of net fishing
last year (see
map of Cambodia).
But researchers who study the rare
dolphin have expressed deep skepticism that such a dramatic
turnaround could have occurred...
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