Charles David Keeling began recording CO2 levels at Hawaii’s Mauna Loa Observatory in 1958, back when concentrations hovered at around 315 parts per million. Five decades later and that number has soared to 400ppm and his son told Yale Environment 360 we’re unlikely to stop it from rising any time soon.
Climate change is one of the most urgent issues of our time, yet most countries in the Middle East and North Africa continue to subsidize energy derived from fossil fuels. Seeking solutions, The Guardian launched a three part Global Public Leaders Series and sent us this recent lecture by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
In Egypt, people often have to line up for hours to fill their cars and trucks with diesel fuel – particularly during summer months when it comes at a premium. Concerned to ease these shortages, as well as pollution and climate change, Egyptian agricultural engineer Wadad Khaireddine is pushing to grow a desert full of [...]
A great collection of short stories inspired by the ecological crisis which are honest, creative and sometimes really funny I don’t know if it’s just me but whenever someone recommends a book that is for charity or even a song that is ‘worthy’ – alarm bells go off. Alarms that tell me to stay away [...]
‘Greedy Lying Bastards’ opens with an image of environmental destruction, and a voiceover announces: “what if I told you all this was preventable?” This is a powerful opening for an in your face movie that is bound to win plaudits for its exposure of those who deny, and actually do their bit to cause, and [...]
Situated even deeper in the desert than Morocco and prone to locust swarms, Mauritania’s topography consists of the “mostly barren, flat plains of the Sahara” – as the CIA puts it. They’ve got very little water and less than half of one percent of the country’s land is arable. But they’ve got sun and they’ve [...]
Israeli archaeologists are baffled by a giant cone-shaped structure submerged beneath the waters of the Sea of Galilee. Twice the diameter of Stonehenge and weighing more than ten elephants, a mysterious cone-shaped structure on the bottom of the Sea of Galilee is challenging archaeologists to determine its purpose and age. The mound was first detected [...]
As if they didn’t have enough trouble on their hands, residents of 15 towns and 45 villages in Pakistan’s Swat Valley have been completely stranded since a bridge linking them was swept away by last year’s floods. This isolation officially ended last Friday when the United Arab Emirates ambassador to Pakistan inaugurated a new 448 [...]
Researchers keen to understand the role that dust plays in climate change have discovered that 5,000 years ago, what we now think of as the vast, unforgiving Sahara desert home to nomads and camels was once a green grassland where elephants and giraffe roamed, RD Mag reports. From 11,000 to 5,000 years ago, the 3.5 [...]
All over the Middle East and North Africa, governments are feeling the energy pinch, and each has a different solution. Morocco and Algeria are turning to solar energy, so are Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, while Jordan seems more intent on exploiting its oil shale reserves to bridge the soaring gap between supply and [...]
Up to 100,000 people died in Somalia during the 2011 famine that devastated the Horn of Africa, and British scientists have reported that climate change is partly responsible. The short rains at the end of 2010 failed as a result of natural variations in weather caused by La Nina, Peter Stott of Britain’s Met Office [...]
Jordan (where this Green Prophet lives) is not my Xanadu because it lacks an oceanic coastline: but, hey, if climate change keeps raising sea levels my dreams can (catastrophically) come true…Green Prophet’s brought you vivid images of NASA flood maps, and alarming predictions of Mediterranean basin flooding. This winter’s extreme precipitation may have added precious water to regional stocks, [...]
When he first began his career as a young biologist, Allan Savory basically ordered the culling of 40,000 elephants. He and other scientists in Zimbabwe observed that former grasslands set aside as national parks were turning to desert and decided, after considerable research, that elephants were responsible. But it didn’t help to kill them. In [...]
Incredulously, despite everything that we know about climate change and its inevitable consequences of drought, food insecurity, rising sea levels and widespread ecological change, certain sectors of society stand steadfast by the suicidal notion that developing increasingly dangerous fossil fuels is “good” for us. Led by ruler-backed organizations such as King Abdullah City for Atomic and [...]
Given that 85 percent of the country’s residents lack access to electricity, it is no surprise that Ethiopia has pursued an aggressive hydropower plan. But the Grand Renaissance Dam and similar projects are expected to create significant environmental and social disruptions, problems that the former President Meles Zenawi both denied and defied. But the Ethiopian [...]
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Taking irrigated water from the Nile, the Toshka pumping station in upper Egypt was supposed to help combat encroaching desert Political tension in Egypt in the aftermath of the revolution which began nearly two years ago, has hit tourism, led to high food prices, and caused an economic slowdown which is raising food security concerns. [...]
Tel Aviv University professors tell Green Prophet that it’s just a matter of time: Tel Aviv will flood again. It’s warming up again this week in Israel, just after a series of storms last week that began with major flooding on the Mediterranean Coast and ended with Jerusalem of Gold turned to white after a [...]
Israel, like other rich countries in the Middle East, has had to rely a lot on desalination plants to supply much of its drinking water. Desalination now supplies Mideast countries like Saudi Arabia, which is said to have the world’s largest desalination plant. The country receives almost all its fresh water supplies from this energy-intensive process. [...]
Are Jordan’s snow and Israel’s floods signs of climate change or are they simply flukes of weather? People might argue this for decades there is strong evidence that Mideastern climate has changed dramatically over thousands of years and there is evidence that humans can negatively impact their environment over a much shorter time period. The [...]
Roads have become rivers throughout Amman, Jordan after three days of torrential rainfall. Strong winds and falling temperatures have literally put this city on ice. Severe weather is pummeling the Middle East. Latest reports puts the death toll at dozens. I’m fresh back from a trip to my family’s two homesteads: the USA, where we [...]
It seems silly to perpetuate apocalyptic hype that NASA debunked eons ago, but as 2013 approaches, we are sensitive to a shift in global consciousness – something that spiritual leaders have long advocated as the necessary means to our survival. As the conversation about climate change and other environmental issues gains traction, it’s a good [...]
Two young Omani men are literally freezing themselves in order to prepare for the next 2041 Antarctic Youth Ambassador Programme. Founded by Gemma Borgo-Caratti and Swati Hingorani, AYAP is a two week Antarctic expedition that transforms passionate environmentalists into informed advocates of renewable energy generation in their home countries. Trouble is, these boys aren’t used to subzero [...]
Students from the American University of Beirut have worked with the Forum for Environment and Development to create a documentary on the environmental challenges facing the Arab world The youth of the Arab world have had a particularly inspiring – if turbulent – last couple of years. Protests, revolutions and taste of real empowerment has [...]
Saudi Arabia has a lofty goal of storing CO2 by increasing oil recovery and reducing waste. Carbon capture utilization has become one of the most innovative means of recycling and reducing greenhouse gas emissions across the globe, but has largely remained an untouched endeavor in the Middle East. Until now. Saudi Arabia’s Aramco research and [...]
A quiet little technology blog called Upworthy just posted a pie chart that, despite the solid pedigree of its source data, is likely to provoke debate so heated it may accelerate climate change. Kudos to Luigi Montanez, the site’s founding engineer, for recycling that ancient truism “a picture’s worth a thousand words”. Let the arguments [...]
Although just about everybody at the COP18 climate talks in Doha, Qatar, understood the importance of arresting climate change following a slew of recent reports that show temperatures and sea levels rising faster than we imagined, the conference closes today without a commitment to cut a single pound of CO2 emissions. The reasons for that [...]
Consequences of climate change especially acute in the Arab world, and traditional methods for coping with climate are severely stressed finds new World Bank assessment. All eyes are on Qatar now as the country hosts the UN-sponsored climate change event COP18. We’ve been reporting on COP18 before it began and during, and recently posted about [...]
Trade unionists have used the COP18 discussions in Qatar to bring the silent but disturbing plight of migrant workers to light. While the emirate boasts about its plans to build a bevy of solar-powered stadiums in advance of the 2022 World Cup in addition to a host of other eco-boosting projects, very little has been [...]
Activists have gathered at the global COP18 climate event in Doha, Qatar to press negotiators to put aside money from a ‘Robin Hood tax” to boost the climate change fund. Evoking the legend of England’s Robin Hood, who either stole from or persuaded the rich to help the poor depending on which story one believes, a [...]
Like Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia, Qatar uses up a lot of its own fossil fuels – either to power energy-intensive desalination plants or complicated subsidies. The emirate is the world’s largest per capita consumer of energy, a topic that has come up time and again at the ongoing COP18 climate talks in Doha, and [...]
Counteracting overwhelming criticism leveled at Gulf nations for their lack of environmental accountability, the Gulf Organisation for Research and Development (GORD) unveiled a low-emission, lower fuel consumption hybrid car-concept that can be applied to any vehicle. “The engine captures thermal waste energy that is utilized to generate electric energy to run hydrogen fuel cells using the potable [...]
Young Arabs in Doha are telling the Arab world it’s time to take a lead on climate change during the first climate change talks to be held in the Middle East. With more than a billion Muslims in the world, Arab activists claim that Muslim leaders are pretty much silent about global warming and environmental [...]
With the world’s fourth largest number of planned coal-fired power plants, Turkey is flouting international concern about climate change. As the United Nation’s climate change talks in Doha enter their second day, Turkey has been called out on its irresponsible climate policies with the “Fossil of the Day” award. Although Turkey has kept a low [...]
Negotiators working on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol in Qatar ought to know that 1,700 gigatonnes of carbon lie buried in the permafrost, which is double the amount that currently wreaks so much havoc here on earth, reports UNEP. Then, as arctic temperatures rise as a result of global warming and the permafrost melts, [...]
A sea level rise of 100 inches or eight feet in Ar Ru’ays, a city at the northern tip of Qatar, would render 100 percent of the population homeless. Considered one of the top ten developing nations that is most vulnerable to rising seas, the host of the 18th Conference of the Parties to the [...]
Egypt’s youth are an inspiring bunch. They have taken down a dictator, and withstood the subsequent uncertainty, but their hardest battle may come in convincing the country that the natural surroundings are worth saving. But they are not being deterred. A few dedicated environmentalists in the country gathered this month to continue to build the [...]
More and more studies highlight the truly drastic action we need to take at Doha to avoid four degree warming – but is it too late? According to a new report, heat waves in the Middle East with temperatures consistently above 40 degrees could seem like ‘a pleasant prospect in a few decades’ if we [...]
Every year it’s the same thing. Hundreds of delegates from around the world fly somewhere to agree to climate change solutions. Journalists bemoan the lack of progress, environmentalists criticize the amount of carbon emissions spewed into the atmosphere as a result and the public at large completely loses faith in the process. The UN Convention of [...]
The last global climate meetings weren’t considered very successful in finding an acceptable successor to the Kyoto-protocol, one with emission targets that would include all the countries and not only developed ones. China recently became the world’s biggest emitter, and it will be hard to limit the temperature variation if the developing world, and more [...]