What will Israel do if the Nile Delta becomes submerged from climate change? Brainstorming at the Climate Change Mitigation Policy Workshop today at Ben-Gurion University. (Image courtesy of Ophir Shoham) In his opening remarks at the Climate Change Mitigation Policy Workshop at Ben-Gurion University today, Prof. Alon Tal, one of Israel’s most revered environmentalists, referred […]
How Many Discs Will Save Abu Dhabi’s Coral Reefs? We have a long history of worrying about the Middle East’s coral reefs. These “rainforests of the sea” – so named because of their extraordinary biodiversity – are at risk of melting if CO2 levels continue to rise. They also face relentless jeopardy from development projects […]
Can environmental awareness campaigns sponsored by major corporate polluters still get the right message across? [image via: alyssakai] Eighty-eight students from 20 different governmental and private schools in Abu Dhabi were honored as winners of the country’s ninth Annual Environmental Competition last week. The competition, which was organized by the Abu Dhabi Education Council and […]
Dr. Gotlieb comments on the attempts by economically and politically interested parties to obscure the climate change debate. Scientists are “street fighting” the demagoguery in prestigious journals, like Nature. There is a mean spirit blowing — and its not a sirocco out of the Maghreb. The issue began brewing around the time of the ill-fated […]
Israel holds Earth Hour a little later than the rest of the world, but just in time for Earth Day. Stubborn as always, Israel insists on doing things a little differently. The official international date for Earth Day, the worldwide energy saving campaign, was on March 27th and many other Middle Eastern countries – such […]
Yosef explores Paul Klugman’s environmental economics essay in the NY Times. Klugman and Gore’s words, Yosef finds, may influence decision-makers to slow the gallop toward environmental ruin in the Middle East. Above image of Klugman We greens of the Middle East have to take our manna from whence it comes – even if its from […]
EngEx, an organization of independent and nonpartisan engineers, believes that “enhanced communication, achieved through unity and constant exchange of research and dialogue, is the means to a solution for energy, water, infrastructure, and climate concerns.” And it is organizing a conference in order to provide a forum for such communication. EngEx hopes that their conference […]
Sea levels off Israel’s coast have been rising and falling over the last 2,500 years suggesting that short-term trends of rising sea levels may not necessarily reveal a long-term trend. Researchers around the world are putting their minds together, focusing on both global and local patterns to find symptoms of climate change. Is there going […]
Cairo could flood over if climate change predictions come true. Image of smoggy Cairo via ninahale. The Egyptian Minister of Agriculture Amin Abaza confirmed last week that the ministry had prepared a strategy for sustainable agricultural development until 2030. (This comes after gloomy reports for the Cairo region by the year 2020) He said that […]
Yosef Gotlieb, educator and writer, opines on critics of Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth. Image via asterdata. In a meticulously reasoned essay appearing on the Opinion page of the March 1, 2010 edition of the International Herald Tribune (New York Times, Feb 28), Al Gore succeeds in disarming and discrediting the champions of climate change skepticism. […]
Some animals, it seems, are going on a diet, while others have expanding waistlines. It’s likely these are reactions to rapidly rising temperatures due to global climate change, speculates Prof. Yoram Yom-Tov of Tel Aviv University, who has been measuring the evolving body sizes of birds and animals in areas where climate change is most […]
The Arab world is getting dryer; Bin Laden blames the US and western globalization for climate change. We’ve covered this topic before: the effects of climate change on a region of the world that in even normal weather periods is not exactly flowing with fresh water. In one article we noted acute water crises problems […]
Bradley Winterton, writing in the Taipei Times in Taiwan, recently gave big thumbs up to one of the first climate chaos novels to come out of Britain, Finitude, penned by a Canadian expat in Edinburgh named Hamish MacDonald. While the novel takes place in an un-named country in the far distant future, it’s a book […]
A study conducted by the Center for Remote Sensing at Boston University, commissioned by the Arab Forum for Environment and Development, warned that Egypt would be one of the Arab countries most affected by climate change. The study analyzed a variety of scenarios of climate change impact, particularly on coastal areas, based on satellite images […]
Borj Cedria beach in Tunisia. This North African country speaks up after Copenhagen. The fallout from the failure of the Copenhagen climate change summit that ended last Friday continues to see world leaders lash out at the international community’s missteps. This time it is Tunisia’s Minister of Environment Nadir Hamada, who said the global leadership […]