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Archive for May 14th, 2010
Alpacas to Help Fight Gulf Spill?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 14th, 2010
National Geographic: Can an Alpaca help protect the shores of the Gulf of Mexico from a massive oil slick? SOUNDBITE (off camera): Patti Hall, Director, Alabama Gulf Coast Zoo "They're not having a great time, but by the time they're finished, they're going to feel a lot cooler. " Some Gulf Coast residents are pinning hopes on what may be a unique defense against millions of gallons of oil that has spewed from a ruptured deep sea drill site. Soak it up with hair. Skip a few ...
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Salt killing crops, driving migration in storm-hit southern Bangladesh
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 14th, 2010
Reuters: Worsening sea water storm surges and overuse of irrigation have left fields, wells and ponds in parts of southern Bangladesh too salty to grow crops, leading to a growing exodus of farmers from the region. During Cyclones Sidr and Aila, in 2007 and 2009, sea water was driven into ponds and rivers in Khulna, Bagerhat and Satkhira districts in southern Bangladesh, and some fields remained flooded by sea water long enough to raise levels of salinity in the soil and in underground ...
Global warming blamed for pattern of lizard deaths
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 14th, 2010
Washington Post: When it comes to the hazards of global warming, it may turn out that lizards in burrows are the canaries in the coal mine. In a study to be published Friday in the journal Science, an international team of biologists reports that in more than one-tenth of the places in Mexico where lizards flourished in 1975, the reptiles now cannot be found. The researchers predict that by 2080, about 40 percent of local lizard populations worldwide will have died off and 20 percent of lizard species ...
Gulf Spill Could Be Much Worse Than Believed
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 14th, 2010
National Public Radio: The amount of oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico may be at least 10 times the size of official estimates, according to an exclusive analysis conducted for NPR. At NPR's request, experts examined video that BP released Wednesday. Their findings suggest the BP spill is already far larger than the 1989 Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska, which spilled at least 250,000 barrels of oil. BP has said repeatedly that there is no reliable way to measure the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico ...
Environment group plans to sue U.S. over oil permits
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 14th, 2010
Reuters: U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar improperly approved offshore oil operations in the Gulf of Mexico without regard to possible harm to marine mammals, an environmental group said on Friday in a legal notice. The Center for Biological Diversity said it plans to sue Salazar and the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service (MMS) for failing to get environmental permits required by two environmental laws -- the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species ...