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Archive for May 25th, 2010
Little African grebe becomes extinct
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 25th, 2010
AFP: A tawny water fowl that lived in a tiny corner of Madagascar is extinct, wiped out by an introduced species of predatory fish and by nylon fishing nets, conservationists reported on Wednesday. The Alaotra grebe, Tachybaptus rufolavatus, also called the rusty grebe, had been highly vulnerable as it was found only in Lake Alaotra, eastern Madagascar, said the Swiss-based International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which compiles the famous Red List of endangered ...
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Lawmakers: New warning signs found in BP probe
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 25th, 2010
Associate Press: Two congressmen say that BP's internal investigation into the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has identified new warning signs of problems before the April 20 explosion that brought down the company's oil rig. Reps. Henry Waxman and Bart Stupak say in a committee memo that the warning signs include an unexpected loss of fluid from a pipe known as a "riser" five hours before the explosion. That suggests there could have been a leak in the blowout preventer. Engineers conducting ...
Wind Power Can Make Sense For Utilities
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 25th, 2010
REDORBIT: When the federal government approved the Cape Wind project in April, allowing 130 power-generating turbines to be placed in the waters off Cape Cod, it gave a significant boost to the prospects of wind energy. The comparatively high costs of wind power, however, remain a problem. But in a study, MIT researchers have concluded that some of the price problems associated with wind power can be remedied right now, given a couple of changes to the electricity grid. "Everyone knows advances ...
Mexico: Nature’s own Mexican wave
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 25th, 2010
Guardian: Known in the United States simply as "the Wave", and in Latin America by the Spanish translation "la Ola", the stadium wave caught the attention of the world's media at the 1986 football World Cup, held in Mexico. Coca-Cola was quick to associate itself with these spontaneous crowd celebrations, running TV ads that showed the waves, and ended with the line "Coca-Cola, la Ola del Mundial" (the World Cup Wave). Since the company was one of the World Cup sponsors, these ads – and so the ...
Oil spill off Singapore after vessels collide
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 25th, 2010
AFP: Emergency teams scrambled to contain thousands of tonnes of crude oil that spilled into waters near one of the world's busiest ports Tuesday after two ships collided in the Singapore Strait. Singapore's Maritime and Port Authority (MPA) said in its latest update that 5,000 tonnes of crude had leaked from the Malaysian-registered tanker MT Bunga Kelana 3, double its estimate just a few hours earlier. A crude oil slick about four kilometres (2.5 miles) long and one kilometre wide ...
Lake Tanganyika under threat, scientists record highest ever temperatures
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 25th, 2010
East African News: East Africa's second biggest inland water, Lake Tanganyika has heated up sharply over the past 90 years and is now warmer than at any time for at least 1,500 years, according to a new scientific study published in Nature Geoscience. The lake, which straddles the border between Tanzania, Burundi, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is a vital source of both protein for the thousands of people living on its shores and employment for the hundreds of fishermen who take their ...
Alien species ‘huge’ threat to Africa, experts warn
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 25th, 2010
SciDev.Net: Virtually every protected area in Africa suffers from invasive species threatening biodiversity and peoples' livelihoods, a meeting called to address the problem has heard. Africa's protected biodiversity areas are under increasing threat from the species introduced -- usually through human activities -- to areas outside their natural range where they damage biodiversity, agriculture and human health. The poor -- who depend almost exclusively on ecosystems for their survival -- ...