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Archive for July 6th, 2010
The new norm: Record-breaking heat
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 6th, 2010
Climate Central: The intense heat wave that is gripping the crowded metropolitan corridor and toppling records from Washington, DC to Boston, with temperatures hovering near or just above 100 degrees Fahrenheit during the first full week of July, is raising questions about whether events like this are likely to become more common and/or severe as the climate warms in response to greenhouse gas emissions. The short answer: yes and yes, but with an important caveat. No individual extreme weather event ...
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TransCanada pipeline faces new hurdle
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 6th, 2010
Globe and Mail: With the Gulf oil spill continuing to poison U.S. attitudes toward petroleum, strident new criticism has erupted against a TransCanada TRP-T pipeline that would deliver oil sands crude to Texas, with a prominent U.S. politician joining a loud chorus of critics opposed to the multi-billion-dollar project. The Keystone XL pipeline "is a multi-billion-dollar investment to expand our reliance on the dirtiest source of transportation fuel currently available,' Henry Waxman, an important ...
BP oil spill: tar balls from Deepwater Horizon reach Texas
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 6th, 2010
Associated Press: More than two months after oil from BP's exploded well on the seabed first reached shore in Louisiana, tar balls have washed on to two Texas beaches, meaning that all five states on the Gulf of Mexico have now been affected. Bad weather has forced a fleet of skimmers that should be cleaning the worst-hit areas to stay in port. For more than a week, storms have made the water off Florida, Alabama and Mississippi too choppy for the boats to operate. BP was operating the Deepwater Horizon ...
Water Flows from Villagers’ Own Toil
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 6th, 2010
Inter Press Service: With just 13.4 percent of the country's 6.3 million people having access to piped water at present, Lao authorities would have to work more than double time if the rest of the population are to have clean and safe water within a decade. Here in Xieng Ngeun however, no one is waiting for the government alone to provide the townspeople with their water needs. Located 25 kilometres south of the World Heritage City of Luang Prabang and part of the province of the same name, Xieng ...
Storms aggravate damage from Gulf oil spill
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 6th, 2010
Reuters: Summer storms are pushing oil from a BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico deeper into Louisiana's wetlands and temporarily slowing efforts to contain damage. The storms are also responsible for washing oil into Lake Pontchartrain, which borders New Orleans, further polluting Mississippi's beaches and halting tests on a supertanker adapted to skim large quantities of oil from the surface. Just the outer fringes of Hurricane Alex passed over the Louisiana coast last week but it was ...
Canada: Fraser River sockeye sustainability under review
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 6th, 2010
Globe and Mail: The London-based Marine Stewardship Council has certified sockeye salmon from three B.C. fisheries --Skeena, Nass and Barkley Sound -- as meeting the MSC standard for a sustainably-managed fishery. The Fraser River Sockeye fishery remains under review. The MSC had been considering certification of B.C.'s entire salmon fishery, divided by the MSC into four geographic areas, but held back on certifying the Fraser River run after stakeholders -- including the Watershed Watch ...
United States: From Safe To A Flood Zone, Without Moving An Inch
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 6th, 2010
National Public Radio: Across the country, millions of people are suddenly finding themselves in federal hazard zones -- not because of any natural or man-made disaster, but because the Federal Emergency Management Agency is updating its old flood risk maps. Even if they've never been under water, home and business owners in places deemed hazardous are now forced to buy flood insurance. For one Midwestern industrial area, the stakes are higher. In southwestern Illinois, there are serious fears federal ...
Dead zone in gulf linked to ethanol production
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 6th, 2010
San Francisco Chronicle: While the BP oil spill has been labeled the worst environmental catastrophe in recent U.S. history, a biofuel is contributing to a Gulf of Mexico "dead zone" the size of New Jersey that scientists say could be every bit as harmful to the gulf. Each year, nitrogen used to fertilize corn, about a third of which is made into ethanol, leaches from Midwest croplands into the Mississippi River and out into the gulf, where the fertilizer feeds giant algae blooms. As the algae dies, it ...
Solomon Islands: Mangroves under threat
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 6th, 2010
Solomon Star: MANGROVES are continuously under threat from overharvesting, degradation and land reclamation. Yet we continue to cut them down unaware at times of the role these trees are playing within the coastal ecosystem. Fiji and other Pacific Islands are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change and because we cannot prevent it we have to find means to adapt to climate change. Conservation of mangroves and associated coastal ecosystems has been identified as a key ...
Texas Tar Balls Mean Oil Now Fouls All Gulf States
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 6th, 2010
Associated Press: The oil's arrival in Texas was predicted Friday by an analysis from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which gave a 40 percent chance of crude reaching the area. "It was just a matter of time that some of the oil would find its way to Texas," said Hans Graber, a marine physicist at the University of Miami and co-director of the Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing. About five gallons of tar balls were found Saturday on the Bolivar ...