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Archive for July 7th, 2010
Bold venture aims to make Portland, Oregon an ‘icon of sustainability.’
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 7th, 2010
Greenwire: Westward pioneers halted their wagons here 150 years ago, but today's politicians and planners aim to make recession-battered Portland the starting point for green-economy trailblazers. Mayor Sam Adams and General Electric Co. executives are forging a first-of-its-kind partnership that will include retrofitting drafty buildings with energy-saving technologies and helping local startups sell their clean-technology products abroad. GE, the global industrial conglomerate, will also help ...
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Beleaguered BP gets some love from Eddie Izzard
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 7th, 2010
Guardian: The beleaguered oil company BP needs any friend it can get as it faces uproar over its catastrophic Gulf of Mexico spill. An unexpected sympathiser has materialised in the shape of Eddie Izzard, the comedian, actor, occasional transvestite and Labour activist. Izzard's father worked at BP, initially as a filing clerk and subsequently at various refineries around the world including one in Aden, where the comedian was born in 1962, and another in Northern Ireland. "We grew up ...
Land owner argues over definition of hedge
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 7th, 2010
Telegraph: By Martin Evans Published: 4:08PM BST 07 Jul 2010 Legal representatives from both sides have spent hours arguing over whether a line of blackthorn and hawthorn trees at the edge of a field constitutes an official hedgerow boundary or is merely a strip of scrub. Thomas Cook, a descendant of Thomas Cook the Victorian traveller who first developed the idea of package holidays and owner of the stunning Sennowe Park Estate at Guist in Norfolk, first triggered the row with his ...
Climate change could drive crocs out of the water
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 7th, 2010
New Scientist: CROCODILES could find it harder to locate food and take refuge from predators as global warming bites. So says Hamish Campbell of the University of Queensland in St Lucia, Australia. His team recorded the dives made by 10 juvenile freshwater crocodiles in Lakefield National Park, Queensland, over 15 days in both summer and winter. Campbell's group tagged the crocs - which dive periodically to catch food, rest and avoid predators - with two recorders that clocked time ...
Many deckhands lack documentation for spill claim
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 7th, 2010
Associated Press: In the fallout from the BP oil disaster, they're almost invisible: deck hands and other day laborers who get paid in cash, don't receive W2 forms, may not file tax returns and have little or no way of proving they are losing income because of the spill. "We run into them on a daily basis. They're stuck in limbo," Tuan Nguyen, deputy director of the Mary Queen of Vietnam Community Development Corp. in eastern New Orleans, said in a recent interview. Nguyen said he has ...
Norwegians generate power from the sea
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 7th, 2010
Global Post: As the waters rush together in a torrent, the fresh is drawn toward the salty in a chemical reaction that creates pressure powerful enough to move turbines. For now, they are little turbines. But they demonstrate the enormous potential for generating energy where river meets sea. When researchers at the Norwegian Institute of Technology (NIT) started the hunt for new and revolutionary power sources more than a decade ago, they turned to their country's 155,000 miles of ...
Some oil spill events from Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 7th, 2010
Associated Press: A summary of events Wednesday, July 7, Day 78 of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that began with the April 20 explosion and fire on the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon, owned by Transocean Ltd. and leased by BP PLC, which is in charge of cleanup and containment. The blast killed 11 workers. Since then, oil has been pouring into the Gulf from a blown-out undersea well. OIL PRAYERS Religious leaders who see environmental activism or "creation care" as a religious duty are visiting ...
Some BP gas station owners switching brands
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 7th, 2010
Associated Press: Some independent owners of BP gas stations in Michigan say they have switched or are trying to switch brands amid customer boycotts sparked by the continuing Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Abdel Berry, who owns three BP stations in the Detroit area, is converting two of them to the Sunoco brand. Berry said business is down at one location from 800 gallons to 500 gallons a day. "It's either change or go out of business," he told the Detroit Free Press for a story ...
No Free Press for BP Oil Disaster
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 7th, 2010
Inter Press Service: Last week, the U.S. Coast Guard, working in concert with oil giant BP, instituted new restrictions across the U.S. Gulf Coast that prevent the media from coming within 20 metres of booms or response vessels on beaches or water. But the insidiousness of the restrictions runs even deeper. "You can't come in here," Don, the security guard hired by BP, told IPS at the Oiled Wildlife Rehabilitation Center at Fort Jackson, Louisiana. Inside, the International Bird Rescue Research ...
Study Shows Cleaner Water Mitigates Climate Change Effects On Florida Keys Coral Reefs
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 7th, 2010
Red Orbit: Improving the quality of local water increases the resistance of coral reefs to global climate change, according to a study published in June in Marine Ecology Progress Series. Florida Institute of Technology coral reef ecologist Robert van Woesik and his student Dan Wagner led the study, which provides concrete evidence for a link between environmental health and the prospects for reefs in a rapidly changing world. Van Woesik and his team showed that when waters in the Florida Keys ...