RSS Feed
Archive for July 7th, 2010
Oil containment effort facing 2 key moments
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 7th, 2010
McClatchy Newspapers: The battle to contain BP's massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is approaching two critical junctures in coming days that could affect how the months-long catastrophe ends. The first will happen for sure: the connection of a third ship to the jury-rigged containment system through which BP has been capturing about 24,000 barrels of oil per day since early June. That may take place as soon as this weekend, depending on how rough the seas are, and it would raise the ...
Posted in 
Climate change affects meadows’ ecosystems
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 7th, 2010
United Press International: Studying drought effects on a pristine ecosystem could show how climate change may affect flora and fauna diversity, an Iowa State University researcher said. Researcher Diane Debinski has studied meadows in the Rocky Mountains' Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem since the 1990s, finding that if the area's climate becomes drier as the Earth's temperature rises, it could change the types of plants and animals living there, the Ames, Iowa, university said Tuesday in a release. To ...
Gulf oil spill progress hampered by bad weather
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 7th, 2010
Agence France-Presse: High seas in the Gulf of Mexico Wednesday scuppered immediate hopes of deploying a third ship that could see almost all the leaking crude contained. The Helix Producer processing vessel would more than double the amount of oil that can be siphoned up from a "top hat" funnel a mile down on the sea floor to 53,000 barrels a day, officials say. The latest estimate for the amount of oil leaking from the wreck of the sunken Deepwater Horizon rig is between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels ...
China launches armada to head off algae plume
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 7th, 2010
Guardian: Chinese authorities have dispatched a flotilla of more than 60 ships to head off a massive tide of algae that is approaching the coast of Qingdao. The outbreak is thought to be caused by high ocean temperatures and excess nitrogen runoff from agriculture and fish farms. Scientists involved in the operation say the seaweed known as enteromorpha needs to be cleaned up before it decomposes on beaches and releases noxious gases. According to the domestic media, the green ...
Fish Populations Under Threat By Carbon Emissions
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 7th, 2010
Red Orbit: Humanity's rising CO2 emissions could have a significant impact on the world's fish populations according to groundbreaking new research carried out in Australia. Baby fish may become easy meat for predators as the world's oceans become more acidic due to CO2 fallout from human activity, an international team of researchers has discovered. In a series of experiments reported in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), the team found that as ...
Timeline: Gulf of Mexico oil spill
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 7th, 2010
Reuters: Millions of gallons/liters of oil have spewed into the Gulf of Mexico since an April 20 explosion on a drilling rig triggered the worst spill in U.S. history. Below is a timeline of the disaster and its impact. April 20, 2010 - Explosion and fire on Transocean Ltd's drilling rig Deepwater Horizon licensed to BP Plc; 11 workers are killed. The rig was drilling in BP's Macondo project 42 miles southeast of Venice, Louisiana, beneath about 5,000 feet of water and 13,000 feet under ...
The Return of the Giant Tortoise
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 7th, 2010
Inter Press Service: The historic reintroduction of giant tortoises is under way on Pinta Island, where not a single one of the famous animals that gave their name to the Ecuadorian archipelago of Galápagos remained. "The tortoises have adapted well to their new habitat and are moving in a radius of approximately 1.5 kilometres from the site where they were released," said biologist Washington Tapia, of Galápagos National Park, head of the experiment on Pinta Island, which has an area of 60 square ...
U.S. Lawmakers Oppose New Canadian Pipeline, and Oil Sand as Dirty
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 7th, 2010
New York Times: Facing a decision on a proposed pipeline to bring Canadian crude oil to the United States, the Obama administration is confronting growing resistance from politicians who oppose the project or, at the very least, urge further study before approval. The massive pipeline, known as Keystone XL, would allow Canada to export an additional 1.1 million barrels a day of oil to the United States. The United States currently imports 1.9 million barrels a day from Canada. Canadian oil sands are ...
Effects of Spill Spread as Tar Balls Are Found
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 7th, 2010
New York Times: All along the Gulf Coast for the past two months, the threat of oil hitting shore has kept communities on edge. But the sight of oil on a Texas beach and at the passes leading into Lake Pontchartrain over the weekend has reinforced what many already suspected: nowhere along the coast may be left unstained by this huge spill. While the tar balls discovered in Texas appear to have been an anomaly, the tar balls in Lake Pontchartrain, a brackish body of water that is technically ...
Violence a part of the illegal timber trade, says kidnapped activist
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 7th, 2010
Mongabay: The European parliament made a historical move today when it voted overwhelmingly to ban illegal timber from its markets. For activists worldwide the ban on illegal timber in the EU is a reason to celebrate, but for one activist, Faith Doherty of the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), the move has special resonance. In early 2000, Doherty and an Indonesian colleague were kidnapped, beaten, and threatened with a gun by illegal loggers in Indonesian Borneo. "My colleague ...