Archive for July 27th, 2010

Report: US faces climate change-driven water shortages

Energy Collective: As global warming accelerates, the world will become not only hotter, flatter, and more crowded but also thirsty, according to a new study that finds 70 percent of counties in the United States may face climate change-related risks to their water supplies by 2050. One-third of U.S. counties may find themselves at "high or extreme risk," according to the report prepared for the Natural Resources Defense Council by Tetra Tech, a California environmental consulting firm. "It ...

China Gorges flooding set to peak

BBC: China says flood waters at the Three Gorges Dam will peak within the next 24 hours, after torrential rain further up the Yangtze river over the weekend. More heavy rain is expected in parts of southern China from now until Thursday. News has only just emerged of a bridge collapse in Henan province on Saturday in which 33 people died and up to 21 are still missing. China suffers monsoon-type rains every year but this year's rainfall has been the heaviest in more than a ...

Climate Weapons: More Than Just a Conspiracy Theory?

Ria Novosti: The abnormally hot weather in the central regions of Russia has already caused serious economic damage. It has destroyed crops on roughly 20% of the country's agricultural land lots, the result being that the food prices are clearly set to climb next fall. On top of that, fires are raging over peat lands around Moscow. These days, the majority of forecasts concerning the climate are alarming: droughts, hurricanes, and floods are going to be increasingly frequent and severe. Director of the ...

What BP knows about the size of Gulf disaster

Mother Jones: While BP publicly stuck to claims that its blow-out well was leaking at rate of 5,000 gallons of oil per day, the company was privately operating under the assumption that at least five times that amount was gushing into the Gulf, according to documents released today by congressional investigators. BP's internal estimate of 53,000 barrels per day is buried in one of the company's requests to use more than the maximum threshold of dispersants established by the EPA, which the Coast ...

State Dept. extends review of Canadian pipeline

The Hill: The State Department is extending its review of a controversial pipeline project that would expand U.S. imports of oil from Canadian tar sands, a plentiful energy source that is under fire from activists and some lawmakers over its environmental effects. The decision to lengthen the review of TransCanada's proposed Keystone XL follows complaints from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and a senior House Democrat that State's draft environmental review was inadequate. The ...

United States: Severe local water shortages on the way due to global warming

Modest Bee: Sacramento County is one of four in California and just 29 nationwide that face likely, extreme water shortages by 2050 -- even if global warming were to mysteriously disappear -- according to a recent report by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group. The report found that California and 13 other states face severe shortages under expected global-warming scenarios. Nationwide, more than 1,100 counties -- one in three -- were projected to face water ...

Proposed law seen as new threat to Brazil’s Amazon

Reuters: A proposed overhaul of Brazilian forest policy being considered in Congress is raising concern that the world's largest forest could be left more vulnerable than in decades to razing by farmers despite recent progress in protecting it. Destruction of the forest, which is a vital global climate regulator due to the vast amount of carbon it stores as well as a caldron of biodiversity, is driven mainly by farmers who clear Amazon land for crops and livestock. Supported by the ...

Carbon emissions threaten fish populations

ScienceDaily: 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 a recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), the team found that as carbon levels rise and ocean water acidifies, the behaviour of baby fish changes dramatically -- in ways that decrease their chances of survival by 50 to 80 per ...

Marshes ‘at risk from hurricanes’

BBC: Hurricanes in 2005, including Katrina, destroyed 527 sq km of wetlands in the US Gulf state of Louisiana Freshwater coastal wetlands are more vulnerable to erosion during hurricanes than habitats with higher levels of salinity, a study has suggested. US researchers say freshwater marshes have shallower root systems, leaving them at risk from wave erosion during storm surges. They added that the results could have implications for wetland restoration projects in ...

BP oil spill: taxpayers face clean-up costs

Guardian: BP is poised for fresh controversy after it emerged today that the UK Treasury will lose hundreds of millions of pounds as a result of the oil clean-up in the Gulf of Mexico. The cost of the clean-up has pushed BP into the red, meaning the oil company will be able to book a near-$10bn (£6.5bn) tax credit, slashing its tax bill in the US and Britain. The loss comes on top of a plunge in tax revenues after BP halted its dividend payouts to shareholders. The news will dismay ...