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Archive for July, 2010
Farm payments agency still wasting taxpayers’ money
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 20th, 2010
Telegraph: Farmers receiving cheques worth £1 - at £1,700 processing cost Farm payment fiasco could cost the taxpayer £620 million says National Audit Office The problems were first highlighted five years ago but the latest Government report found that the RPA is still 'not well run'. Despite an overhaul in staff and a new computer system, it now costs an average of £1,034 to process each claim. In some cases the cost is more than the payment itself. The report, commissioned ...
Wildlife in war
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 20th, 2010
BBC: Research shows that the vast majority of armed conflicts occur in areas rich in biodiversity, says Eva Fearn. In this week's Green Room, she explains how conservationists often find themselves on more than the front line in the battle to save species. In Afghanistan's Wakhan region, a mountainous area bordered by Tajikistan and China, a herd of ibex deftly climbs a steep hillside. Across the valley, a man in Wakhi headdress views them through a spotting scope. His ...
US Navy takes delivery of algae-based jet fuel
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 20th, 2010
Business Green: Normally associated with carbon-belching aerospace hardware, the Farnborough Air Show today saw San Francisco-based algal biotechnology company Solazyme announce the delivery of 1,500 gallons of algae-based jet fuel to the US Navy's testing and certification programme. In April, the US Navy declared its intention to use renewables for half its power needs at sea and shore-side by 2020, and the delivery fulfils a contract awarded to Solazyme by the US Department of Defense in September ...
Ireland: Get out the brollies, bad weather to become norm
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 20th, 2010
Irish Independent: Extreme weather leading to an increased risk of flooding will become more commonplace as climate change takes hold here, new research shows. Average rainfall has increased by 10pc in the past 30 years in some parts of Ireland, and more than 50 bog bursts or landslides have occurred in the past century caused by extreme rainfall and "possibly compounded" by human activity. The research from UCC, carried out for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), comes as the Government ...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Ireland: Get out the brollies, bad weather to become normChina’s largest river nears overflow
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 20th, 2010
Guardian
Volcanic ash team return to ocean
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 20th, 2010
BBC: A team of scientists has returned to the North Atlantic to get more data on how the Icelandic volcanic eruption has affected the region's marine biology. They are assessing whether iron within the vast volcanic ash cloud entered the ocean, causing an extended bloom of tiny organisms known as phytoplankton. The team, in the middle of a five-week cruise, have recorded "enhanced levels" of iron in samples they have collected. The latest project follows an earlier cruise, ...
Strategising In Readiness For REDD
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 20th, 2010
Independent: Nigeria has taken a major stride in her effort towards developing natural strategies for climate change mitigation via reducing greenhouse gas emission, in the light of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD+) mechanism. Courtesy of a collaboration involving United Nations (UN) agencies including the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), UN-REDD Secretariat, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Forest Carbon ...
Gulf cattle ranchers fear toxins after oil spill
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 20th, 2010
Reuters: The cattle in these parts don't seem to mind the helicopters hauling oil booms overhead, nor the response boats hurrying past their banks. But the oil that British energy giant BP is scrambling to clean up from its massive Gulf of Mexico spill threatens the animals' grazing land and the income of the ranchers who own them. Over 1,000 head of cattle graze on marshy islands off Louisiana's southeast tip and thousands more are found in the coastal low-lying pastures highly ...
Ind. environmental group appeals landfill permit
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 20th, 2010
Associated Press: A northern Indiana environmental group is appealing a state permit recently awarded to ArcelorMittal for its planned disposal of steel-making waste at the company's complex along Lake Michigan. In its petition, Save the Dunes said the permit does not contain proper environmental controls to keep toxic waste from polluting the air, land and water until the waste is landfilled at the Burns Harbor site. The Michigan City-based group wants the state's Office of Environmental ...
EPA takes new look at gas drilling, water issues
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 20th, 2010
Associated Press: So vast is the wealth of natural gas locked into dense rock deep beneath Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and Ohio that some geologists estimate it's enough to supply the entire East Coast for 50 years. But freeing it requires a powerful drilling process called hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," using millions of gallons of water brewed with toxic chemicals, that some fear could pollute water above and below ground and deplete aquifers. As gas drillers swarm to this ...