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Archive for August 5th, 2010
Analysis: Did Gulf dodge an ecological bullet?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 5th, 2010
Reuters: With most of a once-massive Gulf of Mexico oil slick no longer a threat, environmental experts say the Gulf coast may have dodged the worst nightmare of a massive catastrophe. The slick from BP Plc.'s blown-out Macondo well has shrunk to the point that cleanup vessels are having trouble finding skimmable oil, and tiny bacteria that thrive in the Gulf's warm waters may have neutralized much of the danger. "The vast majority of the oil" -- about 75 percent of the 4.9 million ...
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Chinese soil experts warn of massive threat to food security
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 5th, 2010
SciDev.Net: If China's current rate of soil loss continues, a layer the size of Puerto Rico will be washed away in the next 50 years -- resulting in a 40 per cent decrease in food production, according to a study led by the country's Ministry of Water Resources, and science and engineering academies. The two-year Soil Erosion and Ecological Safety expedition took place from 2005 to 2007 and was followed by three years of data analysis. Around 200 scientists surveyed 27 provinces in China, ...
Russia: Vladimir Putin bans grain exports as drought and wildfires ravage crops
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 5th, 2010
Guardian: Russia's prime minister, Vladimir Putin, has announced a ban on grain exports after millions of hectares of crops perished in the worst drought in more than a century. High temperatures, lack of rain and wildfires have devastated more than a third of cultivable land in Russia, the world's fourth largest grain exporter. News of the ban pushed wheat prices to a 23-month high on commodities markets and raised concerns about a boost in food prices worldwide. Putin said the ...
Chevron urges arbitration in $27 billion Ecuador case
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 5th, 2010
Reuters: Chevron Corp urged a federal appeals court not to force it into Ecuador's courts to defend a $27.4 billion lawsuit alleging its oilfields polluted the Amazon rainforest and sickened thousands of Ecuadorians. Lawyers for Chevron contended the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York should instead uphold a lower court ruling in March allowing the second-largest U.S. oil company to take the 17-year-old case into international arbitration. Ecuadorian farmers and indigenous ...
Officials to inspect ruptured Mich. oil pipeline
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 5th, 2010
Associated Press: A ruptured section of pipeline that spewed hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into a southern Michigan river will be ready for inspection and removal shortly, officials said Thursday. The damaged segment has been hard to reach since the spill was reported July 26 because it's in a marshy, oil-covered area of Calhoun County. It will be examined in the ground at first and eventually cut out and shipped to a National Transportation Safety Board lab for tests, regulators ...
Hunting threatens the other Amazon: where harpy eagles are common and jaguars easy to spot, an interview with Paul Rosol
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 5th, 2010
Mongabay: If you have been fortunate enough to visit the Amazon or any other great rainforest, you've probably been wowed by the multitude and diversity of life. However, you also likely quickly realized that the deep jungle is not quite what you may have imagined when you were a child: you don't watch as jaguars wrestle with giant anteaters or anacondas circle prey. Instead life in the Amazon is small: insects, birds, frogs. Even biologists will tell you that you can spend years in the Amazon and ...
Much Gulf Oil Remains, Deeply Hidden and Under Beaches
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 5th, 2010
National Geographic: As BP finishes pumping cement into the damaged Deepwater Horizon wellhead Thursday, some scientists are taking issue with a new U.S. government report that says the "vast majority" of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has been taken care of by nature and "robust" cleanup efforts. In addition, experts warn, much of the toxic oil from the worst spill in U.S. history may be trapped under Gulf beaches--where it could linger for years--or still migrating into the ocean depths, where it's a "3-D ...
Scientists think Gulf can recover
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 5th, 2010
Associated Press: Want to know the future of the oil-stained Gulf of Mexico ecosystem? Look first to its muddy, polluted past. The recent ecological history of the Gulf gives scientists reason for hope. In an extensive survey of Gulf of Mexico researchers by The Associated Press, at least 10 of them separately volunteered the same word to describe the body of water: "resilient." This is buttressed by a government report Wednesday that claims that all but 53 million gallons of the leaked oil from ...