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Archive for August 12th, 2010
The Coast Is Not Clear
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 12th, 2010
Bloomberg: Visit the Gulf of Mexico today and you'd hardly recognize it as the scene of what President Barack Obama called "the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced." It's as if scientists had conducted an insane experiment--dumping some 4.9 million barrels of oil into the ocean water--and discovered that its effect was in some ways negligible. Some 21 years after the Exxon Valdez disaster, you can still find globs of oil in Alaska's Prince William Sound. Yet the Gulf appears to be ...
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Calif. desert on pace to become world’s solar capital
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 12th, 2010
Greenwire: Southern California is poised to become the world's solar power capital as the Obama administration continues to stamp its approval on large-scale renewable energy projects across the Mojave and Colorado deserts. Since Aug. 1, the Bureau of Land Management has issued final environmental impact statements (EISs) for three commercial solar plants that, once built, will cover nearly 20,000 acres of BLM land in the desert regions and produce enough electricity to power nearly 1.6 million ...
Fit all homes with water meters to protect rivers, urges wildlife charity
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 12th, 2010
Guardian: All homes in England and Wales should be fitted with water meters to relieve pressure on rivers and their wildlife, conservationists urged today. WWF-UK warned that one-third of river catchments were facing damage as a result of too much water being taken out of them. In a summer that has seen drought and water shortages leading to hosepipe bans in some areas, the wildlife charity is calling on the government and water companies to ensure universal metering is in place by 2020 ...
Climate changes lead to hotter summers
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 12th, 2010
WLKY: According to data released by NASA, this has been the hottest decade in world history. And so far, Louisville's summer temperatures are on track to make this the hottest summer in the city's history as well. What is behind the record breaking temperatures? Is it a pattern? And how has it affected the rest of our climate during recent seasons? A local geological expert and WLKY's Chief Meterologist, Jay Cardosi, weigh in with the numbers, recent patterns, and climate ...
Few Chernobyl radiation risks from Russia fires
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 12th, 2010
Reuters: Fears that fires scorching forests polluted by Chernobyl fallout may propel dangerous amounts of radioactivity into the air are overblown, scientists say, and the actual health risks are very small. Even firefighters tackling the blazes, which officials say have hit forests in Russia's Bryansk region tainted by radioactive dust from the 1986 Chernobyl reactor disaster, are unlikely to run any added nuclear contamination risks. The amount of radiation in smoke would be only a ...
Pakistan president visits flooded regions as official response criticised
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 12th, 2010
Guardian: President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan today made his first visit to an area ravaged by the country's worst ever flood disaster amid mounting criticism of his lack of leadership in the two-week-old crisis. Two days after returning home from a European tour, Zardari ventured to the city of Sukkur on the banks of the Indus river in the southern province of Sindh. Wearing a traditional white cap, Zardari travelled along the one-mile (2km) long Sukkur barrage, surveyed the churning Indus ...
Greenpeace expected massive break-off from Greenland glacier
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 12th, 2010
AFP: Environmental watchdog Greenpeace said Thursday it was expecting the disintegration of the Petermann glacier in north-western Greenland, from which a massive ice island four times the size of Manhattan broke off earlier this month. "We had been expecting since last year that unavoidable break of the edge of the glacier, which we studied closely with an international team of researchers during an expedition in July and August 2009," Mads Flarup Christensen, who heads Greenpeace in the ...
Record droughts, floods and fires strain food markets’ resilience
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 12th, 2010
ClimateWire: A string of devastating natural disasters many are attributing to climate change has sent food prices on a roller coaster ride, leading to fears of a wave of climate-induced food price shocks of the sort that sparked rioting in the developing world two years ago. But international agriculture experts say those concerns are unfounded. Though they acknowledge dramatic spikes in wheat and corn, and new pricing pressure on rice, U.N. and other food policy experts say data show global food ...
NASA Video Shows Global Reach of Pollution from Fires
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 12th, 2010
redOrbit: A series of large wildfires burning across western and central Russia, eastern Siberia and western Canada has created a noxious soup of air pollution that is affecting life far beyond national borders. Among the pollutants created by wildfires is carbon monoxide, a gas that can pose a variety of health risks at ground level. Carbon monoxide is also an ingredient in the production of ground-level ozone, which causes numerous respiratory problems. As the carbon monoxide from these wildfires is ...
Nano ‘tea bag’ purifies water
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 12th, 2010
SciDev.Net: Scientists have reversed the action of the humble herbal tea bag to purify water on a small scale. Instead of infusing water with flavour, a sachet sucks up toxic contamination when fitted into the neck of a water bottle. The researchers, at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, hope communities that have no water-cleaning facilities will use it to purify dirty water. The sachets are made from the same material used to produce the rooibos tea bags that are popular in South ...