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Archive for August 16th, 2010
First Louisiana shrimp season since BP oil spill starts
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 16th, 2010
AFP: Louisiana's first shrimping season since hundreds of millions of gallons of toxic crude spewed into the Gulf of Mexico opened Monday, but few boats took to the water and some found oil, while fears lingered that no one will buy the shrimp anyway. Before the world's largest ever maritime oil spill, nearly three-quarters of US wild shrimp come from the Gulf of Mexico, which also contains major crab fishing and oyster grounds. The fishing industry is also a way of life for coastal ...
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Greenland oil lures Cairn Energy from India
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 16th, 2010
Guardian: Cairn Energy, the oil exploration group, confirmed that it had sold a 51% stake in Cairn India to Vedanta for £5bn to help fund its move towards exploration projects off the coast of Greenland, just as offshore drilling becomes more controversial. The deal will also allow the Edinburgh-based company, which owns 62% of Cairn India, to return a "substantial sum" to investors while adding to its two rigs positioned 200km away from Aasiaat, on Greenland's west coast. The explorer ...
Russia fires caused by global warming? Maybe not, say scientists
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 16th, 2010
Christian Science Monitor: Russia's heat wave, drought and wildfires, by themselves, are not signs of global warming, according several leading climatologists -- despite widely reported claims this week by a Russian scientist. But experts agree that overall, the climate indeed shows signs of human-induced warming. Alexander Bedritsky, the Krelim's weather adviser and president of the World Meteorological Organization, said that Russia's recent spate of extreme weather, along with other natural disasters, ...
Beyond the Congo: Fishing for Different Species in Smaller Rivers and Tributaries
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 16th, 2010
NYT: I have to be honest – there is very little at this moment that I would not give for a soft bed, a hot shower, and a cold beer! This past week has been hot, humid and hard work. But the fishing is good and already we have some interesting findings. We have been exploring the Malebo region and fishing in as many small rivers as we can get to. Of course it's early days yet (and much of the real work will begin only once we get our specimens back to the museum in New York), but we are ...
Logging may swamp Indonesian peatlands, destroy local sustainable sago industry
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 16th, 2010
Mongabay: Industrial logging concessions on islands off the coast of Sumatra threaten to undermine a sustainable community industry that may hold to key to protecting Indonesia's carbon-dense, but increasingly endangered peatlands. The three concessions, which cover 72,280 hectares of peatlands and natural tropical forest in Kepulauan Meranti, islands north of Sumatra's Kampar Peninula, are held by Riau Andalan Pulp and Paper/Asia Pacific Resources International Holdings Limited (APRIL), ...
Human link to giant turtle’s end
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 16th, 2010
BBC: The turtle outlasted other megafauna by thousands of years - until humans arrived Humans helped drive a species of giant turtle to extinction almost 3,000 years ago, according to study in PNAS. It is one of the first cases that clearly shows that humans played a role in the demise of the giant, extinct animals known as "megafauna". An Australian research team discovered turtle leg bones - but not shells or skulls - on an island of Vanuatu. The bones date to just ...
Funding Lags to Aid Pakistan’s Millions of Displaced
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 16th, 2010
Inter Press Service: U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon returned from Pakistan Monday calling the floods there the worst disaster he has ever witnessed and urging the world community to speed up assistance to the Pakistani people. Ban, who made a helicopter flight over four districts in Punjab, one of the most populated and badly affected areas, described the scenes as "heart wrenching", and said he would never forget the destruction and suffering in the flood-hit areas. He announced a further 10 ...
Logging down in Mexican Monarch butterfly reserve
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 16th, 2010
AP: The number of Monarch butterflies wintering in western Mexico has plunged despite a dramatic decline in illegal logging in their mountain forest nesting grounds, experts said Monday. Factors including climate change, droughts and other extreme weather, and pesticide use north of the border are possible reasons behind the steep drop in the number of butterflies that arrived in Mexico following their annual long-distance migration from Canada and the United States. Mexico has ...
Pakistan Flooding Because of Farms?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 16th, 2010
National Geographic: Pakistan's extreme floods, which have displaced 20 million people and swamped a fifth of the country, have been made far worse by decades of river mismanagement, experts say. In Pakistan's wide plains where the bulk of the population lives, the rivers swelled by monsoons have been confined by levees, dams, and canals, in much the same way the Mississippi River has in the United States. On Pakistan's glacial-fed Indus River, the British started to build a system of canals and ...
Wind turbine will generate power, interest, on Lake Pontchartrain Causeway
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 16th, 2010
Times-Picayune: The winds that buffet commuters on the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway could one day provide at least a portion of the electricity to power the bridge. The Times-Picayune archiveThe turbine project, the first commercial use of wind power in southeastern Louisiana, could show that a larger project involving turbines installed along the bridge itself is feasible, said Causeway General Manager Carlton Dufrechou. At least, that's what bridge officials and Cleco executives hope will be ...