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Archive for August 30th, 2010
Bad weather delays retrieval BP blowout preventer: US gov’t
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 30th, 2010
Reuters: BP Plc delayed retrieval of the failed blowout preventer atop its ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well this week because of bad weather, the top U.S. official overseeing the oil spill said on Monday. "We are in a weather hold right now," Retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, noting seas were 6 to 6 feet high at the site of the Macondo well. He said bad weather is expected to last two to three days. The blowout preventer retrieval had been slated for Tuesday or Wednesday.
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Oil sands polluting Alberta river system: study
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 30th, 2010
Reuters: Oil sands operations are polluting the Athabasca River system, researchers said on Monday, contradicting the Alberta government's assertions that toxins in the watershed are naturally occurring. In a study likely to add more fuel to the environmental battle over oil sands development, researchers said mercury, arsenic, lead and cadmium are among the toxins being released into the Athabasca, which flows north through the region's major oil sands operations. The findings of the ...
IPCC climate change panel needs transparency, review panel finds
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 30th, 2010
Christian Science Monitor: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, set up 22 years ago to provide science advice to governments as they try to deal with global warming, needs to overhaul the way it runs itself, according to a report released Monday. Among those needs: more transparency; a rigorous set of conflict-of-interest rules; wider representation of dissenting views among practicing climate scientists in its final reports; and a limit on the number of reports scientists can take a lead role in ...
Once-in-a-century salmon run hits Canada’s West Coast
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 30th, 2010
Reuters: Every year Vancouver resident Stephen Ottridge takes hamburgers or steak to his street's annual summer block party. This year, against the backdrop of what looks to be the biggest sockeye salmon run in almost a century in the nearby Fraser River, he arrived with a salmon large enough to fill the whole barbecue. "There is a cornucopia of salmon this year, so we decided to treat the block to some," Ottridge said from the city on Canada's Pacific Coast, where marine experts are ...
Canada: New Findings on Toxic Pollutants and Oil Sands Mining
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 30th, 2010
NYT: Native Canadians living downstream from the oil sands mines in Alberta have long contended that their high cancer rates were related to the expanding excavation of bitumen for the production of synthetic crude. Their assertions have been disputed by the reports of a joint oil industry-government research panel that concluded that natural causes -- and not mining -- were responsible for the high levels of various metals in the sub-Arctic Athabasca River. But now a new study in the ...