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Archive for September, 2010
BP oil spill costs surge to $8 bln
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 3rd, 2010
AFP: British oil giant BP revealed Friday it has so far spent eight billion dollars to battle the Gulf of Mexico disaster, as its crews retrieved key evidence from the seabed. Robotic submarines recorded the delicate operation as engineers raised a failed blowout preventer from the ruptured well and began lifting it to the surface in order to hand it over to the US Justice Department. The US government is conducting what could be a criminal investigation into the April 20 explosion ...
River managers discuss future Columbia water issues
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 3rd, 2010
Missoulian: The Columbia River Treaty doesn't come up much in casual conversation. Even at this week's Legislative Council on River Guidance in Missoula, the 45-year-old agreement was an eye-opener for the representatives of Montana, Oregon, Idaho and Washington. It governs the fate of 8.5 million acre-feet of stored water in Canada, which can produce around 450 megawatts of electricity before it reaches the U.S. border and goes through more reservoirs and dams. The council members were ...
Brazil: Sugarcane’s Electrical Potential Goes to Waste
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 3rd, 2010
Inter Press Service: Sugarcane could replace the energy produced by three hydroelectric dams like the Belo Monte in the Amazon, claims the Brazilian sugarcane industry, which remains relegated to marginal participation in the national electricity matrix. Brazil's sugarcane straw and pulp could generate 12,200 megawatts, while the Belo Monte dam, to be built on the northern Amazonian Xingú River, will generate just 4,571 megawatts on average, according to UNICA, the sugarcane industry association, in the ...
Pakistan flood data wasted, say critics
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 3rd, 2010
SciDev.Net: A huge effort to collect and analyse data on the devastating floods wreaking havoc in northern Pakistan has been severely undermined by a lack of strategies for disaster management and the dissemination of information, scientists and disaster experts have said. The Pakistan Meteorological Department's flood forecasting division provides information on the size and flow of the floods using data from an extensive network of weather radars along the Indus river as well as an Indus flood ...
Hot rocks and high hopes
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 3rd, 2010
Economist: OVER the course of the next ten years a company called Geodynamics, based in Queensland, Australia, is planning to drill as many as 90 wells, each 4,500-5,000 metres deep, in the Cooper Basin, a desert region in South Australia with large energy reserves. But the company is not drilling for oil or gas. It is looking for an energy source that is far cleaner and more abundant than any fossil fuel: heat emanating from hot rocks deep beneath the Earth's surface, a promising emerging form of ...
Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill’s 30-Year Legacy
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 3rd, 2010
IPS: A surprisingly small number of scientists have studied the impacts of the oil spill resulting from the 1979 blowout at the Ixtoc I oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Wes Tunnell, who first studied the spill's effects in July and August of 1980 and has returned many times since, is one of the few exceptions. Days after speaking to IPS in June, he flew back to Veracruz to see what remnants, if any, are still present from the disaster - the largest accidental oil spill in history before the ...
BP says offshore oil limits could hurt payouts in spill
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 3rd, 2010
AFP: Proposed US limits on offshore oil drilling could hurt BP's ability to pay for damages stemming from the huge Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a company executive said in an interview Friday. David Nagle, executive vice president for BP America, told the New York Times that legislation pending before Congress could have an impact on the company's ability to compensate losses from the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Of particular concern is a bill passed by the House of Representatives on ...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on BP says offshore oil limits could hurt payouts in spillUN to hold crisis talks on food prices as riots hit Mozambique
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 3rd, 2010
Guardian: The UN has called an urgent meeting on rising global food prices in an attempt to head off a repeat of the 2008 crisis that sparked riots around the world. Seven people, including two children, were killed in Mozambique this week during three days of protests triggered by a rise in the cost of bread. There has also been anger over increasing prices in Egypt, Serbia and Pakistan, where floods destroyed a fifth of the country's crops. The UN's announcement came after Russian ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on UN to hold crisis talks on food prices as riots hit MozambiqueClimate change gets wet
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 2nd, 2010
Discover Magazine: One of the most important gases affecting the global climate is both incredibly familiar and persistently mysterious--water vapor. Researchers know that atmospheric water traps heat and insulates the earth, but even after years of intensive study, the magnitude of the effect has remained obscure. By analyzing global water vapor and temperature satellite data for the lower atmosphere, Texas A&M University atmospheric scientist Andrew Dessler and his colleagues found that warming driven by ...
Soaring water risks spell opportunity for investors
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 2nd, 2010
Business Green: Ahead of the launch of World Water Week on Monday, new research suggests rising water risks around the world are presenting huge commercial opportunities for water infrastructure firms and investors. The latest results from Standard & Poor's Global Water Index, released yesterday, reveal that utilities and other water-related firms are outperforming the wider stock market as demand for water infrastructure continues to rise. Over the past five years, the total return from ...