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Archive for December 14th, 2010
Obama Admin Wants Study but Backs Northeast Shale Drilling
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 14th, 2010
Greenwire: The Obama administration supports a full study of the effects of gas drilling in the watershed that provides drinking water for Philadelphia and New York City, but it doesn't want to wait until it's finished for drilling to begin.
Gen. Peter "Duke" DeLuca of the Army Corps of Engineers outlined the position in a letter (pdf) written to Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-N.Y.) and released today.
The letter offers the first indication of the administration's position on gas drilling in the Northeast since...
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U.S. expected to join Gulf spill lawsuits: report
Posted by Reuters: James Vicini on December 14th, 2010
Reuters: The U.S. Justice Department is expected to announce as early as Wednesday its first significant legal action stemming from the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a federal government source familiar with the matter said.
The source said the action involved the filing of civil lawsuits, rather than criminal charges, stemming from the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history and that it was expected to be announced at a news conference as early as Wednesday.
The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig...
UC Davis study: Wild salmon decline was not caused by sea lice from farm salmon
Posted by Science Centric: None Given on December 14th, 2010
Science Centric: A new UC Davis study contradicts earlier reports that salmon farms were responsible for the 2002 population crash of wild pink salmon in the Broughton Archipelago of western Canada.
The Broughton crash has become a rallying event for people concerned about the potential environmental effects of open-net salmon farming, which has become a $10 billion industry worldwide, producing nearly 1.5 million tons of fish annually.
The new study, to be published online this week in Proceedings of the National...
Team of scientists predicts continued death of forests in southwestern US due to climate change
Posted by Science Centric: None Given on December 14th, 2010
Science Centric: If current climate projections hold true, the forests of the Southwestern United States face a bleak future, with more severe - and more frequent - forest fires, higher tree death rates, more insect infestation, and weaker trees. The findings by university and government scientists are published in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
'Our study shows that regardless of rainfall going up or down, forests in the Southwest U.S. are very sensitive to temperature...
Hot with decades of drought: Expectations for the Southwest
Posted by Science Centric: None Given on December 14th, 2010
Science Centric: An unprecedented combination of heat plus decades of drought could be in store for the Southwest sometime this century, suggests new research from a University of Arizona-led team.
To come to this conclusion, the team reviewed previous studies that document the region's past temperatures and droughts.
'Major 20th century droughts pale in comparison to droughts documented in palaeoclimatic records over the past two millennia,' the researchers wrote. During the Medieval period, elevated temperatures...
Decline of West Coast fog brought higher coastal temperatures last 60 years
Posted by Science Centric: None Given on December 14th, 2010
Science Centric: Fog is a common feature along the West Coast during the summer, but a University of Washington scientist has found that summertime coastal fog has declined since 1950 while coastal temperatures have increased slightly.
Fog formation appears to be controlled by a high-pressure system normally present off the West Coast throughout the summer, said James Johnstone, a postdoctoral researcher with the Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean at the UW.
'The behaviour of that high-pressure...
Diversifying crops ‘could green African agriculture’
Posted by SciDev.Net: Moses Michael-Phiri on December 14th, 2010
SciDev.Net: The biodiversity of crop fields could be key to a greener revolution in Africa, where ecosystems are degrading and crop yields are stagnating, says a study conducted in Malawi.
African farmers could halve their fertiliser use and still get the same yields, the study found, with less year-to-year variation in yields and with as much as 70 per cent more protein in grains -- by simply rotating their maize crops with shrubby legumes.
The legumes, such as soybeans, groundnuts or pigeon pea, fix...
Haiti cholera deadlier than other strains
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 14th, 2010
New Scientist: The Haiti cholera epidemic has arisen from a new, South Asian strain carrying three genetic mutations that make it more deadly, and able to spread more aggressively, than previous forms of the disease.
Scientists who sequenced the DNA of the bacterium, which has killed more than 2,000 people, have reported that it is different from Latin America's naturally occurring strain, and over ten times more deadly than a strain that emerged in Peru in 1991.
Two of its three mutations allow the bug to...
2010: probably the hottest year ever recorded
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 14th, 2010
Guardian: 2010 was the year of the heatwave, with record temperatures set in 17 countries. Two leading groups of scientists say it was the warmest since records began in 1850; another suggests it was the second-warmest.
But the year that saw an unprecedented month-long heatwave in Russia will be followed by cooler global temperatures in 2011, say climate scientists monitoring sea temperatures in the Pacific that are thought to determine temperatures around the world.
The final ranking of 2010 will not...
Soil erosion threatens to leave earth hungry
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 14th, 2010
Guardian: Within 40 years, there will be around 2 billion more people – another China plus India – on Earth. Food production will have to increase at least 40%, and most of that will have to be grown on the fertile soils that cover just 11% of the global land surface.
There is little new land that can be brought into production, and existing land is being lost and degraded. Annually, says the UN's food and agricultural organisation, 75bn tonnes of soil, the equivalent of nearly 10m hectares of arable land,...