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Archive for December 21st, 2010
Environmentalists plan to redirect strategies
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 21st, 2010
Washington Post: As 2010 comes to a close, U.S. environmentalists are engaged in their most profound bout of soul-searching in more than a decade. Their top policy priority - imposing a nationwide cap on carbon emissions - has foundered in the face of competing concerns about jobs. Many of their political allies on both the state and federal level have been ousted. And the Obama administration has just signaled it could retreat on a couple of key air-quality rules.
Hence a shift of focus away from the toxic partisanship...
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Invasive species lie in wait, strike after decades
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 21st, 2010
Reuters: Animals and plants introduced from foreign habitats may not reveal themselves to be harmful 'invasive' species for decades, according to a European study published on Monday.
Species that are moved away from their natural predators back home can displace native species in their new habitats, and scientists say the problem already costs Europe 12 billion euros ($16 billion) a year.
The study, which is likely to hold true for other continents too, means that the seeds of future, perhaps bigger,...
Australia: Keeping floods at bay
Posted by Sunshine Coast Daily: Owen Jacques on December 21st, 2010
Sunshine Coast Daily: THE Federal Government is telling us which parts of the country could go underwater but, according to Councillor Debbie Blumel, the council is already working to keep us high and dry.
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet has released a series of maps of areas across the country, including South-East Queensland, but the Sunshine Coast was not part of it.
Cr Blumel said even though the Coast was left off the map, there were still important lessons to be learned.
"The federal mapping is a very...
Russia’s Radioactive River
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 21st, 2010
National Geographic: A sign near an abandoned school warns against gathering mushrooms, picking berries, and fishing in the Russian village of Muslyumovo. The community sits on the banks of the Techa River in one of the world’s most contaminated nuclear dumping grounds. This Ural Mountain village is one of two dozen that originally sat downstream of the Mayak nuclear complex, which dumped 2.68 billion cubic feet (76 million cubic meters) of highly radioactive waste into the river from 1949 to 1956. The Mayak facility...
Dodds Contributes To New National Study On Nitrogen Water Pollution
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 21st, 2010
redOrbit: A Kansas State University professor is part of a national research team that discovered that streams and rivers produce three times more greenhouse gas emissions than estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Through his work on the Konza Prairie Biological Station and other local streams, Walter Dodds, university distinguished professor of biology, helped demonstrate that nitrous oxide emissions from rivers and streams make up at least 10 percent of human-caused nitrous oxide...
BP pleads not guilty to Alaska probation violation
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 21st, 2010
Associated Press: Oil giant BP is fighting charges that it violated probation for a 2006 oil spill on Alaska's North Slope by allowing another large spill in the area in 2009.
The Anchorage Daily News says BP pleaded not guilty Monday to probation violations related to a criminal conviction for the 2006 North Slope oil spill. The company has been on probation since it pleaded guilty to violating the federal Clean Water Act for that spill.
Federal prosecutors say BP violated probation when it spilled about 13,000...
The UK may be cold, but it’s still a warm world, says Met Office chief
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 21st, 2010
Independent: She may have been one of the many thousands of people who failed to get to work yesterday because of the snow, but Professor Julia Slingo, the Met Office's chief scientist, is adamant that the current cold weather is merely a natural fluctuation -- and does not mean that global warming is all a myth.
Professor Slingo, who is in charge of Britain's biggest research team investigating climate change, insisted that global warming was a reality despite the bitterly cold temperatures and heavy snowfalls...