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Archive for December, 2010
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...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Dodds Contributes To New National Study On Nitrogen Water PollutionBP 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...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on The UK may be cold, but it’s still a warm world, says Met Office chiefGlobal rivers emit three times IPCC estimates of greenhouse gas nitrous oxide
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 20th, 2010
ScienceDaily: What goes in must come out, a truism that now may be applied to global river networks. Human-caused nitrogen loading to river networks is a potentially important source of nitrous oxide emission to the atmosphere. Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change and stratospheric ozone destruction.
It happens via a microbial process called denitrification, which converts nitrogen to nitrous oxide and an inert gas called dinitrogen.
When summed across the globe, scientists...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Global rivers emit three times IPCC estimates of greenhouse gas nitrous oxideWyo. Natural Gas Fracking Rules for Point the Way for Public Disclosure of Chemicals Used
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 20th, 2010
Greenwire: To coax more oil from a wildcat well named "Mad Hatter," Halliburton Co. is planning to inject water mixed with small concentrations of napthalene, ethanol, "1,2,4-Trimethylbenzene" and "hydrotreated light petroleum distillate" into a hole in the ground near Casper, Wyo.
Such detailed chemical information was once a closely guarded secret. But it is available to anyone with an Internet connection now that Wyoming is demanding that drillers disclose each chemical that they are putting in each well....
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Wyo. Natural Gas Fracking Rules for Point the Way for Public Disclosure of Chemicals UsedProbable Carcinogen Found in Tap Water of 31 U.S. Cities
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 20th, 2010
Greenwire: In 25 of 35 U.S. cities where tap water supplies were tested for hexavalent chromium -- deemed likely to cause cancer in humans in a U.S. EPA draft review this year -- levels of the chemical exceeded the minimum set by the state of California to protect public health, according to a report released today by an environmental group.
The Environmental Working Group's (EWG) new findings mark a public flare-up in the behind-the-scenes battle over estimating the carcinogenicity of oral exposure to hexavalent...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Probable Carcinogen Found in Tap Water of 31 U.S. CitiesThat snow outside is what global warming looks like
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 20th, 2010
Guardian: There were two silent calls, followed by a message left on my voicemail. She had a soft, gentle voice and a mid-Wales accent. "You are a liar, Mr Monbiot. You and James Hansen and all your lying colleagues. I'm going to make you pay back the money my son gave to your causes. It's minus 18C and my pipes have frozen. You liar. Is this your global warming?" She's not going to like the answer, and nor are you. It may be yes.
There is now strong evidence to suggest that the unusually cold winters of...
Why is it so cold this winter?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 20th, 2010
Guardian: What is causing the freezing weather?
The freezing weather is being caused by cold air from the north, known to meteorologists as a "block pattern". The UK's weather is usually dominated by the jet stream, a strong wind that blows straight from west to east, about 8km above the Earth's surface, that brings damp, mild weather off the Atlantic. In winter, the ocean is warmer than the land. But when the jet-stream is blocked by high pressure, as now, it dips southwards and lets chilled air flood...