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Archive for February 17th, 2011
Tallying Coal’s Hidden Cost
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 17th, 2011
New York Times: Joshua Anderson for The New York Times Miners in a break car that will take them down into a coal mine in Hazard, Ky.
Coal may be among the dirtiest fuels, but it is also cheap and plentiful in the United States, where it still accounts for nearly half of electricity generation.
Yet coal power`s rock-bottom price for utilities and consumers omits a host of attendant costs associated with its production, from public health impacts to local and global environmental effects. Measuring these impacts...
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Saving Madagascar’s little-known star: the fossa
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 17th, 2011
Mongabay: Saving Madagascar's little-known star: the fossa
The fossa. Photo © Nick Garbutt .
An interview with Mia-Lana Lührs, a part of our Interviews with Young Scientists series.
Madagascar is a land of wonders: dancing lemurs, thumbnail-sized chameleons, the long-fingered aye-aye, great baobab trees, and the mighty fossa. Wait--what? What's a fossa? It's true that when people think of Madagascar rarely do they think of its top predator, the fossa--even if they are one of the few who actually recognizes...
Chevron asks Ecuador judge to clarify ruling
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 17th, 2011
Reuters: Lawyers for Chevron Corp on Thursday requested clarification of a recent court ruling in Ecuador that ordered the U.S. oil company to pay $8.6 billion in damages for contaminating the Amazon.
Indigenous farmers in Ecuador's jungle region say the company is responsible for polluting a Rhode Island-sized swath of rainforest through faulting drilling practices in the 1970s and 1980s.
Judge Nicolas Zambrano of Sucumbios provincial court on Monday ruled that Chevron contaminated the jungle. He ordered...
Rainfall’s link to carbon emissions quantified
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 17th, 2011
Nature: Two studies published in Nature this week have demonstrated a direct link between rising greenhouse gas levels and severe rainfall events.
Scientists compared rainfall predictions from eight climate models with data from weather stations around the Northern Hemisphere. Gabriele Hegerl, a climate researcher at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom, told NatureNews:
"We can now say with some confidence that the increased rainfall intensity in the latter half of the 20th century cannot be...
Tar sands pipeline poses health risks, campaigners claim
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 17th, 2011
Guardian: Just after dawn on July 26, 2010, homeowners along Talmadge Creek near Marshall, Michigan, awoke to the chemical stench of raw fuel. Several bolted outside and followed the sickening stink to the creek's wooded banks and found its source: a torrent of black goo, unlike anything ever experienced in Michigan or anywhere else in the upper Midwest, heading downstream to the Kalamazoo River.
The black goo originated some 2,000 miles away, in the tar sands fields of Alberta, Canada. There, a massive...
Rising seas threaten 180 US cities by 2100: Study
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 17th, 2011
Reuters: Rising seas spurred by climate change could threaten 180 U.S. coastal cities by 2100, a new study says, with Miami, New Orleans and Virginia Beach among those most severely affected.
Previous studies have looked at where rising waters might go by the end of this century, assuming various levels of sea level rise, but this latest research focused on municipalities in the contiguous 48 states with population of 50,000 or more.
Cities along the southern Atlantic coast and the Gulf of Mexico will...
Study links rise in rain and snow to human actions
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 17th, 2011
New York Times: An increase in heavy precipitation that has afflicted many countries is at least partly a consequence of human influence on the atmosphere, climate scientists reported in a new study.
Members of the British Army tried to reinforce floodwalls in North Yorkshire in November 2000, when severe rains flooded England and Wales.
In the first major paper of its kind, the researchers used elaborate computer programs that simulate the climate to analyze whether the rise in severe rainstorms, heavy snowfalls...
Scientists identify human connection to precipitation extremes
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 17th, 2011
Climate Central: With waters finally receding from early 2011's collection of devastating floods, people in many parts of the world are wondering if the storms and their aftermath are a preview of future extreme weather. Until recently, there's been little evidence that climate change is responsible for the growing number of intense rainfall events seen in many regions, but new research now shows there is a clear connection between some heavy rainfall events and increasing levels of climate-warming greenhouse gases...
United Kingdom: Extreme Storms Linked To Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 17th, 2011
redOrbit: Two studies published Wednesday in the journal Nature suggest that extreme rainstorms and snowfalls have grown considerably stronger over the last half of the 20th century, with scientists linking man-made global warming to the torrential downpours. The studies are among the first to identify the telltale signs of climate change and its impact on deadly and damaging extreme weather events. Australia, Brazil, Pakistan and Sri Lanka have all been devastated recently by massive flooding, raising questions...
United Kingdom: Man-made climate change doubling risk of extreme flooding
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 17th, 2011
Ecologist: By allowing emissions to to rise humans may have doubled the likelihood of further floods like those that struck the UK in 2000, say climate scientists in first attempt to prove link between man-made climate change and extreme weather
Humans are increasing the risk of dangerous flooding events by allowing greenhouse gas concentrations to continue to rise in the atmosphere, according to a groundbreaking new study.
Analysing the floods in England and Wales in 2000, climate scientists found a...