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Archive for July 29th, 2011
How to Pick a Site for a Nuclear Waste Dump
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 29th, 2011
New York Times: The United States can find a way to dispose of its nuclear waste, even if the current program is at an impasse, according to the blue-ribbon commission established by President Obama after he ended the government`s planning for making Yucca Mountain in Nevada the nation`s nuclear waste repository.
In a draft report issued Friday, the commission members wrote that “we know what we have to do, we know we have to do it, and we even know how to do it.”
Essentially, the commission recommended that...
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Drought-hit bears head for Texas urban areas
Posted by Reuters: Benjamin Wermund on July 29th, 2011
Reuters: A historic Texas drought is driving bears into urban areas searching for food and water, the latest in a series of bizarre wildlife stories to come out of the deadly hot and dry weather across the nation.
Authorities have reported wayward razorbacks in Arkansas digging through flower beds, and bats changing their nightly flight patterns in Austin, Texas. High temperatures and stifling humidity in the Midwest have killed thousands of cattle in the Dakotas and Nebraska.
In far West Texas, the...
Skeptic’s small cloud study renews climate rancor
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 29th, 2011
Associated Press: A study on how much heat in Earth's atmosphere is caused by cloud cover has heated up the climate change blogosphere even as it is dismissed by many scientists.
Several mainstream climate scientists call the study's conclusions off-base and overstated. Climate change skeptics, most of whom are not scientists, are touting the study, saying it blasts gaping holes in global warming theory and shows that future warming will be less than feared. The study in the journal Remote Sensing questions the...
United States: Huge 2007 tundra fire seen as ominous sign for climate
Posted by Reuters: Yereth Rosen on July 29th, 2011
Reuters: A wildfire that burned over 400 square miles of Alaska tundra in the scorching summer of 2007 poured as much carbon into the atmosphere as the entire Arctic normally absorbs each year, according to a new study in the scientific journal Nature.
The tundra fire, near the Anaktuvuk River of Alaska's North Slope, was considered an unprecedented event at the time. It was, by far, the largest single wildfire on treeless Arctic tundra ever recorded, and was twice as big as all previously recorded Alaska...
Panel: Nation Needs New Nuclear Waste Site, Pronto
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 29th, 2011
National Public Radio: Last year, the Obama administration canceled plans to make Yucca Mountain the permanent storage site for the nation's nuclear waste. The half-built site is seen here in a file photo from 2006.
As sagas go, it rivals the Star Wars epics: "Yucca Mountain: The Quest for a Nuclear Waste Dump" premiered in 1978, when the U.S. government added the Nevada site to its list of potential "permanent repositories." Since then, it's been a story of political intrigue, desert outposts, giant machines and doctored...
ESA Rider Averted, but Some Species Remain in Cross Hairs
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 29th, 2011
Greenwire: Despite voting this week to overturn a controversial moratorium on Endangered Species Act listings, the House's Interior Department and U.S. EPA funding bill -- and expected GOP amendments -- would roll back or prevent protections for a handful of individual species, including bighorn sheep, lizards, wolves and grouse.
Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.), following the defeat Wednesday of the rider to preclude new Fish and Wildlife Service species listings or critical habitat designations, said he plans...
Insight: NY water at risk from lack of natgas inspectors?
Posted by Reuters: Edward McAllister on July 29th, 2011
Reuters: New York state may have enough natural gas to spark an energy boom, but it could lack the inspectors needed to ensure drilling won't foul its other prized resource -- water.
Home to a portion of the Marcellus shale formation, the country's richest natural gas deposit, New York is mulling plans to end a year-long moratorium on drilling. The ban was put in place due to concerns that a new extraction technique called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, contaminates water wells.
But the state Department...
Greenland’s Ice Sheet May Be More Stable than Previously Thought
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 29th, 2011
Yale Environment 360: Research into the last prolonged warm spell on Earth — an interglacial period roughly 125,000 years ago — shows that Greenland’s ice sheet may be more stable and Antarctica’s less stable than previous studies have shown. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin conducted a detailed study of the behavior of Greenland’s ice sheet during the previous interglacial era and discovered that the melting of Greenland’s glaciers probably accounted for about half of the 13 to 20 foot increase in global sea...
United States: Removal of Dams Expected to Replenish Salmon Population
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 29th, 2011
New York Times: Beginning late this summer, one of the most promising and pure acts of environmental restoration the region and the nation have ever seen will get under way here, experts say, in the form of the largest dam removal project in American history: the demolition of two massive hydroelectric dams, one of them 210 feet high, that block the otherwise pristine flow of the Elwha River, nearly all of which is within the boundaries of this remote national park. For a century, since the first dam was built...
Climate change transforming Britain’s farms as crops of tea and olives appear
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 29th, 2011
Reuters: British farmers are experimenting with crops such as olives and nectarines which have traditionally been imported from southern Europe, while the first British tea plantation has opened with a changing climate set to transform the nation’s countryside.
Flowers will bloom early and crops will be harvested sooner as Britain marches toward what the government describes as a “wetter and warmer” UK.
Britain’s first tea plantation has opened in Cornwall in southwest England, the country’s warmest...