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Archive for August, 2011
Fracking stirs controversy in South Africa
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 31st, 2011
SciDev.Net: A controversial method for extracting natural gas -- hydraulic fracturing or 'fracking' -- is stirring an environmental and property rights debate in South Africa.
The controversy stems from concerns over the safety of the technology, which uses large amounts of clean water mixed with sand and various chemicals to crack the rocks underground to release the gas. Various reports from the United States -- where the method has spread widely over the past decade -- suggest that the method pollutes...
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Apple attacked over pollution in China
Posted by Financial Times: Leslie Hook and Kathrin Hille on August 31st, 2011
Financial Times: Ma Jun, director of one of the Chinese environmental groups that have attacked Apple's environmental record
Chinese environmental groups have accused Apple suppliers in the country of systemic pollution, underscoring the pressures on one of the world’s biggest companies as opposition grows in China to environmental degradation as the cost of economic growth.
In a report released on Wednesday, five Chinese non-governmental organisations said the US technology company was using suppliers with...
United Kingdom: Healthy Thames ‘attracts salmon’
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 31st, 2011
BBC: Salmon in the Thames are more likely to be fish that have "strayed" from nearby rivers rather than a result of a multi-million pound restocking effort. Researchers collected genetic data from returning fish, which suggested that habitat restoration was more effective than species re-introductions. Lessons from this study, the team said, could be applied to rivers that the fish had disappeared from. The findings will be published in the journal Bological Conservation. "Traditionally, people -...
United Kingdom: The UK’s lack of fracking regulation is insane
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 31st, 2011
Guardian: Before the government approves a new industrial process in the UK it must have ensured that it won't harm either people or the environment. Mustn't it? That's what any sane person would expect. Any sane person would be wrong.
One year ago, a company called Cuadrilla Resources began drilling exploratory shafts into the rock at Preese Hall near Blackpool, in north-west England, to begin the UK's first experiments with extracting gas trapped in formations of shale. The process – called hydraulic...
British rivers ‘healthiest for 20 years’
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 31st, 2011
Agence France-Presse: The renaissance of Britain's rivers was underlined on Tuesday when waterways once considered polluted to death were revealed as teeming with life.
Among the list of the 10 most improved rivers published by the Environment Agency were the River Wandle, a tributary of the Thames which runs through southwest London.
It was declared a sewer in the 1960s but is now one of the best urban fisheries in the country.
In the northeast, the River Wear in Northumberland and its better-known sibling the...
Hurricane Irene: It’s the rain
Posted by Washington Post: Joel Achenbach on August 31st, 2011
Washington Post: Precipitation is the underestimated, mundane, unexotic hazard of a tropical storm. No one fears rain. It is familiar, unlike a gale that gusts to 110 miles an hour or a sea that foams and rages. But floods can be killers, their effects felt far inland. That fact was demonstrated this week as Irene, a hurricane that on paper had dwindled to a tropical storm, inundated the steep valleys of Vermont, the farmland of Upstate New York and many other places nowhere near the Atlantic Ocean. “People aren’t...
Largest U.S. Dam Removal to Restore Salmon Runs
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 31st, 2011
National Geographic: This story is part of a special National Geographic News series on global water issues.
In Washington State's Olympic Peninsula, members of the Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe still tell stories of a time when the Elwha River was so full of salmon that a person could cross from one bank to the other by walking atop the thrashing bodies of fish struggling to move upstream.
No one has attempted such a feat since two dams were built, near the mouth of the river, in the early 20th century, blocking salmon...
DNR secretary weighs in on mining, deer and climate change
Posted by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Lee Bergquist on August 31st, 2011
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Natural Resources Secretary Cathy Stepp said Tuesday the state's mining laws are "very old' and need to be updated.
Stepp also said the agency is close to naming a new "deer trustee' to advise the Department of Natural Resources on deer policy. She also declined to state her beliefs about climate change.
The Republican appointee told Steven Walters of WisconsinEye that her agency would play only a technical role in new mining legislation - it will be up the Legislature to decide whether mining...
UK has its coolest summer since 1993
Posted by Independent: Katie Binns on August 30th, 2011
Independent: This summer has been the UK's coolest since 1993, provisional Met Office figures indicate.
The data covers the three months from 1 June to 29 August and may confirm what many have already been thinking: it hasn't been the best of seasons.
The temperature during August has been 1C below average in most parts of the country. The UK has also received 126 per cent of the average monthly rainfall for August.
But while this summer has been wetter than last year, it has not been as wet as those...
Land grab for housing angers National Trust
Posted by Independent: Oliver Wright on August 30th, 2011
Independent: Land "twice the size of Leicester" is to be released by the Government in order to tackle the shortage of housing across the UK.
Home-ownership in England is predicted to fall from 72 per cent to just 64 per cent over the next decade, the lowest level since the mid-1980s.
At the same time the average house price is predicted to rise from £214,647 this year to £260,304 in 2016.
Grant Shapps, the Housing Minister, admitted that not enough houses had been built, but claimed that this could...