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Archive for October 18th, 2011
TransCanada offers Nebraska concessions for pipeline
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 18th, 2011
Reuters: TransCanada Corp has offered a $100 million performance bond and other oil spill protection measures to Nebraska legislators in an attempt to reduce opposition to the company's proposed $7 billion Keystone XL oil pipeline.
State lawmakers want TransCanada to move the pipeline route from Nebraska's Sandhills region, which sits atop a massive aquifer from which a large portion of the agriculture-heavy central United States gets its water.
In a letter to the speaker of the legislature on Tuesday,...
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36 Lawmakers Berate State Dept. on Pipeline
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 18th, 2011
New York Times: With a decision expected by the end of the year from the Obama administration on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, members of Congress have sent two letters to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raising concerns over the State Department’s handling of a critical environmental review of the project.
A letter sent late last week by Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and two Vermont senators, Patrick Leahy and Bernard Sanders, criticized the State Department for assigning the review of Keystone XL to a...
Scientist: Texas buried work over climate claim
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 18th, 2011
Associated Press: A Rice University oceanographer says the state's environmental agency is refusing to publish his research article on a Texas bay unless he agrees to delete key references to rising sea levels and human involvement in climate change.
Professor John Anderson has declined the proposed edits by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, calling the changes to a report on Galveston Bay "censorship" and an attempt to mislead the public.
Consequently, the state agency said it will remove Anderson's...
For the Keystone Battle, a Folk Hero
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 18th, 2011
New York Times: Randy Thompson, a Nebraskan rancher, at a pipeline protest in Washington.
Randy Thompson, a laconic cattle buyer, may seem an unlikely symbol of activism. Yet his likeness is now on hundreds of T-shirts across Nebraska.
As I reported with Dan Frosch in Tuesday`s paper, Mr. Thompson is among dozens of landowners resisting efforts by the energy giant Transcanada to lease their property for the Keystone XL pipeline.
Bold NebraskaA $25 item for Keystone foes.
TransCanada’s spokesman Shawn...
Brazil’s Petrobras Plans Pipeline To Open Isolated Amazon Gas Field
Posted by Dow Jones: None Given on October 18th, 2011
Dow Jones: A natural gas field discovered more than 30 years ago deep in Brazil's Amazon rain forest could finally be linked to the outside world, according to plans detailed by federal oil company Petroleo Brasileiro (PBR, PETR4.BR).
Petrobras, as the energy giant is also known, has won regulatory approval for a 140 kilometer pipeline from the Jurua natural gas discovery in Amazonas state to the Urucu oil-and-gas field, said Urucu general manager Luiz Ferradans during a site visit Monday.
Senior management...
Infectious Salmon Anemia Reported in Wild Pacific Fish
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 18th, 2011
New York Times: A farm-raised salmon, the type hit hardest by infectious salmon anemia. The spread to the wild in the Pacific Northwest was reported by researchers in British Columbia. Farms hit by the virus, infectious salmon anemia, have lost 70 percent or more of their fish in recent decades. But until now, the virus, which does not affect humans, had never been confirmed on the West Coast of North America. The researchers, from Simon Fraser University and elsewhere, said at a news conference in Vancouver that...
Evidence builds that scientists underplay climate impacts
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 18th, 2011
Daily Climate: The warnings were dire: 188 predictions showing that climate-induced changes to the environment would put 7 percent of all plant and animal species on the globe - one out of every 14 critters - at risk of extinction.
Scientists have been quite conservative in a lot of important and different areas. - Naomi Oreskes, University of California, San Diego
Predictions like these have earned climate scientists the obloquy from critics for being "alarmist" - dismissed for using inflated descriptions...
Climate change is shrinking species: Study
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 18th, 2011
CNN: Climate change is shrinking many plant and animal species and is likely to have a negative impact on human nutrition in the future, according to a new study.
Rising temperatures and growing variability in rainfall are affecting the size of all species in the ecosystem from microscopic sea organisms to land-based predators, say researchers.
"Our study suggests that ectotherms (cold-blooded animals like toads, turtles, and snakes that rely on environmental heat sources) are already changing a...
Why the world may be running out of clean water
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 18th, 2011
Time: Earlier this month, officials in the South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu had to confront a pretty dire problem: they were running out of water. Due to a severe and lasting drought, water reserves in this country of 11,000 people had dwindled to just a few days' worth. Climate change plays a role here: as sea levels rose, Tuvalu's groundwater became increasingly saline and undrinkable, leaving the island dependent on rainwater. But now a La Niña–influenced drought has severely curtailed rainfall,...
Strange case of the vanishing Arctic lakes
Posted by New Scientist: Chelsea Whyte on October 18th, 2011
New Scientist: THE lake-spotted landscape of Canada is home to a watery mystery. According to a painstaking satellite survey of 1.3 million lakes stretching from coast to coast, the country lost 6700 square kilometres - or 1.2 per cent - of its water surface area between 2000 and 2009. Yet what we know about the physical processes at play suggests the lakes should be growing, not shrinking.
Whatever the cause, the loss could impact local wildlife and human populations. "It's an important finding. We need to...