Archive for January 10th, 2012

Canadian natives warn against pipeline to Pacific

Reuters: Aboriginal leaders opposed to a C$5.5 billion ($5.4 billion) oil sands pipeline backed by Canada's government warned on Tuesday that the project could devastate fishing and traditional life on the rugged Pacific Coast and called for it to be stopped. As hearings into Enbridge Inc's proposed Northern Gateway pipeline opened with drumming and native singing, hereditary chiefs and elders of the Haisla First Nation told the regulatory panel their greatest fear was the potential impact of oil spills...

New Yorkers Protest Fracking Outside Environmental Hearing

Yahoo!: Hundreds of fracking protestors and supporters gathered outside a New York Department of Environmental Conservation hearing to make their feelings known before the environmental regulations public input session ended this morning, according to the New York Daily News. Both fracking factions stated they would deliver thousands of comments to the agency's office by the end of the day, according to the Daily News. Natural gas drilling supporters stated the regulations proposed will permit economic...

United Kingdom: Fracking company chief to face critics in south-east

Guardian: The chief executive of the company pioneering shale gas "fracking" in the UK is to face his home county critics, as leading scientists urged closer monitoring of new drilling. Mark Miller, chief executive of Cuadrilla – the shale gas company whose initial drilling near Blackpool was found to be "highly probably" responsible for two minor earthquakes last year – will confront a new set of opponents in the south-east's stockbroker belt. The company is widening its attention to Sussex, Kent and Surrey,...

Songbirds as a Casualty of Warming

New York Times: As the United States experiences a snow shortage, researchers have released a study showing that declining snowfall in the mountainous regions of Arizona is causing a cascading series of effects that are proving devastating to songbirds . United States Geological SurveyA red-faced warbler on its nest in Coconino National Forest in Arizona. In recent years, scientists have become increasingly intent on understanding how the warming of the earth will affect wildlife populations. A lot of attention...

Boom and doom: Revisiting prophecies of collapse

New Scientist: AT THE beginning of the 1970s, a group of young scientists set out to explore our future. Their findings shook a generation and may be even more relevant than ever today. The question the group set out to answer was: what would happen if the world's population and industry continued to grow rapidly? Could growth continue indefinitely or would we start to hit limits at some point? In those days, few believed that there were any limits to growth - some economists still don't. Even those who accepted...

Canada: Titanic clash looms over proposed Northern Gateway pipeline

Toronto Star: A biologist, an energy lawyer and an aboriginal geologist will sit down Tuesday in a recreation centre in the wilderness of northern British Columbia to initiate what could be the fiercest environmental standoff ever seen in Canada. Before the hearings in B.C. and Alberta are completed next year, more than 4,000 people are expected to appear before the three-member panel vetting the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline from Alberta through the Rockies to the B.C. coast. Like the now-stalled Keystone...

Rio+20 Earth summit draft agenda

Guardian: A draft copy of the agenda for the first 'Earth summit' in twenty years, which takes place in Brazil this June

AFBF: Climate Change Not Likely to Harm Ag

Wisconsin Ag Connection: Record yields for staple crops in the United States and globally in recent years seem to contradict fears that agriculture will be negatively affected by increasing climate temperatures, according to James Taylor, senior fellow for the Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment and Climate News. Taylor spoke today at an issues conference at the American Farm Bureau Federation's 93rd Annual Meeting. Beyond debating the issue of whether global climate change is actually taking place...

Glacier Cores From Eastern European Alps May Yield New Climate Clues

redOrbit: Researchers are beginning their analysis of what are probably the first successful ice cores drilled to bedrock from a glacier in the eastern European Alps. With luck, that analysis will yield a record of past climate and environmental changes in the region for several centuries, and perhaps even covering the last 1,000 years. Scientists also hope that the core contains the remnants of early human activity in the region, such as the atmospheric byproducts of smelting metals. The project, led...

Ecologists should learn to look on the bright side

New Scientist: The planet is in a bad state but remorseless pessimism is a turn-off. It's time conservationists talked up their successes IT'S hard to spend your working life charting the demise of the things you love. Ask an ecologist why they chose that career, and you will often hear a tale about being mad about animals as a kid. These days, they are more likely to spend their days modelling how quickly their favourite species will disappear. As Nancy Knowlton of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum...