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Archive for January 26th, 2012
Can US ready for climate change?
Posted by Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Kate Spinner on January 26th, 2012
Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Last year's extreme weather across the U.S. - 2011 was the most expensive year ever for natural disasters - is raising concern among scientists and policy-makers about the nation's ability to withstand a shifting climate.
Damage from tornadoes, floods, droughts, hurricanes and wildfires caused more than $200 billion in losses and 1,000 deaths across the nation last year. Florida escaped major damage, but saw record high temperatures over the summer, after a much colder than normal winter.
The...
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Panel Charts Path To New Home For Nuclear Waste
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 26th, 2012
National Public Radio: A panel of experts Thursday set forth a plan for getting rid of thousands of tons of highly radioactive nuclear waste.
Most of it is spent fuel from nuclear power reactors. It was supposed to go to a repository in Nevada called Yucca Mountain, but the government has abandoned that plan.
Yucca Mountain was largely done in by Nevadans, led by powerful Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who didn't want their state to be the country's nuclear waste dump. Some also questioned how geologically...
22 Years Later, USDA Releases New and Improved Map
Posted by Climate Central: Nicole Heller on January 26th, 2012
Climate Central: Twenty-two years after its last revision, the U. S. Department of Agriculture finally released an update to the Plant Hardiness Zone map, which serves as a kind of detailed road map for gardeners, farmers, foresters, nurseries, or just about anyone who works with plants.
The Plant Hardiness Zone Map, a useful tool for gardeners and researchers, was updated for the first time since 1990. Credit: U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Last published in 1990, the new map illustrates the effects of global...
Climate Change Report Shows U.K. Impact By 2080
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 26th, 2012
redOrbit: According to the first U.K. climate impact report, climate change poses both risks and opportunities to Britain by 2080.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs` 2,000-page report says that flooding, heat waves and water shortages could become more likely this century.
The research was carried out over the past three years and involved studying the possible impacts in 11 key areas, including agriculture, flooding and transport.
Authors of the study said that there are still...
U.S. media favored Keystone pipeline in coverage
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 26th, 2012
Mongabay: A new report by Media Matters finds that U.S. TV and print media were largely biased toward the construction of TransCanada's Keystone XL Pipeline, which the Obama administration recently turned down. The report finds that guests and quotes were largely in favor of the pipeline in addition to news outlets consistently repeating job figures for the pipeline that have been discredited.
According to Media Matters, 79 percent of guests or quotes on broadcast news favored the pipeline, while 14 percent...
Bill Gates Warns Climate Change Threatens Food Security
Posted by Climate Progress: Joe Romm on January 26th, 2012
Climate Progress: Bill Gates is one very confused billionaire philanthropist.
He understands global warming is a big problem - indeed, his 2012 Foundation Letter even frets about the grave threat it poses to food security. But he just doesn`t want to do very much now to stop it from happening (see Pro-geoengineering Bill Gates disses efficiency, “cute” solar, deployment -- still doesn’t know how he got rich).
He love technofixes like geoengineering and, as we`ll see, genetically modified food. Rather than investing...
Obama’s green tint signals shift to campaign mode
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 26th, 2012
Reuters: Not long before his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama ventured to a place he'd never been in three well-traveled years as president: the Environmental Protection Agency.
For a Democrat who won the White House with strong green credentials, Obama has kept his environmental policies well below the radar for much of his presidency.
The trip to the EPA, the rejection of the Canada-to-Texas Keystone pipeline, the long-delayed roll-out of regulations on mercury pollution and auto...
Protecting original wetlands far preferable to restoration
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 26th, 2012
Mongabay: Even after 100 years have passed a restored wetland may not reach the state of its former glory. A new study in the open access journal PLoS Biology finds that restored wetlands may take centuries to recover the biodiversity and carbon sequestration of original wetlands, if they ever do. The study questions laws, such as in the U.S., which allow the destruction of an original wetland so long as a similar wetland is restored elsewhere.
"Once you degrade a wetland, it doesn't recover its normal...
U.S. court rules against Chevron in Ecuador case
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 26th, 2012
Reuters: A federal appeals court threw out an injunction that Chevron Corp won to block enforcement of what it considers a fraudulent, multibillion-dollar judgment in Ecuador for polluting the Amazon jungle.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York on Thursday said a lower court erred in concluding that state law allowed the oil company to challenge a roughly $18 billion judgment before enforcement of that judgment had been sought.
Chevron could challenge the judgment's validity "only defensively,...
Flooding is the United Kingdom’s biggest climate threat
Posted by Nature: Katherine Rowland on January 26th, 2012
Nature: Severe flooding that could affect millions of people is the United Kingdom's most pressing climate-change risk, says a study released yesterday by the country's government.
The first Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA), published by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), examines 100 potential consequences of climate change for the United Kingdom. The study draws on climate projection models from 2009, known as the UKCP09, and examines how different levels of greenhouse-gas...