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Archive for January, 2012
Fidel Castro says world marching into abyss with shale gas
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 6th, 2012
Reuters: Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro said on Thursday the world was on an "inexorable march toward the abyss," which he blamed in part on the discovery and exploitation of vast reserves of so-called "shale gas" around the world. Shale gas is natural gas locked in rock formations that in the past decade has been found in great abundance around the world and is now considered a top source of future energy. Castro, 85, wrote in one of his occasional columns published in Cuban state media that "numerous...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Fidel Castro says world marching into abyss with shale gasUnequal risks and benefits for citizens in six states on Keystone XL pipeline route
Posted by InsideClimate News: Lisa Song on January 6th, 2012
InsideClimate News: If the Keystone XL oil pipeline were approved today, residents in the six states along its route would not receive equal treatment from TransCanada, the company that wants to build the project.
The differences are particularly striking when it comes to tax revenue and environmental protection. States with stronger regulations have won protections for their citizens, while other states sometimes focused more on meeting TransCanada's needs.
In Kansas, for example, lawmakers gave TransCanada a...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Unequal risks and benefits for citizens in six states on Keystone XL pipeline routeClimate change and habitat loss threaten biodiversity, extinction rate underestimated
Posted by Bay Area Indymedia: None Given on January 6th, 2012
Bay Area Indymedia: Two new scientific papers have emphasised the threat to biodiversity from the impacts of climate change and habitat loss. A study by US ecologist Mark Urban identified that predictions of the loss of animal and plant diversity due to climate change may be greatly underestimated as most predictions of the rate of extinctions don't take into account species competition and movement. A second key global study by University of Queensland and Australian CSIRO scientists emphasised the link between current...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Climate change and habitat loss threaten biodiversity, extinction rate underestimatedClimate models may underestimate extinction rates
Posted by TG Daily: Kate Taylor on January 6th, 2012
TG Daily: We may be being grossly complacent about the scale of species extinctions caused by climate change, according to US scientists.
Predictions of the loss of animal and plant diversity around the world fail to account for species competition and movement, they say.
"We have really sophisticated meteorological models for predicting climate change," says ecologist Mark Urban of the University of Connecticut.
"But in real life, animals move around, they compete, they parasitize each other and...
Climate change ‘will boost British farmers’
Posted by Daily Telegraph: None Given on January 6th, 2012
Daily Telegraph: In a speech at the Oxford Farming Conference, she said that, although problems such as droughts would become more frequent, warmer weather would also mean a longer growing season and less frost damage, allowing the introduction of crops such as peaches, maize and sunflowers. Already 10,000 melons are expected to be harvested in Kent this year.
Mrs Spelman said farmers must "seize the opportunities' of increased production as well as preparing for more droughts and floods by building reservoirs...
Dozens of Texas Species in Line to Be Studied as Endangered this is a test application please ntrhhf
Posted by New York Times: KATE GALBRAITH on January 6th, 2012
New York Times: Near a glade of blackened pines, a Ph.D. student at Texas State University used microchip technology to search for an endangered Houston toad. Her device beeped as she held it over a carpet of pine needles, and after a bit of digging, a live toad emerged, half-buried in dirt. The creature was waiting for warmer, wetter weather before mating, but its species’ future is grim. The huge wildfires that swept through Bastrop County last fall may wipe it out. “That was an extinction-level event,” said...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Dozens of Texas Species in Line to Be Studied as Endangered this is a test application please ntrhhfEPA may retest PA. water near fracking
Posted by Reuters: Edward McAllister and Timothy Gardner on January 6th, 2012
Reuters: Federal regulators are considering retesting water supplies at a small town in Pennsylvania that residents say have been contaminated by natural gas drilling.
Just a month after declaring water in Dimock safe, officials from the Environmental Protection Agency are taking another look after new evidence provided by residents suggested that drinking water could be more polluted than originally thought.
"We believe that additional information is needed to better understand the situation in Dimock...
Snow Drought? Wimpy Winter Weather Across U.S.
Posted by Climate Central: Andrew Freedman on January 5th, 2012
Climate Central: The calendar may say January, but across much of the U.S., the ground is bare, with none of the epic snowstorms that were the hallmarks of the past few winters.
While some may be cheering the lack of snow as welcome relief, the widespread lack of it spells trouble for the ski industry, which pumps billions into the wintertime economy in states from California to Maine, and requires cooperation from Mother Nature to stay in business.
Ski area operators across the country are already reporting...
Fracking will poison New York’s drinking water, critics warn
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 5th, 2012
Guardian: A former staffer at a state government agency responsible for regulating hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has warned that allowing the controversial gas drilling method in New York would lead to contamination of the state's aquifers and would poison its drinking water.
These stark warnings, issued by Paul Hetzler in a letter to an upstate newspaper, came as a current employee and union representative at the Department for Environmental Conservation (DEC) sounded alarm bells over the under-staffed...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Fracking will poison New York’s drinking water, critics warnWarm weather threatens to extend U.S. drought
Posted by Reuters: Carey Gillam on January 5th, 2012
Reuters: A New Year's Eve "heat wave" melted away welcomed winter snow that had brought some drought relief to the U.S. Plains, reviving fears that harmfully warm and dry conditions will persist into 2012, U.S. climatologists said in a report issued Thursday.
"The return of warm, dry weather to the nation's southern tier could be suggestive of an increasingly La Nina-driven atmospheric regime," said the U.S. Drought Monitor report, issued weekly by a team of national, state and academic climatology experts....