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Archive for February 24th, 2012
Forests: the fire next time
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 24th, 2012
Guardian: Forest fires are a fact of life, and in some regions an important part of the natural ecosystem, but that does not make them welcome. Wildfire sears an astonishing 350 to 400 million hectares each year: this is an area of land greater than the surface of India. The economic costs of bushfires are prodigious – one sustained blaze in Texas in 2011 did damage estimated at $5bn – but the human costs, too, are cruel. A team led by Tasmanian and Canadian scientists has just made a careful estimate of the...
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Deepwater Horizon disaster: worst oil spill in US history gets its day in court
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 24th, 2012
Guardian: After thousands of hours of legal deliberations, the accumulation of 72m pages of documents and the recorded testimony of 303 witnesses, it will fall to an engineering expert who blamed the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster on a "multi-decade history of organisational malfunction and short-sightedness" to frame the case against BP.
The civil trial, which opens before Judge Carl Barbier in a federal court in New Orleans on Monday, is expected to be epic by any definition, unmatched in scale or legal...
Texas Drought Eases, But It’s Too Late for Some
Posted by Climate Central: Andrew Freedman on February 24th, 2012
Climate Central: Defying seasonal climate forecasts, this winter has been very good to Texas, which has been locked in the grips of one of the worst droughts in state history. But the unexpectedly generous winter storms have come too late for some, since water supplies are still running low.
As I reported in late January, managers of the Lower Colorado River are likely to take the unprecedented step of denying water for rice growers in Southeast Texas, putting several thousand jobs at risk. Although the decision...
Climate change may have caused Mayan civilization’s collapse
Posted by Christian Science Monitor: Charles Choi on February 24th, 2012
Christian Science Monitor: The collapse of the ancient Mayan civilization may have been linked to relatively modest dry spells, researchers now say.
The ancient Mayan empire once stretched across an area about the size of Texas, with cities and fields occupying what is now southern Mexico and northern Central America, including the countries of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras. The height of the Mayan empire, known as the Classic period, reached from approximately A.D. 250 to at least A.D. 900.
The ancient...
A Curse on Hydropower Projects in the Amazon?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 24th, 2012
Inter Press Service: "Perhaps it's the curse of Rondônia," joked Ari Ott, referring to teething troubles with the first turbine of the Santo Antônio hydroelectric plant which was intended to kick off a new cycle of huge power projects in Brazil's Amazon jungle region.
The enormous turbine, designed to generate 71.6 megawatts of electricity, overheated during initial tests in December and the necessary repairs delayed its coming onstream, now announced for late March, by at least three months.
Professor Ott, of...
The fracking frontline: a tale of two Pennsylvanias – video
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 24th, 2012
Guardian: In what the Pennsylvania governor says will 'level the playing field for gas exploration', a controversial bill has been passed, rendering previous zoning laws void. With the new bill hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, can take place as close as 90 metres (300ft) from residential houses. This film visits Dallas township where the citizens' engagement has kept the gas exploration at bay – for now
Hosepipe bans likely as UK gripped by drought
Posted by Guardian: Fiona Harvey, on February 24th, 2012
Guardian: The worst drought to grip the UK in more than 30 years is already killing wildlife, threatening farmers' livelihoods, and is likely to lead to widespread hosepipe bans – even before spring has begun.
Fish populations have been dying in Hampshire, according to the Environment Agency, owing to the low river flow that has left them stranded, while boats have been banned from areas on the Grand Union Canal where the level has had to be lowered. In the east of England, domestic boreholes supplying...
France, Netherlands key to EU oil sands decision
Posted by Globe and Mail: Shawn Mccarthy on February 24th, 2012
Globe and Mail: Ottawa has been lobbying the Europeans for two years for fundamental changes to an EU proposal to label oil sands as being more carbon-intensive than other crude sources -- a tag that would effectively ban oil sands crude, and threaten to snowball to other regions. Britain had clearly indicated it was in Canada's camp, but on Thursday, France and the Netherlands helped derail the proposed regulation by abstaining on the vote, which needed a majority of total votes to pass.
All three countries...
Feds move Aspen into warmer climate zone
Posted by Aspen Daily News: Andrew Travers on February 24th, 2012
Aspen Daily News: Federal agriculture officials recently released new national climate designations for the United States, confirming for Aspen what you may have already noticed: winter is getting warmer around here.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) this month released revised zones for “plant hardiness.” It’s the first update since 1990. The zones are effectively used to guide farmers and gardeners on what plants can survive in each area. It’s scientifically based on the average minimum winter temperature...
North America could be hit with decades-long ‘megadrought’: Scientist
Posted by Leader Post: Emma Graney on February 24th, 2012
Leader Post: When a drought hit North America in the 1930s, creating a giant dust bowl and crippling agriculture from Saskatchewan to Oklahoma, it entered history as the Dirty Thirties.
But University of Regina paleoclimatologist Jeannine-Marie St. Jacques says that decade-long drought is nowhere near as bad as it can get.
St. Jacques and her colleagues have been studying tree ring data and, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in Vancouver over the weekend, she explained...