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Archive for June 15th, 2012
Natives occupy Amazon dam construction site
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on June 15th, 2012
Agence France-Presse: Around 300 indigenous and green activists occupied Friday the construction site of a huge hydro-electric dam across the Xingu River, a tributary of the Amazon, protest organizers said.
The demonstration at the Belo Monte dam sought to draw attention to the project at the UN Conference on Sustainable Development taking place in Rio de Janeiro, more than 3,500 kilometers (2,200 miles) to the south.
"We call on the world to let our river live," Antonia Melo, head of the Xingu River Forever Alive...
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Report: No high risk of quakes from ‘fracking’
Posted by MSNBC: Seth Borenstein on June 15th, 2012
MSNBC: The controversial practice of hydraulic fracturing to extract natural gas does not pose a high risk for triggering earthquakes large enough to feel, but other types of energy-related drilling can make the ground noticeably shake, a major government science report concludes.
Even those man-made tremors large enough to be an issue are very rare, says a special report by the National Research Council. In more than 90 years of monitoring, human activity has been shown to trigger only 154 quakes, most...
Billionaire pledges 90,000 acres for protected area
Posted by MSNBC: Miguel Llanos on June 15th, 2012
MSNBC: A billionaire hedge-fund manager on Friday pledged to protect 90,000 acres of his Colorado ranch from further development as part of a much larger planned conservation area. The Obama administration said it would be the "largest single conservation easement" ever provided to the federal government.
The easement, which would include tax benefits for New York-based Louis Bacon, provides "the foundation for the proposed new Sangre de Cristo Conservation Area," the Interior Department announced. ...
Fracking for oil and gas poses little quake risk: study
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on June 15th, 2012
Reuters: The fracking drilling technique used to tap shale oil and gas is unlikely to trigger earthquakes, but underground injection of waste water from drilling offers more risks for seismic activity, a new U.S. study said on Friday.
The National Research Council study, which also examined the risk of earthquakes associated with tapping geothermal energy and carbon capture and storage, found that the total balance of fluid injected or removed underground was the biggest factor in causing earthquakes related...
Climate change will reduce renewable energy capacity, warn scientists
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on June 15th, 2012
SciDev.Net: Climate change is set to reduce Latin America's capacity to produce renewable energy, according to Roberto Schaeffer, a Brazilian energy planning expert.
He told the Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation for Sustainable Development underway in Brazil this week (11--15 June) that many forms of renewable energy are vulnerable to variations in climate, due to their dependence on water -- as is the case with hydropower and biofuels -- as well as on wind and sun.
Schaeffer-- a researcher at...
North Carolina tries to outlaw climate models
Posted by New Scientist: Hannah Krakauer on June 15th, 2012
New Scientist: Political satirist Stephen Colbert's solution to unfavourable climate science is simple: "If your science gives you a result that you don't like, pass a law saying that the result is illegal. Problem solved."
Legislators in North Carolina are apparently of the same mindset. When a state-appointed commission announced that North Carolinians could expect 39 inches of sea-level rise by 2100, the Senate responded with a bill that legally prevents the Division of Coastal Management from using the climate...
Carbon storage ‘may cause small earthquakes’
Posted by Guardian: Fiona Harvey, on June 15th, 2012
Guardian: Capturing carbon dioxide and storing it underground could give rise to small earthquakes, according to a new report from the US National Research Council.
But the authors said there was too little research to be firm on the findings, and called for more work to be done.
The report examined sites where hydraulic fracturing – the practice of blasting dense rocks apart with water, sand and chemicals in order to release tiny bubbles of natural gas trapped within them – had been used. The authors...
As Politicians Debate Climate Change, Our Forests Wither
Posted by Atlantic: Sophie Quinton on June 15th, 2012
Atlantic: Dan Gibbs keeps dead beetles in the back of his beat-up Chevy Silverado. He has a wooden block with beetles impaled on it, each insect about the size of a grain of rice. He's got vials of embalmed beetles and their larvae. He carries around pieces of wood that show what those tiny beetles do to a mature lodgepole pine: They drill deep into the trunk and infect the tree with a fatal fungus that stains its wood blue.
Gibbs isn't a scientist. He's a commissioner for Summit County, a high-altitude...
Wildfires rage in Colorado and New Mexico as US bolsters firefighting fleet
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on June 15th, 2012
Associated Press: The government is bolstering the nation's rundown aerial firefighting fleet by taking steps to add seven large tanker planes. But the aircraft likely won't be available soon, and several other firefighting planes are grounded as destructive wildfires rage in Colorado and New Mexico.
President Barack Obama signed a bill Wednesday hastening the addition of those aircraft at a cost of $24m. The same day, two firefighting C-130 military transport planes sat on a tarmac in Cheyenne, shrouded in an...
Colorado wildfire could burn all summer, officials fear
Posted by LA Times: Jenny Deam and John M. Glionna on June 15th, 2012
LA Times: Making his descent from the mountaintop Thursday morning, bicyclist Kent Bell rolled smack into the filmy haze coating this resort town. Forty miles away, near Friday's finish line of the Ride the Rockies endurance test, one of the largest fires in Colorado history raged out of control. Over the last few days, insulated by clear skies to the west, the 36-year-old rider had heard there was a wildfire somewhere out in the forest, but he wasn't sure where. Then he saw the smoke. "It was a shock. Coming...