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Archive for July 12th, 2012
Drought leads to declaration of natural disaster in 26 US states
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 12th, 2012
Guardian: America declared a natural disaster in more than 1,000 drought-stricken counties in 26 states on Thursday.
It was the largest declaration of a national disaster and was intended to speed relief to about a third of the country's farmers and ranchers who are suffering in drought conditions.
The declaration from the US department of agriculture includes most of the south-west, which has been scorched by wildfires, parts of the midwestern corn belt, and the south-east.
It was intended to free...
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Study Shows Heat Waves More Common Due To Global Warming
Posted by redOrbit: Brett Smith on July 12th, 2012
redOrbit: While a new study warned about the increasing odds of heat waves sweeping the earth, it also suggested the controversial nature and political undertones of climate studies.
The study, led by National Oceanographic and Atmospheric (NOAA) scientists and issued in coordination with the U.K. Met (Meterology) Office, said that global warming made the 2011 Texas heat waves from March through August 20 times as likely as they would have been in the 1960s. The report also noted that the unusually warm...
Free markets solve climate-change threats
Posted by Newsday: Jay Ambrose on July 12th, 2012
Newsday: A while back, in my neighborhood in the mountains west of Denver, a couple heard some strange sounds on their deck about 1 in the morning. They went out to investigate and found a mountain lion upside down with its legs around the neck and belly of a standing elk. Its teeth were sunk in the elk’s jugular. One of these neighbors shouted something to the effect of, “Hey, cut that out!” and the mountain lion took heed.
The creature let go, landed on its feet and scooted from sight while the elk jumped...
The Natural Gas Boom: Doing More Harm Than Good?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 12th, 2012
National Public Radio: The United States is in the midst of a natural gas boom - about 200,000 gas wells have been drilled in the past decade. The boom has been fueled by the use of hydraulic fracturing - or fracking - which involves pumping a mixture of water and chemicals into the ground to get access to the gas.
The rush to extract natural gas has helped the economy pick up in places like Pennsylvania, but it also has raised questions that scientists can't yet answer about potential health and environmental problems....
Alarming Decline in Sockeye Salmon
Posted by Discovery News: Emily Sohn on July 12th, 2012
Discovery News: Every year, millions of adult salmon return from the ocean to their home streams, where they lay eggs and produce the next generation of fish. But far fewer sockeye salmon are making it back to their freshwater mating grounds compared to a few decades ago, and that's seriously affecting population sizes of the species throughout the Northwest, from Alaska to Washington State.
The discovery suggests that changing ocean conditions may be making life harder for some groups of wild salmon -- possibly...
Deja vu: U.S. undergoes hottest 12 months on record…again and again
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 12th, 2012
Mongabay: According to new data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)'s National Climatic Data Center, the last twelve months have been the warmest on record for the contiguous United States. This record, set between July 2011 through June 2012, beat the last consecutive twelve month record set only a month earlier between June 2011 and May 2012, which in turn beat the previous record holder, you guessed it: May 2011 through April 2012.
June 2012, according to the NOAA, was the...
Scientists slam Telegraph blogger’s claims that climate change will be good for the Amazon
Posted by Mongabay: None Given on July 12th, 2012
Mongabay: Recent blog posts on The Telegraph and the Register claiming that tropical rainforests like the Amazon are set to benefit from climate change are "uninformed" and "ridiculous" according to some of the world's most eminent tropical forest scientists.
The posts, published Sunday and Monday by Tim Worstall, a Senior Fellow at London's Adam Smith Institute, asserted that a new Nature study indicates that "climate change will mean new and larger tropical forests."
"We're told, endlessly, that climate...
Natural gas boom could isolate US on climate change
Posted by The Hill: Zack Colman on July 12th, 2012
The Hill: The domestic national-gas boom might thin the ranks of climate change advocates and put the United States at odds with the international community on the issue, an expert said Thursday.
America's insistence that natural gas will play an important role in easing the effects of climate change runs counter to European views and will likely invite “friction,” Michael Levi, program director on energy security and climate change with the Council on Foreign Relations, said during a discussion hosted...
The World’s Worst Ideas for Addressing Climate Change
Posted by Slate: Will Oremus on July 12th, 2012
Slate: Rupert Murdoch made waves on Twitter yesterday by dunking his toe into the climate change debate:
Climate change very slow but real. So far all cures worse than disease. Shale gas huge breakthrough for US. Half carbon of coal and oil.
David Roberts of Grist was incredulous: "Solar panels are worse than drought or rising sea levels?'
Of course not. The problem is that we aren't building enough of them to significantly slow climate change. And we may not anytime soon, thanks in part to that...
Still time to save most species in the Brazilian Amazon
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 12th, 2012
Mongabay: Once habitat is lost or degraded, a species doesn't just wink out of existence: it takes time, often several generations, before a species vanishes for good. A new study in Science investigates this process, called "extinction debt", in the Brazilian Amazon and finds that 80-90 percent of the predicted extinctions of birds, amphibians, and mammals have not yet occurred. But, unless urgent action is taken, the debt will be collected, and these species will vanish for good in the next few decades....