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Archive for August 13th, 2012
Heat Shuts Down a Coastal Reactor
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 13th, 2012
New York Times: A reactor at the Millstone nuclear plant in Waterford, Conn., has shut down because of something that its 1960s designers never anticipated: the water in Long Island Sound was too warm to cool it.
Under the reactor`s safety rules, the cooling water can be no higher than 75 degrees. On Sunday afternoon, the water`s temperature soared to 76.7 degrees, prompting the operator, Dominion Power, to order the shutdown of the 880-megawatt reactor.
“Temperatures this summer are the warmest we’ve had...
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Stressed Aquifers Around the Globe
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 13th, 2012
New York Times: As the worst drought in decades continues to afflict the Midwest and the Great Plains, it is straining a precious commodity far beneath the earth’s surface: groundwater.
Take, for instance, the Ogallala aquifer, which underlies eight states from Nebraska to Texas. The aquifer helps irrigate fields of corn, soybeans and wheat, notes Mark Svoboda, a climatologist at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln who maintains the U.S. Drought Monitor.
In a summer like this, even farmers who draw from...
Shifting Climate Makes Frogs More Vulnerable to Disease, Study Says
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 13th, 2012
Yale Environment 360: Increasingly unpredictable swings in the weather are making frogs more vulnerable to the deadly chytrid fungus, according to a new study. In a series of tests, scientists at Oakland University in Michigan exposed Cuban treefrogs living under a variety of conditions in laboratory incubators to chytridiomycosis, a highly infectious fungal disease that has decimated amphibian species globally. The scientists found that frogs that were exposed to unpredictable temperature changes were more susceptible...
Diversifying crops to cope with climate change
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 13th, 2012
IRIN: Lemons and sweet bamboo may not be associated with frontline efforts to adapt to climate change in most parts of the world, but in Kioutaloun village in northern Laos, rice farmers hit by landslides, land erosion and severe flooding are looking to different crops.
"When the farmer starts planting upland rice he needs rain for fast growth. If there is no rain within a month, then it`s not good," said Ki Her, head of Kioutaloun village, where mostly the Hmong ethnic group live.
Khamphone Mounlamai,...
In Iowa, Obama to announce measures to soothe drought pain
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 13th, 2012
Reuters: President Barack Obama will announce on Monday that the Department of Agriculture intends to buy up to $170 million of pork, lamb, chicken and catfish to help support farmers suffering from the drought, a White House official said. The food purchases will go toward "food nutrition assistance" programs, like food banks. During a visit to Iowa, a political swing state that the Democrat hopes to win in the Nov. 6 election, Obama will press Congress to pass a farm bill with short-term relief measures...