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Archive for August, 2012
Near Fracking Wells, the Many Quakes That Go Unfelt
Posted by New York Times: Oanna M. Foster on August 7th, 2012
New York Times: A series of small earthquakes made Halloween of 2008 an unusually scary one for people in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. While it has long been theorized that underground injections of fluids from oil and gas development operations could decrease friction and cause faults to slip, the quakes occurred in an area where people weren`t accustomed to tremors, renewing calls for research into the geological consequences of the booming natural gas industry in Texas.
In a new study, one of the researchers...
Wonkbook: Climate change may be to blame for extreme weather events now
Posted by Washington Post: Karl Singer on August 7th, 2012
Washington Post: A new study finds some extreme weather events wouldn`t have happened without climate change. "The percentage of the earth’s land surface covered by extreme heat in the summer has soared in recent decades, from less than 1 percent in the years before 1980 to as much as 13 percent in recent years, according to a new scientific paper. The change is so drastic, the paper says, that scientists can claim with near certainty that events like the Texas heat wave last year, the Russian heat wave of 2010 and...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Wonkbook: Climate change may be to blame for extreme weather events nowDeforestation fuels temperature hikes around Mt. Kilimanjaro
Posted by AlertNet: Kizito Makoye on August 7th, 2012
AlertNet: A logging boom has hit Tanzania's tourist-drawing Kilimanjaro region, reducing the region's native forests, hitting rainfall and leading to unusually high temperatures.
The increasingly extreme weather has come as a surprise to people who live a stone's throw from one of the world's heritage sites, and who had been used to a cold, misty climate.
Joshua Meena, 72, a resident of Machame, told AlertNet that the annual rainfall in the region has been dwindling from year to year over the past decade,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Deforestation fuels temperature hikes around Mt. KilimanjaroRecent extreme heatwaves ‘a result of global warming’
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 7th, 2012
Independent: Global warming is responsible for the recent spate of summer heatwaves, according to James Hansen, the scientist who first alerted the world to the dangers of climate change. Dr Hansen, director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, said that the "climate dice" are now loaded in favour of extreme heatwaves which now affect 10 per cent of the Earth's surface, compared with about 1 per cent in the period between 1951 to 1980.
Dr Hansen said that at least three extreme summers...
Climate Change’s Role in Heat Waves Still Under Debate
Posted by LiveScience: Wynne Parry on August 6th, 2012
LiveScience: It's no surprise to those who follow climate science that temperature patterns have shifted as the world has warmed up. But in a new study, outspoken climate scientist James Hansen goes a step further, saying devastating heat waves in recent years are the result of global warming.
Since natural dynamics -- such as fluctuations in sea-surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean -- contribute to extreme events like heat waves, this connection can be controversial.
Scientists disagree...
Fred Krupp: A New Climate-Change Consensus
Posted by Wall Street Journal: Fred Krupp on August 6th, 2012
Wall Street Journal: One scorching summer doesn't confirm that climate change is real any more than a white Christmas proves it's a hoax. What matters is the trend-a decades-long march toward hotter and wilder weather. But with more than 26,000 heat records broken in the last 12 months and pervasive drought turning nearly half of all U.S. counties into federal disaster areas, many data-driven climate skeptics are reassessing the issue.
Respected Republican leaders like Govs. John Kasich of Ohio and Chris Christie...
Earth’s ecosystems still soaking up half of human carbon emissions
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 6th, 2012
Mongabay: Even as humans emit ever more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, Earth's ecosystems are still sequestering about half, according to new research in Nature. The study finds that the planet's oceans, forests, and other vegetation have stepped into overdrive to deal with the influx of carbon emitted from burning fossil fuels, but notes that this doesn't come without a price, including the acidification of the oceans.
"We're already seeing climate change happen despite the fact that only half of...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Earth’s ecosystems still soaking up half of human carbon emissionsU.S. business group challenges EPA mercury rule
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 6th, 2012
Reuters: The biggest U.S. business lobby group said Monday it has petitioned a federal appeals court to invalidate environmental regulations it claims will lead to sweeping electricity blackouts by forcing coal-fired power plants to close.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it filed a friend-of-the-court brief with a broader business coalition in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on Friday to challenge the Environmental Protection Agency‘s "Utility MACT" rule, which aims to reduce emissions...
Are Recent Heat Waves A Result Of Climate Change?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 6th, 2012
National Public Radio: It's been an unusually hot couple of years in many parts of the U.S. But just how unusual is this? It's a question climate scientists are getting asked a lot.
They wonder whether a warming climate is doing this or whether it's just part of the normal variation in the weather. Among scientists there's a growing view that these latest heat waves are a result of climate change.
NASA climate scientist James Hansen has been looking at the past century's temperatures all over the world. He has measured...
Heat Waves “Almost Certainly” Due to Global Warming
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 6th, 2012
National Geographic: Recent heat waves that have triggered wildfires, droughts, and heat-related deaths in the United States and around the globe "almost certainly would not have occurred" without global warming-and will become more routine in coming years, NASA climate scientist James Hansen says.
A new study examining six decades of global temperature data concludes that a sharp increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers can only be the result of human-caused global warming. ee an interactive map of global...