RSS Feed
Archive for September 20th, 2012
A Delay in New York’s Fracking Decision?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 20th, 2012
New York Times: New York State’s top environmental official just announced that he has asked the state health commissioner to assess the potential health impacts from allowing high-volume hydraulic fracturing in New York State. The environmental commissioner, Joe Martens, said he was rejecting requests from various groups for an independent health study. “While the review will be informed by outside perspectives on the science of hydrofracking, the decision-making will remain a governmental responsibility,” he...
Posted in 
Avian Malaria in Alaska: The Climate Change Connection
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 20th, 2012
Climate Central: A team of biologists has just announced the first documented case of bird-to-bird malaria transmission in Alaska. Writing in the journal PLOS ONE, they've shown that this frequently fatal avian illness, which is normally associated with the tropics and temperate areas, may be expanding its range. Fortunately, avian malaria doesn't affect humans, co-author Ravinder Sehgal of San Francisco State University said, but the findings are particularly significant from a bird conservation as well as a climate...
Drought Grows, Forecast to Persist Through Early Winter
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 20th, 2012
Climate Central: The massive and widespread 2012 drought that has gripped the nation since the spring refuses to die, according to the latest report from the U.S. Drought Monitor -- and in fact, it's expanded a little: as of September 18, 64.82 percent of the contiguous U.S. was suffering from at least moderate drought, slightly more than the 64.16 percent reported a week earlier, enough of a gain to set a new record for this drought category.
At the same time, NOAA released its seasonal drought outlook for the...
Natural gas fracking fires protest over pollution fears
Posted by Guardian: Amy Goodman on September 20th, 2012
Guardian: Western Pennsylvania is considered the birthplace of commercial oil drilling. On 27 August 1859, Edwin Drake struck oil in Titusville, Pennsylvania, and changed the course of history. Now, people there are busy trying to stop wells, and the increasingly pervasive drilling practice known as fracking.
Fracking is the popular term for hydraulic fracturing, the technique used to extract natural gas from deep beneath the earth's surface. Fracking is promoted by the gas industry as the key to escaping...
Drought area expands in northern U.S., eases in south
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 20th, 2012
Reuters: The worst drought to hit the United States in a half century expanded in the upper Midwest and northern Plains states in the past week due to warmer- and drier-than-normal weather, but loosened its grip on some central and southern areas of the country.
Nearly 65 percent of the contiguous United States were under at least "moderate" drought as of September 18, up from about 64 percent a week earlier, according to the Drought Monitor, a weekly compilation of data gathered by federal and academic...
Via You Tube, a New Conservation Genre
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 20th, 2012
New York Times: The drought of 2012, which continues to spread westward, is making its mark on the national consciousness in many ways. Rising food prices. Interrupted livelihoods. Fields of stunted, desiccated crops.
All of this dryness has resonance in our video culture. Just go to You Tube and look at the proliferation of public service announcements on water conservation. Making one of these seems to be the school project du jour these days. But in this array there are some standouts, like Oklahoma City`s...
Glacier Drainage
Posted by Environmental News Network: Andy Soos on September 20th, 2012
Environmental News Network: Fast-flowing and narrow glaciers have the potential to trigger massive changes in the Antarctic ice sheet and contribute to rapid ice-sheet decay and sea-level rise, a new study has found. These glaciers are suspected to act as a sort of stream that drain off inland ice sheets. Research results published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveal in more detail than ever before how warming waters in the Southern Ocean are connected intimately with the movement and thinning...
Forests and Climate Change: a Combustible Combination
Posted by Forbes: John McQuaid on September 20th, 2012
Forbes: Smokey Bear’s advisories aside, wildfires are a normal part of forest ecology. Fire serves to clear out old trees and excess underbrush so younger trees can grow. You know, textbook “circle of life.” But the cumulative list of manmade alterations to forests, to land, and to climate is rendering the benefits of forest fires all but moot in many places, as this Nature piece illustrates:
Across the American west, the area burned each year has increased significantly over the past several decades...
US Forest mortality declines due to lack of food for mountain pine beetle
Posted by Environmental News Network: Allison Winter on September 20th, 2012
Environmental News Network: Forests are not only threatened by man-made decisions like logging and development expansion, but also by insect infestation. From beetles to forest weevils, moths to borers and timber worms, insects cost millions of dollars each year in forest destruction from eating and living in these trees.
Insects and diseases are important in maintaining a balance between healthy, functioning forests and catastrophic outbreaks and forest loss. These critical roles affect more than 750 million acres of forest...
Shale Gas: Cutting Carbon Emissions While Remaining Controversial
Posted by Forbes: Ken Silverstein on September 20th, 2012
Forbes: Presidential politics these days is about improving economic production and job creation. And while the focus lately is on which half of the country is more entitled to the federal pie, the attention should shift in part to the unyielding trends that now permeate the climate change debate. As recent data shows, cutting the level of heat-trapping emissions and enhancing economic productivity are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the emergence of the shale gas revolution has not only reduced carbon...