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Archive for October 9th, 2012
Honda offers $3,000 worth of fillups for natural gas Civic buyers
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 9th, 2012
Reuters: American Honda and natural gas fueling station operator Clean Energy Fuels Corp are offering $3,000 for fillups to customers buying a 2012 Honda Civic Natural Gas car, the companies said on Tuesday.
Buyers of the new compact Civic will get debit cards that can be used at any of the 163 Clean Energy stations in the United States.
Honda has sold 1,576 of the car, which runs on compressed natural gas, since it was introduced last October, Honda spokesman Marcos Frommer said. American Honda is...
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‘Warmest year’ looking more likely for US in 2012
Posted by NBC: Miguel Llanos on October 9th, 2012
NBC: With less than three months left this year, it's looking increasingly likely that 2012 will go down as the warmest year on record in the continental United States.
January-September was already the warmest first nine months, according to temperature data released Tuesday by the National Climatic Data Center.
Moreover, six of eight scenarios charted by the center have 2012 ending warmer than any other year in records that go back to 1895. The only scenarios where that would not happen are if...
Indigenous groups re-occupy Belo Monte dam in the Amazon
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 9th, 2012
Mongabay: Construction on Brazil's megadam, Belo Monte, has been halted again as around 150 demonstrators, most of them from nearby indigenous tribes, have occupied the main construction site at Pimental. Over a hundred indigenous people joined local fishermen who had been protesting the dam for 24 days straight. Indigenous people and local fishermen say the dam will devastate the Xingu River, upending their way of life.
"The renewed occupation of the project's earthen cofferdams paralyzed construction...
Big Coal Wins Latest Battle to Blast Historic Blair Mountain
Posted by Appalachian Voices: Matt Wasson on October 9th, 2012
Appalachian Voices: In a jaw-dropping display of contempt and disregard for the communities and landscapes where they mine coal, three coal companies back in 2009 challenged the listing of West Virginia’s Blair Mountain on the National Register of Historic Places. The companies, including mining behemoths Alpha Natural Resources and Arch Coal, opposed the listing of Blair Mountain as a historic site because it could interfere with their plans to conduct mountaintop removal mining operations on the Spruce Fork Ridge...
Argentine soy, corn planting seen boosted by rains
Posted by Reuters: Hugh Bronstein on October 9th, 2012
Reuters: Corn and soy planting in the eastern Argentine province of Entre Rios will be helped by light rains this week while the country's key farm area to the south starts getting the sunshine needed to recover from recent flooding, a forecaster said on Tuesday.
The wet start to Argentina's spring planting season has raised hopes for big harvests after dry crop weather in the United States, Russia and Australia sapped food stocks and squeezed global grains prices higher.
The South American country...
New Orleans warns residents of possible water contamination
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 9th, 2012
Reuters: New Orleans scrambled on Tuesday to take precautions against possible bacterial contamination of its water supply, the second time in two years a power outage in its aging water system has prompted a health warning.
At least 17 schools were closed, businesses and residents were told to boil water, and some of the city's fabled restaurants brought in ice from outside the region after Monday's three-minute outage at the city's main water plant left the safety of its water in doubt.
City and state...
TransCanada—The Whole World is Watching
Posted by EcoWatch: William Boardman on October 9th, 2012
EcoWatch: In a remote corner of northeast Texas, there are people living in trees because, they say, they’re trying to protect the planet from increased carbon emissions over the next century to help slow climate change. Challenging this treehouse blockade (see video below) is the advancing Keystone XL pipeline whose owners, the Canadian power company TransCanada, say they’re trying to save the oil industry from worsening economic conditions over the next decade.
TransCanada started building the Texas section...
Global Warming Spurs Extreme Weather, Most in US Believe
Posted by LiveScience: Jeanna Bryner on October 9th, 2012
LiveScience: The majority of Americans think global warming is not only affecting weather but is also worsening extreme weather events, including record-high summer temperatures and the Midwest drought, a new survey released today (Oct. 9) finds.
Between Aug. 31 and September, more than 1,000 participants ages 18 and over answered survey questions about their beliefs on global warming and its link to weather events. The results were weighted to give nationally representative numbers.
Overall, there has...
Global recession halts decades of steady progress in reducing world hunger
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 9th, 2012
Independent: Two decades of steady progress in reducing world hunger have come to a stop with the recession of the last four years, new figures from the United Nations reveal.
The number of people without enough to eat fell from one billion in 1990-92 to 867 million in 2007-2009, the figures from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) show, but then went back up to 868m in the period 2010-2012, while in Africa, the worsening trend is even more pronounced.
The development “should sound alarm bells...
September Bookends the Warmest 12 Months on Record
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 9th, 2012
Climate Central: NOAA's latest State of the Climate roundup shows that September marked the 16th month in a row with above-average temperatures for the lower 48 states of the U.S. Both the calendar year and the 12-month period from October 2011 through September 2012 were the warmest on record, and statistics show that it will require an unusually cold October through December period for 2012 to rank anything other than the warmest year.
The U.S. has never before recorded 16 straight months of above-average temperatures,...