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Archive for December 18th, 2012
Great Lakes Study Highlights Environmental Threats And Conservation Challenges
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 18th, 2012
RedOrbit: A research team, led by the University of Michigan, has developed a comprehensive map telling the story of human impact on the Great Lakes and identifying how "environmental stressors" stretching from Minnesota to Ontario are shaping the future of an ecosystem that contains 20 percent of the world`s fresh water. The map, three years in the making, was a collaborative effort with the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a binational team of researchers from the Great Lakes Environmental Assessment...
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Will Toxic Fracking Wastewater Be Transported by Barge?
Posted by EcoWatch: Emily DeMarco, Public Source on December 18th, 2012
EcoWatch: The shale gas drilling industry wants to move its wastewater by barge on rivers and lakes across the country. But the U.S. Coast Guard, which regulates the nation’s waterways, must first decide whether it’s safe.
“It may be hazardous,” said Commander Michael Roldan, chief of the Coast Guard’s Hazardous Material Division, stressing the word ‘may.’ “If it is, it would not be allowed to ship under bulk.”
Right now, he pointed out during an interview with PublicSource, it can’t be shipped by barge,...
5 reasons global warming is more terrifying than you think
Posted by AlterNet: Tara Lohan on December 18th, 2012
AlterNet: This week the sane among us will scoff at those hoarding candles and food for another apocalypse that fails to materialize. We’ll laugh at the accounts of people readying their bunkers and at store shelves being wiped clean. We know that the world will not come to a cataclysmic end on December 21.
Here’s what we’re not so good at understanding: We are part of a slowly enfolding tragedy in which the end of the world as we know it may be getting closer and closer. It won’t happen on any particular...
UK sets solar, biomass subsidy levels for 2013-17
Posted by Reuters: Oleg Vukmanovic on December 18th, 2012
Reuters: Britain on Tuesday set out support levels designed to encourage new solar and biomass power-generation developments over the 2013-2017 period, the energy ministry said, moves that could boost jobs and unlock investment.
Support levels for the solar photovoltaic (PV) industry are higher than initial proposals made by the government in September, following a consultation period with developers opposed to steep cuts to subsidies that closed in October.
Britain's subsidies are aimed at helping...
Two Arrested at Fracking Protest in North Carolina
Posted by EcoWatch: Croatan Earth First! on December 18th, 2012
EcoWatch: North Carolinians, with the grassroots group Croatan Earth First!, organized a mobile protest this morning at the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) Headquarters--217 W. Jones St. in Raleigh, NC--and marched to the Archdale building--512 N. Salisbury St.--where the NC Mining and Energy Commission is holding a meeting. Protestors carrying banners, signs and drums led chants to vocalize their opposition to the dangerous energy extraction process known as fracking. Two local North...
‘Climate change is taking place before our eyes’ – the weather of 2012
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 18th, 2012
Guardian: When in September the Arctic sea ice that freezes and melts each year shrank to its lowest extent ever recorded and then contracted a further 500,000 sq km, the small world of ice scientists was shocked. This was unprecedented, yet there was nothing unusual about the meteorological conditions in the Arctic in 2012, no vast storms to break up the ice, or heatwave to hasten the retreat. Only widespread warming of the atmosphere could have been responsible for less ice growth during the winter and more...
Climate challenge will test India’s adaptation strategies says forestry head
Posted by Daily Pioneer: None Given on December 18th, 2012
Daily Pioneer: Climate change is a major challenge for developing countries like India which are exposed to greater risk from this phenomenon. The Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE) director general VK Bahuguna said this after inaugurating a training programme on climate change, forest ecosystem and biodiversity- vulnerabilities and adaptation strategies for scientists and technologists of Government Sector at Forest Research Institute on Monday.
Speaking on the occasion, the ICFRE director...
Canada: Toronto peers into the future to curb high cost of climate risks
Posted by ClimateWire: Julia Pyper on December 18th, 2012
ClimateWire: Toronto's infrastructure has struggled to keep up with the climatic changes of recent decades, so Canada's biggest metropolis is now looking to the future to find the solutions it will need to be more resilient.
"There's no sense in building infrastructure that was designed for the weather patterns in the '60s or '70s," said Lawson Oates, director of the Toronto Environment Office. "We need to be thinking forward 20 to 30 years out."
Cities hold half the world's population and produce more...
High in sky, scientists chart signs of icy human echo
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 18th, 2012
Greenwire: Standing in the shadow of the cloud machine, his tall frame dwarfed by its three stories, Ottmar Möhler looks around, leans over and spits in a can.
An atmospheric scientist at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, near the French border, Möhler is the master of the world's largest cloud chamber. A giant steel tube housed in a former nuclear reactor building, the chamber, called AIDA, re-creates air found many miles above the ground. And then, it goes further. It mints clouds.
How? With a...
Mapping Great Lakes threats
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 18th, 2012
Environment Report: This is the Environment Report. I’m Rebecca Williams.
The Great Lakes are under a lot of stress.
34 different kinds of stress, to be exact.
That’s according to a research team that has produced a comprehensive map showing many of the things that stress the Great Lakes. Think: pollution, invasive species, development and climate change... just to name a few.
To learn more about this new map, I went to visit David Allan. He’s a professor in the School of Natural Resources and Environment...