RSS Feed
Archive for December 27th, 2012
Average Temperatures in West Antarctica Show Marked Rise Over 54 Years
Posted by Environmental News Network: Roger Greenway on December 27th, 2012
Environmental News Network: Global average temperatures are rising in most places, but the rise is not uniform. In western Antarctica, temperatures have risen significantly over an extended period. In a finding that raises further concerns about the future contribution of Antarctica to sea level rise, a new study by the University of Colorado University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder finds that the western part of the continent's ice sheet is experiencing nearly twice as much warming as previously thought....
Posted in 
Group Collecting DNA Codes of Endangered Species Gets Google Boost
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 27th, 2012
Yale Environment 360: The Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL), a global initiative assembling the “DNA barcodes” of the world’s endangered species, received $3 million from Google this month to create an online database organizers hope will emerge as a critical tool in the enforcement of international wildlife protection laws. Since it was formed in 2004, the consortium’s 200 participating organizations have collected genetic information for more than 100,000 species. With tens of thousands of species currently...
Amazon Regional Alliance to Confront the Climate Emergency
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 27th, 2012
Inter Press Service: "When someone in Peru sneezes, someone in Brazil catches a cold. When a barrel of oil is produced in Ecuador, a neighbouring country ends up buying it," says prominent environmentalist Yolanda Kakabadse.
Everything that happens in Latin American countries is closely connected, as if they were vital organs shared by the same body, maintains Kakabadse, former environment minister of Ecuador and current regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean of the Climate and Development Knowledge...
Human evolution driven by sudden climate change
Posted by TG Daily: Kate Taylor on December 27th, 2012
TG Daily: Erratic changes in the East African climate around two million years ago may have been the driving force behind human evolution, say researchers at Penn State and Rutgers University.
Scientists have long been aware that, around this time, the environment gradually dried out, in a process that took up to three million years. But, says the team, this wasn't a steady process: instead, the environment was highly variable.
"The landscape early humans were inhabiting transitioned rapidly back and...
Loss of microbes in deforestation harming Amazon
Posted by Indo Asian News Service: None Given on December 27th, 2012
Indo Asian News Service: Researchers have sounded alarm bells over the loss of microbes helping preserve the Amazon ecosystem following its systematic deforestation. "We found that after rainforest conversion to agricultural pastures, bacterial communities were significantly different from those of forest soils," said Klaus Nusslein from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, an expert in tropical rain forest microbial soil communities, who led the microbiologists. Nusslein and colleagues studied a large farm site over...
Little Oversight for Enbridge Pipeline Route that Skirts Lake Michigan
Posted by Inside Climate News: David Hasemyer and Lisa Song on December 27th, 2012
Inside Climate News: In the northwestern corner of Indiana a major pipeline project is planned that will carry vast quantities of heavy Canadian crude oil across four rivers that flow into Lake Michigan, where 10 million people get their drinking water. The pipeline will cross one river just 11 miles from the lake. It crosses the other three rivers less than 20 miles from the lake. Because the pipeline runs so close to Lake Michigan—and because it is being built by a company with a history of pipeline spills in the...
In 2012, Canada’s ‘Dilbit’ Becomes a Contentious American Issue
Posted by Inside Climate News: Lisa Song on December 27th, 2012
Inside Climate News: This was the year "dilbit" registered on the U.S. political and public radar in a major way. Previously just a technical industry term, dilbit—short for diluted bitumen—became the center of citizens' concerns about the controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline. Bitumen is a heavy crude oil mined from Canada's oil sands region. The bitumen is so thick that it must be diluted with liquid chemicals before it can flow through pipelines—hence the term dilbit. Environmental groups have long opposed oil...
Canada: Kinder Morgan takes its case for a pipeline to the people
Posted by Vancouver Sun: Gordon Hamilton on December 27th, 2012
Vancouver Sun: Five years ago, when Greg Toth was working on a Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project along the Alberta-B.C. border, the terms public engagement and consultation meant talking to a handful of landowners, holding open houses in pipeline-friendly communities and meeting with people who were mostly pleased over the employment that came along with the project. It was a relatively small project to twin the pipeline between Hinton, AB., through Jasper National Park and Mount Robson Provincial Park...
Refiners Beating Exxon Join Pipeline Boom for Lost Margin
Posted by Bloomberg: Bradley Olson on December 27th, 2012
Bloomberg: Refiners (S5OILR) from Tesoro Corp. (TSO) to Phillips 66 that gained as much as 86 percent this year are investing in pipelines for new revenue as margins for turning oil into gasoline narrow from record levels.
Refiners are set to beat all except three of 154 industry groups on the Standard & Poor’s index for 2012, as a U.S. production glut let them buy oil at a record average of $17.46 a barrel below the global benchmark. That spread will diminish in 2013 as more than 20 new pipelines enter...
Winter storm hits eastern U.S., snarls holiday travel
Posted by Reuters: Ian Simpson on December 27th, 2012
Reuters: A powerful winter storm that has claimed at least five lives pounded the U.S. Midwest and Northeast and snarled post-Christmas travel on Wednesday after rare tornadoes pummeled the Gulf Coast.
Heavy snow and high winds prompted National Weather Service blizzard and winter storm warnings for the Ohio River Valley and into the Northeast. Fifteen inches of snow were recorded at New Baltimore, Michigan, as the storm headed north and east.
About 1,500 U.S. flights were canceled on Wednesday, according...