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Archive for February 12th, 2013
Republican lawmaker urges DOJ not to rush BP clean water decision
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 12th, 2013
Reuters: A Republican lawmaker has urged U.S. authorities not rush to settle with BP Plc under the U.S. Clean Water Act in a court case starting this month related to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. David Vitter, the top Republican on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, said in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder on Tuesday that he was concerned BP "may take advantage of the overlap" between two laws "to continue intentionally slow-walking restoration efforts" under a related...
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Why New Yorkers Don’t Trust Governor Cuomo on Fracking
Posted by EcoWatch: Paul Gallay on February 12th, 2013
EcoWatch: Nearly 300,000 comments have been submitted on fracking by increasingly concerned New Yorkers.
In October 2011 Governor Andrew M. Cuomo frankly admitted that he had yet to earn his constituents’ trust on fracking.
Why is there still no trust for Cuomo, sixteen months later, on the verge of his big decision whether to give fracking the go-ahead?
If anything, public confidence in New York’s fracking process has dropped since 2011. Nearly three times as many New Yorkers now say they will be...
A Move to Protect Red-Rock Country in Utah
Posted by New York Times: Leslie Macmillan on February 12th, 2013
New York Times: In a move that has heartened some environmental advocates, a state senator has proposed a resolution calling on the federal government to protect 1.5 million acres of red-rock arches, mesas and spires adjacent to Canyonlands National Park in southeastern Utah.
The Canyonlands acreage, the largest roadless tract in the lower 48 states, is currently managed by the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. Conservationists and the hikers, bikers and backpackers who flock to the southern Utah’s...
Matt Damon strikes bum note at YouTube launch for water campaign
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 12th, 2013
Guardian: Matt Damon gazes at a press conference of unusually well-groomed journalists. He has an announcement to make. "I'm going on strike," he says, to protest lack of sanitation in developing countries. "Not from acting, that would be too easy." He pauses. "A strike from going to go the bathroom."
There is silence, then consternation. "What?" asks a bewildered reporter. Questions erupt. For how long will he strike? Will he refrain just from actual bathrooms, and do his business elsewhere? Will he forswear,...
East Coast Faces Rising Seas From Slowing Gulf Stream
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 12th, 2013
Climate Central: Experts on the sea level rise triggered by climate change have long known that it will proceed faster in some places than others. The mid-Atlantic coast of the U.S. is one of them, and the reason -- in theory, anyway -- is that global warming should slow the flow of the Gulf Stream as it moves north and then west toward northern Europe.
Now there's a smoking gun that appears to validate the theory. A study in the February Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans ties the measured acceleration of...
Ad in the New York Times Calls for a ‘Time Out’ on LNG Exports
Posted by EcoWatch: None Given on February 12th, 2013
EcoWatch: In a half-page ad today in The New York Times, more than 40 groups and high-profile individuals calll on President Obama to take a “time out” in the headlong run to export more than 40 percent of America’s natural gas for use by other nations.
The ad--signed by the Civil Society Institute, Sierra Club, Physicians Scientists Engineers for Healthy Energy, Gasland director Josh Fox, actor Mark Ruffalo and many others--urges Americans to go to to tell President Obama to take a closer look at liquefied...
U.S. senate panel mulls future of natural gas policy
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 12th, 2013
Reuters: U.S. natural gas policy, from hydraulic fracturing to exports, came under the microscope on Tuesday as environmental and industry groups presented their views on the issue to Congress and divided along mostly familiar lines.
On a day U.S. President Barack Obama is set to lay out his agenda in the annual State of the Union address, the Senate Energy Committee examined the implications of a shale gas revolution that has upended the American energy outlook.
Technological breakthroughs in the drilling...
NASA: Alarming water loss in Middle East
Posted by Associated Press: Michael Casey on February 12th, 2013
Associated Press: An amount of freshwater almost the size of the Dead Sea has been lost in parts of the Middle East due to poor management, increased demands for groundwater and the effects of a 2007 drought, according to a NASA study.
The study, to be published Friday in Water Resources Research, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, examined data over seven years from 2003 from a pair of gravity-measuring satellites which is part of NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment or GRACE. Researchers found...
How Bold a Path on Climate Change in Obama’s State of the Union?
Posted by National Geographic: Daniel Stone on February 12th, 2013
National Geographic: If his inaugural address was any indication, President Obama has big plans for finally addressing global warming in his second term. "We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations," he said after the took his oath of office. It's not just about weather, he pointed out, but about energy technology, new industries and, in the broadest sense, economic growth.
In tonight's State of the Union, Obama is expected to...
Brazil’s hydroelectric dam boom is bringing tensions as well as energy
Posted by Guardian: Juan Forero on February 12th, 2013
Guardian: When it is completed in 2015, the Jirau hydroelectric dam will span 8km across the Madeira river and feature more giant turbines than any other dam in the world. Then there are the power lines, draped along 2,250km of forests and fields to carry electricity to Brazil's urban nerve centre, São Paulo.
Still, it won't be enough. The dam and the Santo Antonio complex that is being built a few kilometres downstream will provide just 5% of what government energy planners say the country will need in...