RSS Feed
Archive for February 19th, 2013
Snowstorm Headed For Heart of Drought Region
Posted by Climate Central: Andrew Freedman on February 19th, 2013
Climate Central: A major snowstorm is poised to deliver much-needed precipitation to areas from central and southern California to the Rockies and Plains states during the next several days. Parts of Kansas and Nebraska -- ground zero for the worst drought conditions in the U.S. -- may pick up more than a foot of snow by the time the storm ends there late Thursday.
While the storm is not expected to deliver blockbuster snow totals, any precipitation -- be it in the form of rain, snow, or the often dreaded "wintry...
Posted in 
Canada: TransCanada: Pipeline would not affect climate
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 19th, 2013
Associated Press: In a shift in strategy, the company that wants to build an oil pipeline from western Canada to Texas said Tuesday that the project will have no measurable effect on global warming.
Alex Pourbaix, TransCanada's president for energy and oil pipelines, said opponents of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline have grossly inflated its likely impact on emissions of greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.
Canada represents just 2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, Pourbaix said at...
Groundbreaking Reports Show Fracking is a Risky Short-Term Bubble
Posted by EcoWatch: None Given on February 19th, 2013
EcoWatch: Energy Policy Forum and Post Carbon Institute have released two groundbreaking reports that belie energy industry claims of U.S. energy independence as a result of newly accessible shale gas and shale (tight) oil.
The report findings are based on an unprecedented analysis of more than 60,000 U.S. shale oil and gas wells and an investigation of the role of Wall Street investment banks in the explosive growth of fracking for natural gas.
Drill Baby Drill: Can Unconventional Fuels Usher in a New...
Nuclear Power Cannot Compete with Cheap Shale Gas
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 19th, 2013
Climate Central: Nuclear power stations in Canada and the United States are closing because they cannot compete with cheap power being produced from shale gas.
This revolution in the way North America produces its electricity is sending shock waves through the nuclear industry in Europe too. New nuclear build will be spectacularly uneconomic if a fracking industry is successful in the United Kingdom.
Gas prices would tumble as they have across the Atlantic. Even the existing nuclear stations in France, Belgium...
The virtues of being unreasonable on Keystone
Posted by Grist: David Roberts on February 19th, 2013
Grist: I know Andy Revkin of The New York Times writes posts like this in part to bait people like me. But like Popeye, I yam what I yam. So consider me baited. Self-proclaimed moderates like to lecture anti-Keystone XL activists that they are "distracting" and "counterproductive," without spelling out what the hell that means, yet they seem bewildered when that makes the activists in question angry.
Let`s review. This weekend, close to 50,000 people gathered for the biggest rally ever against climate...
United Kingdom: E.ON lobbied for stiff sentences against Kingsnorth activists, papers show
Posted by Guardian: James Ball on February 19th, 2013
Guardian: The UK chief executive of energy giant E.ON repeatedly lobbied the then-energy secretary Ed Miliband and others over the sentencing of activists disrupting the company's power plants, warning that any failure to issue "dissuasive" sentences could "impact" upon investment decisions in the UK.
The warnings, which came while the government was still trying to persuade E.ON and others to invest in next-generation nuclear plants, have been described by activists as "wholly improper".
Dr Paul Golby,...
New Global Standard Aims to Reduce Water Waste by Businesses
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 19th, 2013
Yale Environment 360: The UK-based Carbon Trust has introduced what it calls the first global standard on water management and reduction in hopes of encouraging more sustainable water use by businesses. The new standard, created by members of the group along with four early-adopting companies, including Coca-Cola Enterprises, will require businesses to show that they are measuring their water use and reducing consumption on a year-to-year basis, Carbon Trust executive Tom Delay told BBC News. “We look at the various water...
NASA Probes Show ‘Alarming’ Water Loss in Middle East
Posted by Climate Central: Lauren Morello on February 19th, 2013
Climate Central: Parts of the Middle East are losing groundwater reserves at "an alarming rate,' according to a new analysis of NASA satellite data.
From the beginning of 2003 to the end of 2009, portions of Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria that lie within the Tigris and Euphrates river basins shed 117 million acre-feet of water. That's roughly equivalent to the volume of the Dead Sea.
About one-fifth of that water disappeared during a drought that began in 2007, which decreased snowpack that feeds the rivers and...
Top predators have sway over climate
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 19th, 2013
ScienceDaily: University of British Columbia researchers have found that when the animals at the top of the food chain are removed, freshwater ecosystems emit a lot more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
"Predators are disappearing from our ecosystems at alarming rates because of hunting and fishing pressure and because of human induced changes to their habitats," says Trisha Atwood, a PhD candidate in the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences in the Faculty of Forestry at UBC.
For their study,...
Grisly Trend: Green Activists Are Facing Deadly Dangers
Posted by Yale Environment 360: Fred Pearce on February 19th, 2013
Yale Environment 360: Where is Sombath Somphone? With every day that passes, the fate of one of Southeast Asia’s most high-profile environmental activists, who was snatched from the streets of Laos in December, becomes more worrisome.
His case has been raised by the State Department and countless NGOs around the world. But the authorities in Laos have offered no clue as to what happened after Sombath was stopped at a police checkpoint on a Saturday afternoon in the Lao capital of Vientiane as he returned home from...