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Archive for March 10th, 2013
United Kingdom: No Dash for Gas campaigners set up anti-EDF website
Posted by Guardian: James Ball on March 10th, 2013
Guardian: A group of environmental campaigners being sued for £5m by energy company EDF for occupying one of the company's power plants in October last year has launched a website encouraging EDF customers to switch to alternative providers as a gesture of opposition to the civil action.
Members of the campaign group "No Dash for Gas" occupied EDF's gas-fired power plant in West Burton for a week in October last year, protesting against fossil fuels and carbon emissions. Last month, 21 activists pleaded...
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Are tropical forests resilient to global warming?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 10th, 2013
ScienceDaily: Tropical forests are less likely to lose biomass -- plants and plant material -- in response to greenhouse gas emissions over the twenty-first century than may previously have been thought, suggests a study published online this week in Nature Geoscience. In the most comprehensive assessment yet of the risk of tropical forest dieback due to climate change, the results have important implications for the future evolution of tropical rainforests including the role they play in the global climate system...
Hickenlooper Not the Only Government Official Trying to Frack Colorado
Posted by EcoWatch: Gary Wockner on March 10th, 2013
EcoWatch: Over the past few weeks, Colorado`s Governor John Hickenlooper has gotten a lot of negative attention. First, for telling a U.S. Senate committee that he drank Halliburton`s frack fluid and second, for threatening to sue the City of Fort Collins for its ban on fracking.
But Hickenlooper isn`t the only government official trying to frack Colorado.
Helen Hankins, who directs the Colorado office of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM), has also been in the very-uncomfortable glare of public...
Chavez Death Could Affect Oil Prices, Production and Pollution
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 10th, 2013
Scientific American: A Venezuelan oil minister once referred to his country's main export as the "devil's excrement." We’ll see how the death of Hugo Chavez affects production levels of this Faustian fuel—which influences both the global oil market and the climate.
Venezuela’s oil has problematic qualities. The thick, tar-like oil requires extra heat to flow. Once finally on the move, it's fed to refineries where the heavy oil must be what the engineers call "cracked." That chemical process removes excess carbon...
Australia: Who will speak up for climate change adaptation?
Posted by Conversation: None Given on March 10th, 2013
Conversation: As with the federal elections of 2007 and 2010, climate change appears set to feature again in the forthcoming September poll. Yet one of the most important aspects of the issue, that of adaptation to climate change, is again unlikely to garner any attention.
Climate change and its associated global changes (prominently sea level rise and ocean acidification) will produce profound social, economic, and environmental changes in Australia. Some of these changes will be gradual. Others will be abrupt...
Confronting Climate Change and Violence Against Women
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 10th, 2013
Energy Collective: International Women’s Day, a time for celebrating women’s achievements and calling for greater equality. The United Nations has focused this year’s events on ending violence against women--not with more pledges and promises but with real, concrete action. We have made some recent strides. Just yesterday President Obama signed the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. Yet far too many women continue to suffer at the hands of others: 70 percent of women have experienced physical or sexual...
Evidence grows of rainforest resilience to global warming
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 10th, 2013
Reuters: The world's tropical forests are less likely to lose biomass, or plant material, this century due to the effects of global warming than previously thought, scientists said in a paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience on Sunday.
This adds to growing evidence that rainforests might be more resilient to the effects of climate change than feared.
Tropical forests play an important role in the world's climate system because they soak up carbon dioxide and use it to grow leaves, branches...
Warming Means Wetter Weather – and Drier Weather
Posted by Climate News Network: Tim Radford on March 10th, 2013
Climate News Network: Welcome to the see-saw world of climate change. Rainy seasons will get rainier. Dry seasons will tend to become more parched. Even if the total annual rainfall does not change very much, the seasonal cycles will -- with obvious consequences. Floods and droughts will become more frequent, according to Chia Chou of the University of Taipei, and colleagues from Taiwan and California.
Like all pronouncements about the future, this one comes with caveats: the research is based on climate simulations...
Canadian government gag order for scientists?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 10th, 2013
Living on Earth: Canada's Harper Administration is allegedly restricting what environmental information government scientists can share with journalists, according to academics and media watchdogs. Host Steve Curwood learns more from Tyler Sommers, coordinator of Democracy Watch.
Transcript
CURWOOD: Canada's conservative government, which has been pressing the Obama Administration to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, has come under sharp criticism for allegedly muzzling Canadian government scientists who talk...
Thoreau, viewed as a scientist
Posted by Boston Globe: Kathleen Burge on March 10th, 2013
Boston Globe: The annual rituals of nature -- the date when the marsh marigold first unfurls its yellow petals or when the common alder pushes out its leaves -- are among the most sensitive indicators of climate change.
And Concord, known more for its rebellious history and its illustrious writers, also contains a valuable cache of data, spanning more than 150 years, about the habits of plants and animals in town. Henry David Thoreau was one of the first chroniclers, filling an estimated 2,000 pages of his...