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Archive for March 15th, 2013
U.S. lawmakers push bills to approve Keystone pipeline
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 15th, 2013
Reuters: U.S. lawmakers in both chambers of Congress said Friday they are moving forward with bills introduced this week to pluck the power of approving the Keystone XL pipeline, which would run from Canada's oil sands to Texas, from the hands of the Obama administration.
Republican Representative Lee Terry from Nebraska introduced a bipartisan bill on Friday to approve TransCanada Corp's 800,000 barrels per day pipeline, which has been held up in the review process for more than four years.
Fred Upton,...
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Obama says US must shift cars, trucks off of oil
Posted by Associated Press: Nedra Pickler and Matthew Daly on March 15th, 2013
Associated Press: Envisioning cars that can go "coast to coast without using a drop of oil," President Barack Obama on Friday urged Congress to authorize spending $2 billion over the next decade to expand research into electric cars and biofuels to wean automobiles off gasoline. Obama, expanding on an initiative he addressed in his State of the Union speech last month, said the United States must shift its cars and trucks entirely off oil to avoid perpetual fluctuations in gas prices. Citing policies that already...
Green energy more important for climate than Keystone: White House
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 15th, 2013
Reuters: A White House spokesman said on Friday that new investments in green energy technology are more important for easing the effects of climate change than whether or not the controversial Keystone pipeline gets built.
Asked by reporters whether the construction of the pipeline was less important to slowing climate change than supporting projects such as the Argonne National Laboratory that President Barack Obama is visiting on Friday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said it was.
"There's no...
As U.S. Cleans Its Energy Mix, It Ships Coal Problems Abroad
Posted by National Geographic: Thomas K. Grose on March 15th, 2013
National Geographic: Ready for some good news about the environment? Emissions of carbon dioxide in the United States are declining. But don't celebrate just yet. A major side effect of that cleaner air in the U.S. has been the further darkening of skies over Europe and Asia.
The United States essentially is exporting a share of its greenhouse gas emissions in the form of coal, data show. If the trend continues, the dramatic changes in energy use in the United States-in particular, the switch from coal to newly abundant...
Salt marsh restoration could bring carbon benefits
Posted by Plane tEarth: Tom Marshall on March 15th, 2013
Plane tEarth: Allowing farmland that's been reclaimed from the sea to flood and turn back into salt marsh could make it absorb lots of carbon from the atmosphere, a new study suggests, though the transformation will take many years to complete. Breaching the sea defences at Tollesbury in 1995. Scientists looked at one of the oldest such places in the UK, Tollesbury in Essex. Originally a salt marsh, the site was claimed for farming in the late 18th century, but eventually relinquished in 1995 when the bank separating...
Recent Storms Highlight Flaws In Top U.S. Weather Model
Posted by Climate Central: Andrew Freedman on March 15th, 2013
Climate Central: The U.S., which pioneered the groundbreaking science of weather forecasting using mathematical simulations of the atmosphere, has fallen behind other nations when it comes to the accuracy of its global forecasting model. The consequences could be dire for people in harm's way if the U.S. is less prepared for extreme weather and climate events.
The emerging "modeling gap' could erode the accuracy of U.S. weather forecasts and also cause greater economic losses from weather events. A 2011 study...
Meltwater catastrophes are forming high in the Andes
Posted by ClimateWire: Ines Perez on March 15th, 2013
ClimateWire: Glacial melt is a popular topic in global warming discussions, with its contribution to rising sea levels and shrinking freshwater supplies among the main concerns. But for mountainous communities in Peru, such long-term worries are obscured by a much more imminent threat -- glacial lake outburst flows, called GLOFs -- poised just above them.
Last month, the Risk Management Office of the Peruvian Municipality of Huaraz sounded the alarm that glacial lake Palcacocha had once again swollen above...
Human climate change big factor in Somali famine
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 15th, 2013
Associated Press: A new study has found that human-induced climate change contributed to low rain levels in East Africa in 2011, making global warming one of the causes of Somalia's famine and tens of thousands of deaths.
Climate scientists with Britain's national weather service studied weather patterns in Somalia in 2010 and 2011 and found that yearly precipitation known as the short rains failed in late 2010 because of the natural effects of La Nina.
But Peter Scott, one of the study's authors, said the lack...
Bangkok breakthroughs gives Cites a bigger stick
Posted by BBC: Matt McGrath on March 15th, 2013
BBC: Amidst the great celebrations of a historic moment in the history of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites), when regulations on the trading of several shark species were upheld, one man stood looking a little forlorn.
For Shingo Ota, the spokesman for Japan's negotiating team in the conference hall, the debate and the result made it an unhappy day.
"It was not so pleasant to listen to all the clapping and sometimes screaming on the floor," he told me.
The upgrading...
Hundreds more dead pigs found in Chinese river
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 15th, 2013
Guardian: The number of dead pigs found in a river that provides drinking water to Shanghai, China, has risen to 7,545, after local authorities retrieved 944 more carcasses.
The Shanghai municipal government has repeatedly assured the city's 23 million residents that tap water remains safe. However, locals remain worried about water contamination from the swollen and rotting carcasses in the Huangpu river.
The dead pigs are believed to be from farms in the upstream Jiaxing area in neighbouring Zhejiang...