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Archive for March 18th, 2013
Pledging to Resist the Keystone XL Madness
Posted by Rainforest Action Network: None Given on March 18th, 2013
Rainforest Action Network: In the smart new F/X drama “The Americans” about Elizabeth and Phillip, a pair of lovable Soviet sleeper agents living in the DC suburbs during the Reagan-era 1980s, a top Soviet spy tells Elizabeth “the American people have elected a madman as their president. He makes no secret of his desire to destroy us.”
The Reagan years represented a dangerous time in global history. Along with the nuclear arms race that eventually bankrupted the already faltering Soviet Union and took the world to the edge...
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Study: Climate change to worsen hurricane storm surge
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 18th, 2013
USA Today: Could the USA deal with a Hurricane Katrina every two years? Such a scenario is possible by the end of the century due to climate change, according to a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The frequency of extreme storm surges — the deadly and devastating walls of water that roar ashore during hurricanes — is projected to increase by as much as 10 times in coming decades because of warming temperatures, the study finds. Global warming has already doubled...
Ohio is Not the Nation’s Fracking Waste Toilet
Posted by EcoWatch: Athens County Fracking Action Network on March 18th, 2013
EcoWatch: Fifty people, including Athens County Commissioner Charlie Adkins and Athens Mayor Paul Wiehl, braved the rain and cold today to gather at the Athens County Courthouse plaza, bedecked for the occasion with a full-sized outhouse, chanting "We are not the nation`s toxic toilet."
The Athens rally was one of four events in Ohio announcing the filing of a citizens’ petition to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which was written on behalf of all Ohio citizens by Teresa Mills from the Center...
Ten times more hurricane surges in future, new research predicts
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 18th, 2013
ScienceDaily: By examining the frequency of extreme storm surges in the past, previous research has shown that there was an increasing tendency for storm hurricane surges when the climate was warmer. But how much worse will it get as temperatures rise in the future? How many extreme storm surges like that from Hurricane Katrina, which hit the U.S. coast in 2005, will there be as a result of global warming? New research from the Niels Bohr Institute show that there will be a tenfold increase in frequency if the...
Computer models show how deep carbon could return to Earth’s surface
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 18th, 2013
ScienceDaily: Computer simulations of water under extreme pressure are helping geochemists understand how carbon might be recycled from hundreds of miles below Earth's surface.
The work, by researchers at the University of California, Davis, and Johns Hopkins University, is published March 18 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Carbon compounds are the basis of life, provide most of our fuels and contribute to climate change. The cycling of carbon through the oceans, atmosphere...
Even More Evidence Climate Change Will Hit East Coast Cities Particularly Hard
Posted by Atlantic Cities: Tim McDonnell on March 18th, 2013
Atlantic Cities: Batten down the hatches, East Coasters: A new study argues that for every one degree Celsius (1.8 degrees F) of global warming, the American Atlantic seaboard could see up to seven times as many Katrina-sized hurricanes.
That's the conclusion of Aslak Grinsted, a climatologist at Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute, who led an effort to match East Coast storm surge records from the last 90 years with global temperatures. His results, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of...
United Kingdom: Fracking communities should get incentives, says minister
Posted by Guardian: Fiona Harvey and Damian Carrington on March 18th, 2013
Guardian: Communities near shale gas fracking sites should be given handouts to accept drilling in their area, a government minister has said.
The suggestion is markedly similar to a proposal made by the fracking company Cuadrilla in a letter to the energy minister John Hayes, released to the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act, for taxpayers' money to be offered as a "quid pro quo" to help communities accept wells on their doorstep.
In the 11-page letter to Hayes in November last year, the...
Earth’s interior cycles contribute to long-term sea-level and climate change, researchers find
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 18th, 2013
ScienceDaily: Ancient rises in sea levels and global warming are partially attributable to cyclical activity below Earth's surface, researchers from New York University and Ottawa's Carleton University have concluded in an analysis of geological studies.
However, the article's authors, NYU's Michael Rampino and Carleton University's Andreas Prokoph, note that changes spurred by Earth's interior are gradual, taking place in periods ranging from 60 million to 140 million years -- far less rapidly than those brought...
12 Arrested Blockading Controversial Fracking Infrastructure
Posted by EcoWatch: Green Umbrella on March 18th, 2013
EcoWatch: Sandra Steingraber PhD., biologist, author and Trumansburg, NY resident, was arrested alongside residents of Seneca Lake and local college students to oppose Kansas City, MO based Inergy, natural gas and liquid petroleum gas storage facility, which would lock in natural gas development in the Marcellus Shale region. Protesters have linked arms and deployed a banner reading “Our Future is Unfractured, We Are Greater Than Dirty Inergy” across the entrance to the facility on NY State Route 14.
The...
Scientists clone extinct frog that births young from its mouth
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 18th, 2013
Mongabay: Australian scientists have produced cloned embryos of an extinct species of frog known for its strange reproductive behavior, reports the University of New South Wales.
The amphibian, the gastric-brooding frog (Rheobatrachus silus), one of only two species that swallowed its eggs, brooded the young in its stomach, and gave birth through its mouth. But it went extinct in 1983. The closely-related R. vitellinus died out in the wild in in 1985.
However a team of researchers were able to recover...