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Archive for March, 2013
Alberta’s loathed ‘bitumen bubble’ slams Canada’s rich province
Posted by Globe and Mail: Michael Babad on March 8th, 2013
Globe and Mail: In yesterday's budget, Finance Minister Doug Horner projected that Western Canadian Select, whose price has been well below global benchmarks because of pipeline constraints exacerbated by the shale boom in the United States, will continue to trade at a marked discount.
WCS, as it's known, is forecast to sell at an average 27-per-cent below West Texas Intermediate, or WTI, in the 2013-14 fiscal year. That's projected to shrink to 19 per cent by the next fiscal year, and it's hitting the province...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Alberta’s loathed ‘bitumen bubble’ slams Canada’s rich provinceSenate Foreign Relations Chief Menendez Plans Keystone XL Hearing
Posted by The Hill: Ben Geman on March 8th, 2013
The Hill: Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said Thursday that he intends to hold a hearing on the State Department’s review of the proposed Keystone XL oil sands pipeline.
“I am sure that at some point we will,” Menendez told The Hill in the Capitol.
“We want to review their process, especially as they go into the next phase,” he said of the State Department’s review of TransCanada Corp.’s proposed pipeline.
The hearing would ensure an even greater spotlight on...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Senate Foreign Relations Chief Menendez Plans Keystone XL HearingU.S. Drought Intensifies in Texas and Florida
Posted by Climate Central: Daniel Yawitz on March 8th, 2013
Climate Central: Drought expanded in two key areas of the country last week -- Florida and West Texas -- where several weeks of low rainfall have allowed already dry conditions to intensify, according to an update to the U.S. Drought Monitor released Thursday.
While much of the East Coast has seen heavy precipitation over the past two weeks, very little of that has extended into the Florida peninsula. According to the Drought Monitor, "abnormal dryness' pushed into all of southern Florida, while conditions of...
New Type of Bacteria Reportedly Found in Buried Antarctic Lake
Posted by LiveScience: Elizabeth Howell, on March 7th, 2013
LiveScience: A new type of microbe has been found at a lake buried under Antarctica's thick ice, according to news reports. The find may unveil clues of the surrounding environment in the lake, according to scientists.
The bacteria, said to be only 86 percent similar to other types known to exist on Earth, was discovered in a water sample taken from Lake Vostok, which sits under more than 2 miles (3 kilometers) of Antarctic ice. The freshwater lake has likely been buried, unaltered, under the ice for the past...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on New Type of Bacteria Reportedly Found in Buried Antarctic LakeCaptive frogs may be spreading diseases to wild cousins across Southeast Asia
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 7th, 2013
Mongabay: Scientists have documented a series of links between exotic frogs for trade and diseases in wild frogs in Southeast Asia, including the first documented case of the chytrid fungus-a virulent and lethal disease-in Singapore. According to researchers writing in a new study in EcoHealth, frogs imported into Southeast Asia as pets, food, or traditional medicine are very likely spreading diseases to wild populations.
Collecting samples of some 2,300 wild and captive frogs across four countries (Laos,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Captive frogs may be spreading diseases to wild cousins across Southeast AsiaCanada: Environmental Justice and the Keystone XL Pipeline
Posted by EcoWatch: Tom Bk Goldtooth on March 7th, 2013
EcoWatch: On March 1, in an unexpected move, President Obama’s U.S. Department of State released its draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline section that will cross the U.S. and Canadian border in Montana and travel into Steele City, Nebraska.
First and foremost, the SEIS report defies common sense with the statement that reads “the proposed Project is unlikely to have a substantial impact on the rate of development in the oil sands,” and gravely understates...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Canada: Environmental Justice and the Keystone XL PipelineShale Gas Boom Drives Surge in Propane-Fueled Vehicles
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 7th, 2013
Yale Environment 360: The U.S. satellite TV provider DISH Network Corporation has announced it will introduce 200 propane-fueled vans to its fleet in 2013, another sign that propane, like natural gas, is offering an increasingly cost-effective transportation fuel alternative to gasoline and diesel. While there are already more than 13 million propane-fueled vehicles worldwide, propane historically has been considered a niche fuel because of high production costs. But driven by the surge in domestic shale oil and gas production,...
Warming Lakes: Climate Change Threatens the Ecological Stability of Lake Tanganyika
Posted by National Geographic: Lisa Borre on March 7th, 2013
National Geographic: Tropical lakes in East Africa don’t grab headlines the way polar bears do, but climate change is having an effect on them, too. Although the changes are not as visible as melting polar ice caps, they are no less real.
As in many lakes around the world, water temperature is on the rise in Lake Tanganyika. This and other climate-related factors are causing subtle but significant changes that threaten the ecological stability of the lake and the livelihoods of people who depend on it.
With air...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Warming Lakes: Climate Change Threatens the Ecological Stability of Lake TanganyikaA Communications Scholar Analyzes Bill McKibben’s Path on Climate
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 7th, 2013
New York Times: Bill McKibben and I have been on parallel but very different journeys related to human-driven global warming since the greenhouse effect first became front-page news back in the late 1980s (examples here and here). (Our video chat above was done in December for my Pace University blogging class.)
Years ago, McKibben shifted from writing to advocacy and movement building with the creation of 350.0rg. With his peripatetic campus-focused campaign for divestment in stocks of fossil fuel companies...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on A Communications Scholar Analyzes Bill McKibben’s Path on ClimateIllinois deal on fracking could be national model
Posted by Associated Press: Tammy Webber on March 7th, 2013
Associated Press: After years of clashing over the drilling method known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," the oil industry and environmentalists have achieved something extraordinary in Illinois: They sat down together to draft regulations both sides could live with.
If approved by lawmakers, participants say, the rules would be the nation's strictest. The Illinois model might also offer a template to other states seeking to carve out a middle ground between energy companies that would like free rein and...