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Archive for April 7th, 2013
Former EPA climate adviser rips Obama over environmental regulations
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 7th, 2013
Mother Jones: The Senate will hold a confirmation hearing next week for Gina McCarthy, President Obama's pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency in his second term. McCarthy, who is currently the assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation, is expected to face some grilling from Senate Republicans who haven't been big fans of regulations, particularly when it comes to greenhouse gas rules. But the Senate might not be the biggest obstacle to strong new rules.
In a stinging critique...
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Argentina: Deluge in Buenos Aires could be sign of rainfall to come
Posted by ClimateWire: Nayantara Narayanan on April 7th, 2013
ClimateWire: Recent heavy rains that have lashed Buenos Aires and other parts of Argentina, causing 100-year record flooding that left more than 50 people dead, may be just a preview of the years to come. Storms will bring a lot more rain as global temperatures rise through the 21st century, according to a new study from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The study finds that extreme precipitation events will be more intense in a warming world, with as much as 20 percent to 30 percent more...
Fracking: Potential miracle and big challenge
Posted by Santa Monica Mirror: Tom Elias on April 7th, 2013
Santa Monica Mirror: Starting with the day in January 1848 when gold flakes and nuggets first turned up at Sutter's Mill northeast of Sacramento, California has seen plenty of economic miracles, each focused in a different part of the state.
The Gold Rush brought more than 300,000 people to the state, previously a sleepy outpost. The movie industry was the next big miracle, bringing international attention to Southern California for the first time.
The dot.com phenomenon of the 1990s put the spotlight on Silicon...
British Columbia resource champion’s backing questioned
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 7th, 2013
Globe and Mail: The kid with the YouTube rant is young and approachable. He's an actor sporting a black leather jacket, strolling through a West Coast forest and talking about pipelines.
"The environment. The economy," he intones. "People think you have to have one or the other. But do you? So many things to think about."
And then, he tells us how we might want to think about those things. How we don't have to worry about pipeline spills, since pipelines are monitored 24/7 "by trained experts." Tankers,...
Meet the US billionaire who wants to kill the Keystone XL pipeline
Posted by Globe and Mail: Josh Wingrove on April 7th, 2013
Globe and Mail: Tom Steyer is a man at odds with himself. He made his fortune by founding a hedge fund with a keen interest in the energy sector, including leading oil, pipeline and mining companies. The firm also gobbled up stock in BP a year after its Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. All this should hardly make him a darling of environmentalists.
Yet there’s a green streak to Mr. Steyer – one that led last year to something of an existential crisis: Climate change, the American billionaire...
Geoengineering could trigger disaster in parts of Africa
Posted by Climate News Network: Tim Radford on April 7th, 2013
Climate News Network: Less than three weeks after two U.S. researchers called for global agreement on the governance of geoengineering research, British meteorologists have provided a case study in potential geoengineering disaster.
Jim Haywood from the Met Office Hadley Center and colleagues report in Nature Climate Change that fine particles concentrated in the stratosphere could precipitate calamitous drought in the Sahel region of Africa.
Attempts to tackle climate change by altering the atmosphere may have...
Much a-dune about Jersey shore protection project
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 7th, 2013
Washington Post: The question for this tiny barrier island town slammed by Hurricane Sandy is whether an 18-foot-high sand dune would save it or kill it. Mayor William Akers knows that. Sworn to protect everyone in his quintessential shore town — with a boardwalk chock full of pizza joints, custard stands and arcades — he represents people who want the barrier and others who don’t. A line of more-modest protective dunes saved the neighboring borough to the south from widespread damage. So Akers might be expected...
Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant finds second tank leak
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 7th, 2013
Reuters: Radioactive water has apparently leaked from another underground storage tank at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi power plant, Tokyo Electric Power Co said on Sunday.
The utility, known as Tepco, said the volume of the latest leakage is believed to be small. On Saturday, it said as much as 120 tons of radioactive water may have leaked from another nearby storage tank.
The plant's seven storage tanks are lined with water proof sheets meant to keep the contaminated water from leaking into the soil....
Federal Lawsuit Filed Against Exxon Over Mayflower Oil Spill
Posted by Associated Press: Jeannie Nuss on April 7th, 2013
Associated Press: wo women who live near an ExxonMobil pipeline that ruptured last week and spilled thousands of barrels of oil in central Arkansas filed a federal lawsuit against the company on Friday. The class-action complaint from Kimla Greene and Kathryn Jane Roachell Chunn comes a week after ExxonMobil Pipeline Co.'s Pegasus pipeline ruptured in Mayflower, about 25 miles northwest of Little Rock. Crews are still working to clean up oil that spewed onto lawns and roadways and almost fouled nearby Lake Conway....
Steel Production in Perspective: A Global Warming Analysis
Posted by Deep Green Resistance: Max Wilbert on April 7th, 2013
Deep Green Resistance: While global warming is a topic of conversation and news coverage every day around the world,? ?the basic raw materials that drive the global economy are rarely discussed as being involved.? ?But these materials play a key role in global environmental issues.
Where do plastics come from?? ?How is paint made?? ?How do simple electronics,? ?like land line telephones,? ?come to be?? ?How does the electric grid itself come to be?? ?And in a world that is being wracked by warming,? ?how do these basic...