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Archive for April 19th, 2013
Exxon starts restoration work after Arkansas oil spill
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 19th, 2013
Reuters: Exxon Mobil Corp said on Friday it was beginning remediation and restoration activities as its transitions from its emergency response operations after the crude oil spill in Mayflower, Arkansas, last month.
The company said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), state and local authorities conducted an inspection and granted approval to start the new phase of operations in the North Main Street section of the impacted area.
The company's Pegasus pipeline, which can transport more...
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Nitrogen has key role in estimating CO2 emissions from land use change
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 19th, 2013
ScienceDaily: A new global-scale modeling study that takes into account nitrogen -- a key nutrient for plants -- estimates that carbon emissions from human activities on land were 40 percent higher in the 1990s than in studies that did not account for nitrogen.
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Bristol Cabot Institute published their findings in the journal Global Change Biology. The findings will be a part of the upcoming Fifth Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental...
Massive amounts of charcoal enter the worlds’ oceans
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 19th, 2013
ScienceDaily: Wild fire residue is washed out of the soil and transported to the sea by rivers.
Wild fires turn millions of hectares of vegetation into charcoal each year. An international team of researchers led by Thorsten Dittgar from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen and Rudolf Jaffé from Florida International University's Southeast Environmental Research Center in Miami has now shown that this charcoal does not remain in the soil, as previously thought. Instead, it is transported...
How the Old Amazon May Help Explain the New
Posted by Climate News Network: Jan Rocha on April 19th, 2013
Climate News Network: What will be the effect of global warming on the Amazon rainforest? Over the last 30 years, forest fires, most of them deliberately started to clear land by cattle ranchers and soy farmers, have destroyed thousands of square miles of forest. This has increased carbon emissions, reduced rainfall and made the forest more vulnerable to drought.
In 2005 and 2010 unprecedented droughts occurred. Could the rainforest be reduced to a savannah? If the Amazon forest shrinks drastically or disappears altogether,...
New York’s First Desalination Plant Raises Radiation Fears
Posted by Environment News Service: None Given on April 19th, 2013
Environment News Service: Desalination plants are typically built in dry places. But along New York`s Hudson River a different story is unfolding.
A desalination plant has been proposed by United Water New York, a private company, to address the rapid growth of water demand in the expanding New York City suburb of Rockland County.
If built, the Haverstraw Water Supply Project on the Hudson River`s Haverstraw Bay would mark New York State's first foray into desalination, the process of removing salt and particulates...
Ore. lawmakers consider gold dredging moratorium
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 19th, 2013
Associated Press: A bill to put a five-year moratorium on using suction dredges to mine for gold in key salmon streams is moving through the Oregon Legislature.
By a 3-2 vote Wednesday night, the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee referred the bill (SB 838) to the Joint Ways and Means Committee for further consideration.
Co-sponsor Sen. Alan Bates, a Medford Democrat, says new federal permit requirements in Idaho and a state moratorium in California are pushing thousands of small-scale gold miners...
GOP Goes Hunting For EPA Emails About Turducken
Posted by Climate Desk: Tim McDonnell on April 19th, 2013
Climate Desk: Earlier this month, when a burst pipe spilled thousands of gallons of heavy oil into an Arkansas suburb, the message from the White House went something like: "Everybody chill, the EPA has it under control." But reporters on the scene found the cleanup orchestrated by the same company, ExxonMobil, that allowed the spill, and heard only crickets when they asked the EPA about its involvement.
Turns out, on some of the nation`s most pressing environmental health issues, the EPA`s transparency record...
The First—And Last—Hearing on Keystone XL Environmental Impact
Posted by Climate Desk: Tim McDonnell on April 19th, 2013
Climate Desk: State Department officials trekked to Grand Island, Nebraska today to hear statements from ranchers, geologists, construction workers, oil executives, and a colorful cast of other characters in the only public hearing on the Department`s latest Environmental Impact Statement for the Keystone XL pipeline.
Speakers for and against the pipeline began lining up at 7 a.m. amid frigid cold and snow for a chance to get three minutes on the soapbox at the Heartland Events Center. There was the blustering,...
Haiti: A place where poverty and darkness create more vulnerability to powerful storms
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 19th, 2013
ClimateWire: Little comes easy in this tiny coastal village where kids fill plastic buckets with charcoal to sell at market and women sweep bean pods into tidy mounds alongside pastel-painted mud and concrete houses.
Litane Morece, who makes her living selling Chiclets gum and candies in front of the local school, burns a few sticks of wood to make her morning coffee. Showing off her steel stove, which she will place atop three large stones to cook fish and rice for that evening's dinner, Morece says charcoal...
Study outlines overlooked impacts of mountaintop removal
Posted by Charleston Gazette: Ken Ward Jr. on April 19th, 2013
Charleston Gazette: Mountaintop removal is having frequently overlooked impacts on forests, biodiversity, climate and public health, and an updated federal review is needed to more fully examine those issues, according to a new study by government and university scientists.
The study warns that mountaintop removal is not only causing significant changes in the Appalachian topography, but also could be worsening the impacts of global warming.
Authors of the study, published in the peer-reviewed journal BioScience,...