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Archive for July 16th, 2013
Loss of natural buffers could double number of people at risk from hurricanes
Posted by Scientific America: Evan Lehmann and ClimateWire on July 16th, 2013
Scientific America: If the United States lost its shield of natural coastal defenses, about twice as many Americans would be exposed to dangerous storm surges and other hurricane threats, according to new research.
Protective buffers like mangroves, wetlands and oyster beds currently buffer about 67 percent of the nation's seashores from ocean forces like wind and waves. If they disappear, more than a million additional people and billions of dollars in property value will be vulnerable to damage, says a paper published...
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Bowland Shale fracking could reignite UK economy and cut CO2 emissions
Posted by Guardian: Bjørn Lomborg on July 16th, 2013
Guardian: In late June the British Geological Survey announced the world's largest shale-gas field. The Bowland Shale, which lies beneath Lancashire and Yorkshire, contains 50% more gas than the combined reserves of two of the largest fields in the United States, the Barnett Shale and the Marcellus Shale.
The United Kingdom has been reluctant to join the hydraulic-fracturing (or fracking) revolution. Yet tapping the Bowland Shale could reignite the UK economy and deliver huge cuts in CO2 emissions.
At...
The World Bank is bringing back big, bad dams
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 16th, 2013
Guardian: The big, bad dams of past decades are back in style.
In the 1950s and '60s, huge hydropower projects such as the Kariba, Akosombo and Inga dams were supposed to modernise poor African countries almost overnight. It didn't work out this way. As the independent World Commission on Dams found, such big, complex schemes cost far more but produce less energy than expected. Their primary beneficiaries are mining companies and aluminium smelters, while Africa's poor have been left high and dry.
The...
Tony Abbott’s 100 dams policy is the Sharknado of Australian politics
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 16th, 2013
Guardian: A few days ago, if you are the twittering type, you probably would have noticed the #sharknado hashtag dominate your feed.
Helped by the hype of scores of celebrities, including Mia Farrow and the late Glee star Cory Monteith, #sharknado made a massive online splash, but its ratings ultimately were a "bust", according to Bloomberg's Business Week.
Sharknado, a movie apparently about sharks and tornados, was a direct to TV movie for the SyFy cable network, whose role is to fill the "ridiculously...
Earth losing 300bn tonnes of ice every year
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 16th, 2013
Times of India: A satellite has detected that 300 billion tonnes of ice is being lost every year from the Antarctic and Greenland glaciers, dramatically increasing sea levels around the world.
The satellite that detected the melting is Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE). British scientists have been using it since 2002 to detect tiny variations in Earth's gravity field resulting from changes in mass distribution, including movement of ice into the oceans.
Using these changes in gravity, the state...
High carbon dioxide spurs wetlands to absorb more carbon
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 16th, 2013
ScienceDaily: Under elevated carbon dioxide levels, wetland plants can absorb up to 32 percent more carbon than they do at current levels, according to a 19-year study published in Global Change Biology from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Md. With atmospheric CO2 passing the 400 parts-per-million milestone this year, the findings offer hope that wetlands could help soften the blow of climate change.
Plant physiologist Bert Drake created the Smithsonian's Global Change Ecological...
US to begin exporting ‘fracked’ gas
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 16th, 2013
BBC: American gas produced by the controversial technique of "fracking" is due to be exported for the first time.
A $20bn project to prepare an export terminal is under way in Louisiana.
The huge facility on the Gulf of Mexico was originally designed to import natural gas to the US.
But within two years of opening, the owners decided to reverse the process.
In that time, American shale gas has become abundant and relatively cheap.
One of the first contracts will see shale gas shipped to...