RSS Feed
Archive for August 3rd, 2013
United Kingdom: Why the ‘dash for gas’ has got off to a false start
Posted by Guardian: Fiona Harvey, on August 3rd, 2013
Guardian: For all the talk of a dash for gas, the government-backed race for a new generation of power stations has had few willing participants thus far. So the suggestion last week by the chief executive of Drax, the UK's biggest coal-fired power station, that she might invest in new gas plants was a surprise. Nonetheless, her words were hedged with a caution shared by the rest of the energy industry. "We could start to look at it. But it would depend very much on the details of the government's energy market...
Posted in 
United Kingdom: Lib Dem president Tim Farron warns fracking could harm countryside ‘for decades’
Posted by Telegraph: Robert Watts on August 3rd, 2013
Telegraph: In the first major attack on fracking by a leading member of the Coalition, Tim Farron, the Lib Dems' president, said he was "greatly worried' by the Government's "dash for shale gas' and that he would lobby for measures that would severely limit its potential development.
Mr Farron's views clash strongly with those of Ed Davey, the Energy Secretary and a fellow Lib Dem. Mr Davey has said he is "excited' about the secure supply of energy and thousands of jobs that shale-gas extraction could create....
United Kingdom: The water companies and the foul stench of exploitation
Posted by Guardian: Nick Cohen on August 3rd, 2013
Guardian: Sounding more like an admonishing primary school teacher than ever, Margaret Thatcher announced in 1976 that the was that they" always run out of other people's money". I have thought since the crash of 2008 that the same can now be said for the vast system of state capitalism she bequeathed us.
The price of deregulating the banks we know about to our cost. We have received fair warning that George Osborne's taxpayer-subsidised mortgage market will be emptying your wallet when the next bubble...
Revealed: how UK water companies are polluting Britain’s rivers and beaches
Posted by Guardian: Damian Carrington and Sophie Barnes on August 3rd, 2013
Guardian: The most persistent and frequent polluters of England's rivers and beaches are the nation's 10 biggest water companies, an Observer investigation has revealed.
The companies, which are responsible for treating waste water and delivering clean supplies, have been punished for more than 1,000 incidents in the past nine years, but fined a total of only £3.5m.
The revelations have raised concern that the financial penalties are far too low to change the behaviour of an industry that generates billions...
United Kingdom: Ignore fracking protests, government tells planners
Posted by Guardian: Daniel Boffey and Tracy McVeigh on August 3rd, 2013
Guardian: Planning authorities have been banned from considering whether renewable energy plants would be a better fit for their communities, if they receive an application for a fracking mine. Documents released by the government stress that local authorities should instead recognise that "mineral extraction is essential to local and national economies". This is despite a Department for Communities and Local Government document highlighting 16 environmental risks linked to the process, including seismic...
Water wells near gas drilling more likely to have heavy metals, Barnett Shale study finds
Posted by Dallas Morning News: Randy Lee Loftis on August 3rd, 2013
Dallas Morning News: Private water wells near natural gas drilling in North Texas’ Barnett Shale gas field are more likely to be contaminated with heavy metals than those farther from gas operations, a study at the University of Texas at Arlington has found.
Contamination occurred more often and in greater amounts when water wells were closer to gas wells, scientists said. Water wells outside gas-producing areas showed no such problems.
Researchers could not pinpoint the sources, but they ruled out the upward movement...
Sahel region set to see rise in ‘climate refugees’ – report
Posted by Reuters: Emma Batha on August 3rd, 2013
Reuters: Erratic weather linked to climate change is forcing people to flee their homes in West Africa's Sahel region, a trend that could worsen dramatically as temperatures rise, a rights group warned.
Refugees International (RI) urged the United Nations and donor countries to improve the tracking of this new form of displacement and work with national governments to better protect those affected.
Some 11 million people are still at risk of hunger in the Sahel following last year's food crisis in the...
Up in the sky, it’s an environmental revolution
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 3rd, 2013
Washington Post: Somewhere in the South Pacific, thousands of miles from the nearest landfall, there is a fishing ship. Let’s say you’re on it. Go onto the open deck, scream, jump around naked, fire a machine gun into the air — who will ever know? You are about as far from anyone as it is possible to be. But you know what you should do? You should look up and wave. Because 438 miles above you, moving at 17,000 miles per hour, a polar-orbiting satellite is taking your photograph. A man named John Amos is looking...
Japan: Radioactive Fukushima groundwater rises above barrier: media
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 3rd, 2013
Reuters: Radioactive groundwater at the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has risen to levels above a barrier being built to contain it, highlighting the risk of an increasing amount of contaminated water reaching the sea, Japanese media reported on Saturday.
The Asahi newspaper, citing data from a Friday meeting of a task force working on the Fukushima clean-up at Japan's nuclear regulator, estimated that the contaminated water could swell to the ground surface within three weeks.
The latest revelation...
United Kingdom: High Street store Lush is main financial backer of Frack Off
Posted by Telegraph: Gordon Rayner and Robert Mendick on August 3rd, 2013
Telegraph: Lush, which has 105 stores in the UK and Ireland, has given £20,000 in charitable donations to the protest group behind this week's demonstration against test drilling in Balcombe, West Sussex.
The company has such close links to Frack Off that four of Lush's five-strong campaigns team have been given time off work to join the protest in Balcombe.
One of them, Lush's head of global campaigns Tamsin Omond, was arrested on Thursday for chaining herself to a fire engine used to block the entrance...