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Archive for August 4th, 2013
United Kingdom: Fracking row splits apart the Coalition…
Posted by Daily Mail: Tamara Cohen on August 4th, 2013
Daily Mail: Fracking has driven a rift through the Coalition as the minister in charge of it described Middle England shaking with the sound of drills.
Energy Minister Michael Fallon said at a private meeting that the controversial drive for shale gas could soon extend across a vast swathe of the South.
But in the first major attack on fracking by a senior member of the Coalition, Liberal Democrat president Tim Farron predicted opposition would grow stronger than the campaign against wind farms.
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United Kingdom: Gas flares scare? It was a fracking joke says Tory minster as he tries to laugh off drill gaffe
Posted by Mirror: None Given on August 4th, 2013
Mirror: Bungling Michael Fallon yesterday desperately back-pedalled after seeming to admit fracking will blight peaceful communities – claiming that his comments were meant as a joke.
The Energy Minister, who backs controversial plans to drill for shale gas, had presented a gloomy vision of gas flares and disruption across the South East commuter belt.
He suggested even the most vocal supporters would be tested if it came to their own back yards.
Telling how a shale bed with potentially massive...
U.S. and Canada Vie for Big Gas Projects
Posted by Wall Street Journal: Chester Dawson and Ben Lefebvre on August 4th, 2013
Wall Street Journal: Some of the world's largest energy companies are racing to transform backwaters like this hamlet of 544 people into boomtowns. The energy giants are proposing half a trillion dollars in projects to export vast new finds of North American natural gas. Western Canada and the U.S. Gulf Coast are competing to see which region receives the lion's share of the investment. Port Edward has been shrinking since the canneries and pulp mills began shutting decades ago. But it has a deep-water port that could...
Dire projections of ‘runaway’ global warming
Posted by Summit Voice: None Given on August 4th, 2013
Summit Voice: Earth’s climate is not only changing, it’s changing rapidly — as much as 10 times faster than any other climate shift in the past 65 million years, according to researchers with Stanford University and the Carnegie Institution. The accelerating rate of change will strain terrestrial ecosystems around the world. Many species will need to make behavioral, evolutionary or geographic adaptations to survive, the scientists said, adding that some of the expected changes are already baked into the system....
Global warming will impact the power grid
Posted by Tribune: John Lindsey on August 4th, 2013
Tribune: The power distribution grid is a remarkable machine that regulates and transports vast amounts of electrical energy that we use in our homes and businesses. It's there out in the open for all of us to see; in fact, it's so wide open, most of us don't even notice the lines and poles any longer. It's only during a power outage when you actually think about it.
Unfortunately, a new report released by the Department of Energy in July, says that our electrical grid will be impacted due to the effects...
Greenhouse gas controls not so far off, study says
Posted by Gazette-Mail: Ken Ward Jr. on August 4th, 2013
Gazette-Mail: A new study suggests that technology to capture greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants may be more ready for wide deployment than industry officials and political leaders in coal states would have the public believe.
The new review, published last week in the journal Energy Policy, found that most experts on the process don't question the "readiness" of carbon capture and storage, or CCS, technology.
"CCS experts share broad confidence in the technology's readiness, despite continued...
Gas Fracking: No Time for Nuance
Posted by Huffington Post: Carl Safina on August 4th, 2013
Huffington Post: My friend Andrew Revkin, whom I greatly respect, has lately been pointing out certain problems with critiques of gas fracking, and pointing out how it could be greatly improved.
They want more gas until something better can come along. This is the "bridge" argument. Those proponents viewing fracking from the sidelines see that gas is cleaner than coal -- well, what isn't? -- and thus a "bridge" between coal and the next big thing. (The ones in it for the money couldn't care less about "bridges"...
Powerful Calif. water district backs tunnel plan
Posted by Associated Press: Gosia Wozniacka on August 4th, 2013
Associated Press: As a giant harvesting machine uprooted and sucked in hundreds of tomato plants a row at a time, Dan Errotabere contemplated massive strips of bare land on his farm.
"Everything we have in our operation is under duress," he said, looking at a stretch of fallow acres once covered in garlic, onions and other crops.
Errotabere and hundreds of others who run massive farms in California`s Central Valley have left tens of thousands of acres barren this year after seeing their water supplies severely...
Roots breakthrough for drought-resistant rice
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 4th, 2013
Agence France-presse: Japanese biotechnologists on Sunday said they had developed a rice plant with deeper roots that can sustain high yields in droughts that wipe out conventional rice crops. It is the third breakthrough in new cereal strains in less than two years, boosting the quest to feed the world's spiralling population at a time of worsening climate change. Writing in the journal Nature Genetics, a team led by Yusaku Uga of the National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences in Tsukuba describe how they found...
United Kingdom: Fracking will meet resistance from southern nimbys, minister warns
Posted by Guardian: Patrick Wintour on August 4th, 2013
Guardian: A warning that fracking may soon lead to fierce resistance from middle-class southern nimbys has been given by the energy minister Michael Fallon.
Fallon, a strong supporter of shale gas, told a private meeting in Westminster: "We are going to see how thick their rectory walls are, whether they like the flaring at the end of the drive."
Fallon, who is MP for Sevenoaks in Kent, said exploratory studies for fracking were already poised to start in the north of England and were set to spread the...