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Archive for August 17th, 2013
Not Enough Known Regarding Effect of Pesticides on Environment, Researchers Argue
Posted by Nature World: None Given on August 17th, 2013
Nature World: With the rise in global human population has, naturally, come a rise in global food production. As a result, the use of pesticides has increased worldwide as desperate farmers fight to protect their crops from opportunistic scavengers.
However, despite their skyrocketing usage throughout the world, little is known regarding exactly how these pesticides affect not only the plants they were developed to protect but humans and animals as well. And with growing evidence that the chemicals found in...
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United Kingdom: Middle England and the eco-warriors say victory is theirs in the battle for Balcombe
Posted by Guardian: Mark Townsend on August 17th, 2013
Guardian: Some had travelled the length of the country, determined to fortify the new frontline in the ongoing struggle to shape Britain's future energy supply. By Saturday, hundreds of protesters had convened in a camp straddling the B2306 outside the village of Balcombe.
Many are prepared to dig in for what has been described as a six-day campaign of "civil disobedience". Few aligned to the burgeoning No Dash For Gas anti-fracking coalition are contemplating anything other than victory, an assessment...
British fracking firm stops drilling amid fierce protests
Posted by Press TV: None Given on August 17th, 2013
Press TV: British Energy giant Cuadrilla Resources has stopped its exploration work in the West Sussex countryside in southern England amid growing protests from locals and environmentalists, local media reported. In the face of fierce protests, the fracking firm halted its controversial drilling after it was threatened by activists, who said they will act directly to disrupt the process. Cuadrilla admitted to scale back its drilling activities on the Sussex Police’s advice following reports that thousands...
Fracking in UK’s interest, says Cuadrilla’s Browne
Posted by Telegraph: James Quinn on August 17th, 2013
Telegraph: The former chief executive of BP told The Sunday Telegraph that as long as it could be done safely, the method of hydraulic fracturing for shale oil and gas should be pursued.
His comments came as Cuadrilla's potential shale oil site outside the village of Balcombe in West Sussex attracted hundreds of protesters this weekend, angry at the potential environmental fallout from the method. Fracking involves pumping water, gas and chemicals into the ground at high pressure to fracture the rocks and...
Dengue fever sweeps Southeast Asia
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 17th, 2013
Wall Street Journal: Southeast Asia is scrambling to combat a deadly outbreak of dengue fever, the tropical illness transmitted by mosquitoes, which has hit parts of the region especially hard. Health experts suspect that an unusually early rainy season that brought mosquitoes out in April, months ahead of what is expected, contributed to the seriousness of the dengue challenge. Also, above-average temperatures that many experts blame on global warming encouraged early mosquito breeding. Meanwhile, dengue is thought...
Colorado River: Is historic cut in water release the new normal?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 17th, 2013
Christian Science Monitor: Fourteen years of drought in the West and a revised rule book on allocating water along the Colorado River have prompted the US Bureau of Reclamation to make the deepest cut in water released from Lake Powell in the reservoir's 46-year history. Lake Powell is second-largest engineered reservoir in the United States by capacity, bested only by Lake Mead, more than 200 miles downstream. The bureau formally announced the cut Friday. The amount of water that the bureau will release from the lake starting...
United Kingdom: 1,000s expected to converge on Balcombe as fracking protests continue
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 17th, 2013
Independent: Hundreds of demonstrators have arrived at an anti-fracking protest camp in West Sussex on Saturday, swelling numbers on the second day of a proposed six day protest.
Police and the protest organisers No Dash for Gas anticipate up to 1,000 activists joining the anti-fracking demonstrations at the Balcombe camp as it emerged earlier today that the cost of policing the operation has risen to nearly £750,000.
Demonstrators will join the six-day Reclaim the Power Camp on the outskirts of the West...
Fracking for oil is environmentally risky
Posted by Marin Voice: Marc Levine and Kate Sears on August 17th, 2013
Marin Voice: THE STATE Legislature is considering how to deal with the effects of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking."
Fracking is an oil and gas extraction process that, with technological advances in recent years, is creating a California oil rush -- a rush which threatens our environment, public health and safety, water supply and coastal waters.
More importantly, it threatens to undermine the strides made to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions in the face of significant, perhaps catastrophic, climate...
BBC News Magazine Profiles Disappearing Kivalina, Alaska
Posted by Indian Country News: None Given on August 17th, 2013
Indian Country News: With studies about rising sea levels flooding in, Kivalina, Alaska is on the map as the place most likely to be wiped off of it next. BBC News Magazine has profiled the town of 400 Alaska Natives, who have been busy looking for a new place to live for the past several years as rising sea levels overtake the slender peninsula on which their village is perched. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers predicts that Kivalina will be uninhabitable as soon as 2025, BBC News reported in a July 29 story. As the...
Death tolls from summer heat waves are hazy
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 17th, 2013
Wall Street Journal: Hot weather can be deadly, but a summer's full toll often isn't known until after fall has arrived. When a heat wave strikes—as it has this summer in the U.S., Europe and China—death rates rise. But heat's role usually isn't readily apparent. Instead, its victims die of underlying conditions, usually of the heart or lungs, that needed the extra ingredient of heat to become fatal. Moreover, those who succumb to heat often die alone and aren't discovered until after their bodies have cooled. So heat's...