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Archive for September 7th, 2013
U.S. Forest Service set to decide on fracking in George Washington National Forest
Posted by Washington Post: Darryl Fears on September 7th, 2013
Washington Post: George Washington National Forest is more than just one of the largest expanses of pristine land in the East. It's the leafy cradle of the Shenandoah, James and Potomac rivers, a source of drinking water for millions of people in greater Washington.
The forest -- nearly 2 million acres of natural splendor straddling Virginia and West Virginia -- might also hold another treasure: natural gas trapped under a deep layer of rock called the Marcellus Shale.
By the end of the month, the U.S. Forest...
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Newfangled ‘Icepod’ Tracks Greenland’s Melting Ice Sheets
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 7th, 2013
Guardian: The LC-130 Hercules flew low over the ice sheet in a tight grid pattern, Teflon-coated landing skis barely 300 meters above the soft upper layer of snow. At the rear of the plane, scientists clustered round a monitor displaying a regular pattern of dark red waves generated by a radar signal.
Somewhere in the vast, white emptiness below were two tiny cracks -- barely 4 inches across -- imperceptible to the naked eye from this altitude, especially beneath fresh snow.
But the cracks ran across...
Fresno, Calif.’s Groundwater is Dangerously Low
Posted by Associated Press: Gosia Wozniacka on September 7th, 2013
Associated Press: For decades, this city in California's agricultural heartland relied exclusively on cheap, plentiful groundwater and pumped increasingly larger amounts from an aquifer as its population grew.
But eventually, the water table dropped by more than 100 feet, causing some of Fresno's wells to cave in and others to slow to a trickle. The cost of replacing those wells and extracting groundwater ballooned by 400 percent.
"We became the largest energy demand in the region - $11 million a year for electricity...
House GOP demands Harvard study data
Posted by Boston Globe: Christopher Rowland on September 7th, 2013
Boston Globe: House Republicans scouring for evidence of overreaching environmental regulations are taking aim at a two-decade-old, taxpayer-funded scientific study by Harvard researchers that linked air pollution to disease and death.
Even though the landmark study has held up under intense scientific scrutiny since its publication in 1993, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology took the rare step of issuing subpoenas last month demanding access to the study's raw data about thousands of individual...
Seas may be rising faster than predicted: scientists
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 7th, 2013
Bloomberg: The melting of Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets is accelerating and may trigger faster sea level rise than predicted, according to leaked details of the forthcoming Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.
Greenland's ice added six times more to sea levels in the decade through 2011 than in the prior 10 years, according to details of a draft 2200-page study by the UN agency, obtained by Bloomberg.
The Antarctic experienced a five-fold increase, prompting the UN to raise its forecast...
Harper offers Obama climate plan to win Keystone approval
Posted by CBC: Chris Hall on September 7th, 2013
CBC: Prime Minister Stephen Harper has sent a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama formally proposing "joint action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the oil and gas sector," if that is what's needed to gain approval of the Keystone XL pipeline through America's heartland, CBC News has learned.
Sources told CBC News the prime minister is willing to accept targets proposed by the United States for reducing the climate-changing emissions and is prepared to work in concert with Obama to provide whatever...
Climate change played a role in half of 2012’s extreme weather events – study
Posted by ClimateWire: Stephanie Paige Ogburn on September 7th, 2013
ClimateWire: New research released yesterday links human-caused climate change to six of 12 extreme weather events from 2012, including summer heat waves in the United States and storm surges from Superstorm Sandy.
Teams of scientists from around the world examined the causes behind extreme weather events on five continents and in the Arctic. Their results were published as a special report in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
One of the stronger linkages between global warming and severe...
Weather forecast: worse and worse
Posted by Daily Courier: None Given on September 7th, 2013
Daily Courier: Global warming has a wet side with more intense and destructive rainstorms likely around the world unless greenhouse gas emissions are curbed, delegates to an Okanagan water conference heard Friday. Widespread flooding that devastates communities and imperils agriculture are often the result of a meandering jet stream, guest speaker Bob Sandford told people attending the annual general meeting of the Okanagan Basin Water Board. The jet stream's movements are less predictable than ever, Sandford said,...
Rim Fire at Nearly Quarter Million Acres Entering Third Week
Posted by Nature World News: James A. Foley on September 7th, 2013
Nature World News: The Rim Fire continues to burn through a huge swath of land in and around Yosemite National Park, standing at nearly a quarter-million acres as the blaze entered its third week of burning Saturday.
While the fire continues to gain ground daily, growing about 10,000 acres between Thursday and Friday, fire-fighting crews were mostly able to keep pace throughout the week; the conflagration remains at 80 percent contained, as it has for the past several days, officials reported Friday night.
At...
Fightback starts against invasive species that threaten British plants and animals
Posted by Guardian: Conal Urquhart and Robin McKie on September 7th, 2013
Guardian: The pillwort fern is one of Britain's most unusual – and striking – native water plants. Its tiny fronds unfurl to create lush green underwater meadows in lakes and ponds.
However, the pillwort is under threat, a victim of polluted waters and invasive species that are changing the watery habitats of Britain.
The fern is not alone. The tadpole shrimp is another rare species that finds its existence similarly threatened. Considered to be a living fossil, the shrimp – known as Triops cancriformis...