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Archive for September 15th, 2013
Europe’s largest tidal power array surges forward
Posted by BusinessGreen: None Given on September 15th, 2013
BusinessGreen: The UK's fledgling tidal power sector is set to take a major step forward today, as the Scottish government awards planning consent to the Europe's largest tidal array, located in the Pentland Firth.
Meygen, a group led by Morgan Stanley, International Power and tidal technology provider Atlantis, is planning to deploy up to 400 tidal turbines in the Inner Sound, which is known as the "crown jewel' of the Pentland Firth for its fast flowing waters.
Today, Scottish Energy Minister Fergus Ewing...
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Boulder County activists concerned about flooded oil, gas wells
Posted by Denver Post: Erica Meltzer on September 15th, 2013
Denver Post: Inundated along with roads, bridges, houses and farms are thousands of oil and gas wells and associated condensate tanks and ponds in northeast Boulder County and southwest Weld County.
Anti-fracking activists say the industry needs to account for what types of chemicals may be contaminating soil and groundwater in the area around these wells.
The concentration of oil and gas wells in flood-prone areas speaks to one more risk of what they see as a dangerous industry.
Regulators say they...
Which Places Are Most Vulnerable to Climate Change?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 15th, 2013
Scientific American: Spring comes sooner. The rain falls too hard or not enough. Warmer weather causes animals, plants, microbes and fungi to move in new directions. Such shifts are just some of the changes already happening as a result of increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, otherwise known as climate change.
But which places—Arctic tundra or Amazon rainforest—are most vulnerable to such climate change?
A research team has attempted a new estimate published in Nature Climate Change. (Scientific...
Colorado floods rescue efforts threatened by new wave of rain
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 15th, 2013
Associated Press: From the Rocky Mountain foothills to the plains of northeastern Colorado, the search for people stranded by severe flooding grew more difficult on Sunday, with a new wave of rain threatening to hamper airlifts from flooded areas that are still out of reach.
Numerous pockets of individuals remain cut off from help, even with more than 1,750 people and 300 pets already rescued from communities and homes swamped by rivers and streams overflowing after unrelenting rain last week, officials said. Twenty...
Bats and snakes are the latest victims of mass killers in the wild
Posted by Washington Post: Darryl Fears on September 15th, 2013
Washington Post: Jeremy Coleman was on the trail of a ruthless serial killer, recently studying its behavior, patterns and moves at a Massachusetts lab. The more he saw, the more it confirmed a hunch. He had seen it all before. He was looking at a copycat.
The mass killer of bats under Coleman's microscope, Pseudogymnoascus destructans, has a lot in common with Chytridiomycosis, a mass killer of frogs and other amphibians. The culprits resemble a third killer, Ophidiomyces, which kills and disfigures snakes. ...
Averting the sixth extinction
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 15th, 2013
Economist: OVER THE GRAND sweep of history and geography, things have not been going well for Earth’s non-human species. Extinction rates over the past few centuries have been far higher than the background rate, and taking the world as a whole the picture over the past few decades has been looking pretty bleak. The Living Planet Index shows a 30% decline in biodiversity since 1970.
Take a closer look, though, and a more optimistic account of the planet’s trajectory emerges. What limited information on extinctions...
Australia: ‘Pool of hot air’ fans the flames
Posted by Sydney Morning Herald: Peter Hannam on September 15th, 2013
Sydney Morning Herald: Weather patterns creating a ''pool of hot air'' over central Australia continue to set new temperature records for the country and foster unseasonably warm conditions over many regions of the nation's south-east, meteorologists say.
Winter ended with a record national average maximum - at 29.92 degrees - on August 31. September 1 then averaged 31.45 degrees, beating the previous earliest day above 31 degrees by 15 days, the Bureau of Meteorology said in a special climate statement highlighting...
Higher sea levels mean more flood damage from storms like Isabel, experts say
Posted by Times Dispatch: REX SPRINGSTON on September 15th, 2013
Times-Dispatch: Whether or not climate change leads to an increase in big hurricanes, one destructive effect of global warming is already at work in coastal Virginia -- rising sea levels.
As sea levels go up, flooding from even low-level storms will become more destructive, scientists say.
“At times I think we get too locked in on the strongest storms, the Category 3, 4 and 5s,” said Marshall Shepherd, a University of Georgia atmospheric scientist. “But if you look at the last five or 10 years, even the weaker...
Australia: The right climate for action
Posted by Canberra Times: None Given on September 15th, 2013
Canberra Times: In the searing Max Frisch morality play Biedermann und die Brandstifter (The Fire Raisers) the hapless Mr Biedermann invites three people into his home ignoring the obvious reality that they are arsonists.
He continues to turn a blind eye as they wreak havoc through his community.
Written in 1958, the play is seen as an allegory for Europe's contrived ignorance towards the rise of totalitarianism. Today it could be seen as a parable for our wilful blindness towards climate change.
The early...
Amid another round of storms, Colorado rescues and reunions emerge
Posted by Denver Post: Kevin Simpson and Jordan Steffen on September 15th, 2013
Denver Post: Raging floodwaters, powered by yet another round of thunderstorms, washed from the foothills onto the Eastern Plains on Saturday, but choppers churned through the unsettled weather bringing tales of rescue and reunion.
Still, hundreds of residents remained unaccounted for, primarily in rain-ravaged areas of northern Colorado, though authorities emphasized that could mean some simply remained stranded with no way to notify friends or relatives.
But evacuees filtered to centers across the region...