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Archive for September 20th, 2013
Measuring the speed of thaw
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 20th, 2013
Environmental News Network: Researchers have known that ocean temperatures are rising but up until now haven't had any way of measuring the effects of this rise on Antarctica's glaciers. New research will now enable scientists to determine how quickly ice is melting under a rapidly changing glacier. Martin Truffer, a physics professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and Tim Stanton, an oceanographer with the Naval Postgraduate School, were able to look underneath the Pine Island Glacier on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet...
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How much methane leaks out during fracking?
Posted by Mother Nature Network: John Platt on September 20th, 2013
Mother Nature Network: Critics of the natural gas extraction technique known as fracking have long criticized it for leaking too much methane — a potent greenhouse gas — into the atmosphere during the extraction process. The Environmental Protection Agency recently estimated that natural gas operations emitted about 145 million metric tons of methane in 2011, making it the biggest source of these emissions in the country. Now a new study, sponsored by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and nine energy petroleum companies,...
Central Arkansas Water Utility Files Intent to Sue Exxon Over Pipeline
Posted by Arkansas Times: Lindsey Millar on September 20th, 2013
Arkansas Times: Central Arkansas Water (CAW) has filed a notice of intent to file a citizen lawsuit against ExxonMobil under the federal Pipeline Safety Act. The unusual legal maneuver of notifying a party that it'll be sued, rather than simply suing it, is dictated under the Pipeline Safety Act, which requires that potential plaintiffs give 60 days notice to the accused and the Department of Transportation, whose Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) regulates pipelines. ExxonMobil's...
Oil spills in flood-hit Colorado raise concerns over industry regulation
Posted by Al Jazeera: Renee Lewis on September 20th, 2013
Al Jazeera: At least two large oil spills have been confirmed in the wake of Colorado's historic floods -- with almost 20,000 gallons of oil being spilled into Colorado rivers -- raising fears of contamination and questions about the regulation of the state's growing oil and gas industry.
On Wednesday, Anadarko Petroleum Corp. said that a 5,000 gallon tank had spilled oil into the South Platte River near the town of Millikin in flood-ravaged Weld County -- the most heavily drilled county in the state, with...
Documents reveal Army Corps’ earlier concerns about coal trains & wetlands
Posted by KUOW: Ashley Ahearn on September 20th, 2013
KUOW: Proposals to make the Northwest a major coal exporting region have made for a familiar debate over the potential impacts on people and the environment. Will it help the economy? What will coal dust do to the air we breathe? Will our rivers and marine waters be threatened? Here’s another question: Will coal trains harm the wetlands of the Pacific Northwest? So far, wetlands have not been a central part of the public debate over coal exports. But concern over these ecologically sensitive areas are...
Colorado rescue effort biggest in USA since Katrina in ’05
Posted by USA Today: Rick Jervis on September 20th, 2013
USA Today: The massive search-and-rescue effort after the recent floods in Colorado has been one of the biggest in state history -- and the largest in the USA since Katrina -- as thousands of stranded people are plucked from swirling floodwaters by helicopters or rumbled out of washed-out neighborhoods by all-terrain military vehicles. TV and camera-phone images of people hoisted by helicopter from flooded homes have brought eerie comparisons with similar efforts to rescue stranded Gulf Coast residents during...
Climate Change Linked Higher Chemical Load in Polar Bear Diet
Posted by Nature World News: None Given on September 20th, 2013
Nature World News: Polar bears are changing their diets to adapt to climate change, a new study has found. Researchers also found that a change in the diet has led to increase in toxic chemicals in the bears' bodies.
The study was conducted by researchers from the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, Aarhus University (Denmark) and their colleagues. The team found that the diet of polar bears has changed over the past few decades and their tissue samples are showing high levels of contaminants.
Polar bears...
Epic Flooding Deals Colorado Drought Crippling Blow
Posted by Climate Central: Bobby Magill on September 20th, 2013
Climate Central: All it took was a 1,000-year flood to knock out -- or at least significantly dampen -- the drought that has been ravaging much of Colorado for at least a year and half.
The U.S. Drought Monitor, released Thursday, shows that nearly all of north-central Colorado is drought free, and the drought is greatly reduced in much of the rest of the state:
Many parts of the Colorado Front Range received most of their normal annual rainfall in just a couple of days last week, with up to 18 inches of rain...
More on Population Growth and Planetary Prospects
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 20th, 2013
New York Times: The Times has published several letters responding to “Overpopulation Is Not the Problem,” an Op-Ed article by the ecologist Erle C. Ellis (who expanded on that piece here). The first is from a trio of seasoned sustainability scholars, all of whom have been longtime contacts of mine: Joel E. Cohen, Daniel P. Schrag and William C. Clark, who are, respectively, a professor of populations at Rockefeller and Columbia Universities, director of the Harvard Center for the Environment and director of the...
The Best of the IPCC Climate Report Leaks
Posted by LiveScience: Becky Oskin on September 20th, 2013
LiveScience: With 800 volunteer reviewers, the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the international body that assesses the state of the science on climate change — was bound to leak. The first full version of the draft report was posted online in December 2012 by a climate change skeptic who was part of the volunteer review army. Now, as the report's Sept. 27 release date nears, final drafts are circulating among journalists. This latest version of the IPCC's summary of...