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Archive for October 23rd, 2013
Oil Spill in North Dakota Raises Detection Concerns
Posted by New York Times: Dan Frosch on October 23rd, 2013
New York Times: For several days last month, Steven Jensen smelled the oil, wafting up over his rolling wheat farm near Tioga. But in that part of northwestern North Dakota, where the rush to tap the Bakken shale field is roaring, the scent of crude is hardly uncommon. It was not until Sept. 29 that Mr. Jensen came across a six-inch spurt of oil gurgling up from his land and reported a spill. As it turned out, a Tesoro Logistics pipeline had ruptured, spreading more than 865,000 gallons of oil across seven acres...
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Australia: Al Gore attacks Tony Abbott’s refusal to link bushfires with climate change
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 23rd, 2013
AAP: Tony Abbott's insistence that bushfires aren't linked to climate change is like the tobacco industry claiming smoking doesn't cause lung cancer, Nobel laureate Al Gore says.
In light of the New South Wales bushfire disaster, the former US vice-president says the prime minister's comment that bushfires are a function of life in Australia and nothing to do with climate change reminds him of politicians in the US who received support from tobacco companies, and who then publicly argued the companies'...
Nitrogen pollution from farming lingers for decades
Posted by Grist: John Upton on October 23rd, 2013
Grist: When a farmworker sprays fertilizer over a field, there`s a good chance he or she will be outlived by nitrogen pollution from that fertilizer.
A 30-year study published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that nitrogen could linger in soil for nearly a century after fertilizer is applied.
Nitrogen from fertilizer helps crops grow, but it can be poisonous for humans and animals. When nitrates leach from farmed soil into groundwater, they can make it undrinkable....
Recent Spills Prove Management Nightmare for 500,000 Miles of Hazardous Pipelines in U.S
Posted by EcoWatch: Lois Epstein, Wilderness Society on October 23rd, 2013
EcoWatch: What’s going on with pipelines? Has there been a high number of major pipeline tragedies recently, or are such incidents just more in the news with widespread attention to potential federal approval of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline?
As someone who has worked on pipeline safety and associated environmental protection issues since I began serving on a pipeline federal advisory committee in the mid-1990s, I can say confidently that the period from 2010-2013 has had a very large number of serious...
U.S. power plant emissions tumble on shift to natural gas
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 23rd, 2013
Reuters: Greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. power plants fell 10 per cent in 2012 from 2010 as more facilities switched to cleaner-burning natural gas from coal and electricity generation also fell, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Wednesday.
The environmental regulator published its third national greenhouse gas inventory, which collects emissions data from over 8,000 of the biggest industrial emitters in the United States on a website that is accessible to the general public.
Of the...
Australia, UN spar over wildfires & climate change
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 23rd, 2013
Reuters: Australia's prime minister accused the U.N.'s climate change chief on Wednesday of "talking through her hat" when she drew a link between wildfires raging in his country and global warming.
Firefighters were battling about 60 fires burning across New South Wales state, with strong winds fanning blazes in the Blue Mountains, a major commuter area of small towns west of Sydney.
Christiana Figueres, head of the U.N.'s Bonn-based Climate Change Secretariat, told CNN earlier this week that there...
The Northeast is producing more natural gas than Saudi Arabia
Posted by Grist: John Upton on October 23rd, 2013
Grist: More natural gas is being fracked out of the Marcellus Shale formation in the Northeastern U.S. than is being produced by most foreign countries.
A report published Tuesday by the U.S. Energy Information Administration revealed that Marcellus gas production is growing much faster than had been predicted. (So, too, are the damages that fracking is inflicting on the region`s environment - and the world`s climate.)
The Associated Press reports that daily gas production from the Marcellus Shale...
Fire-spotting Satellite Needed, Researchers Argue
Posted by Nature World: Tamarra Kemsley on October 23rd, 2013
Nature World: With another record-setting wildfire season coming to a close in the United States, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley argue it's time to invest in a fire-spotting satellite.
"If we had information on the location of fires when they were smaller, then we could take appropriate actions quicker and more easily, including preparing for evacuation," said fire expert Scott Stephens, a UC Berkeley associate professor of environmental science, policy and management. "Wildfires would...
Why Australia’s wildfires are so bad
Posted by LiveScience: Stephanie Pappas on October 23rd, 2013
LiveScience: A dry, warm winter set the stage for dozens of wildfires currently threatening populated areas in New South Wales, Australia. The fires have destroyed hundreds of homes and sent smoke and ash into the air over Sydney. The region, which is now entering summer, also experienced hundreds of fires this January during a catastrophic heat wave. The past three months have been among the driest 10 percent on record in New South Wales (NSW), said Todd Lane, a meteorologist at the University of Melbourne....
More frequent droughts as climate change hits Pacific: New Zealand scientist
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 23rd, 2013
Xinhua: Severe droughts that happen once every 20 years will affect New Zealand once every two to five years by the year 2100 and the country's Pacific neighbors will need help to deal with the impacts of climate change, a leading New Zealand climate scientist warned Wednesday.
Auckland University climate scientist Dr Jim Salinger said the drought that affected New Zealand in the last southern summer, causing major difficulties for the country's pillar agriculture sector, would be much more common, as...