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Archive for May 19th, 2014
Youngstown, Ohio, is a city changed by fracking
Posted by Buffalo News: None Given on May 19th, 2014
Buffalo News: You might think an earthquake would be enough to make a town turn against fracking, but no, not here, not with a new billion-dollar steel plant open along the river and more new jobs everywhere you look.
This worn-out notch in the Rust Belt, long known for industrial decay and a Bruce Springsteen song about an unemployed steelworker fixing to die, doesn’t seem to mind being shaken up every once in a while if that’s the price to pay for an economic comeback.
Youngstown bore that price most severely...
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Floods menace towns, power plants in Serbia & Bosnia
Posted by Reuters: Fedja Grulovic and Daria Sito-Sucic on May 19th, 2014
Reuters: Communities in Serbia and Bosnia battled to protect towns and power plants on Monday from rising flood waters and landslides that have devastated swathes of both countries and killed dozens of people. Receding waters in some of the areas worst-hit by the heaviest rainfall in the Balkans since records began 120 years ago revealed scenes of devastation - twisted homes, fallen trees and rotting animals. Authorities in Bosnia estimated some 500,000 people had been evacuated or left their homes, the...
Greenland Could Become Greater Contributor To Sea Level Rise Than Previously Expected
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 19th, 2014
RedOrbit: Greenland`s icy reaches are far more vulnerable to warm ocean waters from climate change than had been thought, according to new research by UC Irvine and NASA glaciologists. The work, published May 18 in Nature Geoscience, shows previously uncharted deep valleys stretching for dozens of miles under the Greenland Ice Sheet.
The bedrock canyons sit well below sea level, meaning that as subtropical Atlantic waters hit the fronts of hundreds of glaciers, those edges will erode much further than had...
Quickly Rising Antarctica Suggests ‘Runny’ Earth
Posted by LiveScience: Charles Q. Choi on May 19th, 2014
LiveScience: Antarctica is rising unusually quickly, revealing that hot rock in the Earth's mantle hundreds of miles below the icy continent is flowing much faster than expected, researchers say.
Antarctic ice is more than 2.6 miles (4.2 kilometers) thick on some parts of the continent, a reminder that glaciers that were miles thick once covered many parts of Earth's surface. When these ice sheets shrink, as is happening now in the world's polar regions due to climate change, the underlying Earth rebounds...
Serbia floods threaten country’s biggest power plant
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 19th, 2014
Reuters: Soldiers and energy workers have stacked thousands of sandbags overnight to protect Serbia's biggest power plant from flood waters expected to keep rising after the heaviest rains in the Balkans in more than a century killed dozens of people.
On Monday, Bosnian state radio reported that the swollen Sava river, which has wreaked havoc in Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia, had again overwhelmed flood defences late on Sunday and flooded parts of the northern town of Orasje.
Waters receded in other parts...
Drought is just start of climate change’s toll on the Southwest
Posted by Grist: None Given on May 19th, 2014
Grist: “The story in the Southwest is the story of water,” says Greg Garfin, one of the convening lead authors of the National Climate Assessment chapter on the region, already one of the driest parts of the United States.
Increased heat, drought, and insect outbreaks, all linked to climate change, have increased wildfires. Declining water supplies, reduced agricultural yields, and health impacts in cities due to heat will take their toll, especially in populous desert cities like Las Vegas, where water...
Antarctica’s ice losses double
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 19th, 2014
BBC: Antarctica is now losing about 160 billion tonnes of ice a year to the ocean - twice as much as when the continent was last surveyed.
The new assessment comes from Europe's Cryosat spacecraft, which has a radar instrument specifically designed to measure the shape of the ice sheet.
The melt loss from the White Continent is sufficient to push up global sea levels by around 0.43mm per year.
Scientists report the data in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
The new study incorporates...
37 dead in Balkans worst floods in decades
Posted by Blue and Green: Nicky Stubbs on May 19th, 2014
Blue and Green: A major rescue operation is underway in Serbia after the region’s worst flooding in decades claimed the lives of 37 people, with thousands more forced to flee their homes.
Soldiers, police officers and volunteers are also battling to protect local power plants that are situated on the river Sava. The river is experiencing high water levels after three months’ worth of rain fell in just a few days.
According to the EU floods directive, flood alerts remain in place for many parts of the region....
Bosnia floods trigger 3,000 landslides and unearth mines
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 19th, 2014
Telegraph: Floodwaters have triggered more than 3,000 landslides across the Balkans, laying waste to entire towns and villages and disturbing landmines left over from the region's 1990s war, along with warning signs that marked the unexploded weapons.
The Balkans' worst flooding since record keeping began forced tens of thousands of people from their homes and threatened to inundate Serbia's main power plant, which supplies electricity to a third of the country and most of the capital, Belgrade.
Evacuated...
British fracking support falls below 50%, poll shows
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 19th, 2014
Guardian: Public support for fracking for shale gas in the UK has fallen below 50% for the first time, new polling suggests.
Just 49.7% of people now say they think the controversial process should be allowed in the UK, marking the third fall in support since high-profile protests last summer in West Sussex which saw dozens of arrests including that of Green MP, Caroline Lucas and ongoing protests at a site in Salford.
Support for shale gas was at a high of 58% in July 2012, which slumped to 54% last...