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Archive for June 14th, 2014
Obama rolls out climate change challenge
Posted by Hill: None Given on June 14th, 2014
Hill: President Obama laid out a billion-dollar climate change challenge on Saturday, urging the nation to help combat the effects of natural disasters. “Can you imagine a more worthy goal, a more worthy legacy, than protecting the world we leave to our children,” the president said as he delivered the commencement address at the University of California, Irvine. "U.S. action is critical on climate change, as the world is watching and will follow the U.S.’s lead, he said. “This is a fight America must...
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Australia: ‘Conservationist’ Abbott links himself with Obama on climate change
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on June 14th, 2014
Sydney Morning Herald: Prime Minister Tony Abbott has described himself as a ''conservationist'' who has no disagreement with President Barack Obama on climate change.
In an interview with Fairfax Media in Washington, Mr Abbott said any divisions between Australia and the US over climate policy were overblown, insisting both he and the US President took climate change ''very seriously''.
Mr Obama is understood to have told Mr Abbott that while his administration wanted more co-ordinated international action on global...
Regional partners to focus on sea-level rise in Delaware
Posted by News Journal: Molly Murray on June 14th, 2014
News Journal: A new partnership of scientists and federal officials from Delaware to Virginia will take a regional look at sea-level rise and how best to prepare for the
impacts, including shoreline loss and increased flooding from storms.
One of their first initiatives could be a regional effort to develop a real time, online, coastal flood map similar to what was developed at the University of Delaware for Delaware Bay following the Mother's Day storm of 2008.
That storm, while damaging along the ocean...
United Kingdom: Alarm raised over threat to lakes
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on June 14th, 2014
BBC: The Environment Agency says urgent action is needed to protect lakes in England and Wales. BBC environment correspondent Sarah Mukherjee reports from a conference on the topic on the shores of Lake Windermere.
The pungent smell of wild garlic and the hazy azure of bluebells assault your senses as you climb the slippery woodland path from Ambleside to Troutbeck in the Lake District.
The woods begin to thin, and you start to see sheep grazing the fells. And then you turn a corner and your heart...
If Keystone gets nixed, Canadian pipeline operators have Plan B
Posted by Toronto Star: David Olive on June 14th, 2014
Toronto Star: It might be that the U.S. environmentalists’ long campaign against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline is about to backfire. Canadian pipeline operators are poised to implement an all-Canadian Plan B network of pipelines in place of the ill-fated Keystone XL that was to run the length of the U.S. heartland to the Texas Gulf Coast.
With the hearty good wishes of an Alberta heavy-oil industry desperate to see a return on its multibillion-dollar investment, Calgary-based pipeline operators already...
Abandoned oil wells spouting significant levels of methane, study finds
Posted by Tyee: Andrew Nikiforuk on June 14th, 2014
Tyee: A Princeton University study has found that leaks from abandoned oil and gas wellbores pose not only a risk to groundwater, but represent a growing threat to the climate.
Between 200,000 and 970,000 abandoned wells in the state of Pennsylvania likely account for four to seven per cent of estimated man-made methane emissions in that jurisdiction, a source previously not accounted for, the study says.
Pennsylvania, much like Alberta in Canada, is the oldest oil and gas producer in the United...
Melting glaciers a ‘climate tipping point,’ Bonn meeting told
Posted by Irish Times: None Given on June 14th, 2014
Irish Times: World leaders need to ensure that global warming is kept low enough to avoid “pulling the plug” on vast ice shelves in Antarctica, thereby causing a catastrophic sea level rise across the globe, a leading scientist warned yesterday.
Dr Anders Levermann, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, noted last month’s major scientific report warning that a collapse of large sections of the west Antarctica ice shelf had already begun and was now “unstoppable”.
“We have entered a new era...
El Niño could make U.S. weather more extreme during 2014
Posted by Scientific American: Kevin Schultz on June 14th, 2014
Scientific American: Unusual weather across the U.S. and other parts of the world just became more likely for this summer and autumn. That's because the chances have gone up that El Niño--an atmospheric pattern driven by water temperature changes in the Pacific Ocean--will develop during that time, according to the nation's leading climate experts. When El Niño settles in, it has major effects on weather conditions nationally and globally.
Scientists speaking at a press conference yesterday afternoon said the odds...
Melbourne, Australia, aims to become carbon-neutral leader
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on June 14th, 2014
Age: A digital image by Angelica Rojas Gracia prepared for the Visions and Pathways 200 project. It shows a bicycle highway built above train lines at North Melbourne station.
As the conversation turns to the death of Melbourne's trees the city's influential head planner, Professor Rob Adams, chokes up. He takes a moment, then continues.
"The evidence is so obvious," he declares, "You don't have to go to the scientists, you just have to look at the trees in Melbourne."
Adams is talking about...
Researchers Identify Deepwater Horizon Oil on Shore Years Later
Posted by Nature World: None Given on June 14th, 2014
Nature World: Oil soaked "sand patties" continue to wash ashore years after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
The study shows that the amount of oil deposited on the seafloor might have been underestimated by other scientists.
The research at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences could also help scientists understand how oil degrades over time.
The Gulf oil spill was one of the worst oil spills in the history of the U.S.: the accident killed 11 people and poured...