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Archive for January 9th, 2015
Nebraska Court Upholds Keystone XL Pipeline Route
Posted by Environment News Service: None Given on January 9th, 2015
Environment News Service: TransCanada`s proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline now has a legal route through Nebraska that would take the controversial pipeline through the sensitive Sand Hills region and across the Ogallala aquifer.
The Nebraska Supreme Court Friday reversed a lower court decision that struck down the 2012 law used to approve the route across the state for the $8 billion proposed pipeline that would carry diluted bitumen from Alberta`s tar sands to refineries on the Gulf Coast.
The Nebraska Supreme...
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A Year After West Virginia Chemical Spill, Some Signs of Safer Water
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 9th, 2015
National Geographic: A year ago Friday, Rebecca Roth experienced what she calls one of the "worst fears" she has known as a mother.
A large-scale chemical spill on the Elk River near her home in Charleston, West Virginia, had unleashed an unknown amount of a coal-washing agent, possibly poisoning the local water supply. Roth, who had a two-year-old daughter and was then pregnant, was afraid she "could not keep her children safe and healthy."
For weeks, nearly 300,000 people around Charleston, the state capital,...
We can fix Gulf dead zone — for $2.7 billion a year
Posted by Grist: None Given on January 9th, 2015
Grist: Every year, millions of tons of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers wash down the Mississippi River and out into the Gulf of Mexico. There, instead of fertilizing corn, they fertilize the growth of algae, which blooms extravagantly and, in turn, creates a massive boom in microorganisms. There are so many aquatic microorganisms reproducing, eating algae and respiring at once, that they literally use up all the oxygen in the water. Anything else that needs to breathe oxygen - all the other marine life...
Nebraska Supreme Court Clears Way For Keystone XL Pipeline
Posted by National Public Radio: Krishnadev Calamur on January 9th, 2015
National Public Radio: Nebraska's Supreme Court, in a split decision, cleared the the way for the controversial Keystone XL Pipeline's route.
Four of the seven judges ruled that landowners who challenged the state law giving Nebraska's governor authority to approve the pipeline's route have standing to challenge the constitutionality of the law. The same judges also found that a lower court correctly ruled the state law as unconstitutional. But Nebraska's Constitution requires a supermajority of five to strike down...
Nebraska court approves route of controversial Keystone XL pipeline
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 9th, 2015
Guardian: A Nebraska court has signed off on the proposed route for the Keystone XL, bringing the controversial project a crucial step closer to reality after six years of legal and political fighting.
The Nebraska supreme court said the state’s governor, Dave Heineman, had indeed acted within his authority in January 2013 when he approved the pipeline’s route.
A lower court had ruled that Heineman should have consulted Nebraska’s public service commission, an obscure body which regulates grain bins,...
Brazil water supply, crops still risk year after epic drought
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 9th, 2015
Reuters: Southeastern Brazil is getting some rainfall a year after a record drought started, but not enough to eliminate worries about an energy crisis, water shortages or another season of damaged export crops, meteorologists said.
Record-high temperatures and the most severe drought in at least 80 years punished southeastern Brazil last year, a region accounting for 60 percent of the country's gross domestic product. Despite rain in recent weeks, the country's climate challenges could threaten a tepid...
Integrated farming: The only way to survive a rising sea
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 9th, 2015
Inter Press Service: When the gentle clucking grows louder, 50-year-old Sukomal Mandal calls out to his wife, who is busy grinding ingredients for a fish curry. She gets up to thrust leafy green stalks through the netting of a coop and two-dozen shiny hens rush forward for lunch.
In the Sundarbans, where the sea is slowly swallowing up the land, Mandal's half-hectare farm is an oasis of prosperity.
The elderly couple resides in the Biswanathpur village located in what has now been declared a UNESCO World Heritage...
2014 was California’s hottest year, and it wasn’t even close
Posted by Chronicle: Kurtis Alexander on January 9th, 2015
Chronicle: California not only sweated through its hottest year on record in 2014 but obliterated the previous mark by nearly 2 degrees, federal scientists said Thursday, while experiencing firsthand some of the worst fears of a warming planet — from intensified drought to melting snowpack. The state’s average temperature last year was 61.5 degrees, more than 4 degrees above the 20th century average, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported. The previous hottest year was 1934, at 59.7 degrees,...
A study urges leaving fossil fuels alone. How will it impact business?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 9th, 2015
Guardian: To prevent the Earth from overheating, countries must leave vast reserves of fossil fuels untouched underground. That’s the conclusion of a new report published this week in the journal Nature. Trillions of dollars of known and extractable coal, oil and gas – including deposits in Canada and the Arctic – cannot be burned if the global temperature rise is to be kept under the agreed-upon goal of 2C.
While much of the carbon math is known – about three to five times more carbon in reserve than can...
Keystone XL showdown to move Senate floor on Mon
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 9th, 2015
Guardian: The showdown over the Keystone XL will move to the Senate floor next Monday, with Republicans and Democrats girding up for a clash over the pipeline and climate change.
The Senate energy committee voted 13-9 on Thursday in favour of a bill that would force construction of the Keystone XL, moving the measure towards the Senate floor.
The committee vote all but ensures that the pipeline will be the first substantial order of business for the new Republican-controlled Congress.
It also sets...