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Archive for January 14th, 2015
White House Targets Methane to Slow Climate Change
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 14th, 2015
Time: The White House announced Wednesday morning a new plan to cut methane emissions in the oil and gas sector by 40 to 45% in the next ten years.
The reductions will come in part from fixing leaky equipment and the intentional "flaring" of gas at oil and gas production sites, said Dan Utech, the president's special assistant for energy and climate change, in a conference call with reporters.
By stopping such waste, the White House said it will save enough natural gas in 2025 to heat more than 2...
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Grueling fight on Keystone pipeline to hit new Senate
Posted by Hill: Laura Barron-Lopez on January 14th, 2015
Hill: Senators are bracing for a debate over legislation on the Keystone XL pipeline that could take weeks to conclude, setting up an early test of GOP leader Mitch McConnell’s pledge to allow “regular order” in the upper chamber.
McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday threatened a midnight vote before senators agreed to move forward on the pipeline bill, and could soon turn to late nights and weekend work to muscle through a stack of amendments.
With Republicans eager to pass the Keystone bill and move on...
White House to curb methane emissions from oil, gas production
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 14th, 2015
Reuters: President Barack Obama's administration will unveil new rules Wednesday that aim to slash methane emissions from oil and gas production by up to 45 percent by 2025 in its latest move to solidify the Democratic president's credentials on climate change. Under the proposal, the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Interior will issue measures to contain leaking methane, a potent greenhouse gas, from new drilling equipment and from old and new production facilities located on public lands,...
Obama administration to unveil plans to cut methane emissions
Posted by Dispatch: Coral Davenport on January 14th, 2015
Dispatch: In President Barack Obama’s latest move using executive authority to tackle climate change, administration officials are announcing plans this week to impose new regulations on the oil and gas industry’s emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. The administration’s goal is to cut methane emissions from oil and gas production by up to 45 percent by 2025 from the levels recorded in 2012, according to an official familiar with Obama’s plans. The Environmental Protection Agency will issue the...
Moisture shortfall, heat threaten southwestern forests
Posted by Climate Central: John Upton on January 14th, 2015
Climate Central: Pinecone-littered forests draped over tens of millions of acres of mountaintops through the American Southwest are in danger of being scorched out of existence by global warming.
It's not just rising heat that threatens to put a meteorological flamethrower to lush montane swaths of Arizona and New Mexico better known for low-altitude cacti and desert plains. A fire-wielding threat also comes from a rise in vapor pressure deficit, or VPD -- a parching force linked to climate change that rises as...
Obama moves to create first methane limits for gas drilling
Posted by Associated: Josh Lederman on January 14th, 2015
Associated: The Obama administration laid out a blueprint Wednesday for the first regulations to cut down on methane emissions from new natural gas wells, aiming to curb the discharge of a potent greenhouse gas by roughly half.
Relying once again on the Clean Air Act, the rules join a host of others that President Barack Obama has ordered in an effort to slow global warming despite opposition to new laws in Congress that has only hardened since the midterm elections. Although just a sliver of U.S. greenhouse...
Mass Animal Die-Offs Are on Rise, Killing Billions and Raising Questions
Posted by National Geographic: Jane J. Lee on January 14th, 2015
National Geographic: We're not talking about a few dead fish littering your local beach. Mass die-offs are individual events that kill at least a billion animals, wipe out over 90 percent of a population, or destroy 700 million tons-the equivalent weight of roughly 1,900 Empire State Buildings-worth of animals.
And according to new research, such die-offs are on the rise.
The study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first to examine whether mass die-offs have increased...
Gold mining devours S.American forest land
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 14th, 2015
Agence France-Presse: Gold mining has gobbled up some 1,680 square kilometres (650 square miles) of tropical forest in South America in the 13 years to 2013, a research paper said Wednesday.
Much of the loss happened near conservation areas, placing protected zones at risk from chemical pollutants used in mining, said the study in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
The findings "highlighted the growing environmental impact of gold mining in some of the most biologically diverse regions in the tropics,"...