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Archive for April 11th, 2015
Climate Change Means This Tree May Soon Become Endangered Species
Posted by io9: Cheryl Eddy on April 11th, 2015
io9: According to the Seattle Times, the groups that petitioned to protect the yellow cedar are pleased with the announcement, which came on Thursday.
The decision is great news for the Tongass National Forest and for yellow cedar, said Rebecca Noblin, an attorney in Anchorage for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that petitioned to list the tree.
“We’re losing yellow cedar rapidly to climate change, and if we don’t start addressing our greenhouse gas emissions, we’re going...
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Drinking Seawater Looks Ever More Palatable to Californians
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 11th, 2015
New York Times: Every time drought strikes California, the people of this state cannot help noticing the substantial reservoir of untapped water lapping at their shores — 187 quintillion gallons of it, more or less, shimmering so invitingly in the sun. Now, for the first time, a major California metropolis is on the verge of turning the Pacific Ocean into an everyday source of drinking water. A $1 billion desalination plant to supply booming San Diego County is under construction here and due to open as early as...
In California, the Grass Is Greener at Coachella
Posted by New York Times: Ben Sisario on April 11th, 2015
New York Times: All across the state, the big worry is about the dwindling water supply. But at Coachella, the annual music festival here in the desert east of Los Angeles, tens of thousands of well-hydrated fans are dancing the weekend away on green grass. With California facing severe drought for the fourth year in a row, Gov. Jerry Brown this month ordered a 25 percent reduction in water use across the state. Yet that order came just as organizers of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival — one of the...
Want to fight drought? Build wind turbines
Posted by Mother Nature: None Given on April 11th, 2015
Mother Nature: As California struggles with the specter of ongoing drought, much has been written about water conservation. From clever ways to conserve water at home to the urgent need to tackle pot's environmental footprint, there are so many places that we need to adjust our collective behavior and reduce our water footprint. Fossil fuels suck (water) One area of water use that sometimes gets overlooked is energy. It turns out that reducing our dependence on fossil fuels doesn't just reduce climate change...
Early warning system to detect algal blooms being launched by EPA
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 11th, 2015
Environmental News Network: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today that it is developing an early warning indicator system using historical and current satellite data to detect algal blooms. EPA researchers will develop a mobile app to inform water quality managers of changes in water quality using satellite data on cyanobacteria algal blooms from three partnering agencies-- NASA, NOAA, and the U.S. Geological Survey. The multi-agency project will create a reliable, standard method for identifying...
Soon every summer will be too hot for corals
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 11th, 2015
New Scientist: How are you keeping tabs on coral? The Catlin Seaview Survey (CSS) has captured 800,000 images of coral reefs from 22 countries in four years. It's the largest stocktake of the health of reefs worldwide in history. Right now we have an expedition in the Maldives. We really want to get good baseline data as we start to see the next coral bleaching event. Why should we focus on coral reefs? These reefs create a microcosm story: they are a metaphor for where the world is going, and one of the strongest...
Offshore oil drilling faces tougher rules from Washington
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 11th, 2015
Guardian: The US is planning to impose a major new regulation on offshore oil and gas drilling to try to prevent the kind of explosions that caused the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing Obama administration officials.
The interior department could make the announcement as early as Monday, the paper said. It is timed to coincide with the five-year anniversary of the BP disaster, which killed 11 men and sent millions of barrels of...
Native Hawaiians halt construction of giant telescope
Posted by New Scientist: Michael Lemonick on April 11th, 2015
New Scientist: Sarah Ballard studies exoplanets for a living, so like many other astronomers around the world she's eager to see the Thirty Meter Telescope (the TMT for short) go into operation in the early 2020s. With a light-collecting mirror nine times larger than the ones on the twin Keck Telescopes, currently the world's most powerful, the TMT will revolutionise the search for Earth-like worlds around other stars, and be able to peer to the very edges of the visible universe.
But Ballard, an astronomer...
Thousands of non-native goldfish invade Colorado lake
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 11th, 2015
Reuters: A handful of goldfish dumped into a Colorado lake, evidently by a pet owner years ago, have reproduced and thousands of the non-native fish now threaten indigenous aquatic species, state wildlife officials said on Friday.
Rangers in Boulder County last month detected teeming schools of the goldfish in a semi-rural lake, Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokeswoman Jennifer Churchill said.
The pet fish, a form of carp not native to North America, now number between 3,000 and 4,000 and state biologists...