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Archive for August 1st, 2015
Parched West: Dry Days Bring a Ferocious Start to the Fire Season
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 1st, 2015
New York Times: Another summer of record-breaking drought and heat has seized the West, setting off costly and destructive wildfires from Southern California, where a single blaze burned more than 30,000 acres of national forest east of Los Angeles, to Montana, where a fast-moving fire in Glacier National Park recently forced tourists to flee hotels, campgrounds and vehicles. No measurable rain has fallen here in Walla Walla since May. Temperatures have broken decades-old records. And, though known for soaking...
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California wildfires expand after death of firefighter
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 1st, 2015
Reuters: Firefighters rushed to contain a pair of fast-moving wildfires in Northern California on Saturday as they mourned the death of a U.S. Forest Service firefighter killed this week in the battle against one of the blazes, officials said.
The largest blaze has forced hundreds of people to evacuate and destroyed more than a dozen homes. Experts have predicted a long and volatile summer wildfire season in California in its fourth year of crippling drought.
Firefighter David Ruhl, 38, a married father...
Zambian villagers take mining giant Vedanta to court in UK toxic leaks
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 1st, 2015
Guardian: A London-listed mining giant has been polluting the drinking water of villages in Zambia and threatening a wider health disaster, the Observer has found.
Leaked documents and a confidential internal report commissioned from Canadian pollution control experts show that Vedanta Resources’ giant mine in Zambia’s Copperbelt region has been spilling sulphuric acid and other toxic chemicals into rivers, streams and underground aquifers used for drinking water near the mining town of Chingola.
Related:...
Zambia: ‘I drank the water and ate the fish. We all did. The acid has damaged me permanently’
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 1st, 2015
Guardian: You can’t see the old Chingola copper mine, with its smelter and refinery, from the village of Shimulala. It’s miles away, beyond 300ft-high hills of waste tailings, the leach plant, the main pollution control dam and the 1,600ft-deep open pit that is one of Africa’s largest holes. But you can smell and taste the pollution from the biggest copper mine in Africa. If you pump a glass of water from the borehole outside the little church in Shimulala, you will see it is bright yellow, smells of sulphur...
Agrarian settlements drive severe tropical deforestation across the Amazon
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 1st, 2015
ScienceDaily: Resettlement projects in the Amazon are driving severe tropical deforestation -- according to new research from the University of East Anglia and Câmara dos Deputados (the Brazilian Lower House). Widely hailed as a socially responsible and 'innocuous' strategy of land redistribution, agrarian reform settlements have been created throughout the Brazilian Amazon since the early 1970s at an unprecedented scale. But a study published in PLOS ONE reveals that these farmer resettlement projects are far...
Frightening Interactive Wildfire Map Shows That the West Is on Fire
Posted by EcoWatch: Cole Mellino on August 1st, 2015
EcoWatch: Climate Central, a dedicated team of scientists and journalists researching climate change, has put together an interactive map that shows in real time the active wildfires in the U.S. Each flame icon indicates an active wildfire.
Climate Central explains:
Hover over a given fire to see its name, and if you zoom in you’ll be able to see the outline of the area that’s burning--the so-called fire perimeter. If you click within the perimeter, a window pops up showing the fire’s size in acres,...
Where the GOP candidates stand on global warming
Posted by Boston Globe: Matt Viser on August 1st, 2015
Boston Globe: Almost all of the Republican presidential candidates are skeptical of the idea that climate change is occurring, humans have a contributing role, and something should be done to reverse it. Here's a look at their past public statements.
JEB BUSH
"The climate is changing. I don't think the science is clear of what percentage is man-made and what percentage is natural. It's convoluted. And for the people to say the science is decided on this is just really arrogant, to be honest with you. It's...
Startling Footage Calif Reservoirs Shows Devastating Impact Epic Drought
Posted by EcoWatch: None Given on August 1st, 2015
EcoWatch: If you`re wondering how much damage four years of an epic drought can wreck, look no further than the condition of California`s depleted reservoirs. In new footage of the Folsom, Oroville and Shasta reservoirs--captured by the California Department of Water Resources (CA-DWR) on July 20--it`s genuinely startling to see how little water remains. The CA-DWR wrote on Facebook that Folsom Lake measured at 34 percent of capacity, Lake Oroville at 35 percent and Lake Shasta at 45 percent. Jay Famiglietti,...
Science vs. the Real World on Mauna Kea
Posted by CounterPunch: None Given on August 1st, 2015
CounterPunch: Many view the debate surrounding the Thirty Meter Telescope’s proposed construction on Mauna Kea and Kanaka Maolis’ opposition to it as fundamentally a question of science versus culture. On the benign end, the word “science” has come to connote something close to cool and objective rationality – nothing more nor less than a collection of knowledge to be used in man’s (isn’t it always “man’s”?) noble aim to transcend nature. More malevolently, however, pitting science against indigenous culture is...
A Mauna Kea action against tourism could be the “nuclear option”
Posted by Disappeared News: None Given on August 1st, 2015
Disappeared News: Have you noticed that no matter how severe the discrimination or the oppression, there are never demonstrations in Waikiki, for example?
I was curious and asked someone about this maybe 25 years ago.
As a newcomer I had previously been totally oblivious to Hawaiian history, the illegal overthrow and the near-genocidal oppression of Native Hawaiians. As I began to learn and question, I became both depressed and angry (still am both) that it was still going on.
So I did ask someone, several...