RSS Feed
Archive for August 23rd, 2015
Drought Conditions in California are Causing Severe Subsidence
Posted by Nature World: Samantha Mathewson on August 23rd, 2015
Nature World: As California continues pumping groundwater to combat the historic drought they are facing, land in the San Joaquin Valley is sinking at an increased rate of 2 inches more per month. The California Department of Water Resources released a NASA report illustrating their findings.
"Because of increased pumping, groundwater levels are reaching record lows -- up to 100 feet (30 meters) lower than previous records," Department of Water Resources Director Mark Cowin said in a statement. "As extensive...
Posted in 
California drought could be the new normal
Posted by Fresno Bee: Editorial on August 23rd, 2015
Fresno Bee: Reports of California's demise are as predictable as they are exaggerated whenever the Golden State endures one of its regular disasters.
Earthquakes, fires, floods, the Great Recession and more strike, and we survive. But two reports on the drought last week ought to give us pause about how we use and misuse water, even as a third in the journal Geophysical Research Letters drives home the bad news about global warming, estimating that climate change has worsened California's drought by up to...
MIT analysis improves estimates of global mercury pollution
Posted by Environmental News Network: Mit News on August 23rd, 2015
Environmental News Network: Once mercury is emitted into the atmosphere from the smokestacks of power plants, the pollutant has a complicated trajectory; even after it settles onto land and sinks into oceans, mercury can be re-emitted back into the atmosphere repeatedly. This so-called “grasshopper effect” keeps the highly toxic substance circulating as “legacy emissions” that, combined with new smokestack emissions, can extend the environmental effects of mercury for decades. Now an international team led by MIT researchers...
1st US tar sands mine set open for business in Utah
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 23rd, 2015
Associated Press: On a remote Utah ridge covered in sagebrush, pines and wild grasses, a Canadian company is about to embark on something never before done commercially in the United States: digging sticky, black, tar-soaked sand from the ground and extracting the petroleum.
The impending opening of the nation's first tar sands mine has become another front in the battle across the West between preservationists and the energy industry.
U.S. Oil Sands has invested nearly $100 million over the last decade to acquire...
Iowa waterways are a disgrace
Posted by Des Moines Register: None Given on August 23rd, 2015
Des Moines Register: “Thank you for calling the Iowa Department of Natural Resources’ Beach Hotline… There are currently bacteria advisories at the following state park beaches: Backbone Lake, Brushy Creek Lake, Clear Lake, Lake Geode, Lake Ahquabi, Lake Darling, Lake Macbride, Lake of Three Fires, McIntosh Woods State Park … Thanks and have a fun and safe time at the beach!” Less than 48 hours after that Aug. 15 warning went out, hundreds of dead fish washed up on the shores of Swan Lake in the state park near Carroll....
Can California meet its ambitious greenhouse gas goals?
Posted by LA Times: Editorial on August 23rd, 2015
LA Times: When President Obama announced his controversial and ambitious Clean Power Plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, Californians gave a collective yawn. The president's goal of generating 28% of the nation's electricity from renewable resources by 2030 paled next to California's push, which began nearly a decade ago, to fuel 33% of its electrical needs with solar, wind and other renewables by 2020.
The state's commitment to a serious climate change policy began in 2006 with the...
Jerry Brown says California’s groundwater management ‘not aggressive enough’
Posted by Sacramento Bee: David Siders on August 23rd, 2015
Sacramento Bee: Gov. Jerry Brown said in an interview aired Sunday that California is not aggressive enough policing use of the state’s groundwater, promising stepped-up oversight in future years.
Brown’s remarks on NBC’s “Meet the Press” followed the release of a study tying climate change to the worsening effects of California’s drought.
Asked he if was “about to police agriculture more,” the Democratic governor said, “Well, I think that’s good advice, but of course I don’t rule by decree. I work through...
World’s fastest-melting glacier loses massive chunk in 2 days
Posted by Mashable: None Given on August 23rd, 2015
Mashable: One of the world's most rapidly flowing glaciers may have just set another record, and it's not one not that bodes well for low-lying coastal cities and nations around the world, which are vulnerable to sea level rise. During the past month, a NASA satellite captured images showing a sudden loss of ice, also known as a calving event (or in this case, possibly multiple events) from Greenland's Jakobshavn Isbrae Glacier between July 31 and August 16, 2015. Images posted on the Arctic sea ice blog,...