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Archive for November 1st, 2015
Gas drillers to wait and see on Utica shale’s promise
Posted by Trib Live: David Conti on November 1st, 2015
Trib Live: Big results from recently drilled Utica shale wells have several Marcellus producers eyeing a possible push into the deeper rock, though not every driller is sold on its promise.
Executives at Downtown-based EQT Corp. and Consol Energy Inc. in Cecil spent a chunk of time during quarterly earnings calls in the past two weeks discussing the potential of the layer, pegged by some to be more prolific than the Marcellus, which runs above it.
“If the deep Utica works, it is likely to be larger than...
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Australian insurers keep customers in the dark about climate risks, report finds
Posted by Guardian: Lenore Taylor on November 1st, 2015
Guardian: Australians are in the dark about the risks climate change poses for the local insurance industry because Australian insurers don’t disclose enough information, a new report claims.
According to the study by WWF, Australian insurers IAG, QBE and Suncorp tell customers far less than overseas insurers about the risks climate change could pose to their businesses, and also shy away from public statements about the need to act on global warming more than their international peers.
Climate change...
Ancient pollen reveals droughts between Sierra Nevada glacier surges
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 1st, 2015
ScienceDaily: Hidden below the surface of California's Central Valley are pollen grains from the Pleistocene that are providing scientists with clues to the severity of droughts that struck the region between glacial periods. The Pleistocene -- the age of mammoths and mastodons -- occurred between 1.8 million and 11,500 years ago. For this new study, scientists dug up Pleistocene sediment samples containing buried pollen from the Central Valley. They found that pollen samples dated from interglacial periods --...
Los Angeles considers officially ‘drought shaming’ water violators
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 1st, 2015
Guardian: Drought-stricken Los Angeles is weighing new ways to crack down on residents who use more than their fair share of dwindling water supplies. For the first time in many years, such water hogs could be publicly named in an official version of the increasingly familiar and social-media-driven phenomenon of “drought shaming”.
Earlier this month, LA councilman Paul Koretz had a motion approved that gave the city’s department of water and power 30 days to recommend measures to curb excessive water use,...
Snow in Beartooth Mountains melts away
Posted by Al Jazeera: Tristan Ahtone on November 1st, 2015
Al Jazeera: Jim Halfpenny, an ecologist and teacher, didn’t know where the snow went. He had taken a group of students to see the ancient snowfields of Wyoming’s Beartooth Mountains, but the vast white expanses had vanished. “My stomach dropped. I couldn’t believe it,” said Halfpenny. “Last year I was inside that snowfield. It was 20 feet thick, and we were walking up tunnel mazes made by meltwater.” For the first time in recorded history, the ancient Beartooth snowfields near Yellowstone National Park melted....
Storms, tornadoes lash Texas; death toll rises to 6
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 1st, 2015
Associated Press: The death toll rose to six in Texas as more bodies were recovered on Saturday after another band of strong storms and heavy rain spawned three tornadoes and dangerous flooding in the waterlogged state. It was the second day of turbulent weather in Texas, where at least four people died Friday in flood waters in central Texas. The storms and suspected tornadoes, which forecasters say were caused by an upper-level disturbance from Mexico, socked an already-sodden swath of Texas that was still drying...
Greenpeace releases dramatic haze photos as Indo fire emissions surpass 1.6B tons
Posted by Mongabay: None Given on November 1st, 2015
Mongabay: Emissions from fires burning across Indonesia's peatlands and forests have now surpassed Japan's annual emissions and could pass Brazil's by the end of the week,
But emissions have slowed in recent days with the return of rainfall to parts of Sumatra and Kalimantan which have been most affected by fire.
Nonetheless, vast areas of Indonesia are still affected by choking air pollution, which is estimated to have caused more than 500,000 cases of haze-related respiratory illnesses and killed more...
The countries most vulnerable to climate change know the least about how it will affect them
Posted by Quartz: None Given on November 1st, 2015
Quartz: When world leaders meet in Paris this December to agree on measures to fight climate change, they will be amply armed with information about how rising global temperatures affect the developed world. But they’ll be considerably less informed about the potentially far more devastating effects expected elsewhere. That’s because scientific research on climate change that concerns, or is produced in, the poorest and most vulnerable countries is largely missing. A new analysis of 15,000 papers published...
NASA says Antarctica is actually gaining ice. Does this mean climate fine?
Posted by Christian Science Monitor: Lonnie Shekhtman on November 1st, 2015
Christian Science Monitor: A new NASA study found that Antarctica has been adding more ice than it's been losing, challenging other research, including that of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that concludes that Earth’s southern continent is losing land ice overall.
In a paper published in the Journal of Glaciology on Friday, researchers from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, the University of Maryland in College Park, and the engineering firm Sigma Space Corporation offer a new analysis of satellite...
Climate change could cause refugee crisis
Posted by Journal Times: None Given on November 1st, 2015
Journal Times: European leaders met in Brussels regarding the Syrian refugee crisis, and deep divisions remain about how to handle it. Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar said that his nation is being overwhelmed and that “In the next few days and weeks, I do believe that the European Union and Europe as a whole will begin to fall apart.” This immense human tragedy also affirms the significance of a recent study in the journal Nature, regarding climate change and sea level rise. The study concludes that unless...