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Archive for November 13th, 2015
Northern Gateway hopes dashed Canada moves ban oil tankers off B.C. coast
Posted by Fin Post: Geoffrey Morgan on November 13th, 2015
Fin Post: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau`s federal government is following through on an election promise to ban crude oil tanker traffic off the coast of northern British Columbia, a move which observers say would effectively kill the Northern Gateway pipeline.
Trudeau published his mandate letters to each of member of his cabinet Friday and asked Transport Minister Marc Garneau to "formalize a moratorium on crude oil tanker traffic on British Columbia`s North Coast, working in collaboration with the Minister...
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Liberal donors double down on climate change
Posted by Politico: Andrew Restuccia and Kenneth P. Vogel on November 13th, 2015
Politico: At a closed-door gathering next week in Washington, influential liberal donors and operatives plan to double down on their efforts to make climate change a central voting issue in 2016, despite disappointing returns on a similar campaign in 2014. The meeting at Washington's Mandarin Oriental hotel, organized by the Democracy Alliance liberal donor club, will feature discussions with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy, representatives from powerful green groups and billionaire...
Here’s what you can fight now that Keystone XL is dead
Posted by Grist: Heather Smith on November 13th, 2015
Grist: So the president rejected the permit for Keystone XL (well, the northern part of it, anyway). And there was much rejoicing, especially on the interwebs. "THOU HAST NOT EATEN BALONEY SANDWICHES BEHIND BARS IN VAIN, DEAR COMRADE!" wrote Rebecca Solnit on Facebook to nature writer Christopher Shaw, who was one of the 70 KXL protestors who spent three days in D.C.`s Central Cell Block in August of 2011. "THANK YOU!"
KXL was the training ground for a generation of activists - from the young college...
Portland Bans Fossil Fuel Export
Posted by EcoWatch: Brett VandenHeuvel on November 13th, 2015
EcoWatch: The City of Portland in Oregon took a stand yesterday against dirty fossil fuels. It passed a resolution--with teeth--against new fossil fuel transportation and storage infrastructure in Portland and on our iconic rivers. Coal, oil and gas companies want to export stunning volumes of dirty fuel through our communities--the City of Portland just made that harder.
We're about to see a unanimous vote in #Portland City council for NO NEW FOSSIL FUEL INFRASTRUCTURE!! #citieslead pic.twitter.com/VtSmL4zI38...
A year after Denton, anti-fracking movement reassesses how to reclaim momentum
Posted by Dallas Morning news: None Given on November 13th, 2015
Dallas Morning News: The swell in anti-fracking protest in Texas last year caused an international sensation.
Residents in the most oil rich of states standing up to an industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Media outlets from around the globe poured into Denton last November, to report on a campaign to ban hydraulic fracturing in city limits – forcing a referendum in which 59 percent of voters told the oil and gas drillers to get out.
But that victory was quickly rendered symbolic once the Texas...
Canada’s oil industry frets as pressure mounts to cut fossil-fuel tax incentives
Posted by Globe and Mail: Shawn McCarthy and Bertrand Marotte on November 13th, 2015
Globe and Mail: Canada’s oil industry is facing a twin threat as environmentalists urge the Liberal government to make good on promises to slash “fossil-fuel subsidies” and impose a tougher regulatory regime on existing applications to build pipelines to the West and East coasts. A study released Thursday pegged federal “subsidies” for the industry at nearly $1.7-billion, including items such as accelerated capital-cost writeoffs recently extended to the proposed liquefied natural gas plants, and the Canadian exploration...
The secrets in Greenland’s ice sheets
Posted by New York Times: Jon Gertner on November 13th, 2015
New York Times: At one point several hundred thousand years ago, snow began falling over the center of the earth’s largest island. The snow did not melt, and in the years that followed, storms brought even more. All around Greenland, the arctic temperatures remained low enough for the snow to last past spring and summer. It piled up, year after year, century after century, millennium after millennium. Eventually, the snow became the Greenland ice sheet, a blanket of ice so huge that it covered 650,000 square miles...
Slide of north Greenland glacier quickens, raising sea levels
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 13th, 2015
Reuters: A glacier in northeast Greenland with enough ice to raise world ocean levels by 50 cms (20 inches) has begun to slide faster toward the sea, extending ice losses to all corners of the vast remote island, a study showed on Thursday. Warmer water temperatures meant the end of the Zachariae Isstrom glacier floated free from a ridge of bedrock below sea level on which it had rested until 2012, according to the U.S. study reported in the journal Science. Without that natural brake, the glacier in the...
See How the One-Child Policy Changed China
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 13th, 2015
National Geographic: China's decision to lift its one-child policy next year is expected to diversify the country's aging, increasingly male population. But the degree to which the policy has affected the country of more than 1.3 billion people is hard to imagine. Here are five charts and maps that help illustrate it.
Population Control
The nearly 40-year-old restriction on having multiple children isn't the only time the Chinese government stepped into family planning. Shortly after the establishment of the People's...
Scientists say Greenland just opened up major new ‘floodgate’ of ice into the ocean
Posted by Washington Post: Chris Mooney on November 13th, 2015
Washington Post: As the world prepares for the most important global climate summit yet in Paris later this month, news from Greenland could add urgency to the negotiations. For another major glacier appears to have begun a rapid retreat into a deep underwater basin, a troubling sign previously noticed at Greenland’s Jakobshavn Glacier and also in the Amundsen Sea region of West Antarctica.
And in all of these cases, warm ocean waters reaching the deep bases of marine glaciers appears to be a major cause.
The...