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Archive for December 25th, 2015
Hoping for a Price Surge, Oil Companies Keep Wells in Reserve
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 25th, 2015
New York Times: The price of oil keeps dropping. But that didn’t stop a work crew from drilling a well recently on what was once a cornfield, carefully guiding the last sections of 13,000 feet of pipe spiraling into the hard Niobrara shale with a diamond-tipped bit.
Their well, one of hundreds drilled by Anadarko Petroleum in eastern Colorado’s Wattenberg field this year, could someday gush as many as 800 barrels of crude oil a day. But Anadarko is not planning to produce a drop of crude from the well for at...
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Why Addressing Climate Change Not Enough
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 25th, 2015
Huffington Post: This post was coauthored by Anne-Emanuelle Birn, MA, ScD, Ben Brisbois, MES, PhD and Timothy H. Holtz, MD, MPH.
The celebratory mood accompanying the recent Paris Accord, in which the entire UN membership agreed to hold global temperature increases to no more than 2°C, is quickly dissipating. As the Accord itself acknowledges, there is a "significant gap" between countries' climate change mitigation pledges and the 2°C goal (not to mention the more aspirational 1.5° C limit). This means that promised...
Scores eastern U.S. cities shatter Christmas Eve warm weather records
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 25th, 2015
Washington Post: The warm air surging up the East Coast on Christmas Eve will prove nothing short of historic. Dozens of records will fall, some by very large margins.
Temperatures at or above 70 degrees will span from Florida all the way into southern New England covering some 1,200 miles and 20 percent of the Lower 48.
In many places in the East, temperatures will run some 30-40 degrees above normal.
The warmth in a few locations will be so anomalous that low temperatures will challenge existing records...
Eastern U.S. sees warm Christmas, winter storm looms for Plains
Posted by Reuters: Ian Simpson and Steve Gorman on December 25th, 2015
Reuters: Much of the U.S. East Coast basked in unseasonable warmth on Christmas Day with record high temperatures set or tied in several cities, including New York, even as a tornado hit Alabama and a major winter storm loomed for the southern Rockies and Great Plains.
The twister in Birmingham, Alabama, late on Friday afternoon damaged several homes, uprooted trees and caused a handful of minor injuries, police and weather officials reported.
National Weather Service meteorologist Jody Aaron said the...
Warmest Christmas Eve the East Coast has ever seen shattering record
Posted by Mashable: None Given on December 25th, 2015
Mashable: The world's hottest year is ending in the most fitting manner possible: with one of the most significant heat waves on record for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. The heat extends more than 1,500 miles, from South Florida northward to eastern Canada, and is being described on social media -- in non-technical terminology -- as a "blowtorch" weather pattern.
Or, in the words of a meteorologist at the National Weather Service forecast office in Portland, Maine: "It is safe to say Santa should wear...
In Canada’s far north, warm weather threatens vital ice road
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 25th, 2015
Reuters: Each winter, in the far reaches of Canada's north, a highway of ice built atop frozen lakes and tundra acts as a supply lifeline to remote diamond mines, bustling with traffic for a couple of months before melting away in the spring.
This year, the world's busiest ice road is running late. Unseasonably warm weather has set back ice formation on the Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Road, named after the first and last of hundreds of lakes on the route.
The road is still expected to open on schedule...
How acid rivers are corroding South Africa’s landscape
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 25th, 2015
Guardian: The flow of polluted water from past and present mines is a chronic problem in South Africa, and large volumes of water carrying toxic sulphates and metals such as lead, zinc, copper and radioactive uranium are tainting community water supplies.
Australians flee bushfires at famous beauty spot
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 25th, 2015
Reuters: Fire crews battled into the night on Friday after raging bushfires reduced homes to ashes in a famous Australian beauty spot on Christmas Day, sending residents fleeing for their lives to the sound of blaring sirens.
Water bombing aircraft made a minimal impact on the fires, which set entire trees and hillsides alight in communities along the Great Ocean Road, officials said.
Evacuation sirens sounded in towns along the road, a major tourist attraction southwest of Melbourne, as the normally...
Tornado Leaves Long Path of Destruction in South
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on December 25th, 2015
New York Times: The tornado — dark, wide and roaring — had already raced through about a half-dozen counties by the time it arrived here in Marshall County on Wednesday night and took the first lives of its long rampage.
But it was only on Thursday, after a day of storms that killed at least 14 people while they ravaged the rural South, that the magnitude of the natural trauma became clear.
“I have neighbors, but I don’t know where they’re at because there’s nothing where their houses used to be,” said Cedric...