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Archive for January 12th, 2016
Grazing towards sustainability
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 12th, 2016
ScienceDaily: The first international Global Farm Platform conference hosted by the University of Bristol will highlight the benefits of utilising pasture and robust cows over high-yield, intensive systems. Research findings from data shared between Vet School researcher, Professor Michael Lee and farmer, Neil Darwent, Director of the UK's Free Range Dairy Community Interest Company (CIC), will form part of a keynote address to be given by Professor Lee. The Global Farm Platform is a multidisciplinary group...
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Mountains west of Boulder continue to lose ice as climate warms
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 12th, 2016
ScienceDaily: New research led by the University of Colorado Boulder indicates an ongoing loss of ice on Niwot Ridge and the adjacent Green Lakes Valley in the high mountains west of Boulder is likely to progress as the climate continues to warm. The study area encompasses the Niwot Ridge Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site, thousands of acres of alpine tundra, subalpine forest, talus slopes, glacial lakes and wetlands stretching to the top of the Continental Divide in the Rocky Mountains. The Niwot Ridge...
Greenland ice sheet melts more when it’s cloudy
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 12th, 2016
ScienceDaily: Clouds play a bigger role in the melting of the Greenland ice sheet than was previously assumed. Compared to clear skies, clouds enhance the meltwater runoff by a third. Those are the findings of an international study that was coordinated by KU Leuven and published in Nature Communications.
Greenland's ice sheet is the second largest ice mass in the world -- the largest is Antarctica. The ice sheet is losing mass at a high speed and increasingly contributes to the sea level rise on our planet....
BNDES: Corruption guided award huge Amazon dam contracts in Brazil
Posted by Mongabay: None Given on January 12th, 2016
Mongabay: Brazil’s BNDES (Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social) is the largest development bank in the world. Its annual disbursements of US$50 billion in 2014 were greater than those of the World Bank and Ex-Im Bank (Export-Import Bank of the United States) taken together. Although the bank has played a key role in Brazil’s development over the decades, its hasty expansion in recent years has created widespread concern that the bank is out of control and causing damage to Brazil’s people and...
Calls Michigan Gov. Snyder’s Arrest as Flint Poisoning Scandal Implicates Top Staffers
Posted by Common Dreams: Sarah Lazare on January 12th, 2016
Common Dreams: Calls for Michigan Governor Rick Snyder's ouster--and arrest--are growing after internal emails showed that his high-level staffers were aware of lead poisoning in Flint's public water supply six months before the administration declared a state of emergency.
According to the newly-released emails, which were obtained by NBC News, Snyder's chief of staff at the time, Dennis Muchmore, wrote to an unnamed high-level health department staffer: "I'm frustrated by the water issue in Flint."
"These...
The California gas leak that prompted a state of emergency, explained
Posted by Vox: David Roberts on January 12th, 2016
Vox: On October 23, Southern California Gas Company discovered a leak at its Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility. It is still leaking, spewing methane into the atmosphere, sickening nearby residents, and prompting Gov. Jerry Brown to declare a state of emergency. It is widely being hailed as the worst environmental disaster since the BP oil spill. And SoCal Gas says the leak likely won't be contained until March at the earliest.
There's a lot of great journalism being done around the spill --...