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Archive for April 2nd, 2016
Mega India-backed coal project awarded Australia mining leases
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 2nd, 2016
Agence France-Presse: A controversial India-backed giant coal project near Australia's Great Barrier Reef was Sunday awarded mining leases, but developer Adani said it would not commit to a final investment decision until legal challenges against it were resolved.
The Queensland state government said the Aus$21.7 billion (US$16.7 billion) project to build one of the world's biggest mines was awarded three leases.
"This is a major step forward for this project after extensive government and community scrutiny," Queensland...
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Uh oh: Antarctica might melt much faster than we thought
Posted by Slate: Eric Holthaus on April 2nd, 2016
Slate: Sea level rise--perhaps the most consequential effect of climate change--just got a whole lot more urgent. If you live near the coast, this is your wakeup call.
In a study released Wednesday, a new estimate of how much Antarctic ice would melt in a warmer world nearly doubles previous projections of sea level rise by the end of the century. And it might be even worse than that: The study did not explore the true worst-case scenario, and its lead author said the work is still incomplete. Taken...
Ted Cruz’s climate-denial hearing attracts cash from coal king Bob Murray
Posted by Intercept: Alleen Brown on April 2nd, 2016
Intercept: AS NEGOTIATORS from around the world gathered in Paris last December to draft an agreement to slow down climate change, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz was holding a hearing in Washington, D.C., to highlight the work of climate skeptics.
The hearing allowed Cruz to rail about “suppression of dissent, driven politically by global warming alarmists” and equate the widely accepted science of climate change with “partisan claims that run contrary to the science and data and evidence.”
Cruz was ridiculed in...
Climate change is sucking the Colorado River dry
Posted by ClimateCentral: John Upton on April 2nd, 2016
ClimateCentral: Even as the number of Americans relying on the Colorado River for household water swells to about 40 million, global warming appears to be taking a chunk out of the flows that feed their reservoirs.
Winter storms over the Rocky Mountains provide much of the water that courses down the heavily tapped waterway, which spills through deep gorges of the Southwest and into Mexico.
But flows in recent decades have been lighter than would have been expected given annual rain and snowfall rates - and...
Even In a Warming World, It Will Still Snow Somewhere
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 2nd, 2016
New York Times: Misconception: Climate change is not real because there is snow in my yard. Actually: Anyone who utters an argument like this is mixing up climate and weather. When Senator James Inhofe famously threw a snowball across the Senate floor in an attempt to undermine the validity of climate science, people who practice that science for a living pretty much rolled their eyes. Yet the Republican senator from Oklahoma, chairman of the environment committee in the Senate, is hardly alone is mixing up weather...
Wake-up call: Study finds fracking can pollute underground drinking water
Posted by RT: None Given on April 2nd, 2016
RT: A Stanford University study shows that fracking can pollute underground drinking water. Using publicly available data and reports, researchers found organic compounds used in hydraulic fracturing were migrating into groundwater from unlined pits.
"This is a wake-up call," said lead author Dominic DiGiulio, a visiting scholar at the Stanford School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences in a released statement. "It's perfectly legal to inject stimulation fluids into underground drinking water...
China braces for ‘severe’ flooding on Yangtze River
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 2nd, 2016
Reuters: Severe floods are expected on China's Yangtze River this year due to a strong El Nino weather pattern, state media said, raising the risk of deaths and damage to property and crops along the country's longest waterway. The El Nino conditions are the strongest since records collection began in 1951, and resemble a 1998 weather pattern that flooded the river and killed thousands, the official Xinhua news agency said on Friday, citing vice minister of water resources, Liu Ning. "Precipitation in the...