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Chesapeake waters are warming, study finds, posing challenges for healing ailing bay
Posted by Baltimore Sun: Timothy B. Wheeler on October 14th, 2015
Baltimore Sun: The Chesapeake Bay's waters are warming up, in some places rising more rapidly even than the region's air temperatures, a new University of Maryland study finds. If unchecked, scientists say the trend could complicate costly, long-running efforts to restore the ailing estuary, worsen fish-suffocating dead zones and even alter the food web on which the bay's fish and crabs depend. Drawing on remote sensing by satellites, researchers at UM's Center for Environmental Science found that water temperatures...
Fracking moratorium sought in Maryland
Posted by Baltimore Sun: Timothy B. Wheeler on February 6th, 2015
Baltimore Sun: Regulations that would impose a variety of best practices and safeguards on drilling for shale gas were proposed in the final days of the O'Malley administration, and are out for public comment. The rules were drawn up by the O'Malley administration as an advisory commission he appointed neared the end of a three-year study of fracking's risks. But critics, including some members of the advisory commission, contend the study gave short shrift to health concerns. cComments I wonder where Spam and...
Maryland urged to plan for 2-foot sea-level rise by 2050
Posted by Baltimore Sun: Timothy B. Wheeler on June 26th, 2013
Baltimore Sun: Saying climate change is already underway, a panel of scientists is urging Maryland officials to plan to accommodate rising seas of up to 2 feet along the state's shoreline in the next 40 years -- and perhaps nearly 6 feet by the end of the century.
In a report to be released Wednesday and commissioned by Gov. Martin O'Malley, the group of 21 scientists from Maryland, Virginia and other mid-Atlantic states said recent, more sophisticated studies suggest that sea level is rising faster than forecast...