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Bobby Jindal doesn’t think Big Oil should have to clean up its mess
Posted by Grist: John Upton on August 29th, 2013
Grist: Oil and gas companies have ruined coastal wetlands that formerly helped protect Louisiana from storms and floods, but Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) doesn`t believe they should have to pay to repair the damage.
The governor opposes a lawsuit filed last month by the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East. The suit seeks billions of dollars from energy companies, including BP and ExxonMobil, to restore coastal ecosystems that have been trampled to make way for oil and gas infrastructure along...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Bobby Jindal doesn’t think Big Oil should have to clean up its messFukushima keeps on leaking, Japan keeps on issuing confusing explanations
Posted by Grist: John Upton on August 28th, 2013
Grist: Problems continue to burble up at Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant - or, in this case, gush out.
We learned last month that contaminated water has been leaking from the plant into the sea at a rate of about 300 tons a day. Then last week came word of a more serious spill of 300 tons of extremely radioactive water, which the government classified as a level 3 incident on the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale.
The scale runs from zero, where everything is peachy,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Fukushima keeps on leaking, Japan keeps on issuing confusing explanationsAustralian floods lowered worldwide sea levels
Posted by Grist: John Upton on August 15th, 2013
Grist: Flood-inducing rainfall in Australia in 2010 was so severe that it lowered worldwide sea levels.
Scientists have been puzzled by satellite data that shows sea levels fell in 2011. A paper published this month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters attributes a lot of the surprising sea-level decline to antipodean deluges - record-breaking rainfall that was linked to climate change.
Seas have been rising by about 3 millimeters a year in recent decades. But from mid-2010 until 2011 sea levels...
Alaska’s heat wave breaking records, killing salmon
Posted by Grist: John Upton on August 1st, 2013
Grist: Something smells fishy about a record-breaking heat wave in Alaska. It might be the piles of dead salmon. The Land of the Midnight Sun has been sweating, relatively speaking, through a hot and sun-soaked summer. From the AP: Anchorage has set a record for the most consecutive days over 70 degrees during this unusually warm summer, while Fairbanks is closing in on its own seasonal heat record. The National Weather Service said Alaska’s largest city topped out at 70 degrees at 4 p.m. Tuesday,...
Gulf of Mexico dead zone is big, but not record-breaking big
Posted by Grist: John Upton on July 30th, 2013
Grist: Oh yay. Just 5,840 square miles of the Gulf of Mexico are virtually bereft of life this summer. This year’s dead zone is much bigger than an official goal of 1,950 square miles, but not as bad as had been feared. Heavy spring rains inundated Mississippi River tributaries with fertilizers and other nutrients, and once those pollutants flowed into the Gulf, they led to the growth of oxygen-starved areas where marine life can’t survive. But NOAA says things could have been worse. The agency had previously...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Gulf of Mexico dead zone is big, but not record-breaking bigLeaked EPA document raises questions about fracking pollution
Posted by Grist: John Upton on July 30th, 2013
Grist: The EPA doesn`t seem very interested in finding out whether fracking pollutes groundwater. The latest indication of this emerged over the weekend in the Los Angeles Times.
Residents of the small town of Dimock in northeastern Pennsylvania have long been convinced that Cabot Oil and Gas Corp. was poisoning their drinking water by fracking the land around them. In July of last year, the EPA announced that although water from some local wells contained “naturally occurring” arsenic, barium, and manganese,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Leaked EPA document raises questions about fracking pollutionAntarctica’s permafrost is melting
Posted by Grist: John Upton on July 25th, 2013
Grist: Things are getting ugly on Earth`s underside.
Antarctic permafrost, which had been weathering global warming far better than areas around the North Pole, is starting to give way. Scientists have recorded some of it melting at rates that are nearly comparable to those in the Arctic.
Scientists used time-lapse photography and LiDAR to track the retreat of an Antarctic ice cliff over a little more than a decade. They reported Wednesday in the journal Scientific Reports that the cliff was "backwasting...
ExxonMobil subsidiary, with arm twisted behind back, agrees to treat fracking wastewater
Posted by Grist: John Upton on July 23rd, 2013
Grist: XTO Energy, an ExxonMobil subsidiary, will reluctantly shell out $20 million to properly treat and dispose of fracking wastewater in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. It will also pay a $100,000 EPA fine as part of a settlement agreement [PDF] over water-pollution charges [PDF].
From PennLive:
The company is accused of violating the Clean Water Act by releasing over approximately 65 days between 6,300 and 57,373 gallons of fluids that contained barium, calcium, iron, manganese, potassium, sodium,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on ExxonMobil subsidiary, with arm twisted behind back, agrees to treat fracking wastewaterCanada: No one knows how to stop these tar-sands oil spills
Posted by Grist: John Upton on July 22nd, 2013
Grist: Thousands of barrels of tar-sands oil have been burbling up into forest areas for at least six weeks in Cold Lake, Alberta, and it seems that nobody knows how to staunch the flow.
An underground oil blowout at a big tar-sands operation run by Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. has caused spills at four different sites over the past few months. (This is different from the 100-acre spill in Alberta that we told you about last month, which was caused by a ruptured pipeline.)
Media and others have...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Canada: No one knows how to stop these tar-sands oil spillsSeas may rise 10 yards during centuries ahead
Posted by Grist: John Upton on July 15th, 2013
Grist: Sea-level rise is currently measured in millimeters per year, but longer-term effects of global warming are going to force our descendants to measure sea-level rise in meters or yards.
Each Celsius degree of global warming is expected to raise sea levels during the centuries ahead by 2.3 meters, or 2.5 yards, according to a study published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The world is currently trying (and failing) to reach an agreement that would limit global warming...