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Archive for July, 2011
Antarctica rising as ice caps melt
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 31st, 2011
New Scientist: ANTARCTICA is rising like a cheese soufflé: slowly but surely. Lost ice due to climate change and left-over momentum from the end of the last big ice age mean the buoyant continent is heaven-bound.
Donald Argus of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and colleagues used 15 years of GPS data to show that parts of the Ellsworth mountains in west Antarctica are rising by around 5 millimetres a year (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1029/2011gl048025). Elsewhere on the continent,...
Pakistan: Pakistan floods one year on: Your stories
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 31st, 2011
BBC: It's been a year since Pakistan was hit by the worst floods in its history. At least 18 million people were affected, from Swat in the north to Sindh in the south. Across the country there was massive infrastructural damage and individuals struggled simply to find food.
Here BBC News website users speak about how the floods have changed their lives and what more needs to be done.
Things have certainly improved but rehabilitation has been very slow.
When the floods came last year, my two-storey...
Water Crisis Offers Chance for Unity over Strife
Posted by Inter Press Service: Kanya D'Almeida on July 30th, 2011
Inter Press Service: As record-breaking temperature highs and rapidly melting ice caps fuel fears about impending "water wars", some experts in Washington say that the threat of full-blown conflict is exaggerated, adding that robust institutions and solid treaties could transform water crises into international cooperation.
The planet is currently home to 276 international river basins, which cover almost a half of the earth's land surface and are home to 40 percent of the global population.
Many of these basins...
How to Pick a Site for a Nuclear Waste Dump
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 29th, 2011
New York Times: The United States can find a way to dispose of its nuclear waste, even if the current program is at an impasse, according to the blue-ribbon commission established by President Obama after he ended the government`s planning for making Yucca Mountain in Nevada the nation`s nuclear waste repository.
In a draft report issued Friday, the commission members wrote that “we know what we have to do, we know we have to do it, and we even know how to do it.”
Essentially, the commission recommended that...
Drought-hit bears head for Texas urban areas
Posted by Reuters: Benjamin Wermund on July 29th, 2011
Reuters: A historic Texas drought is driving bears into urban areas searching for food and water, the latest in a series of bizarre wildlife stories to come out of the deadly hot and dry weather across the nation.
Authorities have reported wayward razorbacks in Arkansas digging through flower beds, and bats changing their nightly flight patterns in Austin, Texas. High temperatures and stifling humidity in the Midwest have killed thousands of cattle in the Dakotas and Nebraska.
In far West Texas, the...
Skeptic’s small cloud study renews climate rancor
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 29th, 2011
Associated Press: A study on how much heat in Earth's atmosphere is caused by cloud cover has heated up the climate change blogosphere even as it is dismissed by many scientists.
Several mainstream climate scientists call the study's conclusions off-base and overstated. Climate change skeptics, most of whom are not scientists, are touting the study, saying it blasts gaping holes in global warming theory and shows that future warming will be less than feared. The study in the journal Remote Sensing questions the...
United States: Huge 2007 tundra fire seen as ominous sign for climate
Posted by Reuters: Yereth Rosen on July 29th, 2011
Reuters: A wildfire that burned over 400 square miles of Alaska tundra in the scorching summer of 2007 poured as much carbon into the atmosphere as the entire Arctic normally absorbs each year, according to a new study in the scientific journal Nature.
The tundra fire, near the Anaktuvuk River of Alaska's North Slope, was considered an unprecedented event at the time. It was, by far, the largest single wildfire on treeless Arctic tundra ever recorded, and was twice as big as all previously recorded Alaska...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on United States: Huge 2007 tundra fire seen as ominous sign for climatePanel: Nation Needs New Nuclear Waste Site, Pronto
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 29th, 2011
National Public Radio: Last year, the Obama administration canceled plans to make Yucca Mountain the permanent storage site for the nation's nuclear waste. The half-built site is seen here in a file photo from 2006.
As sagas go, it rivals the Star Wars epics: "Yucca Mountain: The Quest for a Nuclear Waste Dump" premiered in 1978, when the U.S. government added the Nevada site to its list of potential "permanent repositories." Since then, it's been a story of political intrigue, desert outposts, giant machines and doctored...
ESA Rider Averted, but Some Species Remain in Cross Hairs
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 29th, 2011
Greenwire: Despite voting this week to overturn a controversial moratorium on Endangered Species Act listings, the House's Interior Department and U.S. EPA funding bill -- and expected GOP amendments -- would roll back or prevent protections for a handful of individual species, including bighorn sheep, lizards, wolves and grouse.
Rep. Steve Pearce (R-N.M.), following the defeat Wednesday of the rider to preclude new Fish and Wildlife Service species listings or critical habitat designations, said he plans...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on ESA Rider Averted, but Some Species Remain in Cross HairsInsight: NY water at risk from lack of natgas inspectors?
Posted by Reuters: Edward McAllister on July 29th, 2011
Reuters: New York state may have enough natural gas to spark an energy boom, but it could lack the inspectors needed to ensure drilling won't foul its other prized resource -- water.
Home to a portion of the Marcellus shale formation, the country's richest natural gas deposit, New York is mulling plans to end a year-long moratorium on drilling. The ban was put in place due to concerns that a new extraction technique called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, contaminates water wells.
But the state Department...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Insight: NY water at risk from lack of natgas inspectors?