RSS Feed
Archive for August, 2011
ALERT UPDATE! Tell President Obama Tar Sands Pipeline Approval Will Alienate Green Base, Warrant Return of His Nobel Peace Prize
Posted by Water Conservation Blog on August 29th, 2011
By ClimateArk, a project of Ecological Internet
TAKE ACTION HERE NOW!
The struggle over the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline [search] which would run over 1,500 miles from Alberta, Canada to Texas, extending the reach of Canada's filthy and addictive tar sands trade far into the United States is shaping up to be an epic political battle. When Alberta, Canada's tar sands are fully developed, along with its vast proposed pipeline network, the planet will be pushed into abrupt and runaway climate change. Ongoing environmental protest in Washington DC to stop the tar sands pipeline was decimated this past Friday by Obama's State Department approval of the pipeline. On tar sands and fracking in particular, President Obama has abandoned his green base, meaning after an early retirement he will have time to earn that Nobel Prize. Barring Obamas final rejection of tar sands pipelines, a decision that is his to make, it should be returned immediately.
Posted in 
Picture of the day: activists rally at White House against tar sands pipeline
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 29th, 2011
Mongabay: A two week long civil action is taking place in front of the White House in an attempt to convince the Obama Administration to turn down the Keystone Pipeline XL, which would bring oil from Alberta's tar sands to the US market. Protestors are opposed to the pipeline for a number of reasons, including potential oil spills. However, the main reason is that the tar sands carry a bigger carbon burden than conventional oil, exacerbating the global climate crisis. Many environmentalists have come to see...
Irene floods northeast, Manhattan spared the worst
Posted by Reuters: Edith Honan and Clare Baldwin on August 29th, 2011
Reuters: Hurricane Irene swept through Manhattan on Sunday but reserved the worst of its fury for towns and suburbs up and down the northeastern United States where driving rain and flood tides inundated homes and cut power to millions.
On its march up the East Coast over the weekend, the storm killed at least 20 people, left some 5 million homes and businesses without electricity, caused widespread flooding and downed thousands of trees. Suburban New Jersey and rural Vermont were hit particularly hard....
The curious case of Britain’s wildlife revival
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 28th, 2011
Independent: It's been one of the few "good news" stories of the summer: otters can now be found in every English county.
This elusive mammal has made an extraordinary comeback since the dark days of the 1970s, when it almost went extinct in England and Wales and could only be found in a few remote corners of Scotland. Nowadays otters can be seen on rivers all over Britain, including such unexpected places as the River Tyne, in the very centre of Newcastle.
The reason for the otter's post-war decline was...
Residents Clean Up After Irene Drenches East Coast
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 28th, 2011
National Public Radio: This morning, when Tod Clissold walked into Poor Richard's, the bar he owns in Manteo, North Carolina, the first thing he noticed was the smell. Like a lot of East Coast residents, Clissold is in recovery mode after Hurricane Irene left homes and businesses flooded and powerless from North Carolina to Massachusetts. Weekends on All Things Considered guest host Laura Sullivan talks with Clissold and several others, plus the latest from NPR's Jennifer Ludden, Joe Palca and Joel Rose in New York.
NYC Escapes Worst As Irene Roars Through
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 28th, 2011
National Public Radio: With mass transit shut down and mass evacuations ordered, New York was braced for a "once-in-a-century" punch from Irene. But the impact was less than expected. NPR's Joel Rose reports from New York.
Scientists find underground river beneath Amazon
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 28th, 2011
Agence France-Presse: Brazilian scientists have discovered an underground river some 4,000 meters (13,000) feet deep, which flows from west to east like the country's famous waterway. A statement this week from Brazil's National Observatory named the underground river Hamza and said it represents one of two different draining systems for the large rainforest region. A team of scientists led by Elizabeth Pimentel came to the conclusion from studying 241 wells drilled by the state oil giant Petrobras in the Amazon region....
Conservationists around Great Lakes plan for climate change
Posted by Chicago Tribune: None Given on August 28th, 2011
Chicago Tribune: Stuart Goldman, a Nature Conservancy restoration ecologist, sprays herbicide to kill tall goldenrod, an invasive species at the Gensburg-Markham Prairie in Markham this month.
The long-term forecast for the Chicago area calls for more wild rains, hailstorms and flooding. Throughout the Great Lakes region, residents can also expect warmer year-round temperatures, more frequent heat waves, lower lake levels and thinner lake ice.
Conservationists in the region say their efforts to protect resources...
Planet is home to 8.7 million species: study
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 28th, 2011
Agence France-Presse: Some 8.7 million different species exist on Earth, though a tiny amount of those have actually been discovered and catalogued, researchers said Tuesday.
The count, described by the open access journal PLoS Biology in which it is presented as "the most precise calculation ever offered," replaces previous estimates that swung between three million and 100 million.
About 1.25 million species have been discovered and classified since Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus came up in the mid-1700s with...
Study on global plant die-off faces questions
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 27th, 2011
Agence France-Presse: A study on plant productivity that said drought and global warming were killing off plants worldwide is now being questioned by scientists, according to research published Thursday.
In the study published in the journal Science last year, researchers Maosheng Zhao and Steven Running of the University of Montana used NASA satellite data to show that productivity declined slightly from 2000-2009.
Those findings contradicted previous studies from the 1980s and 1990s that showed warmer temperatures...