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Archive for August, 2011
Canada: Green groups seek wider review of Enbridge project
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 26th, 2011
Reuters: Five environmental groups are asking Canada's energy regulator to deny Enbridge Inc's request to reverse the flow in part of an oil pipeline, arguing that the company is trying to avoid a larger review for a bigger long-term project.
The Canadian and U.S. green groups said they believe Enbridge is looking to gradually advance its Trailbreaker project, which it proposed in 2008, by first asking the National Energy Board to reverse to flow of Line 9. The pipeline extends to Sarnia, Ontario, from...
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Extreme weather: ‘the new normal’
Posted by Seattle Times: Julie Cart and Hailey Branson-Potts on August 26th, 2011
Seattle Times: Oklahomans are used to cruel climate. Frigid winters and searing summers, often made more unbearable by scouring winds. Yet, it's been a year of whipsaw weather, even by Oklahoma standards.
February was so cold - the wind chill made the temperature feel like 16 below zero - that Tim Gillard installed a door in the long hallway of his home in the small farming town of Marshall, walling off three rooms to heat the rest of the house more affordably. In this summer's relentless heat, his family huddles...
Longer, hotter heat waves in store for California
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 26th, 2011
Central Valley Business Times: California can expect more frequent and more dangerous heat waves in the coming decades, the result of global warming, according to a new climate-modeling study commissioned by the California Air Resources Board.
Researchers using a new, more comprehensive weather-modeling method have found that the incidence of prolonged hot spells – those lasting 10 or more days -- could rise by a factor of two to ten by the 2090s, depending on the region, CARB says Friday.
“Along with reducing our climate-warming...
Philippines: The looming water crisis
Posted by Journal: None Given on August 26th, 2011
Journal: HISTORY is replete with dramas that caused nations and empires to perish. Yet today, the very existence of our civilization is threatened and no one seems to pay much attention to this fact.
Not the UNFCCC and all the Clean Development Mechanisms (CDM) and REDD+ that are being pushed to lower emissions in developing countries.
Why all the fuzz on low carbon economies? Why don’t we just take the bull by the horn and have the polluters lower their Greenhouse gases (GHG) and restore the CO2 level...
Link between climate change and conflict
Posted by Radio Australia: None Given on August 26th, 2011
Radio Australia: It's an age old question; what causes conflict. and what starts a war?
It's a big question .. and one that - perhaps surprisingly - climate scientists have been studying. New research at Columbia University in New York has found a link between civil war and unusually hot and dry conditions in tropical countries.
i>Presenter: Cathy Harper
Speakers: Solomon Hsiang, Colombia University; Mahendra Kumar, director of the Centre of Climate Change at the University of Fiji; Andy Solow, Woods Hole...
Scientists discover massive underground river 13,000 feet beneath the Amazon
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 25th, 2011
Mongabay: Researchers at Brazil's National Observatory have discovered evidence of a massive underground river flowing deep beneath the Amazon River, reports the AFP.
Presenting this week at the 12th International Congress of the Brazilian Geophysical Society in Rio de Janeiro, Elizabeth Tavares Pimentel reported the existence of a 6,000-kilometer-long (3,700-mile) river flowing some 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) under the Amazon.
Like the Amazon, the river flows west to east, but is considerably wider...
Los Angeles River Tries on New Role, as Waterway
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 25th, 2011
New York Times: As they stood on the bank, the small and eager group exchanged the requisite disparaging jokes about the Los Angeles River, best known for its uninviting concrete channels that make many think of a drainage ditch.
"You think we'll turn into a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle if the water touches us?' asked Aaron Goldstein, one of the group.
They could be forgiven for their dark humor. After all, there had not been an approved float trip down the river in more than seven decades. For many people,...
Malaysia: FBI questioned over ties with corrupt official
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 25th, 2011
Mongabay: Logging roads and damaged forest in Sarawak compared with healthy forest in Brunei. In March Taib claimed that 70 percent of Sarawak's forest was "intact", a claim that was quickly undermined with a simple "flyover" using Google Earth. Photo courtesy of Google Earth.
Activists are questioning the FBI over the agency's rental of office space in a building owned by the family of a controversial Malaysian official.
The Bruno Manser Fund and the Borneo Project, groups that campaign on behalf of...
Africa Remains Hamstrung in Battle for Water and Sanitation
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 25th, 2011
Inter Press Service: The statistics coming out of Africa are staggering: 40 percent of Africa’s 1 billion people live in urban areas and 60 percent live in slums, where water supplies and sanitation are "severely inadequate", according to the Nairobi-based U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).
The worst affected are countries in sub-Saharan Africa where shortage of financial resources, bureaucratic mismanagement and lack of political leadership are hampering progress towards resolving longstanding problems relating to...
Martin Luther King’s legacy and the power of nonviolent civil disobedience
Posted by Guardian: Bill McKibben on August 25th, 2011
Guardian: I didn't think it was possible, but my admiration for Martin Luther King, Jr., grew even stronger these past days. As I headed to jail as part of the first wave of what is turning into the biggest civil disobedience action in the environmental movement for many years, I had the vague idea that I would write something. Not an epic like King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," but at least, you know, a blog post. Or a tweet.
But frankly, I wasn't up to it. The police, surprised by how many people...