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Archive for November, 2011
Energy Secretary Stephen Chu to Defend Solyndra Loan to Congress
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 17th, 2011
New York Times: An unrepentant energy secretary will square off on Thursday with a Republican-led committee that has spent months arguing that his department showed political favoritism and incompetence when it approved a $535 million loan guarantee for Solyndra, a California manufacturer of solar modules that later went bankrupt.
Energy Secretary Stephen Chu will tell the House Energy and Commerce Committee that "when it comes to the clean energy race, America faces a simple choice: compete or accept defeat,'...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Energy Secretary Stephen Chu to Defend Solyndra Loan to CongressUnited States: Route Proposals May Ease an Oil Pipeline Bottleneck
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 17th, 2011
New York Times: With the timing, and perhaps the future, of the Keystone XL pipeline project from Canada's oil sands to the Gulf Coast now uncertain, two alternatives to the hotly contested project have begun emerging.
Seaway Crude Pipeline's pump station in Freeport, Tex. Enbridge, of Canada, bought a 50 percent stake in Seaway.
Both would try to solve one of the problems that the Keystone project was meant to address: the shortage of pipeline capacity for carrying oil from a main terminal in Cushing, Okla.,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on United States: Route Proposals May Ease an Oil Pipeline BottleneckThe Fracturing of Pennsylvania
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 17th, 2011
New York Times: Amwell Township is a 44-square-mile plot of steep ravines and grassy pasturelands planted with alfalfa, trefoil and timothy in the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania. It’s home to some 4,000 people, most of whom live in villages named Amity, Lone Pine and Prosperity. From some views, this diamond-shaped cut of land looks like the hardscrabble farmland it has been since the 18th century, when English and Scottish settlers successfully drove away the members of a Native American village called Annawanna,...
: How climate change will affect NY
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 17th, 2011
Associated Press: Devastating floods like those caused in upstate New York by the remnants of Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee are among the climate change effects predicted in a new report written by 50 scientists and released yesterday by the state's energy research agency.
The 600-page report called ClimAID, intended as a resource for planners, policymakers, farmers and residents, says New Yorkers should begin preparing for hotter summers, snowier winters, severe floods and a range of other effects on...
UN Chief Calls for Support on Climate-Change Mitigation
Posted by Voice of America: Ron Corben on November 16th, 2011
Voice of America: U.N. Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon in Thailand to assess the country’s flood crisis says the global community needs to back funding for climate-change mitigation to follow up the promises made during the 2009 Copenhagen climate conference. Ban's call comes three weeks before a climate-change conference in Durban, South Africa.
The secretary-general, speaking to journalists Wednesday, renewed a plea to the global community to assist in meeting the financial costs of climate change on economies...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on UN Chief Calls for Support on Climate-Change MitigationStudy: Triple threat paints grim future for frogs
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 16th, 2011
Associated Press: Frogs, salamanders and other amphibians may eventually have no safe haven left on the globe because of a triple threat of worsening scourges, a new study predicts.
Scientists have long known that amphibians are under attack from a killer fungus, climate change and shrinking habitat. In the study appearing online Wednesday in the journal Nature, computer models project that in about 70 years those three threats will spread, leaving no part of the world immune from one of the problems.
Frogs...
Bleak future for amphibians turns into ‘terrifying’ threat of extinction
Posted by Guardian: Camila Ruz on November 16th, 2011
Guardian: If the rapid extermination of animals, plants and other species really is the "sixth mass extinction" as scientists warn, then it is the amphibian of the tree of life that is undergoing the most drastic pruning.
In research described as "terrifying" by an independent expert, scientists now predict the future for frogs, toads, newts, salamanders and their kin is even more bleak than conservationists had realised.
Around half of amphibian species are in decline, while a third are already threatened...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Bleak future for amphibians turns into ‘terrifying’ threat of extinction“Alps under the ice” gives clues to global warming
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 16th, 2011
Reuters: The mystery of how a subglacial mountain range the size of the Alps formed up to 250 million years ago has finally been solved, scientists said on Wednesday, which could help map the effects of climate change.
The Gamburtsev subglacial mountains are buried 3 km below the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, the largest remaining body of ice on the planet.
Experts are trying to learn more about the frozen continent as even a small thaw could swamp low-lying coastal areas and cities. Antarctica contains...
EU biofuel target seen driving species loss: study
Posted by Reuters: Charlie Dunmore on November 16th, 2011
Reuters: A European Union target to promote the use of biofuels will accelerate global species loss because it encourages the conversion of pasture, savanna and forests into new cropland, EU scientists have warned.
The finding raises fresh doubts over the benefits of biofuels, which were once seen as the most effective way of cutting road transport emissions, but whose environmental credentials have increasingly been called into question.
The scale of species loss in areas converted into new cropland...
Scientists: NY must prepare for climate change now
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on November 16th, 2011
Associated Press: Devastating floods like those caused in upstate New York by the remnants of Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee are among the climate change effects predicted in a new report written by 50 scientists and released Wednesday by the state's energy research agency. The 600-page report called ClimAID, intended as a resource for planners, policymakers, farmers and residents, says New Yorkers should begin preparing for hotter summers, snowier winters, severe floods and a range of other effects on the...