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Archive for January, 2012
Where did winter go? Birds, bees and some Londoners are confused
Posted by ClimateWire: Jeremy Lovell on January 18th, 2012
ClimateWire: Bees are buzzing, flowers are blooming and trees are budding across southern England after a topsy-turvy 12 months, yet it is still mid-winter. While people scratch their heads over stark changes, woodpeckers are plunging into an abnormally early mating season.
The coldest December on record in 2010 was followed by the warmest and driest spring, bringing with it widespread drought that remains in force across many areas of southern and eastern England after the second warmest and driest autumn...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Where did winter go? Birds, bees and some Londoners are confusedObama administration rejects Keystone pipeline
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson on January 18th, 2012
Washington Post: President Obama, denouncing a "rushed and arbitrary deadline' set by congressional Republicans, announced Wednesday that he was rejecting a Canadian firm's application for a permit to build and operate the Keystone XL pipeline, a massive project that would have stretched from Canada's oil sands to refineries in Texas.
Obama said that a Feb. 21 deadline set by Congress as part of the two-month payroll tax cut extension had made it impossible to do an adequate review of the project proposed by TransCanada,...
Follow the oil sands money trail
Posted by Financial Post: None Given on January 18th, 2012
Financial Post: Last week, on the eve of the environmental review for the $5.5-billion Northern Gateway pipeline project that would carry Alberta oil to Kitimat for export to Asia, Canada’s Minister for Natural Resources, Joe Oliver, expressed concern that foreign-funded environmentalists would jeopardize the review and block the pipeline. Oliver didn’t mention my name, but the research that raised concerns about the foreign funding of environmentalism in Canada is apparently mine.
For five years, on my own nickel,...
Obama’s Keystone pipeline rejection is hard to accept
Posted by Washington Post: Editorial on January 18th, 2012
Washington Post: On Wednesday, the State Department announced that it recommended rejecting the application of TransCanada Corp. to build the Keystone XL oil pipeline, and Mr. Obama concurred. The project would have transported heavy, oil-like bitumen from Alberta -- and, potentially, from unconventional oil deposits in states such as Montana -- to U.S. refineries on the Gulf of Mexico coast.
Environmentalists have fought Keystone XL furiously. In November, the State Department tried to put off the politically...
Obama rejects pipeline, blames Republicans
Posted by E and E: Elana Schor on January 18th, 2012
E and E: President Obama blamed Republicans today for teeing up a rejection of the Keystone XL oil pipeline that he called "not a judgment on the merits," setting off a political conflagration likely to rage until Election Day.
House Republicans pounced on the president's denial of a permit for the $7 billion link between the Canadian oil sands and Gulf Coast refineries, promising to make the White House pay for nixing a project they tout as an economic boon. But the GOP's legislative route to overriding...
Blocking Keystone Won’t Stop Oil Sands Production
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 18th, 2012
National Public Radio: President Obama is feeling election-year pressure over the pending decision on the Keystone XL pipeline. Republicans say the Canadian project would provide the U.S. with oil and new jobs, but environmentalists want Obama to block it. They say Alberta's oil sands generate more greenhouse gases than other kinds of oil, and Americans must not become dependent on such a dirty source of energy. But it may already be too late to change that.
Tucked in among the ranch houses in Burnaby, British Columbia,...
Butterflies and birds unable to keep pace with climate change in Europe
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 18th, 2012
ScienceDaily: Butterflies and birds are no longer able to keep up with climate change. Compared with twenty years ago, butterflies are now 135 kilometres behind the shifting climate zones and birds more than 200 kilometres. This is one of the findings from a study by European researchers published Jan. 9, 2012 in the journal Nature Climate Change.
A lack of reliable long-term data makes recording the effects of climate change on biodiversity a huge challenge. The data for butterflies and birds, however, is...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Butterflies and birds unable to keep pace with climate change in EuropeClimate Change Ripples Through Mountain Ecosystems
Posted by LiveScience: Joseph Castro on January 17th, 2012
LiveScience: Like dominoes given one nudge, climate change in the form of reduced winter snowfall on mountaintops has subtle but powerful cascading effects felt throughout entire ecosystems, a new study finds.
In the northern mountains of Arizona, elk spend their winters in lower elevations where there's much less snow and the cold is less pronounced. But the decrease in high-elevation snowfall in the mountains over the last 25 years has allowed elk to forage in these areas throughout winter. Researchers found...
Shale Gas: A Boon That Could Stunt Alternatives, Study Says
Posted by National Geographic: Mason Inman on January 17th, 2012
National Geographic: Shale gas has transformed the U.S. energy landscape in the past several years-but it may crowd out renewable energy and other ways of cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, a new study warns.
A team of researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology used economic modeling to show that new abundant natural gas is likely to have a far more complex impact on the energy scene than is generally assumed. If climate policy continues to play out in the United States with a relatively weak set of...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Shale Gas: A Boon That Could Stunt Alternatives, Study SaysBulgaria cancels Chevron shale gas permit
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 17th, 2012
Reuters: The Bulgarian government, preparing a full ban on shale gas drilling due to environmental concerns, on Tuesday cancelled a exploration permit for the unconventional energy source that it granted to U.S. energy major Chevron in June.
The centre-right government decided Chevron can still prospect for oil and gas in northeastern Bulgaria but only by using conventional drilling techniques and not hydraulic fracturing, which involves injecting water mixed with sand and chemicals at high pressure into...