RSS Feed
Archive for February, 2012
Poll shows support for Keystone pipeline, environmental regulations
Posted by The Hill: Ben Geman on February 25th, 2012
The Hill: New polling data shows strong support for approving the Keystone XL oil sands pipeline that the Obama administration rejected in January, a decision that unleashed a torrent of GOP attacks against President Obama. The Pew Research Center poll released Thursday finds 66 percent who have heard about the issue say the proposed pipeline to bring oil sands from Alberta, Canada, to Gulf Coast refineries should be approved, while 23 percent say it shouldn’t. The data reveals a partisan split but substantial...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Poll shows support for Keystone pipeline, environmental regulationsCanada: There is a way to clean up ‘dirty’ oil’s problems
Posted by Globe and Mail: Jeffrey Simpson on February 25th, 2012
Globe and Mail: Canada's bitumen resources have a problem, and neither the companies that wish to exploit bitumen or the governments trying to help them seem to understand it.
Bitumen, from which oil is produced, takes more energy per barrel to get at than conventional oil pumped from the ground. Because it needs more energy, bitumen-derived oil produces more greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming than conventional oil.
That gap -- between bitumen-derived and conventional oil -- is the problem...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Canada: There is a way to clean up ‘dirty’ oil’s problemsCourt Says Landowners Own Groundwater
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 25th, 2012
New York Times: The State Supreme Court on Friday ruled that landowners can consider the groundwater underneath their holdings as personal property. “We held long ago that oil and gas are owned in place, and we find no reason to treat groundwater differently,” Justice Nathan L. Hecht wrote for the court. The case involved a landowner who had been unable to get permission from local groundwater managers to use as much groundwater as he sought. Thomas Mason, a lawyer who specializes in water rights with the Austin...
A Second N.Y. Ruling Upholds Local Authority Over Gas Drilling
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 25th, 2012
New York Times: After two state judges upheld drilling bans established by two upstate towns in New York, the question becomes: how many more towns will go ahead and pass their own prohibitions on hydrofracking?
A New York state judge ruled Friday that the town of Middlefield in Otsego County can ban natural gas drilling within its borders, the second time in a week that a state court has affirmed local authority over the drilling process known as hydrofracking.
Earlier this week, another state judge upheld...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on A Second N.Y. Ruling Upholds Local Authority Over Gas DrillingForests: the fire next time
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 24th, 2012
Guardian: Forest fires are a fact of life, and in some regions an important part of the natural ecosystem, but that does not make them welcome. Wildfire sears an astonishing 350 to 400 million hectares each year: this is an area of land greater than the surface of India. The economic costs of bushfires are prodigious – one sustained blaze in Texas in 2011 did damage estimated at $5bn – but the human costs, too, are cruel. A team led by Tasmanian and Canadian scientists has just made a careful estimate of the...
Deepwater Horizon disaster: worst oil spill in US history gets its day in court
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 24th, 2012
Guardian: After thousands of hours of legal deliberations, the accumulation of 72m pages of documents and the recorded testimony of 303 witnesses, it will fall to an engineering expert who blamed the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster on a "multi-decade history of organisational malfunction and short-sightedness" to frame the case against BP.
The civil trial, which opens before Judge Carl Barbier in a federal court in New Orleans on Monday, is expected to be epic by any definition, unmatched in scale or legal...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Deepwater Horizon disaster: worst oil spill in US history gets its day in courtTexas Drought Eases, But It’s Too Late for Some
Posted by Climate Central: Andrew Freedman on February 24th, 2012
Climate Central: Defying seasonal climate forecasts, this winter has been very good to Texas, which has been locked in the grips of one of the worst droughts in state history. But the unexpectedly generous winter storms have come too late for some, since water supplies are still running low.
As I reported in late January, managers of the Lower Colorado River are likely to take the unprecedented step of denying water for rice growers in Southeast Texas, putting several thousand jobs at risk. Although the decision...
Climate change may have caused Mayan civilization’s collapse
Posted by Christian Science Monitor: Charles Choi on February 24th, 2012
Christian Science Monitor: The collapse of the ancient Mayan civilization may have been linked to relatively modest dry spells, researchers now say.
The ancient Mayan empire once stretched across an area about the size of Texas, with cities and fields occupying what is now southern Mexico and northern Central America, including the countries of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras. The height of the Mayan empire, known as the Classic period, reached from approximately A.D. 250 to at least A.D. 900.
The ancient...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Climate change may have caused Mayan civilization’s collapseA Curse on Hydropower Projects in the Amazon?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 24th, 2012
Inter Press Service: "Perhaps it's the curse of Rondônia," joked Ari Ott, referring to teething troubles with the first turbine of the Santo Antônio hydroelectric plant which was intended to kick off a new cycle of huge power projects in Brazil's Amazon jungle region.
The enormous turbine, designed to generate 71.6 megawatts of electricity, overheated during initial tests in December and the necessary repairs delayed its coming onstream, now announced for late March, by at least three months.
Professor Ott, of...
The fracking frontline: a tale of two Pennsylvanias – video
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 24th, 2012
Guardian: In what the Pennsylvania governor says will 'level the playing field for gas exploration', a controversial bill has been passed, rendering previous zoning laws void. With the new bill hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, can take place as close as 90 metres (300ft) from residential houses. This film visits Dallas township where the citizens' engagement has kept the gas exploration at bay – for now
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on The fracking frontline: a tale of two Pennsylvanias – video