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Archive for July 11th, 2012
Keystone XL: Compromise route around Nebraska Sand Hills still crosses sandy hills
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 11th, 2012
Greenwire: Stepping carefully through a 12-foot-deep canyon gouged into the sandy soil of their family ranch by a long-gone storm, Kurt and Laura Meusch ask a Shakespearean question: What's in a name?
The slice of their pasture now set to host the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which TransCanada Corp. agreed to steer around what Nebraska officials mark as the delicate dunes of the state's prized Sand Hills, feels no different to the Meusches than the ground the company was pressured into sidestepping. A sandy...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Keystone XL: Compromise route around Nebraska Sand Hills still crosses sandy hillsMexico: Chihuahua: Where the rain doesn’t fall any more
Posted by Independent: Simeon Tegel on July 11th, 2012
Independent: Gorged to bursting point, the vulture watches impassively as the twister whips a column of dust past the sun-parched remains of cattle dotting the barren field. If there were such a thing as a textbook image of drought, then this could well be it.
Wracked by a savage drug conflict that has claimed thousands of lives, the last thing northern Mexico needed was a "natural" disaster to compound its woes. But now the region's beef herds are being ravaged by the worst drought on record – one which scientists...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Mexico: Chihuahua: Where the rain doesn’t fall any moreNew research rebuts fracking-global warming connection
Posted by Bloomberg: Mark Drajem on July 11th, 2012
Bloomberg: Replacing coal with natural gas cuts the creation of greenhouse gases that cause global warming, a Cornell University researcher has concluded, rebutting the findings of colleagues at the university in Ithaca, N.Y.
Lawrence M. Cathles, a professor in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, released a paper that says even if high rates of natural gas are leaking out after hydraulic fracturing and during transport, gas will still provide a net benefit over time.
"The only thing that really counts is...
After Russian floods, grief, rage and deep mistrust
Posted by New York Times: Ellen Barry on July 11th, 2012
New York Times: Forty-six new graves were cut on Tuesday in a field outside this city, where catastrophic flooding has left behind a slime of mud and anger. Everyone here had a story of the pitch-black hours of Saturday morning, of being trapped inside homes as water rose to 6 and then to 8 and 10 feet, listening to the screams of neighbors and fear-maddened animals. So it came as a shock, and then as the focus of anger, when officials acknowledged that they had been aware of a threat to Krymsk at 10 the previous...
Australia declares huge reserve
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 11th, 2012
BBC: Australia has declared more than 10 million hectares (24.71 million acres) of Aboriginal land as its largest conservation zone.
The southern Tanami Desert in the Northern Territory is home to the country's most endangered species.
The survival of these animals has come under threat from pests like feral cats and foxes. Fires are also a threat to the area.
Indigenous rangers will now work to protect the area.
The new conservation zone - said to be Australia's largest - encompasses deserts...
Heating Up
Posted by New York Times: Editorial on July 11th, 2012
New York Times: The recent heat wave that has fried much of the country, ruined crops and led to heat-related deaths has again raised the question of whether this and other extreme weather events can be attributed to human-induced climate change. The answer, increasingly, is a qualified yes. Mainstream scientists have always been cautious about drawing a causal link between global warming and any specific weather event; the world has experienced calamitous heat waves, droughts, wildfires and floods throughout its...
Does climate change increase the odds of extreme weather events?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 11th, 2012
Christian Science Monitor: Climate change increased the odds for the kind of extreme weather that prevailed in 2011, a year that saw severe drought in Texas, unusual heat in England and was one of the 15 warmest years on record, scientists reported on Tuesday. Tom Karl, the head of NOAA's Climate office, says man-made warming was a factor in Texas because the state's drought intensity fell too far outside historic patterns of dryness and rain. Overall, 2011 was a year of extreme events - from historic droughts in East Africa,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Does climate change increase the odds of extreme weather events?No matter the drilling method, natural gas is a much-needed tool to battle global warming
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 11th, 2012
ScienceDaily: No matter how you drill it, using natural gas as an energy source is a smart move in the battle against global climate change and a good transition step on the road toward low-carbon energy from wind, solar and nuclear power.
That is the conclusion of a new study by Cornell Professor Lawrence M. Cathles, published in the most recent edition of the peer-reviewed journal Geochemistry, Geophysics and Geosystems. Cathles, a faculty member in Cornell's Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on No matter the drilling method, natural gas is a much-needed tool to battle global warmingDoes climate change increase the odds of extreme weather events?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 11th, 2012
Reuters: Climate change increased the odds for the kind of extreme weather that prevailed in 2011, a year that saw severe drought in Texas, unusual heat in England and was one of the 15 warmest years on record, scientists reported on Tuesday.
Overall, 2011 was a year of extreme events - from historic droughts in East Africa, northern Mexico and the southern United States to an above-average cyclone season in the North Atlantic and the end of Australia's wettest two-year period ever, scientists from the...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Does climate change increase the odds of extreme weather events?Global Warming Tied to Risk of Weather Extremes
Posted by Associated Press: Malcolm Ritter on July 11th, 2012
Associated Press: Last year brought a record heat wave to Texas, massive floods in Bangkok and an unusually warm November in England. How much has global warming boosted the chances of events like that? Quite a lot in Texas and England, but apparently not at all in Bangkok, say new analyses released Tuesday. Scientists can't blame any single weather event on global warming, but they can assess how climate change has altered the odds of such events happening, Tom Peterson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration...