Archive for July, 2012

Keystone Pipeline Advances

New York Times: TransCanada, the company seeking to build the 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline from oil sands formations in Alberta to Gulf Coast refineries, received the final go-ahead from the federal government on Friday for the southern leg of the project. The Army Corps of Engineers granted the final permits for a 400-mile portion of the pipeline that will run from the major oil depots of Cushing, Okla., to refineries on the Texas coast. President Obama has blessed the southern portion of the pipeline, now...

Paraguay Opens Doors to Unregulated Foreign Investment

Inter Press Service: In his first month as president of Paraguay, Federico Franco has thrown open the doors of his country to foreign investments that have raised questions about environmental safety. Among the measures taken by the new government were fast-track approval of the planting of transgenic cotton and authorisation of the construction of an aluminium plant. Franco was named to replace Fernando Lugo after the centre-left former Catholic bishop was removed as president in a swift impeachment trial on Jun....

Climate Change, Extreme Weather Link Becoming More Apparent

Reuters: Scientists are finding evidence that man-made climate change has raised the risks of individual weather events, such as floods or heatwaves, marking a big step towards pinpointing local costs and ways to adapt to freak conditions. "We're seeing a great deal of progress in attributing a human fingerprint to the probability of particular events or series of events," said Christopher Field, co-chairman of a U.N. report due in 2014 about the impacts of climate change. Experts have long blamed a...

Two dead and 100,000 without power after storms hit north-east US

Guardian: Heavy thunderstorms and high winds hit the north-east US on Thursday, felling trees and power lines and causing a state of emergency to be declared in the upstate New York city of Elmira. Two people were killed in the storms: a 61-year-old man who died after scaffolding collapsed outside a church in Brooklyn, and a woman who was hit by a tree in Pennsylvania. Some 33,000 people were left without power following the storms, which moved through New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut....

Scientists discover ‘Grand Canyon’ of Antarctica buried deep in ice

Mongabay: British researchers have discovered a one mile deep rift valley hidden beneath the icy surface of West Antarctica, according to research published this week in Nature. The canyon may be hastening ice loss in the region. Scientists from the University of Aberdeen and British Antarctic Survey (BAS) made the discovery below Ferrigno Ice Stream, an extremely remote area that has been visited only once previously. They used ice-penetrating radar to map the valley. Site of the rift valley (marked...

US Drought Linked to Climate Change

Voice of America: As one of the worst droughts ever continues to grip major portions of the United States, a new study links this summer's record-setting dry spell, and other extreme weather events, to the world's warming climate. Parched earth In Texas, the earth is parched. Rivers have dried up, and pasture land has turned brown from the heat. It's been this way since January 2011. The southwestern state is the fourth largest producer of rice in the United States but the drought could cut production by half....

Islamabad’s taps dry up as water shortages worsen

AlertNet: Fatima Batool lives in a two-story house in a posh residential area of Islamabad that features shiny air-conditioned shopping plazas and restaurant-lined streets. But for the past two months, she has been lacking one key thing: water. As the reservoirs that supply Pakistan's capital with water run dry, so has Batool's tap. "It really feels traumatic, like living in a village, when one has taps like this without water for weeks,' said the 34-year-old mother of three, as she tested a tap in her...

Could Africa hold the answers to America’s drought woes?

ClimateWire: The world's poorest continent could offer clues to how America's farmers might cope with a hotter, drier climate, leading agriculture experts say. In the African Sahel -- the belt of semiarid savanna running from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea -- farmers have successfully fought back an expanding Sahara and turned once dry, uncultivated scrub into highly productive farmland. The key to their success has been allowing trees to grow, where they once cut them down, and adopting agricultural...

China accused of downplaying Beijing flood damage, deaths

USA Today: Government authorities raised the death toll Thursday to 77 from the previous total of 37, but some suspect the toll could be much higher from a deluge Saturday and flash flooding. China's state-controlled media continue to publish and broadcast positive news about the relief effort while censors delete negative postings online. Southern Weekend, a sometimes daring weekly newspaper based in southern China, lost eight pages of flood reporting to the censors, several of its journalists complained...

Arizona researcher explores dangers of living in dust

Arizona Republic News: Giant monsoon dust storms that roll across the Valley and coat everything in a fine film of dirt are becoming more frequent, according to the experts. That means more deadly accidents, more harmful pollution and more health problems for people breathing in the irritating dust particles. But one leading researcher says there also needs to be a lot more study of the effects of the tons of dust being kicked up into the air, especially the hidden health costs for millions of people living in Arizona`s...