Archive for November 14th, 2012

Fracking Chemical Disclosure Database Released Today

EcoWatch: Today, SkyTruth released a database created from more than 27,000 industry reports on the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” The data were extracted from chemical disclosure reports submitted by industry to FracFocus.org, for gas and oil wells fracked between January 2011- August 2012. The SkyTruth Fracking Chemical Open Database is the first free resource enabling research and analysis of the chemicals used in fracking operations nationwide, and is available now for download...

Anti-Fracking Groups Demand Release of PA Well Water Test Results

EcoWatch: Twenty-five organizations sent a letter to Governor Tom Corbett today criticizing the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP) well water testing and notification policies as outdated, lacking transparency and inadequate to protect residents and drinking water from pollution caused by gas drilling. The groups called on the Governor to take immediate action to reform DEP’s procedures and disclose all data collected through DEP water tests but only partially reported to households...

In Texas Pipeline Fight, People Step In as Green Groups Step Aside

Inside Climate News: Eleanor Fairchild has been arrested twice: once outside the White House in August 2011 and again last month while standing on her own property near Winnsboro, Texas. In both cases, the 78-year old landowner was protesting the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which will cut through her farm on its way from Cushing, Okla. to refineries on the Gulf Coast. Fairchild's latest arrest has made her a celebrity of the anti-pipeline movement, which was once dominated by the nation's largest environmental groups....

Global drought may have changed less than thought

ScienceNews: Droughts shrivel crops, threaten communities, and wither ecosystems. Studies claim global warming is increasing drought worldwide, and may already have done so. But the standard method of assessing drought has exaggerated drying trends over the past 60 years, scientists report in the Nov. 14 Nature. The 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that “more intense and longer droughts have been observed over wider areas since the 1970s.” Its findings were largely based...

Climate change increases stress, need for restoration on grazed public lands

PhysOrg: Eight researchers in a new report have suggested that climate change is causing additional stress to many western rangelands, and as a result land managers should consider a significant reduction, or in some places elimination of livestock and other large animals from public lands. A growing degradation of grazing lands could be mitigated if large areas of Bureau of Land Management and USDA Forest Service lands became free of use by livestock and "feral ungulates" such as wild horses and burros,...

Will Al Gore’s 24hrs of Reality campaign start to hit home?

BusinessGreen: On Thursday evening I will be heading to a quiet TV studio in East London to participate in Al Gore's 24 Hours of Reality: The Dirty Weather Report. This is an on-line, worldwide live broadcast aiming to connect the dots between global climate change and extreme weather events. It is the second global event that Al Gore has organised aiming to bring the world's attention to the connection between climate crisis and increasingly devastating storms, wildfires, heatwaves and drought. As he succinctly...