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Archive for February, 2013
Nuclear Power Cannot Compete with Cheap Shale Gas
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 19th, 2013
Climate Central: Nuclear power stations in Canada and the United States are closing because they cannot compete with cheap power being produced from shale gas.
This revolution in the way North America produces its electricity is sending shock waves through the nuclear industry in Europe too. New nuclear build will be spectacularly uneconomic if a fracking industry is successful in the United Kingdom.
Gas prices would tumble as they have across the Atlantic. Even the existing nuclear stations in France, Belgium...
The virtues of being unreasonable on Keystone
Posted by Grist: David Roberts on February 19th, 2013
Grist: I know Andy Revkin of The New York Times writes posts like this in part to bait people like me. But like Popeye, I yam what I yam. So consider me baited. Self-proclaimed moderates like to lecture anti-Keystone XL activists that they are "distracting" and "counterproductive," without spelling out what the hell that means, yet they seem bewildered when that makes the activists in question angry.
Let`s review. This weekend, close to 50,000 people gathered for the biggest rally ever against climate...
United Kingdom: E.ON lobbied for stiff sentences against Kingsnorth activists, papers show
Posted by Guardian: James Ball on February 19th, 2013
Guardian: The UK chief executive of energy giant E.ON repeatedly lobbied the then-energy secretary Ed Miliband and others over the sentencing of activists disrupting the company's power plants, warning that any failure to issue "dissuasive" sentences could "impact" upon investment decisions in the UK.
The warnings, which came while the government was still trying to persuade E.ON and others to invest in next-generation nuclear plants, have been described by activists as "wholly improper".
Dr Paul Golby,...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on United Kingdom: E.ON lobbied for stiff sentences against Kingsnorth activists, papers showNew Global Standard Aims to Reduce Water Waste by Businesses
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 19th, 2013
Yale Environment 360: The UK-based Carbon Trust has introduced what it calls the first global standard on water management and reduction in hopes of encouraging more sustainable water use by businesses. The new standard, created by members of the group along with four early-adopting companies, including Coca-Cola Enterprises, will require businesses to show that they are measuring their water use and reducing consumption on a year-to-year basis, Carbon Trust executive Tom Delay told BBC News. “We look at the various water...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on New Global Standard Aims to Reduce Water Waste by BusinessesNASA Probes Show ‘Alarming’ Water Loss in Middle East
Posted by Climate Central: Lauren Morello on February 19th, 2013
Climate Central: Parts of the Middle East are losing groundwater reserves at "an alarming rate,' according to a new analysis of NASA satellite data.
From the beginning of 2003 to the end of 2009, portions of Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria that lie within the Tigris and Euphrates river basins shed 117 million acre-feet of water. That's roughly equivalent to the volume of the Dead Sea.
About one-fifth of that water disappeared during a drought that began in 2007, which decreased snowpack that feeds the rivers and...
Top predators have sway over climate
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 19th, 2013
ScienceDaily: University of British Columbia researchers have found that when the animals at the top of the food chain are removed, freshwater ecosystems emit a lot more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
"Predators are disappearing from our ecosystems at alarming rates because of hunting and fishing pressure and because of human induced changes to their habitats," says Trisha Atwood, a PhD candidate in the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences in the Faculty of Forestry at UBC.
For their study,...
Grisly Trend: Green Activists Are Facing Deadly Dangers
Posted by Yale Environment 360: Fred Pearce on February 19th, 2013
Yale Environment 360: Where is Sombath Somphone? With every day that passes, the fate of one of Southeast Asia’s most high-profile environmental activists, who was snatched from the streets of Laos in December, becomes more worrisome.
His case has been raised by the State Department and countless NGOs around the world. But the authorities in Laos have offered no clue as to what happened after Sombath was stopped at a police checkpoint on a Saturday afternoon in the Lao capital of Vientiane as he returned home from...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Grisly Trend: Green Activists Are Facing Deadly DangersPollution Does Not Change The Rate Of Droplet Formation In Clouds
Posted by redOrbit: April Flowers on February 19th, 2013
RedOrbit: A little bit of oily and viscous organic material doesn`t seem to matter much when it comes to forming the droplets that make up clouds. This is good news for reducing the uncertainty of climate model predictions.
For accurate climate modeling, understanding cloud formation is essential. This understanding has to start with droplet formation, which occurs when water vapor is attracted to particles floating in the atmosphere. These particles include dust, sea salt from the ocean, microorganisms,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Pollution Does Not Change The Rate Of Droplet Formation In CloudsIs cloud seeding halting flooding in Indonesia?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 19th, 2013
Guardian: Indonesia is banking on an unusual strategy to prevent further flooding in its inundated capital Jakarta, and officials claim that they are already seeing positive results.
They are using 'cloud seeding' -- a weather modification technology often resorted to during drought. The method involves injecting clouds with substances that encourage the formation of ice crystals heavy enough to fall, thereby speeding up the production of rain.
Rain is the last thing that Indonesia needs now, as it has...
Oil Sands Mining Uses Up Almost as Much Energy As It Produces
Posted by InsideClimate: None Given on February 19th, 2013
InsideClimate: The average "energy returned on investment," or EROI, for conventional oil is roughly 25:1. In other words, 25 units of oil-based energy are obtained for every one unit of other energy that is invested to extract it. But tar sands oil is in a category all its own. Tar sands retrieved by surface mining has an EROI of only about 5:1, according to research scheduled to be released Tuesday. Tar sands retrieved from deeper beneath the earth, through steam injection, fares even worse, with a maximum...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Oil Sands Mining Uses Up Almost as Much Energy As It Produces