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Archive for April 5th, 2013
Utah governor agonizing over Nevada’s water play
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 5th, 2013
Associated Press: Utah Gov. Gary Herbert said Thursday he was struggling over whether to let Las Vegas pump massive amounts of groundwater from the Nevada-Utah border.
Herbert promised a decision within weeks, while saying he was reluctant to sign an agreement with Nevada. If Herbert refuses to sign the pact, Las Vegas will grab the groundwater anyway, his lawyers say.
The water comes from an ice-age aquifer under 120-mile-long Snake Valley, which supports ranching and farming on both sides of the Utah-Nevada...
Peru bores through Andes to water desert after century of dreams
Posted by Reuters: Mitra Taj on April 5th, 2013
Reuters: Peru's Olmos Valley might be a desert now, with rare rains and rivers that trickle to life for just a few months a year, but a radical engineering solution for water scarcity could soon create an agricultural bonanza here.
Fresh water that now tumbles down the eastern flank of the Andes mountains to the Amazon basin and eventually the Atlantic Ocean will instead move west through the mountains to irrigate this patch of desert on Peru's coast. It will then drain into the Pacific Ocean.
The Herculean...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Peru bores through Andes to water desert after century of dreamsExxon Oil Spill Could Be 40% Larger Than Company Estimates, EPA Figures Show
Posted by InsideClimate: None Given on April 5th, 2013
InsideClimate: UPDATE: After this story was published, ExxonMobil updated the joint command incident report for Friday. The report now says that approximately 5,000 barrels of oil spilled in Mayflower.
Since ExxonMobil’s Pegasus pipeline ruptured and leaked Canadian oil across an Arkansas suburb a week ago, the company has maintained that only "a few thousand barrels" spilled at the site.
"We've had no reason to change that at this stage," Exxon spokesman Charles Engelmann told InsideClimate News on Friday....
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Exxon Oil Spill Could Be 40% Larger Than Company Estimates, EPA Figures ShowPeruvian Ice Cores Reveal History Of Earth’s Tropical Climate
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 5th, 2013
RedOrbit: Earth`s tropical climate history has been revealed in unprecedented detail – year by year, for almost 1,800 years – by two annually dated ice cores drawn from the tropical Peruvian Andes.
In 2003, a research team led by Ohio State University retrieved core samples from a Peruvian ice cap. They noticed some startling similarities to ice cores they had gathered from Tibet and the Himalayas. Even though the cores were taken from opposite sides of the planet, patterns in the chemical composition of...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Peruvian Ice Cores Reveal History Of Earth’s Tropical ClimateSahara Went from Green to Desert in a Flash
Posted by LiveScience: Becky Oskin on April 5th, 2013
LiveScience: From lakes and grasslands with hippos and giraffes to a vast desert, North Africa's sudden geographical transformation 5,000 years ago was one of the planet's most dramatic climate shifts.
The transformation took place nearly simultaneously across the continent's northern half, a new study finds. The results will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.
The findings come from analyses of dust blown west from Africa and dropped into the Atlantic Ocean....
Cow power: Indiana farm uses manure to fuel its dairy trucks
Posted by Mother Nature Network: John Platt on April 5th, 2013
Mother Nature Network: Fair Oaks Farms in Indiana loves its manure. The farm has about 30,000 milk cows which produce more than a fair amount of manure every day. Several years ago the farm started putting that manure to good use, using it to power its barns and other structures. Now, according to a report in The New York Times, it is taking the manure one step further. Fair Oaks now converts some of its manure into enough compressed natural gas (CNG) to keep its fleet of 42 tractor-trailers on the road every day. "As...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Cow power: Indiana farm uses manure to fuel its dairy trucksClimate change already felt by farmers:
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 5th, 2013
USA Today: I am a third-generation farmer from north-central Montana. My wife, Sharla, and I farm the same land homesteaded by my grandparents a century ago, continuing a Montana tradition of making a living off the land. We've farmed this land for nearly 40 years.
For the average American, particularly those of us from rural America, the political conversation about climate change seems worlds away. For us, warmer winters and extreme weather events are already presenting new challenges for our way of life....
A Long Drought Tests Texas Cattle Ranchers’ Patience and Creativity
Posted by New York Times: Stephanie Strom on April 5th, 2013
New York Times: Gary Price is a rarity among cattle ranchers these days. He’s making money on his herd of 200 cows in this tiny town about an hour south of Dallas-Fort Worth. “The market is very good, and we’ve been able to keep what we’ve needed to buy, feed and such, to a minimum,” Mr. Price said, as he strolled in a pasture on his 77 Ranch, which is planted in native grasses, stands of mesquite and a fair number of what most people would call weeds. “That’s benefited us during this drought that has pushed prices...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on A Long Drought Tests Texas Cattle Ranchers’ Patience and CreativitySouth Africa Game Reserve Poisons Rhino Horns to Halt Rising Slaughter
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 5th, 2013
Yale Environment 360: Officials at a private game reserve in South Africa say they have injected into the horns of more than 100 rhinos a parasiticide that will make humans sick if they ingest the horns. As the rhinos’ death toll continues to escalate in South Africa, where nearly 700 animals were poached last year to supply a growing black market for their horns, officials say bold action was necessary. “Despite all the interventions by police, the body count has continued to climb,” Andrew Parker, chief executive of...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on South Africa Game Reserve Poisons Rhino Horns to Halt Rising SlaughterFamine forecasting systems still failing to spur action
Posted by SciDevNet: Richa Malhotra on April 5th, 2013
SciDevNet: Further scientific improvements to famine forecasting will do little to save more lives without reforms to the way in which the humanitarian community uses them, according to a report published today (5 April). Despite being preventable because of sophisticated early warning systems, famine crises continue to be deadly. This is because warnings are systematically ignored by donor governments, agencies and governments in affected countries, says the report, published by Chatham House, an independent...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Famine forecasting systems still failing to spur action