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Archive for April, 2013
Massive amounts of charcoal enter the worlds’ oceans
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 19th, 2013
ScienceDaily: Wild fire residue is washed out of the soil and transported to the sea by rivers.
Wild fires turn millions of hectares of vegetation into charcoal each year. An international team of researchers led by Thorsten Dittgar from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen and Rudolf Jaffé from Florida International University's Southeast Environmental Research Center in Miami has now shown that this charcoal does not remain in the soil, as previously thought. Instead, it is transported...
How the Old Amazon May Help Explain the New
Posted by Climate News Network: Jan Rocha on April 19th, 2013
Climate News Network: What will be the effect of global warming on the Amazon rainforest? Over the last 30 years, forest fires, most of them deliberately started to clear land by cattle ranchers and soy farmers, have destroyed thousands of square miles of forest. This has increased carbon emissions, reduced rainfall and made the forest more vulnerable to drought.
In 2005 and 2010 unprecedented droughts occurred. Could the rainforest be reduced to a savannah? If the Amazon forest shrinks drastically or disappears altogether,...
New York’s First Desalination Plant Raises Radiation Fears
Posted by Environment News Service: None Given on April 19th, 2013
Environment News Service: Desalination plants are typically built in dry places. But along New York`s Hudson River a different story is unfolding.
A desalination plant has been proposed by United Water New York, a private company, to address the rapid growth of water demand in the expanding New York City suburb of Rockland County.
If built, the Haverstraw Water Supply Project on the Hudson River`s Haverstraw Bay would mark New York State's first foray into desalination, the process of removing salt and particulates...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on New York’s First Desalination Plant Raises Radiation FearsOre. lawmakers consider gold dredging moratorium
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 19th, 2013
Associated Press: A bill to put a five-year moratorium on using suction dredges to mine for gold in key salmon streams is moving through the Oregon Legislature.
By a 3-2 vote Wednesday night, the Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee referred the bill (SB 838) to the Joint Ways and Means Committee for further consideration.
Co-sponsor Sen. Alan Bates, a Medford Democrat, says new federal permit requirements in Idaho and a state moratorium in California are pushing thousands of small-scale gold miners...
GOP Goes Hunting For EPA Emails About Turducken
Posted by Climate Desk: Tim McDonnell on April 19th, 2013
Climate Desk: Earlier this month, when a burst pipe spilled thousands of gallons of heavy oil into an Arkansas suburb, the message from the White House went something like: "Everybody chill, the EPA has it under control." But reporters on the scene found the cleanup orchestrated by the same company, ExxonMobil, that allowed the spill, and heard only crickets when they asked the EPA about its involvement.
Turns out, on some of the nation`s most pressing environmental health issues, the EPA`s transparency record...
The First—And Last—Hearing on Keystone XL Environmental Impact
Posted by Climate Desk: Tim McDonnell on April 19th, 2013
Climate Desk: State Department officials trekked to Grand Island, Nebraska today to hear statements from ranchers, geologists, construction workers, oil executives, and a colorful cast of other characters in the only public hearing on the Department`s latest Environmental Impact Statement for the Keystone XL pipeline.
Speakers for and against the pipeline began lining up at 7 a.m. amid frigid cold and snow for a chance to get three minutes on the soapbox at the Heartland Events Center. There was the blustering,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on The First—And Last—Hearing on Keystone XL Environmental ImpactHaiti: A place where poverty and darkness create more vulnerability to powerful storms
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on April 19th, 2013
ClimateWire: Little comes easy in this tiny coastal village where kids fill plastic buckets with charcoal to sell at market and women sweep bean pods into tidy mounds alongside pastel-painted mud and concrete houses.
Litane Morece, who makes her living selling Chiclets gum and candies in front of the local school, burns a few sticks of wood to make her morning coffee. Showing off her steel stove, which she will place atop three large stones to cook fish and rice for that evening's dinner, Morece says charcoal...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Haiti: A place where poverty and darkness create more vulnerability to powerful stormsStudy outlines overlooked impacts of mountaintop removal
Posted by Charleston Gazette: Ken Ward Jr. on April 19th, 2013
Charleston Gazette: Mountaintop removal is having frequently overlooked impacts on forests, biodiversity, climate and public health, and an updated federal review is needed to more fully examine those issues, according to a new study by government and university scientists.
The study warns that mountaintop removal is not only causing significant changes in the Appalachian topography, but also could be worsening the impacts of global warming.
Authors of the study, published in the peer-reviewed journal BioScience,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Study outlines overlooked impacts of mountaintop removalNew York’s New Abolitionists: The Fight to Stop Fracking
Posted by EcoWatch: None Given on April 19th, 2013
EcoWatch: “I blocked the entrance to the Inergy gas storage facility because I believe that the institutions ... [that should] protect the people and the environment from harm can no longer be relied to do so ... When the government fails to act in the public interest, the public must act on its own.” --Michael Dineen
“I’d rather have bread and water now than no bread and toxic water later as a result of this flawed Inergy project.” --Melissa Chipman
“My small, peaceful act of trespass was intended to...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on New York’s New Abolitionists: The Fight to Stop FrackingKeystone Pipeline Challenge Rejected by Top Texas Court
Posted by Bloomberg: Laurel Brubaker Calkins on April 19th, 2013
Bloomberg: TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s power to condemn land as a common carrier won’t be reviewed by the Texas Supreme Court in one of four state-court challenges against the Keystone XL pipeline, which will carry Canadian tar-sands oil to the Texas coast.
The Texas Supreme Court today refused to hear a challenge by Rhinoceros Ventures Group Inc., whose property lies near the industry refinery hub at Beaumont, Texas. The court denied the petition without comment.
The landowners had urged the court to use...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Keystone Pipeline Challenge Rejected by Top Texas Court