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Archive for July, 2013
Who Pays the Cost of Fracking?
Posted by EcoWatch: None Given on July 16th, 2013
EcoWatch: Raising new concerns about a little-examined dimension of the fracking debate, Environment America Research & Policy Center today released a report analyzing state and federal financial assurance requirements for oil and gas drilling operations. As fracking expands at a frenzied pace in several states and federal officials consider allowing fracking near national parks and forests and key drinking water sources, Who Pays the Costs of Fracking? reveals current bonding requirements are inadequate to...
EU to ban fipronil to protect honeybees
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 16th, 2013
Guardian: A widely used insect nerve agent that harms bees will be banned from use on corn and sunflowers in Europe from the end of 2013, after member states overwhelmingly backed the proposal in a vote on Tuesday. However, the UK once again failed to back measures to restrict pesticide use.
Fipronil is used in more than 70 countries and on more than 100 different crops, but in May the European Food Safety Authority labelled it a "high acute risk" to honeybees. A similar assessment by the EFSA on three...
Thousands presumed dead after India floods
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 16th, 2013
Associated Press: More than 5,700 people missing since floods devastated northern India last month are presumed dead, officials have said, as rescuers struggled to bring aid to affected villages.
Vijay Bahuguna, chief minister of the state of Uttarakhand, said the government would give 500,000 rupees (£6,000) to the families of each victim who may have perished in the floods and landslides that hit the Himalayan region in June.
The state declared those missing for the past month presumed dead so it could compensate...
Sand dunes, coral reefs protect coasts against climate change
Posted by Hill: Zack Colman on July 16th, 2013
Hill: Protecting sand dunes and coral reefs can help defend the United States’s coasts against costly extreme-weather events linked to climate change, according to a new study.
Maintaining coastal habitats could halve the people, low-income families, the elderly and total value of residential property most exposed to rising sea levels, floods and storms associated with climate change, the study concluded.
“Extreme weather, sea-level rise and degraded coastal ecosystems are placing people and property...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Sand dunes, coral reefs protect coasts against climate changeLoss of natural buffers could double number of people at risk from hurricanes
Posted by Scientific America: Evan Lehmann and ClimateWire on July 16th, 2013
Scientific America: If the United States lost its shield of natural coastal defenses, about twice as many Americans would be exposed to dangerous storm surges and other hurricane threats, according to new research.
Protective buffers like mangroves, wetlands and oyster beds currently buffer about 67 percent of the nation's seashores from ocean forces like wind and waves. If they disappear, more than a million additional people and billions of dollars in property value will be vulnerable to damage, says a paper published...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Loss of natural buffers could double number of people at risk from hurricanesBowland Shale fracking could reignite UK economy and cut CO2 emissions
Posted by Guardian: Bjørn Lomborg on July 16th, 2013
Guardian: In late June the British Geological Survey announced the world's largest shale-gas field. The Bowland Shale, which lies beneath Lancashire and Yorkshire, contains 50% more gas than the combined reserves of two of the largest fields in the United States, the Barnett Shale and the Marcellus Shale.
The United Kingdom has been reluctant to join the hydraulic-fracturing (or fracking) revolution. Yet tapping the Bowland Shale could reignite the UK economy and deliver huge cuts in CO2 emissions.
At...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Bowland Shale fracking could reignite UK economy and cut CO2 emissionsThe World Bank is bringing back big, bad dams
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 16th, 2013
Guardian: The big, bad dams of past decades are back in style.
In the 1950s and '60s, huge hydropower projects such as the Kariba, Akosombo and Inga dams were supposed to modernise poor African countries almost overnight. It didn't work out this way. As the independent World Commission on Dams found, such big, complex schemes cost far more but produce less energy than expected. Their primary beneficiaries are mining companies and aluminium smelters, while Africa's poor have been left high and dry.
The...
Tony Abbott’s 100 dams policy is the Sharknado of Australian politics
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 16th, 2013
Guardian: A few days ago, if you are the twittering type, you probably would have noticed the #sharknado hashtag dominate your feed.
Helped by the hype of scores of celebrities, including Mia Farrow and the late Glee star Cory Monteith, #sharknado made a massive online splash, but its ratings ultimately were a "bust", according to Bloomberg's Business Week.
Sharknado, a movie apparently about sharks and tornados, was a direct to TV movie for the SyFy cable network, whose role is to fill the "ridiculously...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Tony Abbott’s 100 dams policy is the Sharknado of Australian politicsEarth losing 300bn tonnes of ice every year
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 16th, 2013
Times of India: A satellite has detected that 300 billion tonnes of ice is being lost every year from the Antarctic and Greenland glaciers, dramatically increasing sea levels around the world.
The satellite that detected the melting is Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE). British scientists have been using it since 2002 to detect tiny variations in Earth's gravity field resulting from changes in mass distribution, including movement of ice into the oceans.
Using these changes in gravity, the state...
High carbon dioxide spurs wetlands to absorb more carbon
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 16th, 2013
ScienceDaily: Under elevated carbon dioxide levels, wetland plants can absorb up to 32 percent more carbon than they do at current levels, according to a 19-year study published in Global Change Biology from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Edgewater, Md. With atmospheric CO2 passing the 400 parts-per-million milestone this year, the findings offer hope that wetlands could help soften the blow of climate change.
Plant physiologist Bert Drake created the Smithsonian's Global Change Ecological...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on High carbon dioxide spurs wetlands to absorb more carbon