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Archive for July, 2013
In Nebraska, Latest Foe of Keystone XL Pipeline is Former Nuclear Waste Site Activist
Posted by World-Herald Bureau: Paul Hammel on July 26th, 2013
World-Herald Bureau: A leading opponent of a nuclear waste dump proposed two decades ago in Boyd County has joined the fight against the Keystone XL pipeline.
Lowell Fisher, who conducted a high-profile hunger strike against the nuclear dump, wrote a nonbinding resolution, passed Monday by the Boyd County Planning Commission, stating that the county doesn't want the crude-oil pipeline.
Fisher, a 72-year-old rancher who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1994, said he had a guilty conscience after initially deciding...
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Comments Off on In Nebraska, Latest Foe of Keystone XL Pipeline is Former Nuclear Waste Site ActivistHalliburton admits destroying Gulf oil spill evidence
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 26th, 2013
Reuters: Halliburton has agreed to plead guilty to destroying evidence related to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the US department of justice said on Thursday.
The government said Halliburton's guilty plea was the third by a company over the spill and would require the world's second-largest oilfield services company to pay a maximum US$200,000 statutory fine.
Halliburton also agreed to three years' probation and to continue co-operating with the criminal probe into the 20 April 2010 explosion of...
Hopes for a Fish Revival as a Dam Is Demolished
Posted by New York Times: Jess Bidgood on July 26th, 2013
New York Times: There is a bend in the Penobscot River here, embanked by an Indian burial ground, through which millions of fish used to make a strenuous journey upstream to spawn before returning to the sea. There were elegant Atlantic salmon, prehistoric-looking sturgeon and, most numerous of all, lowly river herring, a nutrient-rich forage fish prized by ground fish, bears and birds. But over the centuries, dams on the river and pollution from paper mills have helped wither the sea runs. Atlantic salmon here...
North Pole melts, forms lake at top of the world
Posted by Mother Nature Network: Bryan Nelson on July 26th, 2013
Mother Nature Network: If this image (above) doesn't scare you about effects of global warming, you must have icewater in your veins. Yes, that's the North Pole. It's now a lake. The photo is part of a time lapse recently released by the North Pole Environmental Observatory, a research group funded by the National Science Foundation that has been monitoring the state of Arctic sea ice since 2000. The shallow lake began forming on July 13th after an especially warm month, which saw temperatures rise 1-3 degrees Celsius...
Dry area expands in western U.S. Corn Belt -Drought Monitor
Posted by Reuters: Christine Stebbins on July 25th, 2013
Reuters: Abnormally dry areas expanded in the U.S. western Corn Belt, including the top crop state of Iowa, over the past week to put much of the corn crop at risk, according to a weekly drought report.
The U.S. Drought Monitor, issued by state and federal climate experts, said dry conditions in the U.S. Midwest for the week ended Thursday, reached 18.94 percent, up from 7.16 percent a week earlier. Dry areas expanded in Minnesota and Iowa south to Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana.
The spread of the...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Dry area expands in western U.S. Corn Belt -Drought MonitorAntarctica’s permafrost is melting
Posted by Grist: John Upton on July 25th, 2013
Grist: Things are getting ugly on Earth`s underside.
Antarctic permafrost, which had been weathering global warming far better than areas around the North Pole, is starting to give way. Scientists have recorded some of it melting at rates that are nearly comparable to those in the Arctic.
Scientists used time-lapse photography and LiDAR to track the retreat of an Antarctic ice cliff over a little more than a decade. They reported Wednesday in the journal Scientific Reports that the cliff was "backwasting...
Monsoon Rains Bring Some Drought Relief to Southwest
Posted by Climate Central: Brian Kahn on July 25th, 2013
Climate Central: Dwindling reservoirs, dusty rangeland and desiccated crops have left the Southwest in dire need of rain. Luckily, July marks the typical start of the annual monsoon season, and it has arrived in earnest this summer, bringing daily thunderstorms from New Mexico to southern California. A "drunken' weather pattern, with weather systems moving in the opposite of their typical direction, also contributed rain to parts of the Southern Plains earlier this month. Though this has provided some relief to the...
The future is a desert, but we can make it bloom
Posted by Grist: Nathanael Johnson on July 25th, 2013
Grist: Over a decade ago, Gary Paul Nabhan moved to the plateau above the Grand Canyon to raise sheep. His timing was terrible: the beginning of one of the worst droughts on record. Some 80 percent of the pine trees around his new home, stressed by lack of water, succumbed to bark beetles. Every time he planted pastures, seedlings would push out of the earth and then wither. He was buying hay year-round, and paying dearly for it: Most of the springs that farmers relied on had gone dry, which meant that...
‘Rivers’ in air could boost flooding
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 25th, 2013
BBC: Winter floods could intensify in Britain, according to new research into powerful weather systems called "atmospheric rivers".
Only identified about 20 years ago, atmospheric rivers are intense bands of moisture that flow through the air.
Known to be responsible for heavy rainfall, they have been blamed for severe flooding in California and the UK.
The new study suggests that warmer conditions could create more rivers - and make them more severe.
The paper is published by the Institute...
Methane meltdown: The Arctic timebomb that could cost us $60trn
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on July 25th, 2013
Independent: The sudden release from the melting Arctic of vast quantities of methane – a greenhouse gas at least 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide –is an “economic time-bomb” that could explode at a cost of $60 trillion (£40tr) to the global economy, a study has concluded.
A scientific assessment of the costs associated with the release of Arctic methane into the atmosphere has found that the financial consequences to the world would almost equal the entire global economic output of one year.
Scientists...
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