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Archive for August 22nd, 2013
California on edge as wildfires spread
Posted by San Francisco Chronicle: Vivian Ho and Kurtis Alexander on August 22nd, 2013
San Francisco Chronicle: What was expected to be a bad fire season is turning out to be just that. Nearly a dozen major fires, some touched off by an unusual string of lightning storms, are burning across California wildlands parched by back-to-back dry winters. Twice as much of the state has burned this year as had gone up in flames at this point in 2012. One of the worst blazes is the Rim Fire, which raged out of control for a fifth day Wednesday in nearly inaccessible terrain west of Yosemite National Park. Hundreds...
Poland’s shale drive will transform Europe, if it does not drop the ball
Posted by Telegraph: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard on August 22nd, 2013
Telegraph: Another branch of the same US government - the US Geological Survey - says there is "essentially nothing" in the Silurian shale corridor from Gdansk to western Ukraine, the great treasure that was supposed to free Eastern Europe from the stranglehold of Russian gas.
If America's experts cannot agree, it is no surprise that Poland has become the wishful-thinking battleground of Continental Europe's fracking wars, each side able to cherry-pick authority and make any hyperbolic claim it likes.
"We...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Poland’s shale drive will transform Europe, if it does not drop the ballUnited Kingdom: Fracking: police reduce operation in Balcombe as protest slackens
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 22nd, 2013
Guardian: Police have begun to scale down their operation at an anti-fracking protest site in west Sussex after four weeks of demonstrations.
Many of the activists who descended on Balcombe to protest against an exploratory drilling site recently opened by energy company Cuadrilla have now left the area, Sussex Police said.
A spokesman said about 120 people are estimated to still be at the roadside camp on London Road at the entrance to the location, while most people had left the Reclaim the Power camp...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on United Kingdom: Fracking: police reduce operation in Balcombe as protest slackensCatastrophic Pipeline Ruptures Still Too Big a Risk for Enbridge, Report Warns
Posted by InsideClimate: David Hasemyer on August 22nd, 2013
InsideClimate: Pipeline regulators in Canada and the United States are being cautioned that claims by Enbridge Inc. that it improved its safety procedures and adopted sophisticated inspection practices are exaggerated and that pipeline ruptures as catastrophic as the company's 2010 accident in Marshall, Mich. [3] are still possible. The warning came in a report filed this month with the Canadian National Energy Board [4], which is considering Enbridge's request to reverse the flow of an oil pipeline in Eastern...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Catastrophic Pipeline Ruptures Still Too Big a Risk for Enbridge, Report WarnsAngry Birds Skip Polluted Delhi
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 22nd, 2013
Inter Press Service: Every winter the Okhla wetlands, a charmed haven in the heart of India's bustling capital city, play host to Greater Flamingoes, Greylag Geese, Tufted Pochards, Northern Shovelers and other exotic, feathered visitors winging in from colder climes as far away as Siberia.
These avian migrants join hundreds of local water birds to breed in the Okhla Bird Sanctuary and Wildlife Park -- a four square kilometres patch of wetland on the Jamuna river. The river is struggling to survive amidst costly real...
Latest Radioactive Leak at Fukushima: How Is It Different?
Posted by National Geographic: Patrick J. Kiger on August 22nd, 2013
National Geographic: n the latest crisis to strike the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan, operator Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) has discovered that 300 tons (nearly 72,000 gallons) of highly radioactive water has leaked from a holding tank into the ground over the past month. The development comes on top of TEPCO's admission last month that an estimated 300 tons of radioactive groundwater, which picks up small amounts of contamination when it flows through the damaged reactor buildings, has been leaking...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Latest Radioactive Leak at Fukushima: How Is It Different?