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Archive for September, 2013
U.N. Panel Report: Most Global Warming Is Caused By Humans
Posted by National Public Radio: David Greene and Richard Harris on September 27th, 2013
National Public Radio: Scientists assembled by the United Nations sent out a renewed warning Friday that the planet is warming up and human beings are largely responsible. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released a report that projects more warming air, melting ice and rising seas in this century.
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on U.N. Panel Report: Most Global Warming Is Caused By HumansHow farmworkers experience a warming climate
Posted by Northwest Public Radio: None Given on September 27th, 2013
Northwest Public Radio: For 20 years, Victor Gonzales has traveled the West picking crops. In the Northwest that means pears, cherries and apples.
Right now, he’s working at a Hood River pear orchard. In the summer, temperatures here can reach 100 degrees. Gonzalez remembers one day when he’d been working really hard, sweating more than normal.
Gonzales felt like he was going to pass out. He was shaky and very sleepy, he says through a translator. Instead of sleeping, he went to the farmworker housing unit and drank...
Investigating mercury pollution in Indonesia
Posted by Science Daily: None Given on September 27th, 2013
Science Daily: Professor Takanobu Inoue of Toyohashi Tech's Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering has been conducting field surveys of mercury poisoning in Indonesia for over a decade. His findings have serious implications and the situation is not improving. "The main source of this pollution today is small-scale gold mining," says Inoue, who is an expert on water environmental engineering. "Gold mining is easy to learn and simple to operate, so for people living on the poverty line, it offers hope...
How to clean a lake with an unstoppable oil spill: Drain the lake
Posted by Grist: John Upton on September 26th, 2013
Grist: We told you in July that tar-sands oil had been leaking into the Canadian wilderness from a drilling site for well over a month - and that nobody knew how to stanch the flow. It would be nice to update you on how that leak was finally fixed. No such luck: The oil is still leaking. More than 12,000 barrels of leaked bitumen has been mopped up, but at least 100 animals have died at the Canadian Natural Resources` Primrose oil extraction site. So much bitumen has flowed into a 131-acre lake that Alberta`s...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on How to clean a lake with an unstoppable oil spill: Drain the lakeAfter the Floods, a Deluge of Worry About Oil
Posted by New York Times: Jack Healy on September 26th, 2013
New York Times: When floodwaters surged into Colorado’s drilling center, they swamped wells, broke pipes and swept huge oil tanks off their foundations. The state has counted a dozen “notable” spills stemming from the catastrophic floods this month. Now, as the waters drain east and regulators move to assess the environmental toll, the sight of drowning oil wells has inflamed the emotional debate over the West’s new resource rush. It is a familiar argument here in a state where oil wells dot farmers’ fields and...
Bangladesh: Thousands March to Oppose World’s Worst Location for a Coal Plant
Posted by EcoWatch: Donna Lisenby on September 26th, 2013
EcoWatch: Buriganga Riverkeeper Sharif Jamil and hundreds of his fellow Bangladeshis, including BAPA, the largest civil society platform in Bangladesh for the environment, and the National Committee for Saving Sundarbans (NCSS), are fighting to save the Sundarbans, an irreplaceable world heritage site, from the destruction of a massive new coal-fired power plant. To show the government the size and scale of the opposition, they began a five-day, 400-kilometer march from Dhaka to Rampal on Tuesday. Their goal...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Bangladesh: Thousands March to Oppose World’s Worst Location for a Coal PlantSuper foodie Alice Waters launches anti-fracking fight
Posted by Grist: None Given on September 26th, 2013
Grist: Some of California’s best-known chefs and restaurateurs are whipping up a fight against fracking in the Golden State. High hopes that California would impose a moratorium on fracking, a process in which chemicals are injected into the ground to extract oil and gas, were dashed on Friday when Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation that regulates the process but does not stop it. Opponents say fracking pollutes water and threatens farms. California is the source of 15 percent of the nation’s crops. ...
Video of Amazon gold mining devastation goes viral in Peru
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 26th, 2013
Mongabay: Video of illegal gold mining operations that have turned a portion of the Amazon rainforest into a moonscape went viral on Youtube after a popular radio and TV journalist in Peru highlighted the story.
Last week Peruvian journalist and politician Güido Lombardi directed his audience to video shot from a wingcam aboard the Carnegie Airborne Observatory (CAO), an airplane used by researchers to conduct advanced monitoring and analysis of Peru's forests. The video quickly received more than 60,000...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Video of Amazon gold mining devastation goes viral in PeruAs Scientists Warn About Climate Change, Russia Eyes Vast Frack Reserves
Posted by EcoWatch: None Given on September 26th, 2013
EcoWatch: So tomorrow is the day.
The day that the world’s leading scientists will announce they are more certain than ever that humans are changing the climate.
The report will be met with a frothing load of bile from the usual skeptics linked to a network of right wing think tanks such as the Heartland Institute in the U.S., the Global Warming Policy Foundation in the UK or right-leaning newspapers, many of whom are linked to a certain Mr. Rupert Murdoch.
The skeptical response is nothing new and...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on As Scientists Warn About Climate Change, Russia Eyes Vast Frack ReservesReport ponders: How sensitive is climate to CO2?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 26th, 2013
Associated Press: Scientists are more confident than ever that pumping carbon dioxide into the air by burning fossil fuels is warming the planet. The question is, by how much?
It's something that officials and scientists meeting in Stockholm will try to pin down as precisely possible Friday in a seminal report on global warming.
Future global warming levels depend on two major factors. One is how much more carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gases are pumped into the air and how quickly.
The other is...