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Archive for October 3rd, 2013
Another Fukushima Leak Likely Sends More Contaminated Water into Ocean
Posted by Nature World: None Given on October 3rd, 2013
Nature World: Another leak of radioactive water at the crippled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear campus was reported Thursday, and some of the water may have have reached the plant's harbor on the Pacific Ocean.
The water, which leaked out of a holding tank, contained 200,000 becquerels per liter of beta-emitting radioactive isotopes, including strontium 90. Levels of strontium 90 were found to be 6,667 times the legal limit, which is 30 becquerels per liter.
Tokyo Electric Power Co., the plant's operator, said...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Another Fukushima Leak Likely Sends More Contaminated Water into OceanSay goodbye to Yosemite’s largest glacier
Posted by Grist: None Given on October 3rd, 2013
Grist: Hasta la vista, glacier.
The world`s glaciers are withering quickly - researchers say they are contributing to nearly one-third of sea-level rise, despite holding just 1 percent of the planet`s surface ice. And while the glaciers in California`s Yosemite National Park aren`t the largest, they are suffering the same alarming fate as their icy ilk in other parts of the world.
Yosemite`s granite cliffs and valleys were carved during the Ice Age as glaciers expanded. Now these vestigial masses...
Australia Has its Hottest September as Fire Threat Grows
Posted by Climate Central: Brian Kahn on October 3rd, 2013
Climate Central: Winter may just be ending in Australia, but temperatures are already summerlike. September was one for the record books, with hot temperatures that baked the country from the outback to the coasts and made this the hottest September in the country's 104 years of record-keeping. The warm start to Australia's spring keeps the country on a path to having its warmest year on record. Following a wet winter, warmer-than-average conditions have also put parts of the country on watch for yet another intense...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Australia Has its Hottest September as Fire Threat GrowsAmerican company sues Canada over fracking moratorium
Posted by Grist: John Upton on October 3rd, 2013
Grist: Quebec isn`t entirely sure about this whole fracking thing. Amid reports from across the continent of groundwater pollution, air pollution, deforestation, and other environmental side effects of hydraulic fracturing, the Canadian province has placed a moratorium on the practice beneath the St. Lawrence River.
That doesn`t sit well with Lone Pine Resources, a Delaware-based company that has long eyed the gas and oil that`s locked up in the Utica shale beneath the grand waterway. The company claims...
Groundbreaking Report Calculates Damage Done by Fracking
Posted by EcoWatch: None Given on October 3rd, 2013
EcoWatch: As federal policy makers decide on rules for fracking on public lands, a new report calculates the toll of this dirty drilling on our environment, including 280 billion gallons of toxic wastewater generated by fracking in 2012--enough to flood all of Washington, DC, in a 22-foot deep toxic lagoon. The Environment America Research & Policy Center report, Fracking by the Numbers, is the first to measure the damaging footprint of fracking to date.
“The numbers don`t lie--fracking has taken a dirty...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Groundbreaking Report Calculates Damage Done by FrackingThe Most Detailed Visuals of Hurricane Sandy, Revealed
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on October 3rd, 2013
Climate Central: Scientists have recently developed awe-inspiring visualizations of Hurricane Sandy, which devastated the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states a year ago. The visualizations, created using state-of-the-art computer models, provide some of most detailed looks at any hurricane to date.
In this 3-D map of potential temperature, relatively cool air wraps around Sandy's core near the surface (purple and blue colors), while air parcels gain heat from moisture condensing into clouds and precipitation as...
Season of smoke: Changing climate leads to bigger, smokier wildfires
Posted by OPB: None Given on October 3rd, 2013
OPB: Each fire season is a roll of the dice.
Some years lightning strikes more often. Other years soggy summers keep big burns at bay.
This year more than 4,000 wildfires burned almost a million acres across the Northwest. That might sound like a lot, but it falls below the 10-year average. In the last decade, only one year has had fewer fires than this year.
Scientists are quick to point out that no single fire season can be attributed to changes in the global climate, but as summers in the...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Season of smoke: Changing climate leads to bigger, smokier wildfiresDangerous levels of radioactivity found at fracking waste site in Pennsylvania
Posted by Guardian: Felicity Carus on October 3rd, 2013
Guardian: Scientists have for the first time found dangerous levels of radioactivity and salinity at a shale gas waste disposal site that could contaminate drinking water. If the UK follows in the steps of the US "shale gas revolution", it should impose regulations to stop such radioactive buildup, they said. The Duke University study, published on Wednesday, examined the water discharged from Josephine Brine Treatment Facility into Blacklick Creek, which feeds into a water source for western Pennsylvania...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Dangerous levels of radioactivity found at fracking waste site in PennsylvaniaAustralia: Green group launches new bid to block Tarkine mine
Posted by Guardian: Oliver Milman on October 3rd, 2013
Guardian: Environmentalists have launched another legal bid to block mining in the Tarkine region of Tasmania, claiming that the government has failed to properly consider the impact on species including the Tasmanian devil.
The Save the Tarkine group has lodged a case in the federal court to challenge the decision to grant environmental approval for Venture Minerals' proposed mine at Riley creek, in the north-west of Tasmania.
Tasmania's planning authority dismissed an appeal by Save the Tarkine last...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Australia: Green group launches new bid to block Tarkine mineFracking May Be Polluting River With Radioactive Waste
Posted by Climate Central: Bobby Magill on October 3rd, 2013
Climate Central: Fracking may be contaminating a Pennsylvania river with radioactive waste, a Duke University study to be published this week shows.
Scientists found elevated levels of radioactivity in river water at a site where treated fracking wastewater from oil and gas production sites in western Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale is released into a creek.
The natural gas-rich Marcellus shale is seeing a drilling boom, part of a nationwide rush to use hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, techniques to extract...