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Archive for March, 2014
Australia: Rain shortfall pushes farm diversification
Posted by PhysOrg: Aaron Fernandes on March 28th, 2014
PhysOrg: Dairy farmers are being urged to diversify their farms to protect profit margins amid declining rainfall and fluctuating production costs.
Collaborative research between Western Australian and Victorian institutions shows farm profitability is affected more by changes in rainfall than commodity prices, with dairy enterprises the most profitable on a $/ha basis.
Profitability of wheat, steer and prime lamb enterprises however, proved most resilient during times of low rain.
Compared to Victoria,...
One Year After Exxon’s Arkansas Spill, 8 Crucial Questions Still Unanswered
Posted by InsideClimate: Elizabeth Douglass on March 28th, 2014
InsideClimate: It's been a year since a broken oil pipeline sent an estimated 210,000 gallons of Canadian dilbit into an Arkansas neighborhood, but there's still a long list of unknowns about the spill. The most critical mystery yet to be resolved for the public: What caused ExxonMobil's Pegasus pipeline to break apart March 29 while the line was running well below its maximum approved pressure? All the public knows now is that a metallurgical report concluded that substandard pipe-making methods left tiny cracks...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on One Year After Exxon’s Arkansas Spill, 8 Crucial Questions Still UnansweredKeeping Secrets Has Been Exxon’s Default in Ark. Oil Spill Case
Posted by InsideClimate: Elizabeth Douglass on March 28th, 2014
InsideClimate: Sometime before April 7, ExxonMobil will finally tell regulators and the public why its 1940s-era Pegasus oil pipeline split open in Mayflower, Ark. last March, spilling thick Canadian dilbit into a neighborhood and nearby cove. Will Exxon just send out a statement announcing its conclusions about the cause or causes of the Pegasus spill? Or will it also make public the details and supporting evidence behind its determination? If Exxon doesn’t provide those details, will they be made available by...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Keeping Secrets Has Been Exxon’s Default in Ark. Oil Spill CaseBorrowed Time on Disappearing Land
Posted by New York Times: Gardiner Harris on March 28th, 2014
New York Times: When a powerful storm destroyed her riverside home in 2009, Jahanara Khatun lost more than the modest roof over her head. In the aftermath, her husband died and she became so destitute that she sold her son and daughter into bonded servitude. And she may lose yet more.
Ms. Khatun now lives in a bamboo shack that sits below sea level about 50 yards from a sagging berm. She spends her days collecting cow dung for fuel and struggling to grow vegetables in soil poisoned by salt water. Climate scientists...
Candidates’ Views on Drilling Begin With Glance Back
Posted by New York Times: Jim Malewitz on March 28th, 2014
New York Times: Greg Abbott and Wendy Davis have sparred over education. The issues of officeholder ethics and equal pay have also surfaced.
But in the head-to-head battle for Texas governor that began well before each party officially nominated its candidates, neither Mr. Abbott, the state's Republican attorney general, nor Ms. Davis, a Democratic state senator, has paid much attention to an issue that has touched most every Texan: the state's rapid growth in oil and gas production.
As the state deals with...
Uganda leader blames developed world IGAD drought
Posted by World Bulletin: None Given on March 28th, 2014
World Bulletin: Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has lashed out at developed countries, blaming them for the droughts plaguing Africa and calling for funding for the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a regional trade bloc.
"This is a new form of aggression by the developed countries, which we should resist very, very fiercely," he told an IGAD drought conference held in Kampala on Thursday.
"This is due to uncontrolled industrial policies. But to a great extent, developed nations are the...
Climate change: While we fiddle, the world burns & floods and parches
Posted by LA Times: Scott Martelle on March 28th, 2014
LA Times: Here’s a statistic for you. Out of 10,855 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals last year that dealt with some aspect of global warming, all but two accepted human behavior as the primary cause. Oddly, that represents a bit of backsliding. The previous year, only one study rejected human factors, according to an annual roundup by geochemist James Lawrence Powell and reported by Salon. Science is not a theory but a process, a mechanism for distilling truth from observation. As astrophysicist...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Climate change: While we fiddle, the world burns & floods and parchesUnited Kingdom: Fracking protest village forms renewable energy company
Posted by Energy Live: None Given on March 28th, 2014
Energy Live: Residents of the village that was the centre of anti-fracking protests have formed their own renewable energy company.
Called REPOWERBalcombe, the new co-operative plans to install around £300,000 worth of solar panels on the rooftops of local buildings in Balcombe – hoping to meet around 7.5% of the electricity demand of the village.
It also hopes to provide all of the village’s electricity need with locally-generated renewable energy in the long term.
The co-operative launched its first...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on United Kingdom: Fracking protest village forms renewable energy companyMudslide deaths expected to soar as some question disaster response
Posted by Reuters: Eric M. Johnson on March 28th, 2014
Reuters: Washington state officials said the confirmed death toll from a huge mudslide in the U.S. Pacific Northwest was likely to rise sharply from 25 on Friday as residents accused local authorities of a slow early response to the disaster that had cost lives. A rain-soaked hillside collapsed without warning on Saturday, unleashing a deluge of mud on dozens of homes in a river valley near the rural town of Oso, in Snohomish County, some 55 miles northeast of Seattle. Authorities fear that some of the...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Mudslide deaths expected to soar as some question disaster responseA more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, methane emissions leap as Earth warms
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 28th, 2014
ScienceDaily: While carbon dioxide is typically painted as the bad boy of greenhouse gases, methane is roughly 30 times more potent as a heat-trapping gas. New research in the journal Nature indicates that for each degree that Earth's temperature rises, the amount of methane entering the atmosphere from microorganisms dwelling in lake sediment and freshwater wetlands -- the primary sources of the gas -- will increase several times. As temperatures rise, the relative increase of methane emissions will outpace...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on A more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, methane emissions leap as Earth warms