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Archive for March, 2014
Tidal flooding Marshall Islands causes widespread damage
Posted by Australia News: None Given on March 5th, 2014
Australia News: A state of emergency has been declared in Marshall Islands due to king tides which have inundated communities living on low-lying attols.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, regional office for the Pacific says waves washed over shorelines, sending water, rubbish and debris across roads and properties.
There are no reports of fatalities or serious injuries, however a state of emergency has been declared.
Preliminary assessments in the capital Majuro show...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Tidal flooding Marshall Islands causes widespread damageGreat Lakes Rebound
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 5th, 2014
New York Times: The Army Corps of Engineers says Great Lakes water levels rebounded sharply last year after a prolonged low period dating from the late 1990s. A report issued Tuesday said Lake Superior rose nearly two feet, almost twice as much as its usual gain during its seasonal rise. Lakes Michigan and Huron rose 20 inches, which also was nearly double their average seasonal rise. It was a strong comeback from January 2013, when those lakes hit their lowest recorded level. Scientists say heavy evaporation caused...
China premier says to ‘declare war’ on pollution
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 5th, 2014
Reuters: China will "declare war" on pollution, Premier Li Keqiang said on Wednesday at the start of the annual meeting of parliament, with the government unveiling detailed measures to tackle what has become a hot-button social issue.
It is not uncommon for air pollution in parts of China to breach levels considered by some experts to be hazardous. That has drawn much public ire and is a worry for China's government, which fears any discontent that might compromise stability.
"We will resolutely declare...
Chevron wins US legal battle against Ecuadorian court’s $9bn ruling
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 4th, 2014
Associated Press: A federal judge on Tuesday blocked US courts from being used to collect a $9bn Ecuadorean judgment against Chevron for rainforest damage, saying lawyers poisoned an honorable quest with their illegal and wrongful conduct.
“Justice is not served by inflicting injustice. The ends do not justify the means,” US district judge Lewis A Kaplan wrote. The judge said it was a sad outcome to have to rule that the Ecuadorean court judgment “was obtained by corrupt means”, because it will likely never be...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Chevron wins US legal battle against Ecuadorian court’s $9bn rulingHow France is disposing of its nuclear waste
Posted by BBC: Rob Broomby on March 4th, 2014
BBC: Half a kilometre below ground in the Champagne-Ardenne region of eastern France, near the village of Bure, a network of tunnels and galleries is being hacked out of the 160 million-year-old compacted clay rocks.
The dusty subterranean science laboratory built by the French nuclear waste agency Andra is designed to find out whether this could be the final resting place for most of France's highly radioactive waste, the deadly remains of more than half a century of nuclear energy.
Emerging from...
Drought-stricken state gets drenched, but not enough to ease historic shortfall
Posted by ClimateWire: Debra Kahn on March 4th, 2014
ClimateWire: California got some much-needed precipitation over the weekend, but not nearly enough to ameliorate the state's persistent drought, weather and water experts said.
Long-awaited storms in Northern and Southern California dumped several inches of snow and rain on parched mountains, fields and cities. Los Angeles saw its precipitation nearly quadruple over the past week. After receiving 4.24 inches of rain since Thursday, the city is now at 5.5 inches since July 2013 -- still just half its normal...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Drought-stricken state gets drenched, but not enough to ease historic shortfallClimate change affecting deepest depths of Antarctic ocean, study finds
Posted by Blue and Green: Tom Revell on March 4th, 2014
Blue and Green: The impacts of climate change are being felt at even the deepest depths of the Antarctic ocean, a new study has found, in a discovery that may explain a 40 year old mystery.
In the mid-1970s, the first satellite images to be studied of Antarctica during the polar winter discovered a strange phenomenon. In the Weddell Sea, researchers noticed a huge ice-free region – known as a polynia – that remained open for three winters.
Scientists found that the polynia was kept open by warm waters that...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Climate change affecting deepest depths of Antarctic ocean, study findsDrought-plagued California tries drink ocean (hold the salt)
Posted by Grist: None Given on March 4th, 2014
Grist: Despite the pugnacious storms that had California on the ropes this past weekend, the state is still in the middle of a record-making drought. The snowpack in the Sierra Nevada Mountains is well under half its usual level for this time of year, and there’s almost certainly no way to catch up this late in the season.
Enter the ongoing construction of 17 desalination plants across the state. A $1 billion plant being built in Carlsbad, Calif., expected to be ready by 2016, will pump 50 million gallons...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Drought-plagued California tries drink ocean (hold the salt)Democratic Republic of Congo: Soco International’s oil activity in world heritage park raises tricky questions for investors
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 4th, 2014
Guardian: A war of words between WWF and UK-listed oil company Soco International about its plans to explore for oil in a world heritage site in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has come to a head after a ruling by an international tribunal.
Soco, whose preliminary results for 2013 are published tomorrow, has a permit to explore in part of the Virunga National Park, Africa's oldest national park and home to the critically endangered mountain gorillas made famous by the film Gorillas in the Mist. ...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Democratic Republic of Congo: Soco International’s oil activity in world heritage park raises tricky questions for investorsAmazon Canopy Study Can Predict Responses To Climate Change And Human Activity
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 4th, 2014
RedOrbit: By studying thousands of canopy tree species in the western Amazon, researchers from the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Department of Global Ecology have uncovered geographically nested patterns of chemical traits they say will help determine how the ecosystem will respond to changes in land use and climate.
Writing in the March 3 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the study authors set out to determine how much variation there is in the chemicals generated...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Amazon Canopy Study Can Predict Responses To Climate Change And Human Activity