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Archive for January 17th, 2015
United Kingdom: A county divided: is Lancashire ready for its fracking revolution?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 17th, 2015
Guardian: Robert Sanderson, a strapping dairy farmer, is standing in his muddy yard. He is in tears. Sanderson’s family and his Lancashire farm have, thanks to geological chance, ended up on the frontline of fracking in the UK.
“I’ve never wanted to do anything but farm,” says Sanderson, part of the third generation of his family to farm near Kirkham. “All my young lad dreams about is farming. Last night he said to me, ‘When I grow up I want to have the biggest tractor in the world’. How can they just take...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on United Kingdom: A county divided: is Lancashire ready for its fracking revolution?Oregon records second-warmest year on record
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 17th, 2015
KTVZ: Oregon was not exempt from the warming and logged the second-hottest year since records were kept beginning in 1895, according to researchers with the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon State University.
"We had a warm summer, and now a warm winter, and that's where we got our warm year," said Kathie Dello, deputy director of the center. "We are looking at our future right now - warm winters and low snowpacks."
The average statewide temperature in Oregon in 2014 was 49.5 degrees,...
Are the US drinking water standards outdated?
Posted by Environmental News Network: Virginia Tech Via EurekAlert! on January 17th, 2015
Environmental News Network: Changes in drinking water quality in the 21st Century are coming from a myriad of circumstances, and not all are for the best. Top contenders for why water-drinking quality might become suspect to the average consumer include California's drought conditions, the technology of fracking, and the nationwide aging infrastructure of rusty, degrading pipes.
Citing these and other relatively recent scenarios, Andrea Dietrich, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech, and her...
5 graphics that show 2014’s record heat
Posted by Climate Central: Brian Kahn on January 17th, 2015
Climate Central: Unless you've been living under a climate news rock, you've probably heard that 2014 was the warmest year on record. NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released data on Friday confirming last year took the crown from 2010 by about 0.1°F and running 1.24°F above the long-term average. That makes it the latest in a string of warm years with all 10 of the hottest years coming since 1998 and nine of the 10 hottest since 2002. The last cooler-than-average year was 1976 and...
U.S.: 2014 world’s warmest year on record
Posted by Philadelphia Inquirer: None Given on January 17th, 2015
Philadelphia Inquirer: Despite a winter-long coming-out party for the polar vortex and the record snows around here, for the planet 2014 was the warmest in 135 years of record-keeping, U.S. climatologists said Friday.
Averaged for the entire year, temperatures were 1.24 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th century average of about 57, according to the National Climatic Data Center, nudging out 2005 and 2010 by a mere 0.07 degrees.
At a joint morning briefing, NASA also said that 2014 was the warmest on its database,...
More record warmth means more flooding
Posted by USA Today: Alan Lowenthal and Michael Shank on January 17th, 2015
USA Today: In the coming years, thanks to a rapidly warming climate, sea level rise and flooding will become a frequent occurrence on every coast of the North American continent.
While Southern California will suffer from some of the most significant sea level rise, no coastal community will be exempt. A recently published report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows just how frequent and dire the predictions are becoming.
Today, it is already five to ten times more likely,...
It’s official: 2014 was hottest year
Posted by Washington Post: Joby Warrick and Chris Mooney on January 17th, 2015
Washington Post: Planet Earth set an ominous record last year as global temperatures rose to the highest level since modern measurements began, scientists said Friday in a report that heightened concerns about humanity’s growing toll on the natural systems that sustain life. The year 2014 was declared the hottest year in a joint announcement by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, based on separate analyses of weather records dating back to 1880, when Rutherford B. Hayes occupied the White...
After the warmest year on record, West Virginia feels the heat
Posted by New York Times: Francis X. Clines on January 17th, 2015
New York Times: Friday’s news that 2014 was the Earth’s hottest year on record could not have been timelier for West Virginia, where a dissident member of the Board of Education recently altered new teaching standards to reflect his personal doubts about climate change. The board member, L. Wade Linger Jr., didn’t like the sound of a sixth-grade study plan mentioning “the rise in global temperatures over the past century.” So he had the language changed to: “rise and fall.” “The temperature rises and falls all...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on After the warmest year on record, West Virginia feels the heat2014 Breaks Heat Record, Challenging Global Warming Skeptics
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 17th, 2015
New York Times: Last year was the hottest on earth since record-keeping began in 1880, scientists reported on Friday, underscoring warnings about the risks of runaway greenhouse gas emissions and undermining claims by climate change contrarians that global warming had somehow stopped.
Extreme heat blanketed Alaska and much of the western United States last year. Records were set across large areas of every inhabited continent. And the ocean surface was unusually warm virtually everywhere except near Antarctica,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on 2014 Breaks Heat Record, Challenging Global Warming SkepticsTeens Take Politicians To Court Over Climate Change
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 17th, 2015
Huffington Post: For politicians who fail to act on climate change, Kelsey Juliana has a few words.
"I want to remind them that we are their employer," said Juliana, 18, a native of Eugene, Oregon, and freshman at Warren Wilson College in North Carolina. "The government works for us. If you're not doing your job, then I'm going to call you out on it."
Those aren't idle words, either. Juliana is a plaintiff in a potentially precedent-setting court case against Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber (D) and the state. She...