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Archive for March, 2015
Here comes progress: what will planned megaprojects mean Amazon city?
Posted by Mongabay: Rebecca Kessler on March 31st, 2015
Mongabay: The city of Itaituba, in western Pará state, is home to several construction projects of strategic interest for the Brazilian government. However, with local infrastructure fragile, residents are worried they will not share in the spoils.
A dirt road divides the neighborhoods of Vila Nova and Vila Caçula. Houses are raised on stilts here, along the bank of the Tapajós River, which skirts the edge of the city of Itaituba, in the west of Pará state. A team from Pública attempted to interview some...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Here comes progress: what will planned megaprojects mean Amazon city?Major Wildlife Impacts Still Felt 5 Years After Gulf Oil Spill
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 31st, 2015
Yale Environment 360: Nearly five years after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico continue to die at unprecedented rates, endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtles are experiencing diminished nesting success, and many species of fish are suffering from abnormal development among some juveniles after exposure to oil. Those are the conclusions of a new study from the National Wildlife Federation, released three weeks before the fifth anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon spill, which began on April...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Major Wildlife Impacts Still Felt 5 Years After Gulf Oil SpillUS makes climate pledge to UN
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 31st, 2015
BBC: he US has pledged to tackle climate change by cutting its carbon emissions 26-28% by 2025.
It made the formal offer to the UN as a step towards a global deal in Paris in December.
The EU has already promised to cut its emissions by a roughly similar proportion.
Tuesday was the deadline for wealthy nations to make their offers - but some, such as Canada, have failed to submit in time.
The announcement was made on Twitter with the words: "America is taking steps to #ActOnClimate, and the...
Texas House Committee Passes Compromise on Drilling Rules
Posted by Texas Tribune: Jim Malewitz on March 31st, 2015
Texas Tribune: A House committee on Monday approved legislation that would limit local control over oil and gas activities -- a committee substitute for a bill that initially stirred anger in city halls across Texas.
In a 10-1 vote, the House Committee on Energy Resources approved an updated version of House Bill 40, among the most prominent of nearly a dozen bills filed in the aftermath of Denton's vote in November to ban hydraulic fracturing within the North Texas city's limits.
Intended to clarify where...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Texas House Committee Passes Compromise on Drilling RulesEPA chief says Keystone Pipeline wouldn’t climate ‘disaster’
Posted by Mashable: None Given on March 31st, 2015
Mashable: The chief of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) told a Washington audience on Monday that building the contentious Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico would not, by itself, constitute a "climate disaster."
Many opponents of the pipeline, which would carry tar sands oil from Alberta to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico for export, argue that it would lead to the emissions of enough planet-warming greenhouse gases that it would be game over for efforts to constrain the amount...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on EPA chief says Keystone Pipeline wouldn’t climate ‘disaster’Indian monsoon’s past analysed
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 31st, 2015
BBC: Fossils from the ocean floor are yielding clues to the Indian monsoon millions of years ago.
Samples drilled from beneath the Indian Ocean are being used to reconstruct past rainfall and temperature records.
Scientists are studying how the Indian monsoon behaved in the past, to shed light on the impact of climate change.
The research will lead to a better understanding of how the monsoon over India might change, said Dr Kate Littler of the University of Exeter.
As part of the larger-scale...
Study finds econ costs climate change hugely underestimated
Posted by Mongabay: Morgan Erickson-Davis on March 30th, 2015
Mongabay: Look at most climate change projection graphs and you will see a smoothly rising red line of increasing temperature, melting ice and other impacts. But climate does not work that way. Studies of the paleoclimate record indicate that when heat energy is rapidly added to the atmosphere -- as humans are doing today -- the climate can experience “tipping points,” with abrupt shifts and potentially disastrous results.
Researchers who have studied economic climate change impacts have until recently...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Study finds econ costs climate change hugely underestimatedNobody listened to them: fishing communities to be displaced by dams want say in their future
Posted by Mongabay: Ana Aranha and Jessica Mota on March 30th, 2015
Mongabay: The life of fisherman Rosinaldo Pereira dos Santos, generally known as Tatá, may take a very different direction from the one that the governments of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and President Dilma Rousseff have promoted through their social welfare programs. Living on the banks of the Tapajós River in the Brazilian Amazon, he has always had abundant food. Proof of this hangs on his living room wall: photographs of catfish bigger than him. But now Tatá may join the group of Brazilians who...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Nobody listened to them: fishing communities to be displaced by dams want say in their futureClimate change could disturb marine life for millennia
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 30th, 2015
Agence France-Presse: Climate change may lead to disturbances in marine life that will take thousands of years to recover from, not hundreds of years as previously thought, researchers said Monday.
The study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is based on a section of fossilized ocean fauna found on the seafloor off the coast of California dating to between 3,400 and 16,100 years ago.
Researchers sliced up the sediment like a cake for a before-and-after glimpse of how creatures were affected by...
Warming Winters Not Main Cause of Pine Beetle Outbreaks, Study Says
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 30th, 2015
Yale Environment 360: Milder winters can't be blamed for the full extent of recent mountain pine beetle outbreaks in the western United States, according to a new study by Dartmouth and U.S. Forest Service researchers. Winters have been warming across the western U.S. states for decades, as overall the coldest winter night has warmed by 4 degrees C since 1960. But that warming trend could only be the primary driver of increasing pine beetle outbreaks in regions where winter temperatures have historically killed most of...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Warming Winters Not Main Cause of Pine Beetle Outbreaks, Study Says