RSS Feed
Archive for March, 2015
In Drought-Stricken California, Market for Canada Gas Emerges
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 2nd, 2015
Bloomberg: Driven out of their best U.S. markets by the shale boom, Canada’s gas producers are turning to the power-hungry West Coast.
Canadian gas shipments to Washington state are the highest seasonally since at least 2008, and exports through a border point in Eastport, Idaho, surged in November to a winter record, data compiled by Genscape Inc. show. Demand from California gas-fired power plants is increasing as a drought now in its fourth year cuts hydroelectric production.
A flood of low-cost Marcellus...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on In Drought-Stricken California, Market for Canada Gas EmergesNew film on China’s pollution sparks debate, seen as milestone
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 2nd, 2015
Reuters: Could "Under the Dome", Chinese journalist Chai Jing's new documentary about pollution, become China's "Silent Spring", the 1962 book that spurred the development of the U.S. environmental movement?
Since it was released online on Saturday, the film has been viewed more than 150 million times and has sparked a national debate on environmental problems.
"Under the Dome", which explains air pollution in personal, straight-forward terms, was well-timed: this week China's National People's Congress,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on New film on China’s pollution sparks debate, seen as milestoneWithout its rainforest, the Amazon will turn to desert
Posted by Ecologist: Peter Bunyard on March 2nd, 2015
Ecologist: It is not - as described in climatological models - the mass circulation of air which drives the hydrological cycle, but the hydrological cycle which drives the mass circulation of air.
Imagine being in one of the wettest rainforests in the world with three outstanding physicists concerned with the thorny question as to how is it conceivably possible for the rainfall to be as high, if not higher, thousands of kilometres inland than it is at the coast.
Indeed, Leticia, in the Colombian Amazon,...
Researchers: Rising seas threaten rare Everglades plants
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 2nd, 2015
Associated Press: Rising sea levels and invasive species increasingly threaten rare plants in Everglades National Park that have not yet recovered from damage caused by orchid collectors long ago or attempts to drain the swamps, according to a 10-year survey released Monday. The report by the Institute for Regional Conservation concludes that the unique plants native to South Florida may be lost despite multibillion-dollar efforts to restore the wetlands. Other studies of the Everglades` natural resources have reached...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Researchers: Rising seas threaten rare Everglades plantsFracking decision changes N.Y. lives
Posted by Poughkeepsie Journal: Jon Campbell on March 1st, 2015
Poughkeepsie Journal: Without hesitation, Kirkwood resident Marchie Diffendorf can recall the exact date of the phone call: Dec. 7, 2007.
It was a landman with a natural-gas company: Would he be interested in leasing the natural-gas rights to his 60-acre property in the rural Broome County town he's lived in his whole life?
Around that same time, someone knocked on the door of Eileen Hamlin's blue-sided, one-story Kirkwood home -- 2 ½ miles from Diffendorf's -- with a similar offer. Take the deal today, the man...
Bells toll for Europe’s largest gas field
Posted by Reuters: Toby Sterling on March 1st, 2015
Reuters: Dutch church bells that for centuries have tolled to warn of floods across the low-lying countryside are sounding the alarm for a new threat: earthquakes linked to Europe's largest natural gas field.
"Money can buy a lot of things, but a building like this cannot be replaced," said Jur Bekooy, a civil engineer with the Groningen Old Churches Association, pointing to cracks in the ceiling and walls of the 13th-century Maria Church in the village of Westerwijtwerd.
Long ignored, voices like Bekooy's...
Dow Bets $6 Billion That U.S. Fracking Boom Will Last Another Decade
Posted by Forbes: None Given on March 1st, 2015
Forbes: Dow Chemical is investing $6 billion to enlarge its manufacturing facilities in the United States by 40 percent, based on a wager that low natural gas prices here will persist into the middle of the next decade, a Dow executive said in Chicago this week. The investment reverses Dow’s vocal exodus from manufacturing in the United States, said Doug May, Dow’s business president of olefins, aromatics, and alternatives, during the Kellogg Energy Conference Wednesday at Northwestern University. “We’re...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Dow Bets $6 Billion That U.S. Fracking Boom Will Last Another DecadeFracking Opponents Feel Police Pressure In Some Drilling Hotspots
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on March 1st, 2015
National Public Radio: Wendy Lee, an anti-fracking activist and philosophy professor at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, has always protested peacefully. So she was stunned last winter when a state trooper came to her home to ask her about eco-terrorism and pipe bombs.
The trooper was investigating an alleged trespassing incident that involved Lee and two other activists visiting a gas compressor in Pennsylvania's Lycoming County in June 2013. Lee says they stayed on a public road and left when security guards...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Fracking Opponents Feel Police Pressure In Some Drilling Hotspots