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Archive for August, 2015
Will New US Restrictions on Methane Be Enough?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 18th, 2015
National Geographic: The U.S. will rein in methane from its biggest human source-the oil and gas industry-but the new rules won't touch a wide swath of places already leaking the invisible, heat-trapping gas.
Strengthened Environmental Protection Agency standards aimed at new energy facilities, proposed Tuesday, will cut somewhere between 20 to 30 percent of the sector's methane emissions from 2012 levels over the next decade, estimates Janet McCabe, acting assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation....
Global warming lethal to baby lizards: Nests become heat traps
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 18th, 2015
PhysOrg: The expected impact of climate change on North American lizards is much worse than first thought. A team of biologists led by Arizona State University investigators has discovered that lizard embryos die when subjected to a temperature of 110 degrees Fahrenheit even for a few minutes.
The researchers also discovered a bias in previous studies, which ignored early life stages such as embryos. Embryonic lizards are immobile and cannot seek shade or cool off when their surrounding soil becomes hot....
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on Global warming lethal to baby lizards: Nests become heat trapsUnited Kingdom: Fracking in the pipeline as exploration sites offered to firms
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 18th, 2015
BBC: The Oil and Gas Authority has announced 27 more locations in England where licences to frack for shale oil and gas will be offered.
Twelve firms, including Cuadrilla and Ineos, have been given the exclusive right to explore for oil and gas, including fracking.
The exploration sites include areas in the Midlands and the North East.
However, whether exploration can actually go ahead is subject to local planning consent.
The announcement comes after Energy Secretary Amber Rudd said last...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on United Kingdom: Fracking in the pipeline as exploration sites offered to firms200 Soldiers Deployed Help Fight Western Wildfire
Posted by Reuters: Laura Zuckerman on August 18th, 2015
Reuters: The U.S. Army mobilized soldiers on Monday to reinforce civilian firefighters stretched thin by dozens of major wildfires roaring largely unchecked across the West, with more than 100 homes reduced to ruins in several states.
The 200 troops deployed from Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington, are to be organized into 10 firefighting crews of 20 each, all of whom will be sent to a single fire yet to be determined, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.
Fire...
England to Open Up 1,000 sq Miles for Fracking
Posted by Guardian: Emma Howard and David Hellier on August 18th, 2015
Guardian: Large areas of Yorkshire, the north-west and the east Midlands are to be opened up to fracking after the government announced it will offer a fresh round of licences for oil and gas exploration.
Areas near Leeds, Sheffield, Lincoln and Nottingham are to be offered to companies in an expansion plan that green groups predicted would trigger “hundreds of battles” over the future of the countryside.
Ineos, the Anglo-Swiss chemicals group that wants to lead the UK’s shale gas industry, was awarded...
Seeking distance from Obama, Clinton voices opposition to Arctic drilling, Keystone XL delays
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 18th, 2015
Associated Press: Hillary Rodham Clinton is voicing opposition to President Barack Obama's authorization for oil drilling in the Alaska Arctic and his delays on Keystone XL, in some of the clearest signs of the Democratic front-runner distancing herself from the president.
Having agreed with him on most issues so far in her 2016 race, Clinton edged to Obama's left on climate change on Tuesday. In the course of a few hours, she announced her disapproval of his move to allow Royal Dutch Shell to drill in the Arctic...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Seeking distance from Obama, Clinton voices opposition to Arctic drilling, Keystone XL delaysGlobal Extinction Rates: Why Do Estimates Vary So Wildly?
Posted by Yale Environment 360: Fred Pearce on August 17th, 2015
Yale Environment 360: Most ecologists believe that we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction. Humanity’s impact on nature, they say, is now comparable to the five previous catastrophic events over the past 600 million years, during which up to 95 percent of the planet’s species disappeared. We may very well be. But recent studies have cited extinction rates that are extremely fuzzy and vary wildly. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, which involved more than a thousand experts, estimated an extinction rate that...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Global Extinction Rates: Why Do Estimates Vary So Wildly?Central Asian glaciers shrinking fast: study
Posted by Agence France-Press: None Given on August 17th, 2015
Agence France-Press: Central Asian glaciers have melted at four times the global average since the early 1960s, shedding 27 percent of their mass, according to a study released Monday.
By 2050, warmer temperatures driven by climate change could wipe out half the remaining glacier ice in the Tien Shan mountain range, reported the study, published in Nature Geoscience.
At stake is a critical source of water for people in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, as well as a section of northwest China.
"Glaciers...
What makes a planet habitable?
Posted by BBC: Christopher Watson on August 16th, 2015
BBC: Water in liquid form is thought to be a necessity for life on Earth.
Naturally, some say that life may flourish under other conditions, and perhaps even in the absence of water.
While that may be true, take a look around - life seems to do quite well here on Earth and we've yet to find it elsewhere in our Solar System.
Based on this, let's look at the classical definition for the habitable zone as the region around a star, such as our own Sun, where the temperature of any orbiting planet...
As sea rise threatens Indian farmlands, scientists study saltwater plants as crops for future
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 16th, 2015
Associated Press: On a sun-scorched wasteland near India's southern tip, an unlikely garden filled with spiky shrubs and spindly greens is growing, seemingly against all odds. The plants are living on saltwater, coping with drought and possibly offering viable farming alternatives for a future in which rising seas have inundated countless coastal farmlands. Sea rise, one of the consequences of climate change, now threatens millions of poor subsistence farmers across Asia. As ocean water swamps low-lying plots, experts...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on As sea rise threatens Indian farmlands, scientists study saltwater plants as crops for future