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Archive for January, 2016
LA-area residents implore officials approve plan to mitigate gas leak
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 10th, 2016
Reuters: Residents of a southern California community on Saturday implored air quality officials to force a gas company to take steps to mitigate a natural gas leak that has reportedly caused health issues and damaged property since it began three months ago.
The five-member hearing board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District fielded comments from residents of the Los Angeles' Porter Ranch neighborhood, home to about 30,000 people, near a Southern California Gas Co natural gas storage well...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on LA-area residents implore officials approve plan to mitigate gas leak‘Strong’ El Nino cause low rainfall Malaysia
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 10th, 2016
Bernama: Malaysia's rainfall intensity is expected to reduce by 20 to 60 percent starting this month, following the El Nino phenomenon currently sweeping the country. Meteorological Department director-general Che Gayah Ismail said the current El Nino level was categorised as 'strong' and the country's temperature is expected to rise between 0.5 to two degrees Celsius. She said the strong impact of El Nino would continue until April with the northern states in the peninsula starting to feel its effects....
Can Ohio avoid North Dakota’s fracking problems?
Posted by Sandusky Register: John Hageman on January 9th, 2016
Sandusky Register: The extensive Bakken oil play in North Dakota has been underway for about 10 years. Their small towns have experienced a variety of well-documented incidents and ongoing problems. While our states certainly differ with respect to geography, number of towns and population, will we be spared the same social and environmental problems as horizontal fracking operations expand here? While nuisance littering, pollution, animal poisonings and poaching are transient, other actions could leave permanent...
Climate Change Could Cause Power Blackouts Worldwide
Posted by TakePart: None Given on January 9th, 2016
TakePart: The record heat waves and devastating droughts that accompany climate change could also hurt the world’s electricity production, according to a new study.
As temperatures warm and drought periods grow longer and more severe over the next 50 years, the water levels in rivers and lakes are expected to fall.
For 98 percent of the world’s power plants, that’s a problem that could result in a 30 percent decrease in electricity production in some months at most power stations.
Natural water flow...
Reforestation policies need to consider climate change, study finds
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 9th, 2016
ScienceDaily: Study at the Polytechnic University of Valencia finds that local pine species are not necessarily the best option for repopulating burn sites. For the past six years, researchers at the Universitat Politènica de València (Polytechnic Univeristy of Valencia, UPV) have been studying the performance of twelve Aleppo pine varieties native to different regions of Spain in reforestation campaigns across three national forest areas. Different varieties or genotypes have different levels of resistance to...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Reforestation policies need to consider climate change, study findsWeather Extremes Slash Cereal Yields
Posted by Climate News Network: Tim Radford on January 9th, 2016
Climate News Network: Climate change may have already begun to take its toll of agriculture. New research suggests that drought and extreme heat in the last 50 years have reduced cereal production by up to 10%. And, for once, developed nations may have sustained greater losses than developing nations. Researchers have been warning for years that global warming as a consequence of rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—in turn, a pay-off from increased fossil fuel combustion—will result in a greater frequency...
Conservation benefits of ecotourism: True or false?
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 9th, 2016
ScienceDaily: Two Texas A&M University scientists highlighted the conservation benefits of ecotourism worldwide and said a recent research review citing the dangers of ecotourism to wildlife is premature and problematic. Dr. Lee Fitzgerald, a conservation biologist, and Dr. Amanda Stronza, an anthropologist, published a critique of a recent review in the scientific journal Trends in Ecology and Evolution that proposed tourism may increase the vulnerability of wildlife to predators. Ecotourists in the Peruvian...
Bushfire kills two in Australia’s south west; more towns evacuating
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 9th, 2016
Reuters: Two people have been killed, at least one other remains unaccounted for and more than 121 buildings have been destroyed by a bushfire that continues to burn out of control in Western Australia, police said on Saturday.
The remains of two men were found by authorities searching burnt-out buildings in the historic timber milling town of Yarloop, 120 km (75 miles) south of the capital, Perth, which was destroyed by the fire on Thursday, police confirmed. The men, both believed to be in their 70s,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Bushfire kills two in Australia’s south west; more towns evacuatingKanuha Found Not Guilty Of Obstruction on Mauna Kea
Posted by Big Island Video News: None Given on January 9th, 2016
Big Island Video News: Kaho`okahi Kanuha was found not guilty by Judge Barbare Takase at the Third-Circuit District Court in Waimea.
Kanuha was charged with obstructing Thirty Meter Telescope crews on the Mauna Kea Access Road on June 24, 2015. He was one of 12 arrested on the mountain that day. Kanuha was a leader in the effort to block construction of the TMT which was granted the right to proceed with the project by the state. The $1.4 billion observatory was set to be located on the northern plateau of the Mauna...
New Orleans Prepares For Mississippi River Flooding
Posted by National Public Radio: Tegan Wendland on January 9th, 2016
National Public Radio: SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
All eyes in Louisiana are on the Mississippi River. Floods that swept the Midwest are headed south, and that will test the levee system in Louisiana. Tegan Wendland at member station WWNO reports that the Army Corps of Engineers has amped up its flood-fighting efforts to protect the city of New Orleans.
TEGAN WENDLAND, BYLINE: Nearly half of New Orleans is at or below sea level, so flooding isn't unusual. That's what the city is lined with flood walls and levees. Army Corps...