Archive for the ‘Water Conservation’ Category

Time, BBC & others drive historic deal protect Canada Great Bear Rainforest

Guardian: Earlier this month, a groundbreaking agreement was reached to prohibit logging in the majority of the 6.4m-hectare Canadian rainforest known as the Great Bear Rainforest – a stretch of coastal ecosystem nearly the size of Ireland. The winners in the deal were environmental groups and the First Nations peoples who call the land their ancestral home. But there was also a less obvious contingent: an international assortment of business interests that used their influence to push for a deal. More...

These Native Americans Might Be the Country’s First Climate Change Refugees

Vice: Sometime in the next few years, the remaining two dozen or so families of Louisiana's Isle de Jean Charles will pack up their stuff and leave for good. They'll leave behind homes that some of the Native American residents have lived in for generations, and they'll watch from afar as what's left of the island gets swallowed by the surrounding waters. "All of our history, all of our ancestral line -- that's where our people are buried. That's where our family members were born," island native...

United Kingdom: How to combat climate change from your garden

Telegraph: When the screenwriter William Goldman said "nobody knows anything", he was talking about the inability of anyone in Hollywood to predict what would turn out to be the next blockbuster. But he might equally have been talking about gardening and climate change, where no one seems to know for sure what to expect, or how to prepare for it. So I was intrigued to see a report of a project by the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh attempting to answer that question. Edinburgh and its three regional outposts...

Oil Stocks: Bakken Shale Drillers Feel Burn From $30 Crude

Motley Fool: After months of speculation about what oil price would break the back of shale drillers, we finally have that number: $30 a barrel. At least that's the price at which Bakken shale drillers Oasis Petroleum (NYSE:OAS), Whiting Petroleum (NYSE:WLL) and Continental Resources (NYSE:CLR) can no longer keep drilling in the oil play that really turned around America's oil production. That was abundantly clear after reviewing their plans for 2016, with each company basically winding down operations in the...

Porter Ranch ‘Monster’ Gas Leak Largest U.S. History

EcoWatch: The Aliso Canyon natural gas well blowout, which lasted for months and sickened scores of nearby residents, has been confirmed as the largest methane leak in history. According to a peer-reviewed study published Thursday in the journal Science, the nearly four-month leak released roughly 100,000 tons of methane--effectively doubling the methane emissions rate of the entire Los Angeles Basin. Southern California Gas Co. said it stopped the leak earlier this month. State Division of Oil, Gas and...

California Natural Gas Leak Officially Largest Leak in U.S. History

Yale Environment 360: The four-month natural gas leak that sickened hundreds of Los Angeles residents and forced the evacuations of 1,800 homes this winter has officially been deemed the largest methane leak in U.S. history, according to a study in the journal Science. The California leak spewed a total 97,100 metric tons of methane into the atmosphere, up to 60 tons per hour—the equivalent of the annual greenhouse gas emissions of 572,000 cars. Methane is a greenhouse gas dramatically more potent than carbon dioxide...

Indigenous communities are forced to clean up a 3,000-barrel oil spill in Peru’s Amazon

Mongabay: The images being shared on social media and by the international press these days show to the average eye what the impacts of a broken oil pipeline can be: water dyed deep black, turned into a liquid as thick as the oil that has contaminated them. Those recent photos from northern Peru document how the oil spill is covering rocks on the rivers’ shores, and also the white suits donned by the men who have been hired to clean up the spill in the Amazon tributary. This isn’t the first time that an...

Chinese dam builder eyeing major Amazon mega-dam contract

Mongabay: Chinese construction companies are trying to gain a larger foothold on infrastructure projects — especially hydroelectric dams — in the Amazon, a region and sector in which large Brazilian construction companies have long dominated. That opportunity has been created by hard times for the Brazilian companies, due to the ongoing government/corporate Operação Lava Jato (Operation Car Wash) scandal, the devaluation of Brazil’s Real currency, along with pricey credit rates. China Three Gorges — a state-owned...

Climate change scientist says past floods help predict future weather

CBC: A leading Canadian scientist says Canada is on the front line of climate change, and researchers are studying once-in-a-century weather events to predict what can be expected in the future. Francis Zwiers is director of the Pacific Climate Impacts Consortium at University of Victoria. He is speaking across the country, including in Halifax on Saturday, about climate change and whether extreme events are more frequent and intense than in the past. "We talk about different kinds of events, we...

Study: California methane leak largest in U.S. history

Climate Central: The gas leak that forced the evacuation of 1,800 homes in the mountains above Los Angeles late last year was the largest methane leak in U.S. history and shows the climate risks of aging natural gas infrastructure, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science. The Aliso Canyon leak near the Porter Ranch neighborhood was so big that it emitted 97,100 tons of methane -- the equivalent of the annual greenhouse gas pollution from 572,000 cars, according to the study, which used aircraft...