All Entries in the "Environment" Category

Climate Change’s Health Costs Projected To Be Enormous

A tally of lost lives and health care expenditures arising from just six recent weather-related or epidemiological events suggests that the economic toll of future climate change is likely to be even more staggering than previously thought, according to a study published Monday in the journal Health Affairs.

The analysis, conducted by a team of researchers from the Natural Resources Defense Council, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, San Francisco, represents one of the most ambitious attempts to establish a uniform method for putting a price tag on the health impacts of climate change. Most previous estimates have only looked at costs associated with property losses, damage to infrastructure and other resource forfeitures.

“This is a problem with a human face,” said Kim Knowlton, a senior scientist in the Health and Environment Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council and the lead author of the study. “Our prior notions about climate change damage without these costs included have been vastly underestimated.”

Full Story Here: Climate Change’s Health Costs Projected To Be Enormous.

Thousands surround the White House to protest TransCanada pipeline

Thousands of demonstrators, including movie stars and a Nobel laureate, surrounded the White House on Sunday to protest a proposed Canadian pipeline that’s serving as a flashpoint for the U.S. environmental movement while resonating with Americans fed up with corporate interests.

The demonstration is the latest in a series of White House protests aimed at convincing U.S. President Barack Obama to thwart Calgary-based TransCanada’s attempts to build the Keystone XL pipeline that would carry Alberta oilsands crude through six American states to Gulf Coast refineries.

Mark Ruffalo, nominated for an Academy Award last year, and Jody Williams, winner of the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for her work on banning landmines, were among a sea of protesters who marched along several downtown blocks, including past the U.S. Treasury building, before joining hands in a mammoth circle around the White House.

Police on the scene estimated the crowd at about 5,000-strong while organizers claimed as many as 12,000 people were on hand at the peak of the protest.

Full Story Here: Thousands surround the White House to protest TransCanada pipeline – Winnipeg Free Press.

Biggest spike ever in global warming gases: U.S.

Harmful carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels made their biggest ever annual jump in 2010, according to the US Department of Energy’s latest world data released this week.

China led the way with a spike of 212 million metric tons of carbon in 2010 over 2009, compared to 59 million metric tons more from the United States and 48 million metric tons more from India in the same period.

“It’s big,” Tom Boden, director of the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center Environmental Sciences Division at the DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, told AFP in an interview.

Full Story Here: Biggest spike ever in global warming gases: U.S. | The Raw Story.

Microsoft Funds Koch’s Climate-Denying Tea Party Conference

Microsoft Corporation, which argues that climate pollution requires a “comprehensive and global response,” is sponsoring the Koch brothers’ Tea Party convention taking place in Washington, DC. Microsoft is a “gold sponsor” of the Americans For Prosperity Foundation’s fifth annual Defending The American Dream Summit, cheek and jowl with top climate denial front groups like the Heartland Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Speakers at the conference include climate deniers Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS), Ken Cuccinelli, Ann McElhinney, Chris Horner, Myron Ebell, and Carly Fiorina. Their prominent involvement was captured in a photograph by Slate.com reporter Dave Wiegel.

Full Story Here: Microsoft Funds Koch’s Climate-Denying Tea Party Conference | ThinkProgress.

‘Highly Probable’ Fracking Tests Caused Earthquakes in UK Drill Site

It is “highly probable” that shale gas test drilling triggered earth tremors in Lancashire, a study has found.

But the report, commissioned by energy firm Cuadrilla, also said the quakes were due to an “unusual combination of geology at the well site”.

It said conditions which caused the minor earthquakes were “unlikely to occur again”.

Protesters against fracking, a gas extraction method, said the report “did not inspire confidence”.

Six protesters from campaign group Frack Off climbed a drilling rig at one of Cuadrilla’s test drilling sites in Hesketh Bank, near Southport, ahead of the report.

Full Story Here: ‘Highly Probable’ Fracking Tests Caused Earthquakes in UK Drill Site | Common Dreams.

TransCanada To Nebraska: Altering Keystone XL Pipeline Route Would Be Unconstitutional

In a signal of what might lie ahead in the contentious battle over the Keystone XL oil pipeline, the company behind the proposed project, Calgary-based TransCanada, suggested this week that legislative efforts underway in Nebraska to force a rerouting of the pipeline could prove unconstitutional.

The Nebraska legislature, at the urging of the state’s governor, opened a special session Tuesday during which lawmakers were expected to begin introducing myriad bills designed to tweak Nebraska’s pipeline siting and safety authority. For many lawmakers, the overarching goal is to force TransCanada to seek a different route for the pipeline, which as currently conceived would cut through a sensitive region known as the Sand Hills — part of the larger, multi-state Ogallala aquifer.

In a statement late Monday, TransCanada suggested that any law passed during the special session that affects the Keystone XL project would “constitute unconstitutional discrimination against interstate commerce.” Speaking on Tuesday, company spokesman Shawn Howard clarified that TransCanada was not suggesting that Nebraska had no right to govern pipelines that run within its borders, but that it was too late to do so with this project.

Full Story Here: TransCanada To Nebraska: Altering Keystone XL Pipeline Route Would Be Unconstitutional.

Bluff Collapses At Oak Creek Power Station

Geotechnical engineers will be called into investigate what caused an embankment to collapse Monday morning, sending a portion of a bluff to slide into Lake Michigan.

The bluff, located just south of the We Energies Oak Creek power plant, collapsed to the lake around 11:18 a.m.

We Energies spokesman Brian Manthey said that all employees who reported to work Monday morning were accounted for, and that there are no injuries in the incident.

“We’ve checked and double-checked,” Manthey said.

Full Story Here: Bluff Collapses At Oak Creek Power Station – Milwaukee News Story – WISN Milwaukee.

Environmental Group Breaks the Silence on Population Control

Major American environmental groups have dodged the subject of population control for decades, wary of getting caught up in the bruising politics of reproductive health.

Yet, virtually alone, the Center for Biological Diversity is breaking the taboo by directly tying population growth to environmental problems through efforts like giving away condoms in colorful packages depicting endangered animals. The idea is to start a debate about how overpopulation crowds out species and hastens climate change — just when the world is welcoming Baby No.7 Billion.

“Wrap with care, save the polar bear,” reads one of the packages. “Wear a condom now, save the spotted owl,” says another.

Full Story Here: Environmental Group Breaks the Silence on Population Control – NYTimes.com.

Richard Muller, Koch Backed Global Warming Denier, Now Agrees Climate Change Is Real

A prominent physicist and skeptic of global warming spent two years trying to find out if mainstream climate scientists were wrong. In the end, he determined they were right: Temperatures really are rising rapidly.

The study of the world’s surface temperatures by Richard Muller was partially bankrolled by a foundation connected to global warming deniers. He pursued long-held skeptic theories in analyzing the data. He was spurred to action because of “Climategate,” a British scandal involving hacked emails of scientists.

Yet he found that the land is 1.6 degrees warmer than in the 1950s. Those numbers from Muller, who works at the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, match those by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA.

Full Story Here: Richard Muller, Global Warming Skeptic, Now Agrees Climate Change Is Real.

Hungary Destroys All Monsanto GMO Corn Fields

Hungary has taken a bold stand against biotech giant Monsanto and genetic modification by destroying 1000 acres of maize found to have been grown with genetically modified seeds, according to Hungary deputy state secretary of the Minstry of Rural Development Lajos Bognar. Unlike many European Union countries, genetically modified (GM) seeds are banned in Hungary. In a similar stance against GM ingredients, Peru has also passed a 10 year ban on GM foods.

Almost 1000 acres of maize found to have been ground with genetically modified seeds have been destroyed throughout Hungary, deputy state secretary of the Ministry of Rural Development Lajos Bognar said. The GMO maize has been ploughed under, said Lajos Bognar, but pollen has not spread from the maize, he added.

Unlike several EU members, GMO seeds are banned in Hungary. The checks will continue despite the fact that seek traders are obliged to make sure that their products are GMO free, Bognar said.

Full Story Here: Hungary Destroys All Monsanto GMO Corn Fields | Natural Society.

Kneecapping the Environment

If your child has asthma and it’s getting worse, then news about the White House’s recent retreat on ozone (that is, smog) standards for the air over your city wasn’t exactly cause for cheering. Thank our environmental president for that, but mainly of course the Republicans, who have been out to kneecap the Environmental Protection Agency since the 2010 election results came in. We may be heading for an anything-blows environmental future, even though it couldn’t be more logical to assume that whatever is allowed into the air will sooner or later end up in us.

With a helping hand from that invaluable website Environmental Health News, here’s a little ladleful of examples from the chemical soup that could be not just your air, soil, or water, but you. It’s only a few days’ worth of news reports on what’s in our environment and so, for better or mostly worse, in us: In Dallas-Ft. Worth, there’s lead in the blood of children, thanks to leaded gasoline, banned decades ago, but still in the soil. In New York’s Hudson River, “one of the largest toxic cleanups in U.S. history” (for PCBs in river sediments) is ongoing. Researchers now suspect that those chemicals, already linked to low birth weight, thyroid disease, and learning, memory, and immune system disorders,” are also associated with to high blood pressure. Then there’s mercury, that “potent neurotoxin that is especially dangerous to the developing brains of fetuses and children.” If allowed, it will enter the environment via a proposed open-pit gold and copper mine to be built in Alaska near “one of the world’s premier salmon fisheries.”

Full Story Here: Kneecapping the Environment | Common Dreams.

Is the EPA Selling Out Your Water?

We were disheartened to learn this week that Nancy Stoner, the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) acting assistant administrator for water, is an advocate for water privatization. In an interview with Greenwire (Sorry, but subscription required.), Stoner expressed doubt about the federal government’s ability to help provide the public with drinking and wastewater service, citing them as “too expensive.” She then went on to say,

“I think there’s big money in to be made in how to address the water resources needs for our country, particularly when we are going to have population growth, development, the decay of existing infrastructure and climate change.”

Hearing a top government official in charge of protecting one of our most essential shared resources laud a scheme that has been linked to the degradation of municipal water supplies definitely makes us wonder where our government is placing its priorities. Across the U.S., privatization has been linked to deteriorating water quality, rate hikes, job force reductions and poor customer service.

Full Story Here: Is the EPA Selling Out Your Water? | Food & Water Watch.

Japan Tsunami Debris Floating Toward Hawaii

Up to 20 million tons of tsunami debris floating from Japan could arrive on Hawaii’s shores by early 2013, before reaching the West Coast, according to estimates by University of Hawaii scientists.

A Russian training ship spotted the junk – including a refrigerator, a television set and other appliances – in an area of the Pacific Ocean where the scientists from the university’s International Pacific Research Center predicted it would be. The biggest proof that the debris is from the Japanese tsunami is a fishing boat that’s been traced to the Fukushima Prefecture, the area hardest hit by the March 11 disaster.

Jan Hafner, a scientific computer programmer, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that researchers’ projections show the debris would reach the coasts of Oregon, Washington, Alaska and Canada around 2014.

Full Story Here: Japan Tsunami Debris Floating Toward Hawaii.

Expert Says Quakes in England May Be Tied to Gas Extraction

A British seismologist said Friday that two minor earthquakes in northwestern England “appeared to correlate closely” with the use of hydraulic fracturing, a method of extracting natural gas from wells that has raised concerns about environmental and seismological risks in the United States.

The scientist, Brian Baptie, seismic project team leader with the British Geological Survey, said data from the two quakes near Blackpool — one of magnitude 2.3 on April 1, the other of magnitude 1.5 on May 27 — suggested the temblors arose from the same source. Cuadrilla Resources, a British energy company, was conducting hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, operations at a well nearby when the quakes occurred.

In fracking, water, sand and chemicals are injected into a well at high pressure to split shale rock and release trapped gas.

Full Story Here: Expert Says Quakes in England May Be Tied to Gas Extraction – NYTimes.com.

Global Hazardous Waste Ban Advances

The United States, the world’s top exporter of electronic waste, is among nations that have not ratified the original convention

More than 170 countries have agreed to accelerate adoption of a global ban on the export of hazardous wastes, including old electronics, to developing countries.

The environmental group Basel Action Network called Friday’s deal, which was brokered by Switzerland and Indonesia, a major breakthrough.

“I’m ecstatic,” said its executive director, Jim Puckett. “I’ve been working on this since 1989 and it really does look like the shackles are lifted and we’ll see this thing happen in my lifetime.”

The deal seeks to ensure that developing countries no longer become dumping groups for toxic waste including industrial chemicals, discarded computers and mobile phones and obsolete ships laden with asbestos, he said.

Full Story Here: Going Forward: Global Hazardous Waste Ban Advances | Common Dreams.

New study confirms reality of global warming

A broad-based new study of climate change has confirmed earlier evidence of a global rise in average land temperatures of 1 degree Centigrade since the 1950′s. However, it draws no conclusions as to whether this warming is man-made.

The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study, released on Thursday, analyzed data from fifteen different sources, some going back more than two centuries, to answer doubts raised by climate change skeptics in response to earlier studies.

Previous studies had been able to rule out certain sources of possible error, including the urban heat island effect and poor station quality, but they had been based on a limited number of data sources, and skeptics had continued to claim that the results might have been skewed as a result. The new study, which includes almost all available data, is intended to counter that claim.

Full Story Here: New study confirms reality of global warming | The Raw Story.

BP wins approval to resume drilling in Gulf of Mexico

BP has won approval to resume drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, 18 months after a well blowout killed 11 workers and caused an environmental disaster

Regulators approved plans for drilling to depths of up to 6,000ft about 200 miles off the coast of New Orleans.

US officials said in a statement: “Our review of BP’s plan included verification of BP’s compliance with the heightened standards.”

The Gulf’s Kaskida oilfield could contain up to 3bn barrels of crude.

The US Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said BP’s exploration plan meets the stringent standards issued by the government after last year’s Deepwater Horizon disaster, as well as the additional self-imposed standards that BP has taken.

Full Story Here: BBC News – BP wins approval to resume drilling in Gulf of Mexico.

OPS: This is the Base definition of INSANITY. And, another sell-out by the Obama Administration.

GM crops promote superweeds, food insecurity and pesticides, say NGOs

Report finds genetically modified crops fail to increase yields let alone solve hunger, soil erosion and chemical-use issues

Genetic engineering has failed to increase the yield of any food crop but has vastly increased the use of chemicals and the growth of “superweeds”, according to a report by 20 Indian, south-east Asian, African and Latin American food and conservation groups representing millions of people.

The so-called miracle crops, which were first sold in the US about 20 years ago and which are now grown in 29 countries on about 1.5bn hectares (3.7bn acres) of land, have been billed as potential solutions to food crises, climate change and soil erosion, but the assessment finds that they have not lived up to their promises.

The report claims that hunger has reached “epic proportions” since the technology was developed. Besides this, only two GM “traits” have been developed on any significant scale, despite investments of tens of billions of dollars, and benefits such as drought resistance and salt tolerance have yet to materialise on any scale.

Full Story Here: GM crops promote superweeds, food insecurity and pesticides, say NGOs | Environment | The Guardian.

BP’s Gulf of Mexico PR, One Year Later

Finger-pointing over the Deepwater Horizon disaster resumed recently after the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Coast Guard issued a joint report (pdf) which concluded all three corporate participants in the calamity — BP, Transocean Ltd. and Halliburton — were at fault. The report concluded all three companies violated federal laws and safety regulations by “failing to take necessary precautions to keep the Macondo well under control at all times.” The report also found all three companies were “jointly and severally liable for the failure to comply with all applicable regulations.” That means all three companies are mutually responsible for the accident, and each can be held singly responsible for the entire debacle. The report parsed blame among the companies for sloppy materials and workmanship, inadequate training, failure to properly assess risk and conduct proper testing, failure to abide by stop-work work policies after multiple anomalies were discovered, and so on.

The Blame-Go-Round

Despite the report citing all three companies as equally liable, Transocean now believes it has been vindicated. Brian Kennedy, a Transocean company spokesman, said “The report…finally puts to rest all previous allegations that improper maintenance of the [blowout preventer] contributed to the tragedy.” He characterized the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon as “unavoidable.”

Full Story Here: BP’s Gulf of Mexico PR, One Year Later | Common Dreams.

XL Pipeline warning dismissed

When a university professor with expertise in hazardous waste sounds alarms about a proposed oil pipeline in Nebraska, the federal agency overseeing the project should pay attention.

That’s the view of State Sen. Ken Haar of Malcolm, who questions whether the U.S. State Department has ignored a warning that the Keystone XL pipeline could pollute Nebraska groundwater much worse than predicted.

One line from the government’s environmental impact statement raised the senator’s ire, he said, because it struck him as out of place in a serious analysis.

Referring to the professor’s report, the government document said, “This is simply the latest case of opportunistic fear-mongering, dressed up as an academic study.”

“I am very offended by this unprofessional dismissal of a Nebraska scholar and his important work,” Haar wrote last week to an official with the Environmental Protection Agency.

Full Story Here: Pipeline warning dismissed – Omaha.com.

Texas agency censors climate change references in key scientific report

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) doesn’t want to say who’s responsible for deleting all mentions of climate change from part of a forthcoming scientific report, and that’s got at least one scientist hopping mad.

Dr. John B. Anderson (pictured, left), an oceanographer at Rice University, told Raw Story that his report on the Galveston Bay estuary, and the effects of rising sea levels on its fragile ecosystem, was censored for purely “political” reasons.

“This is a clear-cut case of censorship,” he said in an exclusive interview. “It’s not scientific editing. It was strictly deletion of virtually any information that related to global change.”

Full Story Here: Texas agency censors climate change references in key scientific report | The Raw Story.

Lake Erie’s Toxic Algae Bloom Seen From Space: Green Scum Rampant In The Great Lakes (PHOTOS)

Toxic algae is sucking the oxygen out of Lake Erie.

The lake is currently undergoing one of the worst algae blooms in decades, turning the water a scummy bright green. According to NASA, blooms like this did occur in the 1950′s and 60′s, but now phosphorus from farms, sewage, and industry have fertilized the waters.

After the 60′s, increased regulations and improvements in agriculture and sewage treatment limited the phosphorus and helped to control the blooms. However, the shallower Western basin near Detroit has been more susceptible to the algae than other deeper areas.

The exact reason behind the bloom is a bit unclear, but scientists believe it could be linked to increased rainfall and, believe it or not, mussels. It seems the types of mussel, zebra and quagga that have invaded the lake feed on phytoplankton instead of algae, making it even easier for the blooms to occur, according to NASA.

Full Story Here: Lake Erie’s Toxic Algae Bloom Seen From Space: Green Scum Rampant In The Great Lakes (PHOTOS).

Are we just going to talk our way to oblivion?

At Durban in eight weeks’ time, the world’s gaping split over climate change will be clear

Did it stir something in the memory, by any chance, the extraordinary heat of a fortnight ago, when Britain met with its hottest-ever October day, and numerous places experienced their hottest day of the whole year? Did the sheer, seasonal abnormality of its glare give pause, and revive a concern which has faded almost completely, in the face of scepticism and the economic crisis – the concern that the climate might be drastically changing, with potentially deadly consequences?

If so, I suspect that the revival was brief, and that most people have gone back to worrying about their jobs. Global warming is an issue which has dropped off the pubic agenda almost completely. Yet in less than eight weeks’ time it will dominate the headlines once again, when, at the UN climate conference in Durban, South Africa, the gaping split in the world community over how to tackle climate change will come to a crunch.

The essence of this split is simple; developing countries (like India, say) think the rich, developed countries should do it; the rich developed countries (like us) think that everyone should do it. The first position was enshrined in the current climate treaty, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, in which the rich world agreed to cut its carbon emissions, while the developing countries were obliged to do nothing; and now Kyoto, which in its present version runs out on 31 December 2012, is up for renewal.

Full Story Here: Nature Studies by Michael McCarthy: Are we just going to talk our way to oblivion? – Nature Studies, Nature – The Independent.

Rick Perry officials spark revolt after doctoring environment report

Scientists ask for names to be removed after mentions of climate change and sea-level rise taken out by Texas officials

Officials in Rick Perry‘s home state of Texas have set off a scientists’ revolt after purging mentions of climate change and sea-level rise from what was supposed to be a landmark environmental report. The scientists said they were disowning the report on the state of Galveston Bay because of political interference and censorship from Perry appointees at the state’s environmental agency.

By academic standards, the protest amounts to the beginnings of a rebellion: every single scientist associated with the 200-page report has demanded their names be struck from the document. “None of us can be party to scientific censorship so we would all have our names removed,” said Jim Lester, a co-author of the report and vice-president of the Houston Advanced Research Centre.

“To me it is simply a question of maintaining scientific credibility. This is simply antithetical to what a scientist does,” Lester said. “We can’t be censored.” Scientists see Texas as at high risk because of climate change, from the increased exposure to hurricanes and extreme weather on its long coastline to this summer’s season of wildfires and drought.

However, Perry, in his run for the Republican nomination, has elevated denial of science, from climate change to evolution, to an art form. He opposes any regulation of industry, and has repeatedly challenged the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Full Story Here: Rick Perry officials spark revolt after doctoring environment report | Environment | guardian.co.uk.

One of the Worst Meals You Can Possibly Eat Has Just Been Banned in California

It’s a particularly choppy morning here in the Central Pacific, and everyone aboard Greenpeace’s flagship, Esperanza, is on high alert. We are here to document, expose, and take action against illegal and unsustainable fishing practices, and only an hour ago, we encountered a Korean longline vessel, Oryong 335, that has refused to let us board their ship and is steaming away from us. It’s too late for them to hide their secret, though: Even from half a mile off, one can see dozens of shark fins hung to dry in the tropical sun.

Out here in the high seas, it’s only too obvious that the barbaric and wasteful practice of shark finning is alive and well. Current estimates on how many sharks are killed every year for their fins vary widely, but the average figure is somewhere around 50 million. Given this level of carnage, it’s no wonder that many shark populations around the world are in severe decline. As I’ve written before, we need sharks in our oceans. Without sharks and other top-level carnivores to keep populations of sub-predators in check, we run the risk of losing productive and well-balanced marine ecosystems to trophic collapse.

Full Story Here: One of the Worst Meals You Can Possibly Eat Has Just Been Banned in California | Food | AlterNet.

BP to risk worst ever oil spill in Shetlands drilling

BP is making contingency plans to fight the largest oil spill in history, as it prepares to drill more than 4,000 feet down in the Atlantic in wildlife-rich British waters off the Shetland Islands.

Internal company documents seen by The Independent show that the worst-case scenario for a spill from its North Uist exploratory well, to be sunk next year, would involve a leak of 75,000 barrels a day for 140 days – a total of 10.5 million barrels of oil, comfortably the world’s biggest pollution disaster.

BP is making contingency plans to fight the largest oil spill in history, as it prepares to drill more than 4,000 feet down in the Atlantic in wildlife-rich British waters off the Shetland Islands.

This would be more than double the amount of oil spilled from its Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico last year, which had a maximum leak rate of 62,000 barrels a day in an incident lasting 88 days – and triggered a social, economic and environmental catastrophe in the US which brought the giant multinational to the brink of collapse.

Full Story Here: Exclusive: BP to risk worst ever oil spill in Shetlands drilling – Green Living, Environment – The Independent.

Chicago’s Upcoming Winter Expected To Be The Nation’s Worst

If you thought winter in Chicago couldn’t possibly get more intense than last year’s blizzaster, get ready for this one: Long-range forecasters are expecting this winter’s snowfall and average temperatures to rank the city as home to the nation’s worst winter.

According AccuWeather.com’s forecast, the Chicago area will likely be clobbered by between 50 and 58 inches of snow this winter — approximately the same amount as the 56 inches that fell over the city last year. An average amount of snowfall is approximately half that. The Chicago Sun-Times further reports that average temperatures will be 2 to 3 degrees colder than normal — also on par with last winter’s temperatures, which were 2.4 degrees colder than normal.

“People in Chicago are going to want to move after this winter,” AccuWeather meteorologist John Nagelberg told NBC 5 of the predicted frigidness.

The brutal temperatures are expected to hit hard in December and January, before easing up slightly in February, according to the Chicago Tribune. Snow will be expected to be distributed more evenly throughout the season than last year, when the Groundhog’s Day blizzard crippled the city, trapped hundreds of cars on Lake Shore Drive and provided an endless bevy of dramatically wintry images.

(Scroll down to relive the storm.)

Full Story Here: Chicago’s Upcoming Winter Expected To Be The Nation’s Worst.

Keystone XL construction permit expires

The National Energy Board has given Trans Canada Pipeline until October 14 to respond to the assertion of the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union that its Canadian permit to build the Keystone XL pipeline has expired.

The NEB responded to a CEP application last week on the expiry of Order in Council 56 which required that construction of the pipeline commence prior to March 11, 2011. The NEB letter to TCPL can be found on the NEB web site’s regulatory documents section – receipt A31873.

“This is no technicality,” said CEP President Dave Coles. “TCPL missed its construction start deadlines because regulatory approval is more than a year late in the US, and there are still large doubts about whether there will be US federal and state approvals.

Full Story Here: Keystone XL construction permit expires | CEP.

House Committee Censors Testimony of Appalachian Activists

The House Natural Resources Committee has some explaining to do.

In a blatant disregard of the concerns of affected West Virginia coalfield residents who actually live under the fallout of devastating mountaintop removal operations, a press release summary from the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources’ field hearing on “Jobs at Risk: Community Impacts of the Obama Administration’s Effort to Rewrite the Stream Buffer Zone Rule” completely deleted any mention of the official testimonies by Appalachian coalfield leaders Maria Gunnoe and Bo Webb. The press release reported exclusively on testimony from coal industry representatives, Big Coal-bankrolled politicians and hired coal industry supporters.

“Yesterday a House Natural Resources subcommittee tried its very hardest not to hear West Virginians’ concerns about the destruction and heartbreak of mountaintop removal in their communities,” noted Natural Resources Defense Council staff Melissa Waage. “Now the subcommittee leadership is trying to pretend these people don’t even exist.”

Makes you wonder: Is such censorship in an official document released by the House committee a violation of Congressional rules? And will Democrats on the subcommittee or Natural Resources Committee follow up with an investigation and hold responsible committee staff and members accountable?

Full Story Here: House Committee Censors Testimony of Appalachian Activists | Common Dreams.

Plutonium ‘Detected Outside Fukushima Plant’

A limited amount of plutonium has been detected in soil outside Japan’s troubled Fukushima nuclear power plant which was crippled by the March 11 quake-tsunami disaster, the government said Friday.

It was the first time plutonium had been found in government tests outside the plant, presumably due to the nuclear accident, the worst since 1986 Chernobyl, the education and science ministry said in a statement.

Plutonium was detected in soil at six places in a survey which was conducted in June in an area within 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the Fukushima Daiichi plant, the ministry said.

Full Story Here: Plutonium ‘Detected Outside Fukushima Plant’ | Common Dreams.

Canadian Arctic loses most of huge ice shelf

Two ice shelves that existed before Canada was settled by Europeans diminished significantly this northern summer, one nearly disappearing altogether, Canadian scientists say in newly published research.

The loss is important as a marker of global warming, returning the Canadian Arctic to conditions that date back thousands of years, scientists say. Floating icebergs that have broken free as a result pose a risk to offshore oil facilities and potentially to shipping lanes. The breaking apart of the ice shelves also reduces the environment that supports microbial life and changes the look of Canada’s coastline.

Luke Copland is an associate professor in the geography department at the University of Ottawa who co-authored the research published on Carleton University’s website. He said the Serson Ice Shelf shrank from 205 square kilometres to two remnant sections five years ago, and was further diminished this past summer.

Full Story Here: Canadian Arctic loses most of huge ice shelf – World – NZ Herald News.

Oil pipeline opponents pin hopes on Nebraska

Environmentalists hoping to block a proposed underground oil pipeline that would snake 1,700 miles from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico have pinned their hopes on an unlikely ally — the conservative state of Nebraska.

Few states are as red as Nebraska, which hasn’t supported a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964. But opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline has risen steadily since the project was proposed three years ago.

The reason: Fears of contaminating the Ogallala Aquifer, a vast subterranean reservoir that spans a large swath of the Great Plains and provides water to much of Nebraska, as well as seven other states. Opponents have grown to include Nebraska’s conservative governor and two U.S. senators, a Republican and a conservative Democrat.

Full Story Here: Oil pipeline opponents pin hopes on Nebraska – AP News Wire, Associated Press News – Salon.com.

Exposed: New Documentary About Gas Drilling Hailed as Indie and Balanced, But Here’s Why It’s Neither | Environment | AlterNet

“Haynesville” is making the indie film circuit, but its director is actually an oil and gas man in disguise.

This weekend, the Texas Tribune will play host to the Texas Tribune Festival. According to the festival’s website, the convening is designed “to bring together the state’s most prominent thinkers, politicians and public servants for a weekend of debate, discussion and dialogue on the subjects that matter most to all Texans.”

Near the top of the agenda will be a slate of policy discussions pertaining to energy and the environment, include the screening of a documentary about natural gas drilling (no, not Gasland). Texas is home to both the Eagle Ford and Barnett Shale basins, as well as a sliver of the Haynesville Shale, under all of which sits vast amounts of natural gas. The Haynesville Shale, mostly located in the northwest corner of Louisiana, as well as bit of southwest Arkansas and east Texas, underlies an area of about 9,000 square miles and possesses some 250 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas. It is the largest natural gas field in the United States.

The festival’s sponsors include some of the most powerful players in the natural gas arena: Apache Corporation, BP, El Paso Corp, Energy Future Holdings Corp, and America’s Natural Gas Alliance (ANGA) — the largest natural gas industry lobbying consortium in the United States. ANGA spent over $3 million lobbying the U.S. Congress in 2010 and has already spent over $1 million lobbying Congress in 2011, according to OpenSecrets.org.

Full Story Here: Exposed: New Documentary About Gas Drilling Hailed as Indie and Balanced, But Here’s Why It’s Neither | Environment | AlterNet.

Radioactive Rice “Far Exceeding” Safe Levels Found in Japan

Japan found the first case of rice with radioactive materials far exceeding a government-set level for a preliminary test of pre-harvested crop, requiring thorough inspection of the rice to be harvested from the region, the farm ministry said late on Friday.

The ministry said radioactive caesium of 500 becquerels per kg was found in a sample of the pre-harvested rice in Nihonmatsu city, in Fukushima Prefecture, 56 km (35 miles) west of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant which was crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, triggering the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 25 years.

The ministry said the Fukushima Prefecture will expand the inspection spots nearly ten-fold to around 300 areas.

It is the first case in Japan of rice containing radioactive caesium exceeding 200 becquerels per kg, a level which requires further thorough testing of the area for the harvested rice.

Full Story Here: Radioactive Rice “Far Exceeding” Safe Levels Found in Japan | Common Dreams.

House passes bill to block broad Environmental Protection Agency rules

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill Friday that would block a number of broad regulations to reduce unhealthy air emissions.

Passage of the bill was expected in the Republican-controlled House, where lawmakers have targeted Environmental Protection Agency air rules, saying they would kill jobs and laden businesses with billions of dollars in additional costs at the worst possible time.

“The Obama administration is moving too fast and showing little regard for the economic consequences of their energy and environmental policies,” said Rep. John Sullivan (R-Okla.), who sponsored the bill.

The vote on the so-called Transparency in Regulatory Analysis of Impacts on the Nation, or TRAIN, was 249 to 169. It was supported by fewer than 20 Democrats.

The bill, which must be passed in the Democratic-controlled Senate and signed by President Obama to become law, would delay certain EPA moves by setting up an interagency panel led by the Commerce Department. The panel would be tasked with assessing the impact of EPA rules on the economy, thus delaying their implementation.

Full Story Here: House passes bill to block broad Environmental Protection Agency rules – The Washington Post.

OPS:  Even a couple of suicidal Dems voted for this. A couple of Repubs voted against it. But 99% the the Rightwing voted FOR.

The Keystone Pipeline: Too Dirty for George W. Bush?

The Keystone XL pipeline, recently approved by the US State Department and awaiting President Obama’s declaration that it is in the “national interest,” will carry oil that is too dirty for the US government to buy — under legislation signed by George W. Bush!

In 2007, President Bush signed into law Section 526 of the Energy Independence and National Security Act of 2007. It prohibits the US government, which is the largest single fuel purchaser in the U.S., from using taxpayer dollars to purchase fuels that have a higher carbon footprint than conventional oil.

This little-known law is significant because Congress crafted it, in part, with the explicit intent to block the US from buying Canadian tar sands oil — considered the dirtiest oil on the planet. With President Obama currently debating whether to authorize the construction of the Keystone Pipeline — which will funnel tar sands oil from Alberta into the the US — and more than 1000 activists arrested in front of the White House last month in protest the pipeline, the issue has moved to the front and center of the climate debate in recent weeks.

Full Story Here: The Keystone Pipeline: Too Dirty for George W. Bush? | Common Dreams.

DuPont’s Herbicide Goes Rogue

Jim Hightower :_:

In the corporate world’s tortured language, workers are no longer fired. They just experience an “employment adjustment.” But the most twisted euphemism I’ve heard in a long time comes from DuPont: “We are investigating the reports of these unfavorable tree symptoms,” the pesticide maker recently stated.

How unfavorable? Finito, flat-lined, the tree is dead. Not just one tree, but hundreds of thousands all across the country are suffering the final “symptom.”

The culprit turns out to be Imprelis, a DuPont weed-killer widely applied to lawns, golf courses, and — ironically — cemeteries.

dupont-imprelis-dead-tree

Rather than just poisoning dandelions and other weeds, the herbicide also seems to be causing spruces, pines, willows, poplars, and other unintended victims to croak.

Full Story Here: DuPont’s Herbicide Goes Rogue – OtherWords.

Arctic ice cover hits historic low: scientists

The area covered by Arctic sea ice reached its lowest point this week since the start of satellite observations in 1972, German researchers announced on Saturday.

“On September 8, the extent of the Arctic sea ice was 4.240 million square kilometres (1.637 million square miles). This is a new historic minimum,” said Georg Heygster, head of the Physical Analysis of Remote Sensing Images unit at the University of Bremen’s Institute of Environmental Physics.

The new mark is about half-a-percent under his team’s measurements of the previous record, which occurred on September 16, 2007, he said.

According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC), the record set on that date was 4.1 million sq km (1.6 sq mi). The discrepancy, Heygster explained by phone, was due to slightly different data sets and algorithms.

Full Story Here: AFP: Arctic ice cover hits historic low: scientists.

Effect of contaminated soil on food chain sparks fears

Cesium absorption through roots may have long-term effect on farming

Six months after the nuclear meltdowns in Fukushima Prefecture, the public’s awareness of the threat posed by radiation is entering a new phase: the realization that the biggest danger now and in the future is from contaminated soil.

The iodine-131 ejected into the sky by the Fukushima No. 1 power station disaster was quickly detected in vegetables and tap water — even as far away as Tokyo, 220 km south of the plant.

But contamination levels are now so low they are virtually undetectable, thanks to the short half-life of iodine-131 — eight days — and stepped up filtering by water companies.

But cesium is proving to be a tougher foe. The element’s various isotopes have half-lives ranging from two to 30 years, generating concern about the food chain in Fukushima Prefecture, a predominantly agricultural region, as the elements wash fallout into the ground.

The root of the problem is, well — roots.

Full Story Here: Effect of contaminated soil on food chain sparks fears | The Japan Times Online.

U.S. endures hottest summer since 1936

Skeptics of climate change will have to deal with more evidence contrasting their disbelief.

The U.S. has experienced its hottest summer in 75 years, according to USA Today and the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. This latest summer season, with an average temperature of 74.5 degrees, has also been recorded as the second hottest ever. Only the Dust Bowl year of 1936, at 74.6 degrees, was warmer.

Full Story Here: U.S. endures hottest summer since 1936 | The Raw Story.

DuPont’s herbicide goes rogue

Jim Hightower :-:

In the tortured language of CorporateWorld, workers are no longer fired, they’ve just experienced an “employment adjustment.” But the most twisted euphemism I’d heard in a long time comes from DuPont: “We are investigating the reports of these unfavorable tree symptoms,” the pesticide maker recently stated.

How unfavorable? Finito, flat-lined… the tree is dead. Not just one tree, but hundreds of thousands all across the country are suffering the final “symptom.” The culprit turns out to be Imprelis, a DuPont weed-killer widely applied to lawns, golf courses, and – ironically – cemeteries. Rather than just poisoning dandelions and other weeds, the herbicide also seems to be causing spruces, pines, willows, poplars, and other unintended victims to croak.

“It’s been devastating,” says a Michigan landscaper who applied Imprelis to about a thousand properties this spring and has already had more than a third of them suffer outbreaks of tree deaths. “It looks like someone took a flamethrower to them,” he says. At first, DuPont tried to dodge responsibility, claiming that landscape workers might be applying the herbicide improperly. The corporation even urged customers to be patient and leave the tree corpses on their lawns to see if they come back to life in a few years.

Full Story Here: Jim Hightower | DuPont’s herbicide goes rogue.

Barbara Boxer: I hope greens sue President Obama

Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer said she hopes green groups sue President Barack Obama over his decision to punt a regulation curbing smog-creating emissions until at least 2013.

Boxer — whose relatively mild reaction to Obama’s surprise announcement Friday was in contrast to heated rebukes by environmental groups — said she will stand by those groups in any litigation to force the administration to issue a final ozone rule that goes beyond what was enacted by President George W. Bush.

Environmental groups charged that Obama made a political calculus by punting on a rule that was a particular target of critics who charge his regulatory agenda has hurt the economy and jobs.

Full Story Here: Barbara Boxer: I hope greens sue President Obama – Darren Goode – POLITICO.com.

Tons of radioactive sewage in Japan is latest crisis

Growing piles of contaminated sewage, located hundreds of kilometers from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown, are loaded with high levels of radiactive cesium, and the government has yet to come up with a policy for the country’s latest crisis.

Tons of alarmingly high levels of radioactive cesium are being reported at a sewage treatment facility in Saitama, located more than 150 miles southwest of Fukushima, site of the triple nuclear meltdown last March after a devastating earthquake and tsunami.

According to Al Jazeera English (AJE), workers at the plant have been told to store the sewage, but none are qualified in dealing with the hazardous waste. Under normal conditions, the treated sewage is passed along to fertilizer and cement companies, but the radioactive sewage currently has no takers.

Full Story Here: Tons of radioactive sewage in Japan is latest crisis.

New evidence of a massive oil slick near Deepwater Horizon site

A California nonprofit organization dedicated to the protection and preservation of wildlife has discovered what seems to be a massive oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico near the area of the original Deepwater Horizon spill.

In a flight over the Gulf Tuesday, OnWingsOfCare.org founder and pilot Dr. Bonny Schumaker spotted an oil slick that stretched for nearly 10 miles.

Last week, two Louisiana State University men took a boat into the Gulf and returned with video evidence of large blooms of crude oil swelling up to the water’s surface where the doomed oil rig once hovered.

Full Story Here: New evidence of a massive oil slick near Deepwater Horizon site | Raw Replay.

Obama guts pollution, clean air regulations

Greenpeace :-:

Corporate polluters don’t have to worry about dismantling the Clean Air Act, it appears that President Obama is doing it for them.

As Americans prepare for the holiday weekend, President Obama has announced that he doesn’t plan on enforcing a law that would have prevented 12,000 deaths every year by protecting Americans from ozone pollution.

The President, along with Big Oil and the other corporate polluters whose interest he is serving with this decision, are hoping you won’t notice.

Too bad. We’re paying attention and the President needs to know that putting thousands of American lives needlessly at risk is a serious political miscalculation.

Senior members from Obama’s Democratic party were swift in their criticism of the President’s decision. In reaction, Congressman Ed Markey who sits on the House Energy and Commerce committee stated:

Full Story Here: BREAKING: Obama guts pollution, clean air regulations | Greenpeace.

Obama halts controversial EPA regulation

President Barack Obama on Friday scrapped his administration’s controversial plans to tighten smog rules, bowing to the demands of congressional Republicans and some business leaders.

Obama overruled the Environmental Protection Agency — and the unanimous opinion of its independent panel of scientific advisers — and directed administrator Lisa Jackson to withdraw the proposed regulation to reduce concentrations of ground-level ozone, smog’s main ingredient. The decision rests in part on reducing regulatory burdens and uncertainty for businesses at a time of rampant uncertainty about an unsteady economy.

The announcement came shortly after a new government report on private sector employment showed that businesses essentially added no new jobs last month — and that the jobless rate remained stuck at a historically high 9.1 percent.

Full Story Here: Obama halts controversial EPA regulation – Yahoo! News.

OPS: Obama showing more of his true Republican colors

Petermann Glacier Picture: Before And After Images Show Extent Of 2010 Greenland Ice Break (PHOTOS)

When a 100 mile chunk — an area four times the size of Manhattan — broke off Greenland’s Petermann Glacier in the summer of 2010, scientists knew that it was a historic event. After all, it was the largest known calving in Greenland’s history, and the largest to occur in the Arctic in nearly 50 years.

Over the last year, scientists have only been able to view the extent of the breakup via satellite imagery. Until now.

Photographs taken in July and released on Wednesday offer a new perspective on the August 2010 break, showing before and after images of different areas of Petermann Glacier.

(PHOTOS BELOW)

“Although I knew what to expect in terms of ice loss from satellite imagery, I was still completely unprepared for the gob-smacking scale of the breakup, which rendered me speechless,” Alan Hubbard, the scientist from Aberystwyth University in Wales who took the most recent photograph, said in a statement.

And we can expect more. Hubbard told MSNBC.com that another sheet, about half the size of the 2010 chunk, is poised to break away.

Jason Box, a scientist with the Byrd Polar Research Center at The Ohio State University and photographer of the 2009 image, told HuffPost that the summer of 2010 was Greenland’s warmest on record, and records have been kept since 1873.

“We’re bearing witness to abrupt climate change,” Box told HuffPost. “This isn’t of in the future. It’s very much now.”

Full Story Here: Petermann Glacier Picture: Before And After Images Show Extent Of 2010 Greenland Ice Break (PHOTOS).

Fresh oil slicks forming over Deepwater Horizon spill site 

Despite assurances from British oil company BP that no oil was present at the Deepwater Horizon site in the Gulf of Mexico, two Louisiana State University men have returned with video evidence of large blooms of crude oil swelling up to the water’s surface where the doomed oil rig once hovered.

Tests on the oil were inconclusive as far as linking it to the now-plugged oil well, but if it is from the Deepwater Horizon spill it could indicate the formation of fissures on the seabed, seeping oil into the ecosystem anew.

If so, that would mean the worst accidental release of oil in human history — a spill so bad, it took five months just to stop crude from flowing — isn’t quite over.

Full Story Here: Fresh oil slicks forming over Deepwater Horizon spill site | Raw Replay.

Cesium leak equal to 168 ’45 A-bombs

NISA compares contamination to Hiroshima blast

The amount of radioactive cesium ejected by the Fukushima reactor meltdowns is about 168 times higher than that emitted in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the government’s nuclear watchdog said Friday.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency provided the estimate at the request of a Diet panel but noted that making a simple comparison between an instantaneous bomb blast and a long-term accidental leak is problematic and could lead to “irrelevant” results.

The report said the crippled Fukushima No. 1 plant has released 15,000 terabecquerels of cesium-137, which lingers for decades and can cause cancer, compared with the 89 terabecquerels released by the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

The report estimated each of the 16 isotopes released by the “Little Boy” bomb and 31 of those detected at the Fukushima plant. NISA has said the radiation released at Fukushima was about one-sixth of that released during the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

Full Story Here: Cesium leak equal to 168 ’45 A-bombs | The Japan Times Online.

Scientists discover massive underground river 13,000 feet beneath the Amazon

Researchers at Brazil’s National Observatory have discovered evidence of a massive underground river flowing deep beneath the Amazon River, reports the AFP.

Presenting this week at the 12th International Congress of the Brazilian Geophysical Society in Rio de Janeiro, Elizabeth Tavares Pimentel reported the existence of a 6,000-kilometer-long (3,700-mile) river flowing some 4,000 meters (13,000 feet) under the Amazon.

Full Story Here: Sustainable Ecosystems and Community News: Scientists discover massive underground river 13,000 feet beneath the Amazon.

U.S. Offers Key Support to Canadian Pipeline

The State Department gave a crucial green light on Friday to a proposed 1,711-mile pipeline that would carry heavy oil from oil sands in Canada across the Great Plains to terminals in Oklahoma and the Gulf Coast.

The project, which would be the longest oil pipeline outside of Russia and China, has become a potent symbol in a growing fight that pits energy security against environmental risk, a struggle highlighted by last year’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

By concluding that the $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline would have minimal effect on the environment, President Obama would risk alienating environmental activists, who gave him important support in the 2008 election and were already upset by his recent decisions to expand domestic oil drilling and delay clean air rules. Pipeline opponents have protested in front of the White House for a week, resulting in nearly 400 arrests.

Full Story Here: U.S. Offers Key Support to Canadian Pipeline – NYTimes.com.

Approaching the Collapse: Don’t Panic, Go Organic

So-called “business as usual” is neither sustainable, nor even possible, for much longer. Out-of-control energy corporations, Wall Street, the Pentagon, agribusiness/biotech corporations, and indentured politicians have driven us to the brink. They tell us: don’t worry; trust the experts, things will soon return to “normal.” But reality and common sense tell a different story.

Extreme weather, crop failures, commodities speculation, land grabs, escalating prices, soil degradation, depleted aquifers, routine contamination, food-related disease, and mass hunger represent the “new norm” for food and farming. The global agricultural system, with the exception of the rapidly growing organic sector, rests upon a shaky foundation. Patented seeds, genetically engineered crops, expensive and destructive chemical and energy-intensive inputs, factory farms, monoculture production, eroding soils, unsustainable water use, taxpayer subsidies, and long-distance hauling and distribution, including massive imports that amount to 15% of the U.S. food supply amount to a recipe for disaster.

A “perfect storm” or “ultimate recession” as described by Lester Brown in his new book, World on the Edge, could develop at any time, precipitated by extreme weather and crop failures on a massive scale. A growing number of nations, including the oil giants and China, are now scrambling to secure overseas farmland to feed their domestic populations. World grocers and supermarkets, including the U.S., have, on the average, only a four-day supply of food on hand. An oil shock, global disease pandemic, prolonged drought in the American heartland, or nuclear meltdown could set off a global food panic. Supermarket shelves and grain silos would be stripped bare within a short period of time. Have you thought about this? Are you and those in your local community ready for this?

Full Story Here: Approaching the Collapse: Don’t Panic, Go Organic | Common Dreams.

Your Water’s On Fire But A Corporate Flunky Will Drink It Anyway If So Instructed

Look Ma No Cancer (Yet): As sleazily entertaining proof that Halliburton and other fracking enthusiasts are stepping up their p.r. efforts, we have the gas and oil conference earlier this month where Halliburton CEO Dave Lesar had an underling drink CleanStim, a fracking fluid, to prove how benign it is. Umm, okay. Fracking fluids contain chemicals and additives that these guys keep secret, but what’s known is already a laundry list of known carcinogenics. To understand what they’re doing, here’s The Fracking Song to explain it.

“My Water’s On Fire Tonight (The Fracking Song)” is not meant to take the place of the rich, detailed investigation done by Abrahm Lustgarten and the rest of ProPublica’s frack squad. It’s impossible to sum up a massive, immersive experience like “Buried Secrets” in a two-and-a-half minute song. Instead, the intent is to bring people in, to create an easily digestible package that compels news consumers to dig into the real meat of the story.

An explainer is not “everything you need to know about X.” It’s not a shortcut to becoming an armchair expert. But it is the starting point, the big picture, the tiny bundle of information that gives users the context to appreciate and understand the most challenging and rewarding works of journalism.

Full Story Here: Your Water’s On Fire But A Corporate Flunky Will Drink It Anyway If So Instructed | Common Dreams.

Keystone XL Pipeline Obama’s ‘Biggest Climate Test,’ Green Groups Say

In a boost for grassroots efforts pressuring the Obama administration to block approval of TransCanada’s Keystone XL oil pipeline, the heads of major environmental organizations released a letter on Wednesday calling on Barack Obama to deny presidential approval to the pipeline, which would stretch from tar sands in Alberta to oil refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.

In their letter to Obama, the groups described the pipeline as “perhaps the biggest climate test you face between now and the election,” and warned that a failure to deny the permit could come back to haunt him in 2012.

“If you block it, you will trigger a surge of enthusiasm from the green base that supported you so strongly in the last election,” wrote the groups.

Full Story Here: Keystone XL Pipeline Obama’s ‘Biggest Climate Test,’ Green Groups Say | Common Dreams.

A 5.9 Earthquake Has Rattled The East Coast And Yesterday, Colorado Experienced Their Largest Quake In 40 Years

While working on another project I received a call from a relative asking if I had felt a large Earthquake that shook them awake in Delaware, and has been felt as far north as New Hampshire. We live in the Atlanta area, and while I didn’t feel the temblor, I am currently unaware if there were any significant movement as far south as the Greater Atlanta area:

The quake that struck the East Coast comes as no surprise; there has been significant earthquake activity on the East Coast before, however, even though the 7.3 quake that struck Charleston, South Carolina in 1886 caused a significant loss of life and property damage, it has largely escaped the public’s attention in this new age of geological activity. I worry that this could be a “pre-quake” or alternatively, as a direct consequence of today’s quake, could awaken the fault mechanism that caused the quake of 1886:

Full Story Here: A 5.9 Earthquake Has Rattled The East Coast And Yesterday, Colorado Experienced Their Largest Quake In 40 Years | ThePoliticalBandit.com.

Monsanto and the mortal danger to traditional agriculture

The greatest threat to the future of food production in the world is the introduction of genetically engineered foods from the bio-tech industry. Contrary to their mendacious propagandized promises of solving the problem of world hunger through the so-called second green revolution, the bio-tech companies are instead in the process of destroying the world’s ecosystems, and thus the natural food chains and life cycles. Their goal is certainly not to solve any problem at all, but instead to fill the corporate coffers with the profits from selling their dangerous products to countries with already high mortality rates from malnutrition and starvation.

Despite its growing economy, India is still a country with enormous poverty. What is happening in India is the most visible example of what is going on in the poor countries all over the world. Giving the green light for genetically modified (GM) products, which have caused medical and financial disasters for poor farmers, is outrageous and a positive danger to Indian agriculture in general.

The farmers are lured by the promise of easy loans and increased yields to buy genetically engineered, patented seeds. They subsequently find out that they also need pesticides, chemical fertilizers and weed killers (Round-up and other ecologically damaging products). Added to the toxic and destructive nature of these products is the fact that the seeds are not suitable for non-irrigated fields, which means for most agricultural fields in India and in poverty-stricken countries all over the planet.

Full Story Here: Monsanto and the mortal danger to traditional agriculture By Siv O’Neall « Dandelion Salad.

65 arrested at pipeline sit-in

Dozens of environmentalist protesters were arrested outside the White House on the first day of a planned two-week protest over a proposed oil pipeline from Canada to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Park Police spokesman David Schlosser said 65 people were arrested Saturday. The protest is scheduled to run through Sept. 3.

The protesters want President Barack Obama to deny a permit for the 1,700-mile TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline, which would cross the Ogallala Aquifer and Nebraska’s Sand Hills on its way to refineries in Houston and Port Arthur, Texas.

Protester Gus Speth, co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the Wall Street Journal that the pipeline would continue the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels. TransCanada says its pipeline would provide jobs and needed oil.

Full Story Here: 65 arrested at pipeline sit-in – Omaha.com.

A New Study Shows That Plants and Animals Are Moving Rapidly in Response to Climate Change

Regardless of what Rick Perry and the rest of Republican presidential candidate field believe (except for you, Jon Huntsman), climate change is real and it’s happening. The questions for the 98% of climate researchers who accept the consensus on man-made global warming is how fast the climate is changing, and what impact it will have on humanity and the planet.

Here’s one effect of warming scientists are already seeing: plants and animals migrating to cooler climates to escape hotter temperatures. In a study published in the August 18 Science, researchers in Britain and Taiwan found that species are moving in response to global warming up to three times faster than previously believed. Analyzing studies covering over 2,000 responses from plants and animals, the scientists found that on average, species have moved to higher elevations to escape warmer temperatures at 40 ft per decade, and moved to higher latitudes (ie, further away from the equator) at 11 miles per decade.

Full Story Here: A New Study Shows That Plants and Animals Are Moving Rapidly in Response to Climate Change – Ecocentric – TIME.com.

Massive protest at White House against Alberta tar sands pipeline

Campaigners say the two-week protest will be the biggest green civil disobedience in a generation

A protest at the White House against a pipeline from the Alberta tar sands is emerging as the biggest green civil disobedience campaign in a generation, organisers said.

Approximately 1,500 people signed up to court arrest during the two-week action outside the White House, which begins on Saturday morning.

The campaign is seen as a last chance to persuade Barack Obama to stop a planned 1,600-mile pipeline that will carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta across rich American farmland to the Gulf of Mexico.

The State Department is expect to produce its final environmental analysis of the pipeline by the end of the month. Obama will then have 90 days to decide whether going ahead with the project would be in the national interest.

Full Story Here: Massive protest at White House against Alberta tar sands pipeline | Environment | guardian.co.uk.

OBAMA APPOINTS MONSANTO’S VICE PRESIDENT AS SENIOR ADVISOR TO THE COMMISSIONER AT THE FDA

Folks, it just keeps getting more insane.

Michael Taylor was just appointed senior advisor to the commissioner of the FDA. This is the same man that was in charge of FDA policy when GMO’s were allowed into the US food supply without undergoing a single test to determine their safety. He “had been Monsanto’s attorney before becoming policy chief at the FDA [and then] he became Monsanto’s Vice President and chief lobbyist. This month [he] became the senior advisor to the commissioner of the FDA. He is now America’s food safety czar. This is no joke.”

Here’s the full story:
You’re Appointing Who? Please Obama, Say It’s Not So!
http://www.responsibletechnology.org/blog/858

The person who may be responsible for more food-related illness and death than anyone in history has just been made the US food safety czar. This is no joke.

Attorneys Question Rental Proposal: Why Isn’t Administration More Interested In Preventing Foreclosure In 1st Place?

While the Obama administration has begun looking at ways to transform government-owned foreclosed homes around the country into rental properties, a group of lawyers wants the administration to do more to help keep embattled homeowners in their homes in the first place.

The administration last week announced plans to convert some of the 250,000 foreclosed homes that the government owns through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration in an effort to improve the nation’s housing market. The government would look for investors to turn foreclosed homes into rental units.

However, the head of the National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys (NACBA) wants to see the government offer more help to those Americans facing mortgage trouble so as prevent more foreclosures.

Full Story Here: The Washington Current: Attorneys Question Rental Proposal: Why Isn’t Administration More Interested In Preventing Foreclosure In 1st Place?.

We’ve Entered the Age of Mass Extinction: Goodbye Fish and a Whole Lot More

Paleontologist Peter Ward talks about the threats from global warming, rising population and our own plain stupidity

Mass extinction is finally fighting its way back into the news cycle, thanks to recent scary reports on climate change from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean, the United Nations Environment Program and the July issue of Science. But University of Washington paleontologist Peter Ward has been there, done that, and he’s still depressed as hell.

“I wrote a book in 1994 called The End of Evolution: A Journey in Search of Clues to the Third Mass Extinction Facing Earth that said, within in a decade or two, we’d be seeing these monumental destructions, and people laughed at it,” Ward explained by phone from Seattle. “I wrote a book just last year about sea-level rise called The Flooded Earth: Our Future in a World Without Ice Caps, saying that things look pretty desperate for the next 60 to 80 years and got almost no reviews. Luckily, I’m not going to be alive to see the worst of it. But the sad thing is that it’s horrible to be right, just horrible. Somebody gave me the foresight to see what’s coming, and I don’t like it.”

Full Story Here: We’ve Entered the Age of Mass Extinction: Goodbye Fish and a Whole Lot More | Environment | AlterNet.

EPA Study from 1980s Linked Fracking to Fouled Drinking Water |

“There’s never been a documented case of contaminated water supply,” Ed Ireland, executive director of the Barnett Shale Energy Education Council, an industry group, told me in 2010. It’s a line that has been repeated by various people in the energy industry—and quoted by reporters like me—as the practice of fracking (or using pressurized water to fracture shale and release the natural gas within) has come under increased scrutiny. It’s been almost a mantra among key players in energy policy, including, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson.

“I’m not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water, although there are investigations ongoing,” she told Congress earlier this year, a line repeated by other Obama administration officials and demanded by proponents of fracking, such as Senator James Inhofe.

It also now turns out to be false. A 1987 study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency documented at least one case where some of the gel used in fracking, also known as hydraulic fracturing, had contaminated well water in West Virginia.

Full Story Here: EPA Study from 1980s Linked Fracking to Fouled Drinking Water | Observations, Scientific American Blog Network.

Why the insurance industry gets climate change

Insurance companies understand risk – which is why, unlike our myopic political class, they do not have their heads in the sand

When it comes to climate change, the US Congress is a hornets’ nest of political dysfunction. Last month, President Barack Obama nominated energy executive John Bryson to lead the commerce department. From the response of congressional Republicans, you might have thought Obama had nominated Ed Abbey and Rachel Carson’s imaginary love child.

In 2009, Bryson had the audacity to support a cap-and-trade system to address climate change and, 40 years earlier, he helped launch the Natural Resource Defence Council. This spurred Darrell Issa (Republican, California) to deride him as a “green evangelist”, while Senator John Barrasso (Republican, Wyoming) called Bryson an “environmental extremist” and Senator James Inhofe (Republican, Oklahoma) pegged him as “a founder of a radical environmental organisation”.

Symptomatic of climate change deniers driving the Beltway discussion, the Washington Post recently relegated global warming to “second-tier issue” status. However, for one powerful sector of the economy – and one that’s a hefty contributor to congressional campaigns – it’s a first-tier issue: the insurance industry.

Full Story Here: Why the insurance industry gets climate change | Jules Boykoff | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

Does an Old EPA Fracking Study Provide Proof of Contamination?

This post has been updated with the industry’s response.

For years the drilling industry has steadfastly insisted that there has never been a proven case in which fracking has led to contamination of drinking water.

Now Environmental Working Group, an advocacy organization engaged in the debate over the safety of fracking, has unearthed a 24-year-old case study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that unequivocally says such contamination has occurred. The New York Times reported on EWG’s year-long research effort and the EPA’s paper Wednesday.

The 1987 EPA report, which describes a dark, mysterious gel found in a water well in Jackson County, W.Va., states that gels were also used to hydraulically fracture a nearby natural gas well and that “the residual fracturing fluid migrated into (the resident’s) water well.”

Full Story Here: The Washington Current: Does an Old EPA Fracking Study Provide Proof of Contamination?.

Arctic sea ice hits record low for July: satellite data

Sea ice coverage remained below normal everywhere except the East Greenland Sea

Arctic sea ice extent in July 2011 broke its previous record low set for that month in 2007, the National Snow and Ice Data Center said today.

Arctic ice cover reached the lowest level for July recorded by satellites from 1979 to 2011.

Average ice extent for this past July was 7.92 million square kilometres. That’s 210,000 km below the previous record low for the month, set in July 2007,  reported the NSIDC’s Colorado-based scientists on Aug. 3.

Full Story Here: NunatsiaqOnline 2011-08-03: NEWS: Arctic sea ice hits record low for July: satellite data.

What is global warming costing us?

From crop failures to flood damages, climate change is draining billions of dollars out of the world economy

Admittedly, it is a rather difficult proposition: to put a price on climate change.

Global Post Even the numbers people don’t want to put a number on it. It’s very complicated, they say, and largely dependent on uncertainties like when and where the world’s worst-ever storm will hit.

But dollar signs tend to drive the point home, especially when they come before, say, 13 figures. And so it is with climate change.

Deciding the cost of a heatwave — like the one that recently swept the United States — helps determine how quickly something is done about it.

In other words, numbers drive policy.

Here’s another uncomfortable, and inconvenient, truth about climate change:

Full Story Here: What is global warming costing us? – GlobalPost – Salon.com.

Biodiversity On Earth Plummets, Despite Growth in Protected Habitats

Despite rapid and substantial growth in the amount of land and sea designated as protected habitat over the last four decades, the diversity of species the world over is plummeting, a new study has found.

Over 100,000 so-called “protected areas” representing some 7 million square miles of land and nearly 1 million square miles of ocean have been established since the 1960′s, noted the analysis, published Thursday in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series.

And yet, according to a widely cited index used to track planetary biodiversity, the wealth of terrestrial and marine species has seen steady decline over roughly the same period, suggesting that simply protecting swaths of land and sea — a common conservation strategy worldwide — is inadequate for preventing the steady disappearance of earth’s creatures.

Full Story Here: Biodiversity On Earth Plummets, Despite Growth in Protected Habitats.

Hungary Destroys All Monsanto GMO Maize Fields

In an effort to rid the country of Monsanto’s GMO products, Hungary has stepped up the pace. This looks like its going to be another slap in the face for Monsanto. A new regulation was introduced this March which stipulates that seeds are supposed to be checked for GMO before they are introduced to the market. Unfortunately, some GMO seeds made it to the farmers without them knowing it.

Almost 1000 acres of maize found to have been grown with genetically modified seeds have been destroyed throughout Hungary deputy state secretary of the Ministry of Rural Development Lajos Bognar said. The GMO maize has been ploughed under, said Lajos Bognar, but pollen has not spread from the maize, he added.

Unlike several EU members, GMO seeds are banned in Hungary. The checks will continue despite the fact that seed traders are obliged to make sure that their products are GMO free, Bognar said.

During their investigation, controllers have found Pioneer and Monsanto products among the seeds planted.

Full Story Here: Hungary Destroys All Monsanto GMO Maize Fields.

Melting Arctic ice releasing banned toxins, warn scientists

Unknown amount of trapped persistent organics pollutants poses threat to marine life and humans as temperatures rise

The warming of the Arctic is releasing toxic chemicals that had been trapped in the ice and cold water, scientists have discovered.

The researchers warn that the amount of the poisons in the polar region is unknown and their release could “undermine global efforts to reduce environmental and human exposure to them”.

The chemicals seeping out as temperatures rise include the pesticides DDT, lindane and chlordane as well as the industrial chemicals PCBs and the fungicide hexachlorobenzene (HCB). All of these are know as persistent organics pollutants (Pops), and are banned under the 2004 Stockholm convention.

Full Story Here: Melting Arctic ice releasing banned toxins, warn scientists | Environment | The Guardian.

Europe Headed for Water Crisis

- Future glacier retreat in the Alps could affect the hydrology of large streams more strongly than previously assumed, a new study shows. Water shortages in summer could become more frequent.

Even though their ice is called ‘eternal’, many alpine glaciers’ lives may come to an end within this century. For 150 years, most of them have been more or less constantly retreating, and since the eighties, their shrinkage has visibly increased.

The Furka Pass in central Switzerland has long been awaiting its visitors with a special attraction. Just below the highest point of the pass, tourists may enter an ice grotto dug into the Rhone glacier to discover glacier life from the inside. Each year however, the grotto’s entry can be found a few metres further downhill. Long-term measurements reveal that from 1879 to 2010, the Rhone glacier has lost 1266 metres of its original length.

Full Story Here: Europe Headed for Water Crisis – IPS ipsnews.net.

Growing Water Deficit Threatening Grain Harvests

Many countries are facing dangerous water shortages. As world demand for food has soared, millions of farmers have drilled too many irrigation wells in efforts to expand their harvests. As a result, water tables are falling and wells are going dry in some 20 countries containing half the world’s people.

The overpumping of aquifers for irrigation temporarily inflates food production, creating a food production bubble that bursts when the aquifer is depleted.

The shrinkage of irrigation water supplies in the big three grain- producing countries – the United States, India, and China – is of particular concern. Thus far, these countries have managed to avoid falling harvests at the national level, but continued overexploitation of aquifers could soon catch up with them.

In most of the leading U.S. irrigation states, the irrigated area has peaked and begun to decline. In California, historically the irrigation leader, a combination of aquifer depletion and the diversion of irrigation water to fast-growing cities has reduced irrigated area from nearly nine million acres in 1997 to an estimated 7.5 million acres in 2010. (One acre equals 0.4 hectares.)

Full Story Here: Growing Water Deficit Threatening Grain Harvests – IPS ipsnews.net.

Who are polluters’ best friends in Congress?

A report names 15 members of Congress who have prevented the EPA from improving coal power plant standards

A Greenpeace report released Monday names 15 Congress members who have prevented the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from improving pollution standards in coal-fired power plants.

The report, “Polluting Democracy: Coal Plays Dirty on the Hill,” reveals that these Congress members are also among the biggest recipients of funding from the fossil fuel industry on the Hill.

Greenpeace notes, “this report provides a sampling of the actions of a bipartisan cadre of 15 politicians, who are among those in the House of Representatives working for America’s dirty and decrepit coal-fired power industry. These 15 members have tried to stop EPA from modernizing standards for pollutants that come predominantly from coal-fired power plants, including mercury, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, greenhouse gases, and coal ash.”

Full Story Here: Who are polluters’ best friends in Congress? – War Room – Salon.com.

Economists find flaws in federal estimate of climate damage

A new report concludes that each ton of carbon dioxide emitted in the atmosphere inflicts as much as $900 in environmental harm – almost 45 times the amount the federal government uses when setting regulations. The gap, advocates say, disguises the true value of emissions reductions.

Uncle Sam’s estimate of the damage caused by each ton of carbon dioxide is fundamentally flawed and “grossly understates” the potential impacts of climate change, according to an analysis released Tuesday by a group of economists.

The study found the true cost of those emissions to be far beyond the $21 per ton derived by the federal government.

The figure, commonly known as the “social cost of carbon,” is used by federal agencies when weighing the costs and benefits of emissions-cutting regulations, such as air conditioner efficiency standards and greenhouse gas emissions limits for light trucks.

A truer value, according to the Economics for Equity and the Environment Network, an organization of economists who advocate for environmental protection, could be as high as $900 per ton – equivalent to adding $9 to each gallon of gas. Viewed another way, with the United States emitting the equivalent of close to 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually, the higher figure suggests that avoiding those emissions could save the nation $5.3 trillion annually, one-third of the nation’s economic output.

Full Story Here: Economists find flaws in federal estimate of climate damage — The Daily Climate.

Republicans take aim at Clean Water Act

Every Republican, along with some conservative Democrats, in the U.S. House of Representatives voted to repeal the 1972 federal Clean Water Act, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow noted on her show Friday night.

House Bill 2018 would preventing the Environmental Protection Agency from enforcing clean water standards, leaving regulation of water pollution up to the states. The bill is expected to be voted down in the Senate.

Maddow’s guest, Professor Melissa V. Harris-Perry, explained that states would willingly allow companies to pollute their environment because they are desperate for jobs.

Watch video, courtesy of MSNBC, below:

Full Story Here: Republicans take aim at Clean Water Act | Raw Replay.

Exxon: Ruptured Montana pipeline had carried tar sands crude

Exxon Mobil said on Friday that a pipeline that failed two weeks ago, leaking oil into the Yellowstone River, routinely transported a heavier and more toxic form of crude than the company and federal regulators initially acknowledged.

The Silvertip pipeline carries so-called tar sands crude from Alberta, Canada, as do the U.S. pipelines of most major oil companies, Exxon spokeswoman Karen Matusic told Reuters.

Matusic said the tar sands crude was present along various segments of the pipeline but not at the spill site in Montana.

“Oil from Canada was in the line, but not that area that was affected by the breach. The oil that spilled out, that oil came from Wyoming,” she told Reuters, referring to sweet crude produced in oilfields at the Montana-Wyoming border.

Full Story Here: Exxon: Ruptured Montana pipeline had carried tar sands crude | The Raw Story.

You Can’t Kill a Planet and Live on It, Too

Let’s expose the structure of violence that keeps the world economy running.

With an entire planet being slaughtered before our eyes, it’s terrifying to watch the very culture responsible for this – the culture of industrial civilization, fueled by a finite source of fossil fuels, primarily a dwindling supply of oil – thrust forward wantonly to fuel its insatiable appetite for “growth.”

Deluded by myths of progress and suffering from the psychosis of technomania complicated by addiction to depleting oil reserves, industrial society leaves a crescendo of atrocities in its wake. A very partial list would include the Bhopal chemical disaster, numerous oil spills, the illegal depleted uranium-spewing occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan, mountaintop removal, the nuclear meltdown of Fukushima, the permanent removal of 95 percent of the large fish from the oceans (not to mention full-on systemic collapse of those oceans), indigenous communities replacement by oil wells, the mining of coltan for cell phones and Playstations along the Democratic Republic of the Congo/Rwanda border – resulting in tribal warfare and the near-extinction of the Eastern Lowland gorilla.

As though 200 species going extinct each day were not enough, climate change, a direct result of burning fossil fuels, has proved not only to be as unpredictable as it is real, but as destructive as it is unpredictable. The erratic and lethal characteristics of a changing planet and its shifting atmosphere are becoming the norm of the 21st century, their impact accelerating at an alarming pace, bringing this planet closer, sooner than later, to a point of uninhabitable ghastliness. And yet, collective apathy, ignorance and self-imposed denial in the face of all this sadistic exploitation and violence marches this culture closer to self-annihilation.

Full Story Here: You Can’t Kill a Planet and Live on It, Too | Truthout.

China oil spill six times size of Singapore: govt

A huge oil spill off the Chinese coast has now contaminated an area around six times the size of Singapore, state media reported Friday, as the government said it may seek compensation for the leak.

The spill from the oil field, which the United States’ ConocoPhillips operates with China’s state-run oil giant CNOOC, has polluted a total area of almost 4,250 square kilometres (1,650 square miles), government figures showed.

The figures, which were announced on the State Oceanic Administration website earlier this week but only reported on Friday, were almost five times the size of the 840-square-kilometre area previously reported.

Full Story Here: AFP: China oil spill six times size of Singapore: govt.

Natural shields against global warming being weakened: study

The soil and the ocean are being weakened as buffers against global warming, in a vicious circle with long-term implications for the climate system, say two new investigations.

If the seas and the land are less able to soak up or store greenhouse gases, more of these carbon emissions will enter the atmosphere, holding in even more heat from the sun.

A study published in Nature on Thursday says a gradual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) over the last half-century has accelerated the release of methane and nitrous oxide in the soil.

These gases are respectively 25 and 300 times more effective at trapping radiation than CO2, the principal greenhouse gas by volume.

Full Story Here: Natural shields against global warming being weakened: study | The Raw Story.

Monsanto official Beaten by farmers in India over Failed GMO Bt Cotton Seeds

We have reported in the past an alarming suicide rate among farmers in India that is connected to the failure of American GMO (genetically modified organism) cotton seeds.

Monsanto, the U.S. company responsible for Agent Orange, a cancer-causing chemical sprayed on the jungles of Vietnam, is now in the GMO food and seed business.

Monsanto stands accused of having an international monopoly of the notorious bio-engineered Bt cotton seeds.

Advocates for the agricultural industry say they never dreamed of the tragedy to come, when a 2005 decision was announced to allow the seeds in India.

Now an agrarian crisis has hit Maharashtra itself thanks to the Monsanto program.

Full Story Here: Monsanto official Beaten by farmers in India over Failed GMO Bt Cotton Seeds – Salem-News.Com.

Wait, Did the USDA Just Deregulate All New Genetically Modified Crops?

In a surprise move, the agency green-lights Roundup Ready lawn grass—and perhaps much, much more.

It’s a hoary bureaucratic trick, making a controversial announcement on the Friday afternoon before a long weekend, when most people are daydreaming about what beer to buy on the way home from work, or are checking movie times online. But that’s precisely what the US Department of Agriculture pulled last Friday.

In an innocuous-sounding press release titled “USDA Responds to Regulation Requests Regarding Kentucky Bluegrass,” agency officials announced their decision not to regulate a “Roundup Ready” strain of Kentucky bluegrass—that is, a strain genetically engineered to withstand glyphosate, Monsanto’s widely used herbicide, which we know as Roundup. The maker of the novel grass seed, Scotts Miracle Gro, is now free to sell it far and wide. So you’ll no doubt be seeing Roundup Ready bluegrass blanketing lawns and golf courses near you—and watching anal neighbors and groundskeepers literally dousing the grass in weed killer without fear of harming a single precious blade.

Which is worrisome enough. But even more worrisome is the way this particular product was approved. According to Doug Gurian-Sherman, senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Food and Environment Program, the documents released by the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) along with the announcement portend a major change in how the feds will deal with genetically modified crops.

Full Story Here: Wait, Did the USDA Just Deregulate All New Genetically Modified Crops? | Mother Jones.

BP argues Gulf recovery so strong that future loss claims should end

BP is arguing that victims of last year’s Gulf oil spill should not be paid any more claims for future losses because the areas affected by the spill have recovered and the economy is improving.

The British oil company makes its case in a 29-page document filed with the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, which administers the $20 billion fund for victims.

It criticizes several aspects of the fund’s policies and claims that at some times it has paid victims more than is allowed under the federal Oil Pollution Act.

Full Story Here: BP argues Gulf recovery so strong that future loss claims should end – Toledo Blade.

UA-led research sounds alarm on danger of rising sea levels

A 1-meter increase in sea level doesn’t sound like much.

But the 3.3-foot rise would be enough to flood 90 percent of New Orleans, 33 percent of Virginia Beach, Va., and 18 percent of Miami, according to scientists.

With the release of a University of Arizona-led study earlier this week, evidence continues to mount that the polar ice sheets are melting at a rate that could profoundly affect coastal regions unless greenhouse gases are reduced worldwide, scientists say.

“Sometime before the end of this century, we will cross that critical threshold where the Earth will be committed to 4, possibly more, meters (13.2 feet) of sea-level rise that could occur at a rate as high as a meter per century,” said Jonathan Overpeck, a UA professor and atmospheric scientist.

He and other scientists aren’t certain when that point will be reached, but he believes it could be in the middle of this century.

Full Story Here: UA-led research sounds alarm on danger of rising sea levels.

ExxonMobil Oil Spill: Teams Work to Contain Rupture Under Yellowstone River

Teams are working to contain the damage from an oil spill in the Yellowstone River near Billings, Montana, caused by a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline running under the river, officials said.

ExxonMobil is sending clean-up crews to Laurel, Mont. to mop up the thick band of oil on the banks of the Yellowstone River.

“We’ve shut down the pipeline and the segment where the release occurred has been isolated. And, obviously, we’ve been working in concert with all appropriate state and federal authorities on this,” ExxonMobil Pipeline spokesman Kevin Allexon said.

“Obviously we are very, very, regretful that this has happened and we are working hard, in collaboration with all the local authorities to make sure we mitigate the issue,” he said.

Full Story Here: ExxonMobil Oil Spill: Teams Work to Contain Rupture Under Yellowstone River – ABC News.

Oil spills into Yellowstone River after Exxon Mobil pipeline ruptures

An Exxon Mobil pipeline that runs under the Yellowstone River in Montana ruptured Friday night and leaked for about a half-hour.

The New York Times reported that the town of Lauren, downstream from the rupture, had to be evacuated because officials feared a possible explosion.

Exxon said it had no information on the cause of the incident, which originated from a 12-inch pipeline that runs from Silver Tip to refineries in Billings.

The amount of oil that leaked is still being determined. The Billings Gazette reported that the company had dispatched local cleanup teams with absorbent pads to leach up oil from the riverbanks. Exxon’s Global Response Team is being sent from Houston.

Full Story Here: Oil spills into Yellowstone River after Exxon Mobil pipeline ruptures | The Raw Story.

Climate Change May Pose Biggest Security Threat

As a budget battle rages on in the U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama’s military budget comes under increasingly harsh scrutiny, a report just released here by the Institute for Policy Studies suggests that reallocating defense spending towards tackling climate change might be the only solution to the administration’s woes.

“[The] president speaks beautifully on the need to change our relationship with the rest of the world but the budget itself hasn’t fulfilled the promise of that rhetoric,” Miriam Pemberton, co-author of “The United Security Budget for the United States, FY 2012” report and research fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, told IPS.

“The bottom line is that the current [desire] for deficit reduction provides a strong opening to really get serious about making military cuts. Moving money into non-military foreign engagement will do a lot to underwrite and make real the administration’s promises,” Pemberton added.

Full Story Here: Climate Change May Pose Biggest Security Threat | Common Dreams.

New Jersey Lawmakers Send Christie Ban on Hydraulic Fracturing

The New Jersey Legislature sent Republican Governor Chris Christie a measure to ban drilling for natural gas using a process called hydraulic fracturing, which environmental groups say contaminates drinking water.

The measure passed the state Senate 32-1 and the Assembly 56-11 with 8 abstentions yesterday, according to the New Jersey Office of Legislative Services website. If Christie signs the bill, it will be the first statewide ban on fracking in the U.S. The governor won’t comment until state lawyers review the legislation, Michael Drewniak, his spokesman, said yesterday in an e-mail.

While New Jersey produces no natural gas, communities in the state’s northwest sits atop the Utica Shale, a largely unexplored formation stretching from Ontario, Canada, to Tennessee. Range Resources Corp. (RRC) said in February that its initial well in the Utica formation in Pennsylvania produced the equivalent of 4.4 million cubic feet of natural gas a day.

Full Story Here: New Jersey Lawmakers Send Christie Ban on Hydraulic Fracturing – Bloomberg.

Greenland ice melts most in half-century

Greenland’s ice sheet melted the most it has in over a half century last year, US government scientists said Tuesday in one of a series of “unmistakable” signs of climate change.

“The world continues to warm,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in a briefing paper for reporters.

“Multiple indicators, same bottom-line conclusion: consistent and unmistakable signal from the top of the atmosphere to the bottom of the oceans.”

An annual climate survey, which includes work by scientists from 45 countries, said that ice sheet in Greenland melted at its highest rate since at least 1958, when similar data first became available.

Arctic sea ice shrank to its third smallest area on record, while the world’s alpine glaciers shrank for the 20th straight year, the study said.

Full Story Here: Greenland ice melts most in half-century: US – Yahoo! News.

EPA Fracking Study to Focus on Five States—But Not Wyoming

The Environmental Protection Agency will focus its national study of hydraulic fracturing on seven areas in five states but will exclude the two Wyoming gas fields where agency researchers have already collected some of the most in-depth data on drilling’s environmental impacts.

The study—which was announced last March, without specifics on research sites—will investigate alleged water contamination from drilling in five areas in Texas, Colorado, North Dakota and Pennsylvania. It also will encompass cradle-to-grave research projects in Pennsylvania and Louisiana, where the agency will track drilling’s effects on water quality from before the drill bit hits the ground to after hydraulic fracturing has been performed.

“This is about using the best possible science to do what the American people expect the EPA to do—ensure that the health of their communities and families are protected,” said Paul Anastas, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Research and Development, in a statement.

Full Story Here: The Washington Current: EPA Fracking Study to Focus on Five States—But Not Wyoming.

Roundup: Birth Defects Caused By World’s Top-Selling Weedkiller, Scientists Say

The chemical at the heart of the planet’s most widely used herbicide — Roundup weedkiller, used in farms and gardens across the U.S. — is coming under more intense scrutiny following the release of a new report calling for a heightened regulatory response around its use.

Critics have argued for decades that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup and other herbicides used around the globe, poses a serious threat to public health. Industry regulators, however, appear to have consistently overlooked their concerns.

A comprehensive review of existing data released this month by Earth Open Source, an organization that uses open-source collaboration to advance sustainable food production, suggests that industry regulators in Europe have known for years that glyphosate, originally introduced by American agricultural biotechnology giant Monsanto in 1976, causes birth defects in the embryos of laboratory animals.

Full Story Here: Roundup: Birth Defects Caused By World’s Top-Selling Weedkiller, Scientists Say.

If the Sea Is in Trouble, We Are All in Trouble

The report that the ocean is in trouble is no surprise. What is shocking is that it has taken so long for us to make the connection between the state of the ocean and everything we care about – the economy, health, security – and the existence of life itself.

If the ocean is in trouble – and it is – we are in trouble. Charles Clover pointed this out in The End of the Line, and Callum Roberts provided detailed documentation of the collapse of ocean wildlife – and the consequences – in The Unnatural History of the Sea.

Since the middle of the 20th century, more has been learned about the ocean than during all preceding human history; at the same time, more has been lost. Some 90 per cent of many fish, large and small, have been extracted. Some face extinction owing to the ocean’s most voracious predator – us.

Full Story Here: If the Sea Is in Trouble, We Are All in Trouble | Common Dreams.

House approves offshore drilling bill

The House on Wednesday night approved H.R. 2021, which would make it easier to obtain Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) drilling permits by requiring permitting decisions to be made within six months and easing certain environmental standards.

The bill was approved in a 253-166 vote in which 23 Democrats joined all but two Republicans.

Wednesday debate on the bill was marked by Democratic arguments that the bill would weaken air quality standards across the country. The bill would prevent the EPA from regulating emissions from vessels that service offshore drilling operations, a change that Democrats said prevents EPA regulation on what can be the predominant source of emissions.

Full Story Here: House approves offshore drilling bill – The Hill’s Floor Action.

Oceans in Distress Foreshadow Mass Extinction | Common Dreams

Pollution and global warming are pushing the world’s oceans to the brink of a mass extinction of marine life unseen for tens of millions of years, a consortium of scientists warned Monday.

Dying coral reefs, biodiversity ravaged by invasive species, expanding open-water “dead zones,” toxic algae blooms, the massive depletion of big fish stocks — all are accelerating, they said in a report compiled during an April meeting in Oxford of 27 of the world’s top ocean experts.

Sponsored by the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO), the review of recent science found that ocean health has declined further and faster than dire forecasts only a few years ago.

Full Story Here: Oceans in Distress Foreshadow Mass Extinction | Common Dreams.

World’s oceans in ‘shocking’ decline

The oceans are in a worse state than previously suspected, according to an expert panel of scientists.

In a new report, they warn that ocean life is “at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history”.

They conclude that issues such as over-fishing, pollution and climate change are acting together in ways that have not previously been recognised.

The impacts, they say, are already affecting humanity.

Full Story Here: BBC News – World’s oceans in ‘shocking’ decline.

Japan Nuclear Crisis: Operator Of Damaged Plant Suspends Clean-Up Due To Rising Radiation Levels

The operator of Japan’s stricken Fukushima nuclear power plant, said on Saturday it had suspended an operation to clean up radioactive water only hours after it had begun as radiation levels rose faster than expected.

“The level of radiation at a machine to absorb caesium has risen faster than our initial projections,” said a spokesman for Tokyo Electric Power Co .

The plan had got underway on Friday after being delayed by a series of glitches.

Full Story Here: Japan Nuclear Crisis: Operator Of Damaged Plant Suspends Clean-Up Due To Rising Radiation Levels.

Record ‘Dead Zone’ Expected in Gulf of Mexico

Scientists fear that farm chemicals carried from fields into the Mississippi River by this spring’s record floods will create the largest “dead zone” the Gulf of Mexico has seen since measurements were first taken in 1985.

Among other chemicals, agricultural fertilizers contain phosphorous and nitrogen, elements that encourage plant growth in terrestrial as well as marine ecosystems. The phytoplankton that bloom in the presence of these chemicals feed an explosive population of sea floor-dwelling bacteria that use up all of the oxygen otherwise available for fish, shrimp, crabs and other organisms in the deep. The situation does not bode well for those who depend on the Gulf’s almost $2 billion a year fishing industry. —ARK

Reuters via Scientific American:

This year’s record Mississippi River floods are forecast to create the biggest Gulf of Mexico “dead zone” since systematic mapping began in 1985, U.S. scientists reported on Tuesday.

Full Story Here: Record ‘Dead Zone’ Expected in Gulf of Mexico – Truthdig.

Extreme Weather Events Unprecedented, Scientists Say | Common Dreams

Tornadoes, floods, wildfires, snowmelt, thunderstorms, drought — for Americans, it was a spring to remember.

Government weather researchers said yesterday that, while similar extremes have occurred throughout modern American history, never before have they occurred in a single month, as they did in April.

The last time anything remotely like it happened was the spring of 1927, which also had many tornadoes and flooding, said Harold Brooks of the Storm Prediction Center in Oklahoma.

Full Story Here: Extreme Weather Events Unprecedented, Scientists Say | Common Dreams.

Explosion in jellyfish numbers may lead to ecological disaster, warn scientists

A dramatic global increase in jellyfish swarms could damage the marine food chain

Global warming has long been blamed for the huge rise in the world’s jellyfish population. But new research suggests that they, in turn, may be worsening the problem by producing more carbon than the oceans can cope with.

Research led by Rob Condon of the Virginia Institute of Marine 

Science in the US focuses on the effect that the increasing numbers of jellyfish are having on marine bateria, which play an important role by recycling nutrients created by decaying organisms back into the food web. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, finds that while bacteria are capable of absorbing the constituent carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and other chemicals given off by most fish when they die, they cannot do the same with jellyfish. The invertebrates, populating the seas in ever-increasing numbers, break down into biomass with especially high levels of carbon, which the bacteria cannot absorb well. Instead of using it to grow, the bacteria breathe it out as carbon dioxide. This means more of the gas is released into the atmosphere.

Dr Carol Turley, a scientist at Plymouth University’s Marine Laboratory, said the research highlighted the growing problem of ocean acidification, the so-called “evil twin” of global warming. “Oceans have been taking up 25% of the carbon dioxide that man has produced over the last 200 years, so it’s been acting as a buffer for climate change. When you add more carbon dioxide to sea water it becomes more acidic. And already that is happening at a rate that hasn’t occurred in 600 million years.”

Full Story Here: Explosion in jellyfish numbers may lead to ecological disaster, warn scientists | Environment | The Observer.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, GOP roll back environment standards

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and Republican legislators are using their new majorities to rush through aggressive reversals of environmental safeguards their predecessors championed as a continuation of the state’s outdoors heritage.

Walker and his fellow Republicans have proposed about a dozen plans conservationists say amount to an attack on the environment. Among the most contentious are plans to end a mandate on local recycling, delay tough new limits on water pollution and speeding up mining permits.

Supporters say the provisions dovetail with Walker’s “Wisconsin is open for business” mantra. Republicans are trying to save money and create jobs by streamlining regulations and letting businesses breathe, they say.

Full Story Here: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, GOP roll back environment standards | Green Bay Press Gazette | greenbaypressgazette.com.

Greenhouse gas emissions hitting record highs

Specter of global climate change looms large as 180 countries prepare for conference in Germany in two weeks

Despite 20 years of effort, greenhouse gas emissions are going up instead of down, hitting record highs as climate negotiators gather to debate a new global warming accord.

The new report by the International Energy Agency showing high emissions from fossil fuels is one of several pieces of bad news facing delegates from about 180 countries heading to Bonn, Germany, for two weeks of talks beginning Monday.

Another: The tsunami-triggered nuclear disaster in March apparently has sidelined Japan’s aggressive policies to combat climate change and prompted countries like Germany to hasten the decommissioning of nuclear power stations which, regardless of other drawbacks, have nearly zero carbon emissions.

Full Story Here: Greenhouse gas emissions hitting record highs – Global warming – Salon.com.