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- "You're not going to solve the dead zone with an energy policy that says grow corn."By Stacy Feldman,Sep 8, 2010
Oxygen-starved "dead zones" are spreading in U.S. coastal waters because of human activities, including the leap in corn ethanol production, said federal scientists in a new multiagency report.
Researchers say areas of hypoxic water, where fish and other marine life suffocate from the lack of oxygen, have boomed 30-fold in the U.S. since 1960, threatening the ocean food web and the country's fish and shrimp industries.
Incidence of hypoxia was found in half of the 647 areas analyzed, rising most prominently in the northern Gulf of Mexico.
The Gulf dead zone is the second largest oxygen-depleted area in the world, behind the Baltic Sea. It measured nearly 21,000 square kilometers in 2008, up from 4,000 square kilometers in the mid-1980s.
- Minority government must deliver on climate reform and carbon pricing in return for support from GreensBy Guest Writer,Sep 7, 2010
by Jonathan Watts, Guardian
Julia Gillard's new minority government in Australia means that the country's green party will take a pivotal position in the nation's politics for the first time.
Like the UK and Germany, a surge in popularity has given the environmental movement an unprecedented parliamentary presence in Australia this year, prompting suggestions that electorates are punishing mainstream parties for failing to act decisively on climate change.
In last month's poll, the Australian Greens benefited from a bigger swing than any other party, picking up 11.7% of the vote and the first lower house seat they have ever won at a general election. In the upper house, the Senate, they will soon be in an even stronger position, controlling the balance of power with nine of the 76 seats.
Adam Bandt, the victorious Greens MP, believes there are wider global trends behind his party's success.
"I think climate was the key issue," he said in an interview with the Guardian. "It is very significant that a couple of unions swung behind me and against Labor."
- Reformers say dangerous refrigerants could be eliminated for $70 million a year, instead of $1 billion.By Stacy Feldman,Sep 7, 2010
A storm has been brewing for months in an obscure corner of the carbon-trading world, and it's now raging into full public view.
At issue is whether the UN should modify the way it gives valuable carbon credits for climate-destroying refrigerant chemicals, and the stakes are high. The decision could reshape the $2.7 billion carbon crediting scheme known as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).
The biggest controversy now: whether the World Bank is working to block reforms to the allegedly corrupt system, a charge the bank strongly rejects.
Under Kyoto's CDM, 19 chemical plants in developing nations earn large sums of carbon offset credits as incentive for destroying hydrofluorocarbon-23, a "super greenhouse gas" that is 11,700 times more potent than CO2.
The World Bank has bought credits from two HFC-23 destruction facilities located in China worth about a billion dollars.
Environmental groups accuse these plants — among others — of "gaming" the marketplace by overproducing the heat-trapping waste gas just to destroy it in order to secure the maximum number of carbon credits.
"HFC-23 projects are rotten to the core," Sam LaBudde, senior atmospheric campaigner for the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), told SolveClimate News.
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- Company promising tanker deliveries but high cost might make it just a pipe dreamBy Lisa Song,Sep 4, 2010
Imagine an oil tanker plowing through the ocean, hauling valuable cargo from resource-rich nations of the world to the countries that need it: but instead of oil, the tanker holds millions of gallons of fresh water.
It’s not a vision from some futuristic film or doomsday novel, but the present-day intention of companies trying to launch the bulk water export business. The idea has been around since the 1990’s, yet no one has succeeded in making it a practical reality.
But last July, the US company S2C Global Systems, Inc. became the latest bulk water wanna-be by announcing it would begin shipping water from Alaska to India within the next six to eight months. Using large class vessels that can hold 50 million gallons at a time, S2C plans to sell the water for both manufacturing and drinking purposes to countries around the Arabian Sea.
"I think it's a dream," said Peter Gleick, a scientist and international water expert, in an interview with SolveClimate News. Gleick is President of the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security. "I don't think bulk water transfers of any significant volume are ever going to happen, because the cost of moving water, especially across the ocean, is so high."
- State could become a hub for the energy storage industryBy Sara Stroud,Sep 2, 2010
California lawmakers passed a bill late last month that its backers say offers the triple benefit of job creation, electrical grid stability and greenhouse gas reduction.
The bill, AB 2514, is designed to kick start a statewide process of grappling with energy storage, emerging technologies crucial to the expansion of renewable energy generation required by California law. Though the bill was watered down as it moved through the legislative process, energy storage developers are still expecting it to deliver the incentives and certainty they need to grow and flourish.
In its original version, the bill set specific energy storage procurement targets for utilities, as well as timelines. The amended version approved by state lawmakers did not say how much, if any, storage capacity utilities would be required to have. Instead, it would require the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to assess whether to require the state’s utilities to adopt energy storage systems.
If the agency determines that such storage systems are viable and cost-effective, it would then be tasked with setting targets and timelines for utilities to procure them.
Still, David Nemtzow, chief policy officer for Colorado-based energy storage company Ice Energy told SolveClimate News that the bill is “the most far reaching storage legislation so far in the U.S. It will change the way utilities think about storage.”
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Government scientists have found that private water walls in Pavillion, Wyo. are polluted with toxic chemicals used in the controversial gas drilling technique of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking — and residents have been told not to drink from them.
The findings offer the latest evidence that the fast-spreading gas-extraction method could be endangering public health.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found methane from natural gas in seven of 19 wells that were tested in January of this year. Eleven had 2-butoexythanol phosphate, a common solvent in fracking fluids that experts say can cause kidney failure, toxicity to the spleen, liver cancer and fertility problems.
They also found traces of benzene, a cancer-causer, and other chemicals that come from crude in 17 of the wells, with "high levels" detected in groundwater that is connected to the drinking water aquifer.
California lawmakers passed a bill late last month that its backers say offers the triple benefit of job creation, electrical grid stability and greenhouse gas reduction.
The bill, AB 2514, is designed to kick start a statewide process of grappling with energy storage, emerging technologies crucial to the expansion of renewable energy generation required by California law. Though the bill was watered down as it moved through the legislative process, energy storage developers are still expecting it to deliver the incentives and certainty they need to grow and flourish.
In its original version, the bill set specific energy storage procurement targets for utilities, as well as timelines. The amended version approved by state lawmakers did not say how much, if any, storage capacity utilities would be required to have. Instead, it would require the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to assess whether to require the state’s utilities to adopt energy storage systems.
If the agency determines that such storage systems are viable and cost-effective, it would then be tasked with setting targets and timelines for utilities to procure them.
Still, David Nemtzow, chief policy officer for Colorado-based energy storage company Ice Energy told SolveClimate News that the bill is “the most far reaching storage legislation so far in the U.S. It will change the way utilities think about storage.”
by Alyson Kenward, Climate Central
When geoscientist Torbjörn Törnqvist decided to relocate his research group from the University of Illinois to Tulane University in New Orleans, he knew full well there might be some bumps along the way. In addition to setting up a new lab and learning the ropes at a new university, he was leaving a city he had called home for six years.
But while he was prepared for these setbacks when he moved in the summer of 2005, he didn’t anticipate that his welcoming committee would include Hurricane Katrina – one of the worst hurricanes the United States has ever experienced.
Törnqvist took up refuge from the storm with a friend in Texas, but when, six weeks later, he made his way back to “The Big Easy,” he discovered that his new Earth and Environmental Sciences department was not the same one he had signed on to join just a few months earlier.
“There were a lot of changes,” he recalls. “We ended up losing half of our faculty members.”
Today's Climate
September 8, 2010
U.S. Won't Pass Carbon-Price Law for Power Generators This Year, Reid Says (Bloomberg)
The U.S. won't pass legislation this year that charges power plants a price for releasing CO2 and other gases that scientists have linked to climate change, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said.
Conservatives Hammer Candidates Over 'Cap and Trade' (McClatchy Newspapers)
Conservative Republicans around the country are using cap and trade as a political weapon to attack GOP moderates as well as Democrats.
DOE Giving $575 Million in Carbon Capture Grants (AP)
The Energy Department said Tuesday it was awarding $575 million for carbon capture research-and-development projects in 15 states.
Birds Dying in Oil Sands at 30 Times Reported Rate (Toronto Star)
A new study published in in the Wilson Journal of Ornithology says birds are likely dying in oil sands tailings ponds at least 30 times the rate suggested by industry and government.
Oil Sands to Dominate Agenda on Nancy Pelosi’s Visit to Canada (Globe and Mail)
Speaker of the U.S. House Nancy Pelosi will get a crash course this week on Canada's oil sands in a series of private meetings quietly orchestrated by Pres. Obama's point man in Ottawa.
Latest Fire Won't Extend Oil Drill Ban (Reuters)
Fire on another Gulf of Mexico oil platform last week will not slow a decision whether to lift the U.S. drilling moratorium imposed after the BP well disaster last spring, a key federal official said Tuesday.
BP to Release Oil Disaster Report Today (Houston Chronicle)
BP said it will release findings today of a months-long internal investigation into the Deepwater Horizon accident, possibly answering key questions about the disaster and acknowledging some responsibility for the blowout.
NIH to Use BP Cash to Study Spill Health Effects (Reuters)
The U.S. National Institutes of Health said on Tuesday it would use $10 million from BP to start a multi-year study to look at the potential health effects from the oil spill in the Gulf.
Renewable Energy Touted at Nevada Policy 'Summit' (AP)
With clean-energy legislation trapped in a political deadlock, renewable energy advocates called big business the new leader in the nation's green revolution during a national summit meeting Tuesday.
CO2 Target Debate Is Irrelevant, Former UN Climate Chief Says (Bloomberg)
The greenhouse-gas targets pledged by nations after the UN climate talks in Copenhagen in December won't change much before 2020, so there's little point debating them, the man who stewarded the summit said.
Climate Change May Add to Disaster Death Tolls (Reuters)
Natural disasters are tending to kill fewer people but climate change may add to the toll by unleashing more extreme weather and causing after-effects such as disease and malnutrition, experts say.
New Top Climate Change Negotiator Appointed (AFP)
Canada has announced the appointment of a new chief negotiator and ambassador for climate change whose mandate will be to try implement agreements made at the talks in Copenhagen.
Smart Meters Alone May Not Save Much Energy: Study (Reuters)
Smart meters to boost energy efficiency in homes do not automatically achieve a significant reduction in energy demand, research showed on Wednesday.
UK: Solar Panel Pioneers at Risk of Missing Feed-In Tariff Deadlines (BusinessGreen)
Over 4,500 pioneering early adopters of solar and other forms of micro-generation technology could be in danger of missing out on the UK government's new feed-in tariff incentive scheme.






















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