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The Bureau of Land Management’s revised regulations for hydraulic fracturing, aka fracking, on federal lands pleased almost no one outside of Congress. The proposal has three prongs: disclosure of chemicals in the fracking fluid, quality-control for well construction, and wastewater disposal. The BLM’s goal is to streamline the reporting process “without introducing unnecessary new procedures [...]
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The world must improve land and water management in order to combat hunger, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute, Bloomberg News reported. The Institute released its annual Global Hunger Index yesterday, which was topped by Burundi, Eritrea and Haiti. A record loss of sea ice in the Arctic is being mirrored by an [...]
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Food prices This summer’s drought in the United States will cause corn yields to drop 17 percent compared to 2011, according to a new report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Consequently, the USDA expects corn prices to rise 39 percent to $8.90 per bushel. Soybean supplies and prices will face similar consequences, The Wall Street [...]
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The Earth’s land has warmed by 1.5 degrees Celsius over the past 250 years, and humans are almost entirely responsible for the increase, the Guardian reported, citing a new study by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley. The team’s analysis suggests there could be 1.5 degrees of warming over land in the next 50 [...]
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A new study found that only 30 percent of Arctic sea ice loss in the last few decades can be attributed to natural causes, meaning the remaining monsoon rains fall 22 percent below average, Reuters reported. Water shortages have contributed to 300 millimeters of rain (11.8 inches), Xinhua reported. Meanwhile, two 35-mile tunnels to divert [...]
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Electricity-producing coal, nuclear, and natural gas plants account for the fastest-growing use of fresh water in the United States, according to a report from Oregon-based River Network, Bloomberg News reported. The study found that electricity produced by hydropower dams has the largest water footprint. The amount of Arctic sea ice is at a record low [...]
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Oil and Natural Gas Development Companies should think carefully about the hard-to-manage environmental risks of drilling for oil in the Arctic, warned Lloyd’s of London, the world’s biggest insurance market. Some estimates predict that investment in Arctic energy resources could reach $US 100 billion over the next decade, the Guardian reported. Royal Dutch Shell’s annual [...]
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Agriculture The Ethiopian government is relocating thousands of people from the country’s Gambella region in order to make way for commercial agriculture, the Guardian reported, citing a report from Human Rights Watch. The report argues that citizens are not getting proper compensation for the land, and that relocation threatens their food security. A new government [...]
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Thawing permafrost is releasing large plumes of methane gas into the atmosphere from the Arctic seabed, Russian researchers found, according to the Independent. If the trend continues, scientists fear the greenhouse gas could significantly impact climate change. Severe weather events such as monsoons and hurricanes may add stress to fault lines, triggering earthquakes, Discovery News [...]
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The weather extremes in Australia are a dress rehearsal for the effects of climate change in the rest of the world, according to this Rolling Stone article. Why is China leading the world in renewable energy investment? Will the Arctic be the next frontier for the geopolitics of energy in the 21st century? Economic expert [...]
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A new study has revealed that ice volume in the Arctic Sea reached an all-time low in 2010. Meanwhile, in the United States, more high-temperature records have been set this summer than in any other year previously, as well as many regions that have broken rainfall and drought records.
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A leaked draft of the official strategy for the Arctic reveals that Denmark plans to make a formal claim for the territorial rights for the North Pole before the UN deadline in 2014. But Denmark is not the only country with an appetite for the Arctic. Following the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident, Japanese [...]
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Secret U.S. embassy cables released by Wikileaks reveal that several states, including the United States and Russia, are actively hunting for natural resources in the Arctic, the BBC reports. The world must scale down its use of natural resources in order to avoid a ruinous shortage of raw materials in the next decades, a new [...]
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Some of Patagonia’s glaciers are melting up to 100 times faster than at any time in the last 350 years, according to a study by Aberystwyth University. The findings have worrying implications for crop irrigation and water supplies globally. Meanwhile, the European Space Agency has measured record loss of ozone over Arctic that might be [...]
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A recent expedition to the Beaufort Sea revealed that “multiyear” Arctic sea ice is in effect, nonexistent, Reuters reports.
Multiyear ice has “stiffer” composition than first year ice, and makes navigation through Arctic regions extremely difficult, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC).
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The word on the world is out and, water-wise, it is far from encouraging.
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Posted on Thursday, February 10, 2011
In 2009, Harrison Schmitt, a former senator, astronaut, and self-described climate “denier” (and potentially the Energy Secretary to the new New Mexican governor), sent a paper to NASA riddled with long-debunked errors of science. Others have written about this paper, taking it apart error by error. But this week, some of those errors reappeared