Sunday, Nov 24th
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Environmental News Archive
From 1975 to 2008, only a handful of magnitude-3.0 earthquakes or greater occurred yearly in Oklahoma. But the average grew to around 40 annual earthquakes from 2009 to 2013, seismologists said in the report on the uptick of quake activity.
Since 2009, more than 200 magnitude-3.0 or greater earthquakes have hit the state's midsection, according to the Geological Survey. Many have been centered near Oklahoma City, the most populous part of the state.
An important new study measures actual methane levels in the U.S. atmosphere. This is a case where the total is definitely more than the previously imagined sum of its parts. The study, soon to be published in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Sciences (PNAS), found, in particular, that the EPA continues to greatly under-estimate methane emissions from shale gas production, as well as from fossil fuel extraction and processing in general.
Andrew Revkin, who wrote yesterday’s New York Times article, “New study finds U.S. has underestimated methane levels in the atmosphere,” also co-wrote a key analysis four years ago in the New York Times, revealing how serious the EPA’s under-estimation of methane emissions from gas wells was at that time.
Canada is blessed with 3 million lakes, more than any country on Earth -- and it may soon start manufacturing new ones. They’re just not the kind that will attract anglers or tourists.
The oil sands industry is in the throes of a major expansion, powered by C$20 billion ($19 billion) a year in investments. Companies including Syncrude Canada Ltd., Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Exxon Mobil Corp. affiliate Imperial Oil Ltd. are running out of room to store the contaminated water that is a byproduct of the process used to turn bitumen -- a highly viscous form of petroleum -- into diesel and other fuels.
Developing nations have launched an impassioned attack on the failure of the world's richest countries to live up to their climate change pledges in the wake of the disaster in the Philippines.
With more than 3,600 people now believed to have been killed by Typhoon Haiyan, moves by several major economies to backtrack on commitments over carbon emissions have put the world's poorest and most wealthy states on a collision course, on the eve of crucial high-level talks at a summit of world powers.
Across the Dakotas and Nebraska, more than 1 million acres of the Great Plains are giving way to cornfields as farmers transform the wild expanse that once served as the backdrop for American pioneers.
This expansion of the Corn Belt is fueled in part by America's green energy policy, which requires oil companies to blend billions of gallons of corn ethanol into their gasoline. In 2010, fuel became the No. 1 use for corn in America, a title it held in 2011 and 2012 and narrowly lost this year. That helps keep prices high.
Three Colorado cities voted Tuesday to ban fracking, the kind of test that might be coming to states from California to North Carolina as oil and gas drilling surges from coast to coast.
The Colorado vote, happening in a state with a long history of energy development, was a trial of whether the oil and gas industry could overcome passionate opposition to the drilling practice that’s helped create an American energy boom.
Debris from the deadly tsunami that struck Japan in 2011 has been floating in the Pacific Ocean and will likely wash onto North American shores over the next few years, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
"A significant amount of debris has already arrived on U.S. and Canadian shores, and it will likely continue arriving in the same scattered way over the next several years," NOAA officials said in a statement.
Dalley started off the fall sitting in the House of Assembly by announcing that the government will not approve fracking onshore and onshore-to-offshore hydraulic fracturing pending further review.
Dalley said the government will be doing public consultation before it develops any policy for fracking. Both the Liberals and the NDP are supporting the move.
Dalley said this moratorium will allow an opportunity to review regulations, rules and guidelines in other jurisdictions, to complete the technical work necessary to fully assess the geological impact in western Newfoundland and, following this process, to undertake public consultation to ensure residents have an opportunity to comment and are fully informed before any decision is made.
WASHINGTON -- WASHINGTON (AP) — A leaked draft of an international scientific report forecasts that man-made global warming likely will worsen already existing human tragedies of war, starvation, poverty, flooding, extreme weather and disease.
The Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will issue a report next March on how global warming is already affecting the way people live and what will happen in the future, including a worldwide drop in income. A leaked copy of a draft of the report's summary appeared online Friday.
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