Category Archives: Free Press

Why is Alaska fighting the cleanup of Chesapeake Bay?

by KlaraGuzm Posted on April 30, 2014

Why is Alaska fighting the cleanup of Chesapeake Bay?

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The EPA has a plan to clean up Chesapeake Bay, which has been polluted by agriculture interests for decades. A “pollution diet” finalized by the agency in 2010 would reduce the amount of animal waste and fertilizer that gushes into the bay from the 64,000-square-mile watershed every year, causing dead zones.

The American Farm Bureau Federation, corn growers, pork and poultry producers, and home builders are fighting that plan in a federal lawsuit, accusing the EPA of making an illegal power grab. Twenty-one states — including Alaska and many others that are nowhere near the Chesapeake watershed — have joined the suit, worried that the cleanup plan could set a dangerous precedent and spread ecological health to their own tainted waterways.

Monday was the deadline for submitting briefs in the case, and fortunately some of those briefs have been in support of the EPA’s plan. Maryland and Virginia, the two states that actually border the bay, are all for cleaning it up. “This lawsuit attacks our efforts to restore the health of the Chesapeake Bay and strengthen its crucial economic value,” said Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler. “Maryland must preserve its partnership with an effective EPA to safeguard our environment and sustain the thousands of jobs supported by the bay.”

Nearby Delaware and Washington, D.C., are in support of the EPA’s plan too, as are six major cities: Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Four Florida conservation groups have also filed a brief in support of the EPA’s plan, making this cogent point: “The heart of the Clean Water Act is the principle that the Nation’s waters cannot be used — directly or indirectly — to dispose of waste. This appeal [by the Farm Bureau] represents a challenge to that principle.”

The case is a big deal, as the Associated Press points out:

Cary Coglianese, a University of Pennsylvania law professor, says the appeals court ruling could go a long way in shaping environmental policy. “A win will keep intact the EPA’s policy approach, while a loss would not only have an effect on the Chesapeake but similar policies in other parts of the U.S.,” Coglianese said.

The Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia is expected to begin hearing oral arguments in the case this summer.


Source
Challenge to Chesapeake Cleanup Tests EPA Power, The Associated Press
Six Major Cities Add Their Support To Chesapeake Bay Cleanup Plan, ThinkProgress

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Why is Alaska fighting the cleanup of Chesapeake Bay?

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El Niño could raise meteorological hell this year

by JacquelLiddell Posted on April 11, 2014

El Niño could raise meteorological hell this year

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It’s more likely than not that El Niño will rise from the Pacific Ocean this year — and some scientists are warning that it could grow into a bona fide monster.

NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center put out a bulletin Thursday saying there’s a greater than 50 percent chance that El Niño will develop later this year. Australian government meteorologists are even more confident — they said earlier this week that there’s a greater than 70 percent chance that El Niño will develop this summer.

Not totally clear on what this El Niño thing even is? Andrew Freedman explains at Mashable:

El Niño and La Niña events refer to fluctuations in air and ocean conditions in the tropical Pacific. El Niño events are characterized by warmer than average sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, and they add heat to the atmosphere, thereby warming global average temperatures. They typically occur once every three to seven years and can also alter weather patterns around the world, causing droughts and floods from the West Coast of the U.S. to Papua New Guinea.

There was a particularly brutal El Niño from 1997 to 1998, which killed an estimated 23,000 people and caused tens of billions of dollars worth of damage. The looming El Niño could match the intensity of that outburst. More from Mashable:

Eric Blake, a hurricane specialist at NOAA’s National Hurricane Center in Miami, said conditions are changing rapidly in the Pacific, going from 50/50 odds of an El Niño, to a setup that eerily resembles the circumstances that preceded the monster El Niño of ‘97-’98.

“It’s something we haven’t really seen since the ’97 El Niño,” Blake said of the westerly wind bursts and ocean observations.

El Niño events aren’t our fault — they’re just a fact of life on planet Earth, caused by inherent instability in Pacific Ocean weather patterns. But we may be making things worse for ourselves. Scientists reported in July that El Niño is arriving more frequently now than had been the case before we started heavily polluting the skies with greenhouse gases. And in January, a paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change forecast that more El Niños will be of the extreme variety as we continue to warm the globe.


Source
ENSO Alert System Status: El Niño Watch, NOAA
Unusually Intense El Nino May Lie Ahead, Scientists Say, Mashable

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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El Niño could raise meteorological hell this year

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Weather-related blackouts in U.S. doubled in 10 years

by wqds234der Posted on April 11, 2014

Weather-related blackouts in U.S. doubled in 10 years

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The current U.S. electrical grid is a far cry from smart. Climate change and aging infrastructure are leading to an increasing number of blackouts across the country.

A new analysis by the nonprofit Climate Central found that the number of outages affecting 50,000 or more people for at least an hour doubled during the decade up to 2012.  Most of the blackouts were triggered when extreme weather damaged large transmission lines and substations. Michigan had the most outages, followed by Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

Climate CentralClick to embiggen.

Severe rainstorms, which are growing more tempestuous as the globe warms, were blamed for the majority of the weather-related outages.

Climate CentralClick to embiggen.

The researchers listed two main drivers of the trend:

Climate change is, at most, partially responsible for this recent increase in major power outages, which is a product of an aging grid serving greater electricity demand, and an increase in storms and extreme weather events that damage this system. But a warming planet provides more fuel for increasingly intense and violent storms, heat waves, and wildfires, which in turn will continue to strain, and too often breach, our highly vulnerable electrical infrastructure. …

Since 1990, heavy downpours and flooding have increased in most parts of the country, and the trend is most dramatic in the Northeast and Midwest. Some of this heavy rain is likely to be associated with high winds and thunderstorm activity. Researchers have found that these regions have already seen a 30 percent increase in heavy downpours compared to the 1901-1960 average.

Climate CentralClick to embiggen.

Solutions to the problem include more small wind and solar power installations built close to where the electricity is needed — and an overhaul of the country’s overburdened and outmoded grid system.

This research won’t come as a surprise inside the White House. The Obama administration put out a call for more spending on grid infrastructure last year when it published similar findings in its own report.


Source
Weather-Related Blackouts Doubled Since 2003: Report, Climate Central

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Weather-related blackouts in U.S. doubled in 10 years

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GMO labeling would be outlawed by new bill in Congress

by EsmeraldaYarnol Posted on April 11, 2014

GMO labeling would be outlawed by new bill in Congress

By

mikescottnz

State-led efforts to mandate GMO labels are blossoming like a field of organic tulips, but members of Congress are trying to mow them down with legislative herbicide.

Maine and Connecticut recently passed laws that will require foods containing GMO ingredients to be clearly marked as such — after enough other states follow suit. And lawmakers in other states are considering doing the same thing. The trend makes large food producers nervous — nervous enough to spend millions defeating ballot initiatives in California and Washington that also would have mandated such labels. They worry that the labels might scare people off, eating into companies’ sales and profits.

So a band of corporate-friendly members of Congress has come riding in to try to save the day for their donors. A bipartisan group led by Reps. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) and G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) has signed onto legislation introduced Wednesday that would run roughshod over states’ rules on GMO labels. Reuters reports:

The bill, dubbed the “Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act,” was drafted by U.S. Rep. Mike Pompeo from Kansas, and is aimed at overriding bills in roughly two dozen states that would require foods made with genetically engineered crops to be labeled as such.

The bill specifically prohibits any mandatory labeling of foods developed using bioengineering.

Large business groups cheered the legislation, which could receive its first hearings in the summer. “The GMO labeling ballot initiatives and legislative efforts that many state lawmakers and voters are facing are geared toward making people wrongly fear what they’re eating and feeding their children,” said the American Farm Bureau Federation’s president.

But groups that believe Americans have a right to know what they’re eating and which farming technologies they’re supporting are of course opposed, characterizing the bill as a desperate salvo by Big Food in the face of overwhelming support for GMO labels. The opponents have dubbed the bill the Deny Americans the Right to Know Act.

“If the DARK Act becomes law, a veil of secrecy will cloak ingredients, leaving consumers with no way to know what’s in their food,” said the Environmental Working Group’s Scott Faber. “Consumers in 64 countries, including Saudi Arabia and China, have the right to know if their food contains GMOs. Why shouldn’t Americans have the same right?”

Whatever you choose to call it, the bill is unlikely to have success beyond the GOP-controlled House.


Source
U.S. bill seeks to block mandatory GMO food labeling by states, Reuters
GMO labeling bill would trump states, Politico

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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GMO labeling would be outlawed by new bill in Congress

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Droughts push beef prices to record highs

by MollieUrquhart Posted on April 10, 2014

Droughts push beef prices to record highs

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A cost-saving barbecue.

Mo’ drought, moo problems. Hamburger and sirloins are becoming more expensive than ever in the wake of drought-driven herd thinning.

Herd thinning isn’t a bovine diet and calisthenics regime. It’s a euphemism for unplanned cow slaughtering — though the end result of the unfortunate practice could literally lower your meat and cholesterol intake. The L.A. Times reports that the retail price of choice-grade beef hit a record $5.28 a pound last month, up from $4.91 a year ago:

Soaring beef prices are being blamed on years of drought throughout the western and southern U.S. The dry weather has driven up the price of feed such as corn and hay to record highs, forcing many ranchers to sell off their cattle. That briefly created a glut of beef cows for slaughter that has now run dry.

The nation’s cattle population has fallen to 87.7 million, the lowest since 1951, when there were 82.1 million on hand, according to the USDA. (The peak was 1975, with 132 million heads of cattle, but the animals then were less meaty and required more feed.)

“We’re dealing with chronically low herds,” said Richard Volpe, an economist for the USDA. “Beef prices should remain at near-record highs this year and into 2015.”

Even vegetarians aren’t being spared from repercussions of herd thinning. Cattle munch on tumbleweeds, and Colorado’s dwindling cattle population has contributed to a choking outbreak. The AP reports that the freewheeling weeds are so thick in some places that firefighters had to cut through them to help a pregnant woman reach the hospital.

“The frustrating part is once you get the first wave beat down, packed down and out of the road, the wind comes up and here comes the next batch,” said county road worker Russell Bennett.


Source
Beef prices hit all-time high in U.S., Los Angeles Times
Colorado tumbleweeds overrun drought areas, Associated Press

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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California’s drought plan will screw the environment

by Brittany9138 Posted on April 10, 2014

California’s drought plan will screw the environment

By

Mike Vondran

California rivers like this one will be allowed to run drier this year than ever before.

California has a radical plan for managing its rivers and reservoirs as drought grips the Golden State for the third consecutive year. It could help the state cling to water that would normally flush through rivers and into the Pacific Ocean — at the expense of wildlife and fishing folk who rely on the health of those rivers.

The seven-and-a-half-month plan, developed in consultation with federal officials, doesn’t increase the amount of water that will be delivered to customers, but it makes major changes to how precious drops remaining in snowpacks, reservoirs, and rivers will be managed. The Sacramento Bee hits on the plan’s highlights:

Among other things, the plan calls for further loosening of water quality rules in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, allowing the agencies to keep river flows low to preserve as much water as possible in upstream reservoirs, especially Shasta Lake. Temporary dams are proposed on three Delta channels to allow the remaining freshwater runoff to more effectively push back saltwater intrusion from San Francisco Bay.

It also calls for additional hatchery breeding of endangered winter-run Chinook salmon. Normally, those young salmon would be released into the Sacramento River. But because the river could become too warm to sustain them, some of the fish may be relocated into cold-water habitats where they have not existed for decades, such as Battle Creek near Red Bluff.

Environmentalists are warning that these steps could decimate wildlife populations that rely on Californian rivers for their survival. “It’s a disaster,” sport-fishing advocate Bill Jennings told the Bee. “The storage they’re talking about saving isn’t going to be enough to protect the rivers from high temperatures. It is a complete breach of trust, an almost total rejection of laws and regulations.”

Meanwhile, experts are warning that there is little relief in sight for California, where 99.81 percent of the state is considered to be in drought. “Climate patterns may be in the early stages of aligning to quench the state’s thirst,” writes Climate Central reporter Andrea Thompson. “[B]ut if that happens — and there are no guarantees — it won’t happen until after the dry season ends, a long six months or more to wait until dwindling reservoirs are replenished.”


Source
California water plan unveils hardships to come as drought persists, The Sacramento Bee
Why California’s Drought Isn’t Going Anywhere, Climate Central

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Climate change just reshaped America’s wildfire strategy

by FlorineCastanon Posted on April 10, 2014

Climate change just reshaped America’s wildfire strategy

By

EricF2000

Like a tree in a greenhouse, America’s forest fire problem is growing ominously. Rising temperatures and declining rain and snowfall are parching fire-prone areas and juicing conflagrations. On Thursday, following years of meetings and scientific reviews, the Obama administration published a 101-page strategy that aims to help meet the country’s shifting fire threats.

The National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy divides the nation according to fire risks, and profiles the communities that face those risks. “No one-size-fits-all approach exists to address the challenges facing the Nation,” the strategy states.

Despite covering 70,000 communities and 46 million homes, the strategy can be boiled down to guidelines that aim to do three main things: restore and maintain landscapes that are resilient to fire; brace communities and infrastructure for occasional blazes; and help officials make wise decisions about how and whether flames should be doused. Here’s what that all looks like in flowchart form:

Click to embiggen.

“As climate change spurs extended droughts and longer fire seasons, this collaborative wildfire blueprint will help us restore forests and rangelands to make communities less vulnerable,” said Mike Boots, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

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Oil companies would rather let trains explode than cooperate with feds

by JuliannHook Posted on April 9, 2014

Oil companies would rather let trains explode than cooperate with feds

By

PHMSA

As federal officials work frantically to reverse an uptick in explosions and oil spills from crude-hauling trains, the companies that are fracking the crude and transporting it by rail are responding with an unhelpful collective shrug.

Lawmakers and regulators want information from the oil companies about their rail shipments. The oil companies initially made helpful-sounding noises and pledged to cooperate. Now, however, it seems they’re more worried about keeping corporate secrets than protecting Americans from their explosive loads. From The Hill:

“Just last month before the Commerce Committee, the crude oil industry assured us they were focused on safety and willing to work on this issue,” [Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.)] said in a statement. “Since then, I’ve seen nothing to convince me this was more than just lip service.”…

Rockefeller said he and other legislators had received assurances from the American Petroleum Institute (API) that the crude industry was on board with the push to increase the safety of oil trains.

But the West Virginia senator said on Monday that Congress was still waiting to see the promised assistance.

Rockefeller’s frustrations mirror those of top rail regulators. As Reuters reported last week:

Cynthia Quarterman, chief of the Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, or PHMSA, specifically cited the American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s top lobbying group, for not keeping its promise to share data about oil-by-rail shipments. …

“More than two months ago, we received assurances from industry that the safe transport of crude oil across the country was a top priority and, to that end, API would begin sharing important testing data,” she said in a statement.

“To date, that data has not been shared.”

The oil industry isn’t keeping its word? We’re shocked, shocked.


Source
Senate Dem: Oil industry paying ‘lip service’ to freight rail safety, The Hill
Oil industry balks at sharing crucial rail data, U.S. regulator says, Reuters

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Brits may ban new onshore wind power

by XNYMelisajdeots Posted on April 8, 2014

That blows

Brits may ban new onshore wind power

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Britain’s conservative government is preparing to make an unusual pledge — a crackdown on clean energy.

Prime Minster David Cameron, leader of the bluntly named Conservative Party (aka the Tories), is overseeing the drafting of a “manifesto” ahead of next year’s national election. That manifesto might come dressed up in a stifling windbreaker. The Guardian explains:

The Guardian understands that Cameron has brokered a compromise between warring Tories by agreeing to include measures in the manifesto for next year’s general election that will in effect rule out the building of onshore windfarms from 2020. …

The Tories will be working out the details of the pledge, which could involve an absolute cap on the output from onshore turbines. Lesser measures, which would all come into force in 2020, would involve lower subsidies or introducing tighter planning restrictions.

The senior Conservative said it was important to act because onshore windfarms had become so unpopular.

But Cameron’s party understands that renewable energy in general is popular in the country, so the manifesto might offset the anti-onshore wind pledge with strong commitments to solar power and offshore wind farms.

“We are not going to allow the [opposition] to characterize us as anti-clean-energy just because we want to control the number of onshore windfarms,” one party source told the newspaper. “We are mindful that uncontrolled expansion of onshore wind is alienating people from the whole clean energy debate.”


Source
Conservatives to promise ban on new onshore windfarms, The Guardian

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Bird body count still rising following Galveston Bay oil spill

by GerardoAmbrose Posted on April 7, 2014

Bird body count still rising following Galveston Bay oil spill

By

NOAA

There have been so many oil spills lately — from trains, from pipelines, from barges, from a refinery – that it’s easy to forget about the particulars of each one. Unless you’re an unlucky local resident or an emergency responder.

In Texas, where more than 100,000 gallons of heavy fuel spilled into Galveston Bay two weeks ago following a collision between a barge and a ship, the Coast Guard has recovered more than 300 oiled birds – nearly all of them dead. The Texas Tribune reports:

While the Houston Ship Channel is open and fishermen have mostly resumed activities in the bay, officials say they are at least several weeks away from fully containing the fuel oil, and its devastating effects on shorebirds are becoming increasingly apparent. The effects of the spill, [said David Newstead, a research scientist at the Corpus Christi-based nonprofit Coastal Bend Bays & Estuaries Program], are particularly troubling in the ecologically sensitive area in which the birds have already been in peril from human activity.

Newstead and Coast Guard officials said birds affected by the spill include ducks, herrings, herons, brown and white pelicans, sanderlings, loons, willets, black-bellied plover and the piping plover, which is classified as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. …

Newstead said he has surveyed Mustang Island, about 200 miles southwest of the initial spill site, and observed at least 500 more birds with some traces of oil. The soiled birds came into contact with the contaminated water as it washed ashore.

Birds and shorelines aren’t the only things being smeared with toxic oil in the wake of the shipping accident. An attorney representing a shrimp boat captain said Friday that his client had pulled up an “entire catch” that was “covered with oil.”


Source
Galveston Bay Oil Spill Leaves Hundreds of Birds Oiled, Texas Tribune
Feds seize cargo ship involved in oil spill, Galveston Daily News

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Bird body count still rising following Galveston Bay oil spill

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