Environment and Energy News From Around the World (December 2013)
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2014-01-05 22:30:32 UTC
- Modified: 2014-01-05 22:31:15 UTC
Summary: Stories of interest from recent weeks, focusing on the environment and those who harm it
Japan
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Tepco is planning on dumping all of the radioactive water stored at Fukushima into the ocean. The industry-controlled nuclear regulators are pushing for dumping the radiation, as well.
United States
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Conservative groups may have spent up to $1bn a year on the effort to deny science and oppose action on climate change, according to the first extensive study into the anatomy of the anti-climate effort.
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Through an analysis of the financial structure of the organizations that constitute the core of the countermovement and their sources of monetary support, Brulle found that, while the largest and most consistent funders behind the countermovement are a number of well-known conservative foundations, the majority of donations are “dark money,” or concealed funding.
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The presentation created by global intelligence firm Stratfor divides environmental groups into four categories: radicals, idealists, realists and opportunists. The document then offers strategic ways of dealing with each type.
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The extensive global operations of the US military (wars, interventions, and secret operations on over one thousand bases around the world and six thousand facilities in the United States) are not counted against US greenhouse gas limits. Sara Flounders writes, “By every measure, the Pentagon is the largest institutional user of petroleum products and energy in general. Yet the Pentagon has a blanket exemption in all international climate agreements.”
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The Pacific Ocean is warming at a rate faster than anything seen in the last 10,000 years and we may have the warmest Arctic in the last 120,000 years. Our burning of fossil fuels is the big thing pushing us toward the brink. Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, claims that we have enough wind and solar to power the world. The question is why aren’t we using it? This isn’t a matter of changing how we get energy, it means shifting the power dynamic in this country—and across the world for that matter—and literally putting power in the hands of individual people and communities. Not only will renewable resources cut down global warming but also, as fossil fuel costs rise, the cost for wind and solar power is actually decreasing.
United Kingdom
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Met Office issues yellow weather warnings of ice and rain, with 96 flood warnings in place and a further 244 areas on flood alert
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Ministers "stepping up the search for shale" with new exploration rights to be offered to fracking firms next summer
Canada
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Canada is having a cold snap at the moment. This week, in Southern Manitoba, the temperature reached a blisteringly frigid -31 degrees Celsius, or nearly -24 Fahrenheit. (Wind chill values in Winnipeg—in case you were curious and/or in need of some meteorological schadenfreude—dipped to -58 Fahrenheit.) Which is crazy, and which makes for, as Yahoo's Geekquinox blog puts it, "the coldest afternoon temperatures the area has seen in several years."
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Back in 2012, when Canada's Harper government announced that it would close down national archive sites around the country, they promised that anything that was discarded or sold would be digitized first. But only an insignificant fraction of the archives got scanned, and much of it was ">simply sent to landfill or burned.
Unsurprisingly, given the Canadian Conservatives' war on the environment, the worst-faring archives were those that related to climate research. The legendary environmental research resources of the St. Andrews Biological Station in St. Andrews, New Brunswick are gone. The Freshwater Institute library in Winnipeg and the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Centre in St. John's, Newfoundland: gone. Both collections were world-class.
An irreplaceable, 50-volume collection of logs from HMS Challenger's 19th century expedition went to the landfill, taking with them the crucial observations of marine life, fish stocks and fisheries of the age.
Africa
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Oil drilling may bring benefits in healthcare and education, but critics are concerned about corruption and the effect on wildlife
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Millions of tonnes of old electronic goods illegally exported to developing countries, as people dump luxury items
Chevron
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A court in Canada has ruled Ecuadorean farmers and fishermen can try to seize the assets of oil giant Chevron based on a 2011 decision in an Ecuadorean court found it liable for nearly three decades of soil and water pollution near oil wells, and said it had ruined the health and livelihoods of people living in nearby areas of the Amazon rainforest.
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U.S. oil company Chevron has suspended exploration for shale gas in northeastern Romania after hundreds of anti-fracking protesters tore down fences.
Chevron won approval to drill exploratory wells in the town of Pungesti, but halted work for a second time Saturday after residents blocked access to the site.
Deep Sea and Sea Traffic
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Five hundred miles southeast of Hawai'i, in international waters far out of sight of any land, there are vast mineral resources 5,000 meters below the sea.
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Shrimp populations in northern New England have declined so quickly that a regulatory agency has banned all shrimp fishing for the 2014 season in order to allow the small crustaceans to replenish themselves. The sharp fall-off in shrimp stock is due to overfishing and worsening environmental conditions, experts say.
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A floating vessel that is longer than the Empire State Building is high has taken to the water for the first time.
Australia
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'Strictest conditions in Australian history' to safeguard Great Barrier Reef while building three terminals at Abbot Point
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The Japanese Whale Poaching Fleet has left Japan, setting sail for the Australian Antarctic Whale Sanctuary. The factory vessel, the Nisshin Maru left Innoshima Port today and the refuelling vessel, the Sun Laurel, left just days prior. The harpoon ships no longer have their AIS (Automatic Identification System) on and it appears that they are underway as well.
Middle East/Persian Gulf
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Israel has granted oil exploration rights inside Syria, in the occupied Golan Heights, to Genie Energy. Major shareholders of Genie Energy – which also has interests in shale gas in the United States and shale oil in Israel – include Rupert Murdoch and Lord Jacob Rothschild.
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Google Earth has been once again used by researchers for scientific discovery.
Researchers from the University of British Columbia scoured Google Earth in search of fishing weirs along the coasts of seven Persian Gulf nations. They found some 1,900 fish traps, suggesting that the total fish catch in the Persian Gulf may be up to six times the officially reported level of 5,260 metric tons per year.
Other
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We must wake up to the global land crisis or face a very real threat of famine
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Quantities required for the fracking process may make it problematic in areas of the UK where resources are scarce
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