Part Law Student Bar Slave, Mostly Fangirl, Always Environmentalist, Regular Reader, Aspiring Sleeper.
Caffeine Addict.
From: Miami Current City: D.C.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
A Dolphin Death Whodunit In Peru
The Peruvian government claims that nearly 900 dolphins died of natural causes. A separate study disagrees.
A separate dolphin necropsy disagrees with this statement and lays the blame on bursts of high-pressure compressed air used to look for oil deposits beneath the ocean.
George Black: Game Over for Climate? Let’s Hope for Extra Innings
L.A. City Council approves ban on supermarket plastic bags: Los Angeles today became the largest city in the nation to adopt a ban on plastic bags at supermarket checkout lines, handing a major victory to clean-water advocates who sought to reduce the amount of trash clogging landfills, the region’s waterways and the ocean.
Photo: James Alamillo, playing the “Bag Monster” for Heal the Bay, gets into his role while he tries to work up the crowd before the city council voted to ban plastic bags Wednesday. Credit: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times
A virus that creates electricity
A virus called simply M13 has the power (literally) to change the world. A team of scientists at the Berkeley Lab have genetically engineered M13 viruses to emit enough electricity to power a small LED screen. M13 poses no threat to humans — it can only infect bacteria — but it could one day serve humanity by powering your laptop, or even your city.
Illustration by Iaroslav Neliubov via Shutterstock
WOW!!
SAN FRANCISCO—A new labor market study published Wednesday has found that oil companies with hydraulic fracturing interests have outpaced the tobacco industry, Wall Street, and the gun lobby to become the largest employer of recent college graduates with public relations degrees. “These days, media-savvy professionals who know how to publicize questionable scientific data in order to downplay the environmental dangers of forcing toxic fluids into the ground can pretty much write their own ticket,” said Bart Hobijn of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, adding that this year at least 2,500 graduating seniors will be put to work obfuscating the levels of carcinogens in groundwater. ”And in the long term, the job demand will only increase. Fracking has become a high-growth sector in which there is an extraordinary amount of spinning to be done.” When asked how he enjoyed his new position with a Pittsburgh-based fracking operator, recently hired PR manager Matt Coleman said he believed the practice is a ”safe, clean way to increase our natural gas reserves and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.”
Because the evidence is right outside your window.
Flooding, Worcester, UK, May 2, 2012.
(Source: americawakiewakie)
“In a survey conducted by Ceres, a Boston-based coalition of investors and environmental groups, more than 75% of insurers acknowledged the existence of perils stemming from climate change.“Yet despite widespread recognition of the effects climate change will likely have on extreme events, few insurers were able to articulate a coherent plan to manage the risks and opportunities associated with climate change,” the Ceres report states.The Ceres study found that out of 88 U.S. insurance companies, only 11 had formal climate change risk policies and more than 60% had no dedicated management approach to assessing climate risks.Ben Schiller at Yale’s Environment 360 noted that while American insurance companies have been slow to prepare for global warming’s ramifications, their European counterparts have been getting ready for a potentially costly future.”Via AllGov
It’s amazing this is even still a controversy when the science has been so consistent for so long.
This site is very good and should be on you list of favorites.
Will always reblog the great work of John Cook at Skeptical Science.
BP Plc (BP.L) said on Wednesday it reached definitive agreements with well over 100,000 private plaintiffs to resolve claims for economic, property and medical damages resulting from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
The London-based oil company said it still believes the cost of the settlement will be $7.8 billion, to be paid from a $20 billion trust it had previously set aside.
This coming Friday is the two-year anniversary of the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which killed 11 workers and triggered the largest offshore oil spill, after BP’s Macondo well ruptured.
“BP made a commitment to help economic and environmental restoration efforts in the Gulf Coast,” Chief Executive Bob Dudley said in a statement. “This settlement provides the framework for us to continue delivering on that promise, offering those affected full and fair compensation, without waiting for the outcome of a lengthy trial process.”
According to settlement papers, about 109,000 condominium owners, hotel and resort operators, restaurateurs, shrimpers and others may be eligible to recover on economic and property claims. About 16,000 plaintiffs may recover for medical claims.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs may be awarded as much as $600 million to cover fees and costs. This sum is separate from any amounts paid to spill victims, settlement papers show.
READ MORE: BP, private plaintiffs settle over Gulf oil spill
Leopold and Davis, quoted in McCaffrey, S.C., The Law of International Watercourses, Oxford University Press, 2nd ed, Oxford, 2007, p. 4.
I don’t know how the Weather Channel reporters can bite their tongue about climate change.
California schools harness sunshine to cut energy costs: More schools install solar panels to tap California’s sunshine and reduce energy costs. But among the snags are predictable complaints about aesthetics and an unexpected directional mixup.
Photo: Workers install the iron structures that will support the solar panels in a faculty parking lot at Taft High School in Woodland Hills. One teacher expects shaded spaces under the panels to be popular. Credit: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times
People, solar panels are beautiful!
