ScienceDaily - Tropical Sea Temperatures Influence Melting in Antarctica

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111206095649.htm

ScienceDaily (Dec. 6, 2011) — Accelerated melting of two fast-moving outlet glaciers that drain Antarctic ice into the Amundsen Sea Embayment is likely the result, in part, of an increase in sea-surface temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean, according to new University of Washington research.

Higher-than-normal sea-level pressure north of the Amundsen Sea sets up westerly winds that push surface water away from the glaciers and allow warmer deep water to rise to the surface under the edges of the glaciers, said Eric Steig, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences.

"This part of Antarctica is affected by what's happening on the rest of the planet, in particular the tropical Pacific," he said.

The research involves the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, two of the five largest glaciers in Antarctica. Those two glaciers are important because they drain a large portion of the ice sheet. As they melt from below, they also gain speed, draining the ice sheet faster and contributing to sea level rise. Eventually that could lead to global sea level rise of as much as 6 feet, though that would take hundreds to thousands of years, Steig said.

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Rich Bindell - Are Privatized Water Utilities in Cahoots With Shale Gas Companies?

Published on Monday, December 12, 2011 by Food & Water Watch Blog

http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/blogs/are-privatized-water-utilities-in-cahoots-with-shale-gas-companies/

by Rich Bindell

On one hand, we have shale gas companies who have been rushing into various regions of the country to extract gas using a dangerous extraction process that involves toxic chemicals potentially contaminating our drinking water. On the other hand, we also have investor-owned water utilities (IOU’s) who are taking a public resource out of the hands of the public and profiting greatly from it. What happens when you put them both together? The results are revealed in the latest Food & Water Watch Report, Why the Water Industry is Promoting Shale Gas Development and they could involve the over-generalization of water quality tests, increased water rates and big profits… for the investors.

The report details big concerns about the sketchy relationship between IOU’s and gas companies, including the possibility that IOU’s would protect their investment even if it meant downplaying the risks of contamination caused by their new customers: shale gas companies.

Not only that, but water contamination in a community can lead to new customers for the private water utilities when they need to find a new source of drinking water. Look at what’s happening in Pavillion, Wyoming and Dimock, Pennsylvania, and you can see that this could be a tricky relationship to monitor. If your household relies on its own drinking water well and it suddenly becomes contaminated, you might have to deal with switching to an IOU to provide your water. They can benefit from contamination.

The report also points to IOU’s giving gas-drilling companies discounted rates for water—an average of 45 percent less than residential customers, in the case of one IOU. This sets the tone for water—a public resource —to be sold cheaply to shale gas companies, giving IOU’s a handsome profit. And this water would be used for fracking, which could potentially contaminate water sources.

Do we really want to sell our clean water up the river?

Rich Bindell is a senior writer and outreach specialist at Food & Water Watch.

Josh Fox - Shale Gas Drilling's Dirty Secret Is Out

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/dec/09/shale-gas-drilling-epa-fracking-water-contamination

Published on Saturday, December 10, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

The EPA's findings about fracking's contamination of ground water have sent a shockwave through a gas industry in denial

by Josh Fox

Thursday's stunning announcement from US EPA that implicates hydrofracturing ("fracking") as the cause of groundwater contamination in Pavillion, Wyoming is news that has rocked the world. But as groundbreaking and innovative as the investigation has been, the news comes as no surprise to anyone who has been following fracking closely. 

Anyone who lives in a gas drilling area can tell you: fracking contaminates groundwater. Citizens have been shouting this at the top of their lungs in fracking areas since shortly after the process of hydraulic fracturing was exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act in 2005, paving the way for the largest gas drilling boom in domestic history. The exemption, known as the "Halliburton Loophole", allows fracking companies to inject toxic chemicals under the ground in huge quantities and not report it to the EPA. But with this much fracking going on, with thousands of wells being drilled and fracked in 34 states, and with thousands of reported cases of contamination, the gas industry just can't keep their secrets buried; they keep bubbling up through the ground.

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ecowatch.org - Fracking Compounds Found in Drinking Water

Published on Thursday, December 8, 2011 by EcoWatch.org

http://ecowatch.org/2011/fracking-compounds-found-in-drinking-water/

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a draft analysis of data Dec. 8 from its Pavillion, Wyoming ground water investigation. At the request of Pavillion residents, EPA began investigating water quality concerns in private drinking water wells three years ago. Since that time, in conjunction with the state of Wyoming, the local community, and the owner of the gas field, Encana, EPA has been working to assess ground water quality and identify potential sources of contamination.

EPA’s analysis of samples taken from the agency’s deep monitoring wells in the aquifer indicates detection of synthetic chemicals, like glycols and alcohols consistent with gas production and hydraulic fracturing fluids, benzene concentrations well above Safe Drinking Water Act standards and high methane levels. EPA constructed two deep monitoring wells to sample water in the aquifer. The draft report indicates that ground water in the aquifer contains compounds likely associated with gas production practices, including hydraulic fracturing. EPA also re-tested private and public drinking water wells in the community. The samples were consistent with chemicals identified in earlier EPA results released in 2010 and are generally below established health and safety standards. To ensure a transparent and rigorous analysis, EPA is releasing these findings for public comment and will submit them to an independent scientific review panel. The draft findings announced Dec. 8 are specific to Pavillion, where the fracturing is taking place in and below the drinking water aquifer and in close proximity to drinking water wells—production conditions different from those in many other areas of the country.

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William deBuys - The Age of Thirst in the American West

Posted on December 4, 2011, Printed on December 5, 2011
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175475/

Coming to a Theater Near You: The Greatest Water Crisis in the History of Civilization 
By William deBuys

Consider it a taste of the future: the fire, smoke, drought, dust, and heat that have made life unpleasant, if not dangerous, from Louisiana to Los Angeles. New records tell the tale:biggest wildfire ever recorded in Arizona (538,049 acres), biggest fire ever in New Mexico (156,600 acres), all-time worst fire year in Texas history (3,697,000 acres).

The fires were a function of drought.  As of summer’s end, 2011 was the driest year in 117 years of record keeping for New Mexico, Texas, and Louisiana, and the second driest for Oklahoma. Those fires also resulted from record heat.  It was the hottest summer ever recorded for New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana, as well as the hottest August ever for those states, plus Arizona and Colorado.

Virtually every city in the region experienced unprecedented temperatures, with Phoenix, as usual, leading the march toward unlivability. This past summer, the so-called Valley of the Sun set a new record of 33 days when the mercury reached a shoe-melting 110º F or higher. (The previous record of 32 days was set in 2007.)

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Adam Federman - What Killed Dunkard Creek? Residents in Pennsylvania and West Virginia Say Fracking

Published on Thursday, December 1, 2011 by Earth Island Journal

http://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/eij/article/what_killed_dunkard_creek/

by Adam Federman

On August 27, 2009, Dan Cincotta, a fisheries biologist with West Virginia’s Department of Natural Resources, was conducting a routine inventory of Dunkard Creek, a small river that runs through West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania. He was accompanied by a consultant and an environmental engineer from the state’s largest coal and gas company, Consol Energy, which operates a coalmine, Blacksville #2, just outside of Wana, West Virginia. Cincotta was supposed to do electro-fish surveys, whereby the fish are temporarily stunned in order to assess populations, and to take a series of conductivity readings – a basic measure of how much salt is dissolved in water.

When his first reading measured 20,000 micro siemens per centimeter squared (µS/cm), Cincotta thought his equipment was broken; he had never seen readings above 5,000. The Consol consultant took her own reading in the same location but farther from the riverbank. It registered 40,000 µS/cm. Still in disbelief, Cincotta says, “we wandered upstream and found [Consol’s mining] discharge. And in the discharge alone, straight out of the pipe our equipment registered over 50,000 µS/cm,” roughly the equivalent of seawater. Untreated acid mine discharges typically have conductance values of between 1,000 and 1,500 µS/cm.

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Emily Chung - Arctic Sea Ice Shrinking at 'Unprecedented' Levels

Published on Thursday, November 24, 2011 by CBC News

by Emily Chung

The recent loss of sea ice in the Arctic is greater than any natural variation in the past 1½ millennia, a Canadian study shows.

"The recent sea ice decline … appears to be unprecedented," said Christian Zdanowicz, a glaciologist at Natural Resources Canada, who co-led the study and is a co-author of the paper published Wednesday online in Nature.

"We kind of have to conclude that there's a strong chance that there's a human influence embedded in that signal."

In September, Germany's University of Bremen reported that sea ice had hit a record low, based on data from a Japanese sensor on NASA's Aqua satellite. The U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, using a different satellite data set, reported that the sea ice coverage in 2011 was the second-lowest on record, after the record set in 2007.

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ScienceDaily - Great Plains River Basins Threatened by Pumping of Aquifers

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111118151416.htm

ScienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2011) — Suitable habitat for native fishes in many Great Plains streams has been significantly reduced by the pumping of groundwater from the High Plains aquifer -- and scientists analyzing the water loss say ecological futures for these fishes are "bleak."

Results of their study have been published in the journal Ecohydrology.

Unlike alluvial aquifers, which can be replenished seasonally with rain and snow, these regional aquifers were filled by melting glaciers during the last Ice Age, the researchers say. When that water is gone, it won't come back -- at least, until another Ice Age comes along.

"It is a finite resource that is not being recharged," said Jeffrey Falke, a post-doctoral researcher at Oregon State University and lead author on the study. "That water has been there for thousands of years, and it is rapidly being depleted. Already, streams that used to run year-round are becoming seasonal, and refuge habitats for native fishes are drying up and becoming increasingly fragmented."

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Elizabeth Whitman - U.S. Bottled Water Companies Target Minorities, But So Do Soda Firms

Elizabeth Whitman 

IPS New, November 19, 2011

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=105903

NEW YORK, Nov 19 (IPS) - Water is the lifeblood of this planet, whose inhabitants are watching its accelerated spiral into crisis mode even as they struggle to address the issues and lifestyles that are stretching the earth's resources thin.

Outwardly, the global water crisis appears straightforward - people simply consume too much water. A key factor in this spiral is the fact that water has been morphing from a natural resource into a marketable - and costly - product, experts and reports have shown. 

Exploring different aspects of the global water crisis, from privatisation of water to corporations marketing to minorities, reveals that water - as a human right, as a product, as a natural resource - is firmly entangled with a host of issues in areas, including public health. 

By 2025, 1.8 billion people will live in areas with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world's population - projected to reach eight billion by then - will be under stress conditions. Some 1.4 billion currently lack access to safe water. 

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Rousbeh Legatis - A Rising Sea Threatens Pacific Islands

Wednesday 16 November 2011

by: Rousbeh Legatis, Inter Press Service

http://www.truth-out.org/rising-sea-threatens-pacific-islands/1321454979

New York - As world leaders gear up to spend the coming weeks in South Africa haggling over economically bearable cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, climate change is already exacerbating environmental conditions and threatening the lives and livelihoods of thousands of Pacific Islanders.

Diversity characterises the Pacific region, with its approximately 30,000 islands – of which 1,000 are considered to be populated – scattered across the world's largest ocean, which covers nearly a third of the earth's surface.

"Right now, sea level rise is a reality but also a phenomenon which currently occurs in millimetres each year," pointed out John Silk, minister of foreign affairs of the Marshall Islands, at aconference [4] in May at Columbia Law School in New York.

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