Apr 17 2010

Icelandic volcano eases but eruptions continue

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An Icelandic volcano that is spewing ash into the air and wreaking havoc on flights across Europe appeared to be easing up on Saturday but could continue to erupt for days or even months to come, officials said. Iceland's Meteorological Office said the cloud of ash above the volcano had shrunk to a height of 5 to 8 kilometers (3.125 to 5 miles) from 6 to 11 km (3.75 to 6.875 miles) when it started erupting earlier this week. The office said that the volume of magma under the volcano appeared to be decreasing and that heavy pulsing earlier in the day had steadied and the volcano appeared less volatile.An Icelandic volcano that is spewing ash into the air and wreaking havoc on flights across Europe appeared to be easing up on Saturday but could continue to erupt for days or even months to come, officials said. Science | Green Business Iceland's Meteorological Office said the cloud of ash above the volcano had shrunk to a height of 5 to 8 kilometers (3.125 to 5 miles) from 6 to 11 km (3.75 to 6.875 miles) when it started erupting earlier this week. The office said that the volume of magma under the volcano appeared to be decreasing and that heavy pulsing earlier in the day had steadied and the volcano appeared less volatile.An Icelandic volcano that is spewing ash into the air and wreaking havoc on flights across Europe appeared to be easing up on Saturday but could continue to erupt for days or even months to come, officials said. Iceland's Meteorological Office said the cloud of ash above the volcano had shrunk to a height of 5 to 8 kilometers (3.125 to 5 miles) from 6 to 11 km (3.75 to 6.875 miles) when it started erupting earlier this week. The office said that the volume of magma under the volcano appeared to be decreasing and that heavy pulsing earlier in the day had steadied and the volcano appeared less volatile.
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Apr 15 2010

Volcanic ash disrupts northern Europe air traffic

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Air traffic in much of northern Europe was halted Thursday by ash from a volcanic eruption in Iceland, aviation authorities said. "Due to ash, air traffic on the sea area between Scotland, Norway, northern Sweden, Britain, Norway and northern Finland is being limited," Finland's airport agency Finavia said. A volcanic eruption in Iceland spewed black smoke and white steam into the air Wednesday.. Britain's National Air Traffic Service said that following advice from the Met Office weather service it had restricted the number of aircraft flying into British airspace.
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Apr 14 2010

Australia arrests Chinese crew of grounded coal ship

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Australian police arrested on Wednesday two senior crew members of a Chinese coal ship which ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef, charging them with damaging the reef by failing to sail a correct course. Chinese bulk carrier Shen Neng 1 was fully loaded and traveling at full speed on April 3 when it struck the Douglas Shoal, toward the southern end of the protected reef, which covers 346,000 sq km (133,600 sq miles) off the northeast coast. The ship, which leaked around two tonnes of heavy fuel oil, was refloated at high tide on Monday night and towed to safe anchorage near Great Keppel Island, a tourist resort, for a damage inspection.
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Apr 04 2010

Chinese ship leaking oil on Great Barrier Reef

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A stranded Chinese bulk coal carrier leaking oil into the sea around Australia's Great Barrier Reef is in danger of breaking up and damaging the reef, government officials said on Sunday. The 230-meter (754-ft) Shen Neng I was on its way to China when it ran aground on a shoal on Saturday. It had 950 tonnes of oil on board and officials said patches of oil had been spotted in the water early on Sunday, but no major leak. The premier of Queensland state Anna Bligh said the ship was in a poor state, and posed a danger to the reef.
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Apr 02 2010

Canada, US to collaborate on Greenhouse Gas Emissions Regulations

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Canada will not unilaterally impose limits on greenhouse gas emissions from industry, saying on Thursday that it will work in tandem with the United States, as it is doing with vehicle standards. "We don't anticipate doing this alone. Industrial regulations will require the same kind of collaboration that we've had with the United States on the transportation sector," Environment Minister Jim Prentice told Reuters.
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Mar 27 2010

Earth Hour 2010

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Sydney's iconic Harbour Bridge and Opera House temporarily went dark on Saturday as nations across the western Pacific turned out the lights for Earth Hour 2010 to call for action on climate change. The symbolic one-hour switch-off, first held in Sydney in 2007, has become an annual global event and organizers World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said they expect this year's to be the biggest so far. The remote Chatham Islands was the first of more than 100 nations and territories to turn off the power at 8.30 p.m. local time, in a rolling event around the globe that ends just across the International Dateline in Samoa 24 hours later.
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Mar 19 2010

Czech minister quits over controversial power plant

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Czech Environment Minister Jan Dusik resigned Thursday from the caretaker cabinet, saying the prime minister had put pressure on him to decide hastily on plans to upgrade a controversial large coal-fired power plant. The ministry has yet to rule on the project, which has drawn objections from environmentalists and from Micronesia. The Pacific nation fears increasing floods as a result of climate change partly due to carbon emissions from the Czech Prunerov plant.
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Feb 27 2010

House members seek to block EPA carbon limits

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Two senior Democrats in the U.S. House filed a resolution to block the Obama administration from regulating greenhouse gases on its own if a climate change bill fails to pass Congress soon. The resolution of disapproval, filed on Thursday, is identical to a controversial resolution by Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski. Both resolutions offer a fairly quick way to overturn Environmental Protection Agency proposals to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming.
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Feb 26 2010

Huge iceberg breaks off from Antarctic glacier

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An iceberg the size of Luxembourg has broken off from a glacier in Antarctica after being rammed by another giant iceberg, scientists said on Friday, in an event that could affect ocean circulation patterns. The 2,500 sq km (965 sq mile) iceberg broke off earlier this month from the Mertz Glacier's 160 km (100 miles) floating tongue of ice that sticks out into the Southern Ocean. The collision has since halved the size of the tongue that drains ice from the vast East Antarctic ice sheet.
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Feb 14 2010

New error in UN Climate report

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The U.N. panel of climate experts overstated how much of the Netherlands is below sea level, according to a preliminary report on Saturday, admitting yet another flaw after a row last month over Himalayan glacier melt. A background note by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said a 2007 report wrongly stated that 55 percent of the country was below sea level since the figure included areas above sea level, prone to flooding along rivers.
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