Fisherman fighting Pirates with cell phones

Accuweather picked up this interesting story

Annual Bird Festival draws bird lovers, families to Derby Hill Observatory | syracuse.com

Annual Bird Festival draws bird lovers, families to Derby Hill Observatory | syracuse.com

Honey shortage? It's starting out to be a rough year for New York beekeepers | syracuse.com

Honey shortage? It's starting out to be a rough year for New York beekeepers | syracuse.com

Why is my quarterly water bill higher in Camillus? The Real Deal

Why is my quarterly water bill higher in Camillus? The Real Deal

From 9wsyr.com. Something to think about? How are there towns handling it? It is problem of one centralize Water Authority, like Niagara Mohawk, err I mean National Grid, err promised all these jobs...oh yet Solvay Electric is cheaper than them.

Water Resources - Not Just Water Quality – Gains Attention of Opponents to Hydraulic Fracturing | Marten Law

Water Resources - Not Just Water Quality – Gains Attention of Opponents to Hydraulic Fracturing | Marten Law

This article was originally published in The Water Report, the monthly newsletter for water lawyers, and anyone interested in water law, water rights, and water quality in the western United States. Special thanks to David Light for permission to republish.

Introduction

Hydraulic fracturing (commonly called “fracking”) is perhaps the single most controversial environmental issue of the day. The process involves breaking open otherwise impermeable oil and gas bearing geologic formations using a pressurized mixture of water, “proppant” (generally sand or ceramic beads), and chemicals. The mixture is injected down a wellbore, the proppant becomes lodged in the fractures, holding them open, and after a period of flowback recovery, gas and oil can be recovered. Recent technical breakthroughs in horizontal drilling, combined with improvements in traditional hydraulic fracturing techniques, have opened up vast areas of previously “unconventional” deep shale formations to economic development, resulting in a massive boom in oil and gas production across the country — and prompting major controversy.

A Real Carbon Solution - NYTimes.com

A Real Carbon Solution - NYTimes.com

Sometime this summer, in Odessa, Tex., the Summit Power Groupplans to break ground on a $2.5 billion coal gasification power plant. Summit has named this the Texas Clean Energy Project. With good reason.

Part of the promise of this power plant is its use of gasified coal; because the gasification process doesn’t burn the coal, it makes for far cleaner energy than a traditional coal-fired plant.

But another reason this plant — and a handful of similar plants — has such enormous potential is that it will capture some 90 percent of the facility’s already reduced carbon emissions. Some of those carbon emissions will be used to make fertilizer. The rest will be sold to the oil industry, which will push it into the ground, as part of a process called enhanced oil recovery.

The Dying of the Monarch Butterflies - NYTimes.com

The Dying of the Monarch Butterflies - NYTimes.com

Today the winter monarch colonies, which are found west of Mexico City, in an area of about 60 miles by 60 miles, are a pitiful remnant of their former splendor. The aggregate area covered by the colonies dwindled from an average of 22 acres between 1994 and 2003 to 12 acres between 2003 and 2012. This year’s area, which was reported on Wednesday, hit a record low of 2.9 acres.

Reasons for the decline are multiple, including: out-of-control ecotourism, extreme weather and diversion of water. Two threats loom above all others: the destruction of breeding habitat in the United States because of the widespread use of powerful herbicides and genetically engineered crops, and illegal logging in Mexico’s high-elevation Oyamel fir forests.