Oregon Grape Harvest Down Due to Cool Weather Winemaker anticipates losing 30% of harvest  link

                      
  

8 Sep 10 - This summer's cool damp weather is forcing Oregon's  winemakers to toss out a large part of their harvests, says this article from Portland's KGW.com. 

"Right now, grapes are about two to three weeks behind where they should be this time of the year. 

"Many of the Pinot noir grapes are still very green.  As a result many wine growers are having to cut-back a lot of their harvest. 

"Forrest Klaffke, winemaker for Willamette Valley Vineyards, anticipates he'll lose about 30 percent of his grapes."

However, Klaffke doesn't seem overly concerned. "In 2008 we were just as far behind or pretty close to same exact spot," he explained. ". . . we had a great October in 2008."

"Experts say 2008 actually turned out to be one of the best years for pinot noirs in Oregon."

See entire article:
http://www.kgw.com/lifestyle/Cool-weather-taking-its-toll-on-winegrowers-102494879.html
Thanks to Kathleen Stokes for this link

"Can anyone see the similarities between this and the Little Ice Age, when England lost its grapes?" asks Kathleen

‘Rapid’ 2010 melt for Arctic ice – but no record

by admin on Sep.16, 2010, under International News

The Arctic on 3rd September, as visualised using data from Nasa's Aqua satellite

Ice floating on the Arctic Ocean melted unusually quickly this year, but did not shrink down to the record minimum area seen in 2007.
That is the preliminary finding of US scientists who say the summer minimum seems to have passed and the ice has entered its winter growth phase.
2010′s summer Arctic ice minimum is the third smallest in the satellite era.
Researchers say projections of summer ice disappearing entirely within the next few years increasingly look wrong.
At its smallest extent, on 10 September, 4.76 million sq km (1.84 million sq miles) of Arctic Ocean was covered with ice – more than in 2007 and 2008, but less than in every other year since 1979.
Walt Meier, a researcher at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado, where the data is collated, said ice had melted unusually fast.
“It was a short melt season – the period from the maximum to the minimum was shorter than we’ve had – but the ice was so thin that even so it melted away quickly,” he told BBC News.
The last 12 months have been unusually warm globally – according to Nasa, the warmest in its 130-year record.
This is partly down to El Nino conditions in the Pacific Ocean, which have the effect of raising temperatures globally.
With those conditions changing into a cooler La Nina phase, Nasa says 2010 is “likely, but not certain” to be the warmest calendar year in its record.
Ice made
Arctic ice is influenced by these global trends, but the size of the summer minimum also depends on local winds and currents.
This means ice can be concentrated in one region of the Arctic in one year, in another region the next.
This year, the relative absence of ice around Alaska has brought tens of thousands of Pacific walruses up onto land recently.
In terms of the longer-term picture, Dr Meier said the 2010 NSIDC figures tally with the idea of a gradual decline in summer Arctic ice cover.
But computer models projecting a disappearance very soon – 2013 was a date cited by one research group just a few years ago – seem to have been too extreme.
“The chances of a really early melt are increasingly unlikely as the years go by, and you’d need a couple of extreme years like 2007 in a row to reach that now,” he said.
“But the 2040/2050 figure that’s been quoted a lot – that’s still on track. It could end up being wrong, of course, but the data we have don’t disprove it.”
NSIDC will release a full analysis of the 2010 data next month.

15 September 2010 link

US says idle Gulf of Mexico oil wells must be plugged

US offshore oil regulator Michael Bromwich said aging oil infrastructure posed an environmental risk

The US is set to require oil companies to plug 3,500 non-producing Gulf of Mexico oil wells in an effort to prevent future leaks, officials say.

The interior department will also require companies to dismantle 650 unused oil and gas platforms.
Some installations have sat idle for decades without inspection for leaks.
The order comes five months after an explosion at a BP oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico caused one of the worst environmental disasters in US history.

In an order issued on Wednesday, the interior department said wells that had not been used in the past five years for exploration or oil production must be plugged and their pipelines and rig structures dismantled.

Hazards 'reduced'
"As infrastructure continues to age, the risk of damage increases," said Michael Bromwich, director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, in a statement.
He said the new requirements, scheduled to take effect in October, would "substantially reduce such hazards".
Meanwhile, the senior US government official overseeing the BP oil spill response said the blown-out well was to be permanently sealed by Sunday.
"We are within a 96-hour window of killing the well," retired Coast Guard Adm Thad Allen told reporters.
BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in April, killing 11 people. An estimated 4.9m barrels of oil then leaked into the Gulf.