Tag Archives: conservation

As Drought continues in California Newsom urges stricter policies

2 Timothy 3:1 But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty.

Important Takeaways:

  • Newsom urged Californians to cut water use by 15%. In February they saved less than 1%
  • Figures released this week by the State Water Resources Control Board showed that even during a third year of drought, Californians have been slow to step up conservation efforts.
  • Newsom last week issued an order for urban water suppliers to implement more aggressive conservation measures, requiring them to activate “Level 2” of their local drought contingency plans to prepare for shortages. The governor also directed the state water board to consider a ban on watering “nonfunctional” grass at businesses and other properties.
  • The Colorado River, which supplies water to seven states and Mexico, has shrunk dramatically during two decades of dryness intensified by unprecedented warmth, and its reservoirs are continuing to decline.
  • California’s water managers have cut deliveries through the State Water Project to 5% of full allocations, and have called for residents to conserve.

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Girl power in the deep blue sea: World’s largest fish are female

By Will Dunham

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Male and female whale sharks – filter-feeding marine behemoths – grow at different rates, with females doing so more slowly but getting much larger than the guys, according to research that offers deeper insight into the biology of Earth’s largest fish.

Researchers said on Wednesday they had tracked the growth of 54 whale sharks over a 10-year period in the vast Ningaloo Reef off Australia’s west coast, where hundreds of these slow-swimming endangered fish migrate annually.

Whale sharks of both sexes were found to have their fastest growth as juveniles, about 8-12 inches (20-30 cm) annually.

Overall, males were found to grow slightly more quickly than females, plateauing at around 26 feet (8 meters) long after reaching sexual maturity at about 30 years old. Females plateaued at around 14 meters (46 feet) when they reached sexual maturity at about age 50.

It is believed whale sharks may live 100-150 years. The longest-known whale shark reached about 60 feet (18 meters).

“Whale sharks are remarkable in that females have massive litters of pups, up to 300 at one time. Being very large is almost certainly a prerequisite for carrying this many young inside a female’s body,” said Australian Institute of Marine Science marine biologist Mark Meekan, who led the research published the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.

These sharks have a brownish-grayish color on the back and sides with white spots, with a white underside.

“Our study provides the first evidence that male and female whale sharks grow at different rates,” Meekan said. “Previously, researchers had to rely on estimates of growth and age extracted from the vertebrae of dead sharks that had either stranded on shore or been killed by a fishery. Samples were very limited and didn’t cover a very wide size range of animals, confounding attempts to produce reliable estimates of growth patterns.”

They are filter feeders, swimming great distances through the world’s tropical oceans to find enough plankton to sustain themselves.

“Our study has important implications for conservation,” Meekan said. “If it takes many years, 30 or more, for these animals to become mature, there are lots of threats such as hunting and ship-strike that they may succumb to before they get a chance to breed, making conservation strategies for these animals an urgent task.”

(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Sandra Maler)

U.S. natgas use hits record during freeze; utilities urge conservation

FILE PHOTO - A natural gas flare on an oil well pad burns as the sun sets outside Watford City, North Dakota January 21, 2016. REUTERS/Andrew Cullen

By Scott DiSavino

(Reuters) – Several utilities urged customers to cut back on power and gas use on Thursday during the brutal freeze blanketing the eastern half of the country after U.S. homes and businesses used record amounts of natural gas for heating on Wednesday.

Harsh winds brought record-low temperatures across much of the Midwest, causing at least a dozen deaths and forcing residents who pride themselves on their winter hardiness to huddle indoors.

As consumers cranked up heaters to escape the bitter cold, gas demand in the Lower 48 U.S. states jumped to a preliminary record high of 145.1 billion cubic feet per day on Wednesday, according to financial data provider Refinitiv.

That topped the current all-time high of 144.6 bcfd set on Jan. 1, 2018. One billion cubic feet is enough gas to supply about five million U.S. homes for a day.

In Michigan, automakers agreed to interrupt production schedules through Friday after local utility Consumers Energy made an emergency appeal to curtail gas use so it could manage supplies following a fire at a gas compressor station on Wednesday.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV said on Thursday it canceled two additional shifts at its Warren Truck and Sterling Heights Assembly plants and General Motors Co said it was suspending operations at a total of 13 Michigan plants and its Warren Tech Center.

Ford Motor Co said it had also taken steps to reduce energy use at its four Michigan plants supplied by CMS.

Consumers, a unit of Michigan energy company CMS Energy Corp, said that the Ray compressor station in Macomb County was partially back in service but urged all of its 1.8 million Michigan customers to continue their conservation efforts through Friday.

Elsewhere in Michigan, DTE Energy Inc asked its 2.2 million power customers to reduce electric use voluntarily to help safeguard the reliability of the regional grid.

PJM, the electric grid operator for all or parts of 13 states from New Jersey to Illinois, said there were no reliability issues and noted that power demand had already peaked on Thursday below 140,000 megawatts.

That is well below the PJM region’s all-time winter peak of 143,338 MW set on Feb. 20, 2015. One megawatt can power about 1,000 homes.

While the brutal cold boosts gas use for heating, it can also reduce production by freezing pipes in gathering systems in producing regions, called freeze-offs.

Gas production in the Lower 48 states was projected to fall to a four-month low of 84.9 bcfd on Thursday due primarily to freeze-offs in the Marcellus and Utica, the nation’s biggest shale gas-producing region in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, according to Refinitiv.

(Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by David Gregorio and Dan Grebler)