‘I just felt like I needed to’: North Carolina man drives to Edmonton to help fire evacuees

When Jim McGrath heard about the Fort McMurray wildfire, he knew he wanted to do help but what he ended up doing is quite unique.

McGrath hails from near Raleigh, North Carolina. He jumped into his car and drove across the United States and north to Edmonton to volunteer.

“I just felt like I needed to,” he said when asked why he travelled about 4,000 kilometres.

McGrath has no connection to the Fort McMurray fire. He has no friends or family in Edmonton or the rest of the province and has only been to Canada a handful of times.


More (Includes video): http://globalnews.ca/news/2728672/i-just-felt-like-i-needed-to-north-carolina-man-drives-to-edmonton-to-help-fire-evacuees/



He arrived in Edmonton last Wednesday and immediately went to work his first volunteer shift.
Julia Wong/Global News

Offshore Drilling Foes Invoke 1953 Law to Prod Obama on U.S. Ban

Environmental activists who dangled from bridges and paddled kayaks around an Arctic rig have a new strategy for stopping oil development off U.S. coasts: persuading President Barack Obama to use a 1953 law to bar offshore drilling permanently.

An obscure provision that’s been used to preserve coral reefs and walrus feeding grounds empowers presidents to exclude waters from future oil and gas development. Environmentalists want Obama to invoke that statute before leaving office to indefinitely block drilling in the U.S. Atlantic and Arctic.

They saw the opportunity after Royal Dutch Shell Plc abandoned Arctic drilling and Obama rejected the Keystone XL pipeline last year.

"We think this is a moment in time," said Niel Lawrence, Alaska director of the Natural Resources Defense Council. "The last big thing this administration can do is take off the table the places where the government is not in the oil business, where the communities are not reliant on it, where the infrastructure isn’t in place and where the oil couldn’t come for 25 or 30 years."


Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-24/offshore-drilling-foes-invoke-1953-law-to-prod-obama-on-u-s-ban

Thanks for the heads up!

Hi, Skinner! Question regarding the MIRT forum

As someone who has served on MIRT fairly often, I've found Forum Search and Advanced Search invaluable for doing the job. But I'm wondering why Forum Search isn't available in the MIRT Forum. So often we get a notice about someone we know has come up before, but without being able to search for the previous discussion, it's time consuming to go through the previous pages hoping to find it and sometimes we miss it altogether. Since we like to have as much information as possible before making a decision, Forum Search in MIRT would make this much easier and more efficient. And these days, as you know, we're also seeing a lot of returnees, so we often like to compare what we're seeing to previous discussions. Would it be possible? I've so often wished for it, so decided to finally ask. Thanks!

Obama Said to Plan Release of Methane-Limit Rules on Thursday

The Obama administration will unveil on Thursday the first explicit U.S. regulation of methane emissions with a rule designed to reduce leaks of the potent greenhouse gas from oil wells.

The measure will require oil and gas companies to do a better job finding and plugging methane leaks at new wells, pumps, pipes, compressors and other equipment. It will be released by the Environmental Protection Agency, according to three people told of the plans who asked not to be identified prior to the formal announcement.

The primary ingredient of natural gas, methane is pound for pound 84 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at warming the atmosphere when measured over two decades. Previous regulations pared traditional air pollutants from some natural gas wells but did not specifically target methane.

"This is an incredibly important step," said Mark Brownstein, vice president of the Climate and Energy Program at the Environmental Defense Fund, in a phone interview earlier this month. "Methane is responsible for 25 percent of the warming that our planet is experiencing right now, and in the United States, the oil and gas industry is the largest source of methane emissions."


Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-11/obama-said-to-plan-release-of-methane-limit-rules-on-thursday

SleepBus runs overnight between SF and LA for $48

A new type of bus service is starting up to offer travelers a new way to get between two of California's largest cities. It's called the SleepBus, but the company doesn't actually use a bus; it's a Volvo truck hitched to a long trailer with individual sleep pods on board.

Each pod has an electric socket (so you can power and charge your devices while under way) and there's on-board wifi, desks should you prefer to sit up and work, coffee and tea, and room for three bags and even a bicycle in the luggage compartment. The whole trim takes about seven hours, which is a bit longer than the typical hour-and-twenty-minute flight between LAX and SFO, even once you take into account extra time for check-in, clearing security, and transit. But the SleepBus travels overnight, so you leave one city at 11 pm and arrive at the other end by 6 am – plus they'll even let you stay on board until 7:30 if you want to sleep in a little.

To get the word out, the company is offering one-way trips for $48. That's expected to go up to $65 once things are fully up and running, but that's still cheaper than the cheapest nonpromotional airfare you're going to find, even on a budget carrier like Southwest. Add in the convenience of its pickup and drop-off locations at the Caltrain station in San Francisco and the Santa Monica Pier in LA and the SleepBus strikes us as a viable alternative to air travel, and a far better option than the Greyhound – at least until the high-speed train is complete.

No more at link: http://www.autoblog.com/2016/05/09/sleepbus-la-sf-overnight-official/#slide-3887572

Michigan: Leaving dogs in cars could escalate into a felony under Senate bills

LANSING, MI -- Leaving Fido in the car with unsafe conditions would be illegal under a pair of Senate bills introduced this week, and someone who causes an animal death that way could face five years in prison.

Sen. Curtis Hertel, D-Lansing, said sixteen states already have similar laws surrounding dogs being left in cars.

"We just think in situations where there is obvious potential harm that we shouldn't be allowing that in Michigan," Hertel said.

So what would the rules be?

The bill language states that a person cannot "Leave or confine an animal in an unattended motor vehicle under conditions that endanger the health or well-being of the animal, including, but not limited to, heat, cold, lack of adequate ventilation, lack of food or water, or other circumstances that could reasonably be expected to cause suffering, disability, or death of the animal."

Read more: http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2016/05/leaving_dogs_in_cars_could_esc.html#incart_river_home_pop


MLive photographer Yffy Yossifor's dog in the car Wednesday, July 2. Pets left in cars in the summer are subject to various health risks and have prompted new legislation in the Senate. (Yfat Yossifor | The Bay City Times) (Yfat Yossifor)

Michigan: Leaving dogs in cars could escalate into a felony under Senate bills

LANSING, MI -- Leaving Fido in the car with unsafe conditions would be illegal under a pair of Senate bills introduced this week, and someone who causes an animal death that way could face five years in prison.

Sen. Curtis Hertel, D-Lansing, said sixteen states already have similar laws surrounding dogs being left in cars.

"We just think in situations where there is obvious potential harm that we shouldn't be allowing that in Michigan," Hertel said.

So what would the rules be?

The bill language states that a person cannot "Leave or confine an animal in an unattended motor vehicle under conditions that endanger the health or well-being of the animal, including, but not limited to, heat, cold, lack of adequate ventilation, lack of food or water, or other circumstances that could reasonably be expected to cause suffering, disability, or death of the animal."

Read more: http://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2016/05/leaving_dogs_in_cars_could_esc.html#incart_river_home_pop


MLive photographer Yffy Yossifor's dog in the car Wednesday, July 2. Pets left in cars in the summer are subject to various health risks and have prompted new legislation in the Senate. (Yfat Yossifor | The Bay City Times) (Yfat Yossifor)

Fort McMurray wildfire threatens to double in size by day's end (includes videos)

Source: CBC News

Now covering 156,000 hectares, continues to grow to the northeast

Firefighters are once again preparing to battle with what Darby Allen, the Regional Fire Chief of Wood Buffalo, has been calling "the beast," Fort McMurray's out-of-control wildfire.

Officials worry the "the beast" — a fire that has destroyed more than 1,600 homes and buildings and burned more than 101,000 hectares of forest — will grow to over double its size by the time the sun sets.

"I do expect that there is a high potential that this fire could double in size by tomorrow," said Chad Morrison, senior wildfire manager for the province, on Friday.

"We have substantially extreme fire conditions in front of us still for the next two days."

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/fort-mcmurray-wildfire-saturday-1.3571678

The U.S. oil and gas boom is having global atmospheric consequences, scientists suggest

Scientists say they have made a startling discovery about the link between domestic oil and gas development and the world’s levels of atmospheric ethane — a carbon compound that can both damage air quality and contribute to climate change. A new study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters has revealed that the Bakken Shale formation, a region of intensely increasing recent oil production centered in North Dakota and Montana, accounts for about 2 percent of the entire world’s ethane output — and, in fact, may be partly responsible for reversing a decades-long decline in global ethane emissions.

The findings are important for several reasons. First, ethane output can play a big role in local air quality — when it is released into the atmosphere, it interacts with hydrogen and carbon and can cause ozone to form close to the Earth, where it is considered a pollutant that can irritate or damage the lungs.

Ethane is also technically a greenhouse gas, although its lifetime is so short that it is not considered a primary threat to the climate. That said, its presence can help extend the lifespan of methane — a more potent greenhouse gas — in the atmosphere. This, coupled with ethane’s role in the formation of ozone, makes it a significant environmental concern.

From 1987 until about 2009, scientists observed a decreasing trend in global ethane emissions, from 14.3 million metric tons per year to 11.3 million metric tons. But starting in 2009 or 2010, ethane emissions starting rising again — and scientists began to suspect that an increase in shale oil and gas production in the United States was at least partly to blame. The new study’s findings suggest that this may be the case.


Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/04/28/the-u-s-oil-and-gas-boom-is-having-global-atmospheric-consequences-scientists-suggest/



Advances in hydraulic fracturing and directional drilling have unlocked huge amounts of petroleum in the Badlands of Montana. (AP/Charles Rex Arbogast)