How climate change could threaten, transform LI

How climate change could threaten, transform LI: "Scientists say the Long Island of the future will have shorter, wetter winters and oppressively hot summers, with seas rising and storm surges so strong they will threaten beaches, salt water marshes and infrastructure."

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Retirees want #walkability, #publictransit

Sun City It’s Not — Upper West Side Retirement - NYTimes.com: "The most recent census estimates indicate that 22 percent of Upper West Siders, or 46,000 people, are 60 or older, compared with the citywide average of 17 percent. Attracted by convenient shopping, abundant mass transit and a wealth of cultural activities, many older residents hope to remain in their apartments the rest of their lives."

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Very clear video explaining where #transit fares go (hint: banks)

http://nofarehikes.net/

What Promised Land Doesn’t Mention – EcoWatch: Uniting the Voice of the Grassroots Environmental Movement

What Promised Land Doesn’t Mention – EcoWatch: Uniting the Voice of the Grassroots Environmental Movement: "But there are many more problems from fracking that Promised Land doesn’t mention, much less explain.

• Most importantly, fracking’s huge and growing contribution to our global heating crisis. Methane is 72-105 times as powerful a greenhouse gas as CO2 over the first 20 years after it’s released into the atmosphere. Studies over the past two years, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), show that there is much more methane leakage over the lifecycle of fracked, as well as conventionally-produced, natural gas, than the oil and gas industry admits.
• Constant heavy truck traffic transporting water, sand and fracking fluids that pollutes surrounding air, causes damage to roads, creates traffic congestion and noise and other negative impacts.
• The contamination of rivers close to fracking sites through either deliberate dumping of “flowback” toxic wastewater after a well is drilled or through migration of those fluids underground.
• The drawdown of massive amounts of sometimes-scarce—as in historically dry or dought-impacted areas—nearby river and lake water, many millions of gallons per well.
• Documented radiation levels in wastewater 100 or more times the U.S. EPA’s drinking water standard.
• Disruption of other economically- and socially-valued industries or practices, such as agriculture, tourism, hunting and fishing.
• Fragmentation of woods and forests via construction of well sites, pipelines, roads and other infrastructure.
• A decline in property values of homes and land adjacent to or near wells.
• Earthquakes—the U.S. Geological Survey has reported that deep underground injection of drilling wastewater is the probable cause of a six-fold increase in earthquakes in middle America in 2011 compared to 20th century levels."

Carolers explain why banks are to blame for fare hikes

Money-losing gas fracking heavily subsidized and harmful -- same as oil, big surprise

DEC selling out to fracking industry - Times Union: "Moreover, fracking depends on massive, wealth-eating subsidies from public resources that will lower net New York wealth. For example, damage to state roads alone has been estimated by the state to cost tens of millions of dollars annually. Then there are the adjacent landowners whose property and business values fracking will crash, the environmental degradation of water resource, the lack of any offsetting tax revenues, and the disruptive effects on local services and housing markets of a transient oil patch work force.

Fracking also promises potentially devastating impacts on three critical economic development opportunities for New York: agriculture, tourism and green energy."

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Still 10,000 without power in the Rockaways

Battle for the Rockaways | The Indypendent: "Yet, underneath this veneer of forced, revenue-generating normalcy, the eastern area of the peninsula, where Casco and other working-class, mostly people of color live, is decidedly not back to normal. According to Queens State Senator Joe Addabbo, there are still 10,000 homes without electricity and heat in the Rockaways, and — according to reports by numerous on-the-ground organizers — the majority of those houses are in the poorer neighborhoods of Far Rockaway."

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Tanker Carrying Bakken Oil to Canadian Refinery Runs Aground - Bloomberg

Tanker Carrying Bakken Oil to Canadian Refinery Runs Aground - Bloomberg: "The first oil tanker carrying Bakken crude to Irving Oil Corp.’s refinery in Canada from Albany, New York, ran aground in the Hudson River, delaying the first of what is expected to be many voyages on the route."

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MTA: All fares go up in 2013; unavoidable | The Poughkeepsie Journal | poughkeepsiejournal.com

MTA: All fares go up in 2013; unavoidable | The Poughkeepsie Journal | poughkeepsiejournal.com: "“We are not the fat, profligate, out-of-control agency that people make the MTA out to be. We’ve done everything we can to control costs,” board Chairman Joseph Lhota said. “I agree with everyone that our riders pay too much of the cost.”"

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Communities hit by Sandy “form like Voltron” and fight back « ear to earth

Communities hit by Sandy “form like Voltron” and fight back « ear to earth: "The stakes are high for people in the Rockaways. More than month and a half after Superstorm Sandy, winter is setting in and many of the ten thousand residents of this Queens neighborhood still lack heat or electricity. Many have no hot water. And there’s another festering crisis: mold. "

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