New EPA standards will aim to significantly cut methane emissions from oil and gas sites in the U.S.

The Obama administration makes its latest move to take on climate change.

usnews.com - by Alan Neuhauser - January 14, 2015

In the Obama administration’s latest use of executive authority to address climate change, the White House announced plans Wednesday to impose new regulations on the oil and gas industry that would nearly halve methane emissions from wells, drill sites and pipelines in 10 years.

The new standards, to be developed by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Air Act, would aim by 2025 to cut methane emissions by up to 45 percent from levels recorded in 2012. They would also slash the spread of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, key components of ground-level smog that have been linked to cancer, neurological conditions and other illnesses.

nrdc.org

Across the nation, climate change is making hot summer days hotter and stretching their numbers into heat waves that never seem to end. And the heat is causing more than just discomfort - as temperatures rise, so are the number of illnesses, emergency room visits, and deaths.

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Oil pump jacks at work at a drilling site in North Dakota. Producers have been cutting back.
Credit Eric Gay/Associated Press

nytimes.com - by Clifford Krauss - January 7, 2015

HOUSTON — With oil prices plunging at an ever-quickening rate, producers are beginning to slash the number of drilling rigs around the country.

The national rig count had remained surprisingly resilient over recent months even as oil prices dropped by more than 50 percent since June, and it still tops the count of a year ago as domestic production continues to surge.

The UCL study used an economic model to determine what percentage of each region's fossil fuel reserves should be left untouched in order to meet climate goals. Reserves are defined as fuels that could be developed given current technology and economic conditions.
EMILY M. ENG, NG STAFF. SOURCE: C. MCGLADE AND P. EKINS. NATURE

New study says vast amounts of coal, oil, and gas must be left untouched to limit global warming.

CLICK HERE - STUDY - NATURE
The geographical distribution of fossil fuels unused when limiting global warming to
2 °C

Nature 517, 187–190 (08 January 2015) doi:10.1038/nature14016

nationalgeographic.com - January 7, 2015
by Christina Nunez

Canada's tar sands need to stay in the ground, the oil beneath the Arctic has to remain under the sea, and most of the world's coal must be left untouched in order to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 2°C, a study released Wednesday says.

THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS  by Sue Ambrose                                     Dec. 27, 2014

DALLAS, Texas --When Ebola surfaced in the U.S., federal guidelines to protect medical workers here were weaker than the ones that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had in place 15 years earlier, The Dallas Morning News has found.

It’s not known exactly how nurse Nina Pham contracted Ebola while caring for patient Thomas Eric Duncan. Shown here at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas, she was later successfully treated at a National Institutes of Health hospital in Maryland. Agence France-Presse

A review of CDC documents and archived Web pages shows that a 1998 protocol originally written for health care workers in Africa had more protective measures than the one for U.S. caregivers when Thomas Eric Duncan became the first patient diagnosed with Ebola in this country.

Two Dallas nurses were infected with the deadly virus while treating Duncan at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas, where he died in early October....

CENTER FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASE AND POLICY                                                                   Dec. 9, 2014          
By  Peter M. Sandman, PhD, and Jody Lanard, MD  

In contrast to the Ebola crisis in West Africa, which started in late 2013 and will last well into 2015 or longer, the US "Ebola crisis" was encapsulated in a single month, October 2014. But there may well be US Ebola cases to come, brought here by travelers or returning volunteers. And other emerging infectious diseases will surely reach the United States in the months and years ahead.

So now is a propitious time to harvest some crisis communication lessons from the brief US Ebola "crisis."

We're putting "crisis" in quotation marks because there was never an Ebola public health crisis in the United States, nor was there a significant threat of one. But there was a crisis of confidence, a period of several weeks during which many Americans came to see the official response to domestic Ebola as insufficiently cautious, competent, and candid—and therefore felt compelled to implement or demand additional responses of their own devising....

(CLICK HERE - INTERACTIVE MAP - Surging Seas - Risk Finder: Texas)

(CLICK HERE - Surging Seas - Risk Finder: Texas)

Searchable interactive map of sea level rise & flood risk areas

Climate Central - An independent organization of leading scientists and journalists researching and reporting the facts about our changing climate and its impact on the American public.

(CLICK HERE - Climate Central)

DALLAS MORNING NEWS  By REESE DUNKLIN and STEVE THOMPSON                                        Dec 8, 2014

The Dallas emergency-room doctor who missed signs of Ebola in a Liberian man who later became the first to die of the disease in the U.S. describes the fateful night for the first time.

Dr. Joseph Howard Meier told The Dallas Morning News that when he treated Thomas Eric Duncan in the early morning hours of Sept. 26, he was unaware that Duncan had recently arrived from a country ravaged by the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. He also said he did not realize Duncan had such a high fever.

"I was unaware of a 103-degree fever," Meier said in written answers to questions from the paper, released by his attorney. "It appears in the chart, but I did not see it...."

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environmentalleader.com - November 26, 2014

The EPA has proposed a plan to reduce harmful emissions of sulfur dioxide in parts of Texas and Oklahoma that would require operators of some of Texas’ coal-fired power plants to spend over $2 billion on emissions-reducing technology, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

The plan, released Monday, would require 15 units at eight coal-fired plants be retrofitted with controls to help clear the air at Texas’ Big Bend and Guadalupe Mountains National Parks and the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma.

THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS                                                                               Nov. 15, 2014

By Sherry Jacobson

The “Ebola cluster” in Dallas County is the subject of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report published Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

...the report offers a detailed timeline of what happened, starting with Thomas Eric Duncan’s arrival in Dallas from Liberia on Sept. 20. His Ebola symptoms were misdiagnosed Sept. 25 at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas as sinusitis and he was sent home with antibiotics. He returned to the hospital Sept. 28, underwent 10 days of treatment and died Oct. 8.

Two of Duncan’s caretakers, both registered nurses, were also infected and were treated successfully for the disease. Protocols required public health workers to monitor 177 people who had contact with the three Ebola patients.

A dozen people in that group, however, were tested for Ebola after developing fever or other symptoms compatible with the disease during the monitoring period. None were found to have Ebola. By last Friday, all contacts had cleared 21 days of monitoring and the county’s outbreak was declared over.

ASSOCIATED PRESS                                              Nov. 7, 2014
WASHINGTON -- The top U.S. military officer has designated five U.S. bases where American troops would be housed and isolated for 21 days upon returning from Africa after serving in the Ebolaresponse mission, U.S. officials said Friday.

Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, signed a plan that lists Fort Hood and Fort Bliss, Texas; Fort Bragg, North Carolina; Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington; and Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia, as bases where troops would be quarantined.

The U.S. also will use two bases in Italy and Germany for returning troops based in that region....

The plan exempts military personnel who travel to Africa for short-term visits and have very limited contact with people there, such as military staff traveling with a senior official who only stops in the country for a day or two...

In a related announcement, U.S. Northern Command has decided to train 30 more medical support personnel who will be available to help U.S. hospitals with any future Ebola cases. The personnel will begin training in San Antonio, Texas, later this month and will supplement a 30-member team that has already been trained and is ready to respond.

ABC NEWS                                                                                                            Nov 7, 2014

by  Sydney Ludkin 

DALLAS The final person in Texas being monitored for Ebola has passed the virus's 21-day incubation period, marking the end of the state's Ebola crisis.

None of the 177 people who had contact with the state's Ebola patients -- Liberian national Thomas Eric Duncan, the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the United States, and two of the Dallas nurses who cared for him, Nina Pham and Amber Vinson -- have contracted Ebola, state officials said. The list included health care workers, people who shared the same households as the Ebola patients and other community contacts.

"Hopefully, Americans will be relieved and fear will be eased," said Dr. Richard Besser, ABC News chief health and medical editor. "In Dallas, not even the people who lived with a very sick person with Ebola became ill."

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http://abcnews.go.com/Health/person-completes-ebola-monitoring-texas/story?id=26742640

By Todd Ackerman                                                                           Nov. 5, 2014

... researchers at the University of Texas-Austin have developed a nasal spray vaccine that has protected monkeys against the deadly Ebola virus even a year after immunization.

The vaccine, a genetically engineered cold virus containing a tiny portion of Ebola DNA, saved 100 percent of monkeys who got a single spray through the nose in a new UT study. Injecting the vaccine only saved the lives of about 50 percent.

"The main advantage is the long-lasting protection after a single inhaled dose," Maria Croyle, a  professor of pharmaceutics and the study's principal investigator, said in a statement. "This is important since the longevity of other vaccines for Ebola (hasn't been) fully evaluated....

LOS ANGELES TIMES                                                                                        Nov.5, 2014
By Michael Muskal                                      
The number of people who are being actively monitored for Ebola in New York has tripled to 357 people, none of whom has displayed any symptoms, city health officials announced Wednesday.

The vast majority of those being monitored arrived in New York in the last 21 days from West Africa, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation said in a statement. Those under monitoring are being checked out of “an abundance of caution,” the statement said.

The latest announcement comes as Ohio said it was officially Ebola-free and Texas prepared to end its observation period for the last 27 healthcare workers. The Texas group will complete its 21-day monitoring period on Friday, according to state officials.

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http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-ohio-ebola-free-monitoring-20141105-story.html