Road salt shortage could make it a slippery winter

He's been told there is a nation-wide shortage of road salt.

A bad winter in parts of the nation last year is partly responsible for the shortage. Demand spiked, mines went into overdrive and river closures slowed delivery of materials, according to the Alexandria, Va.-based Salt Institute, a trade association.

Shepherd has tried to work with other highway departments through the Association of Indiana Counties (AIC) and make some bulk purchases. But that too has provided hardly a sprinkle of new road salt.

"There's quite a few counties, cities and towns that have tried to get them to do a bulk buy and there wasn't even anybody (a vendor) who would even give them a bid, so everybody has kind of got to scramble on their own and try to find it," Shepherd said.

"What I locate is anywhere from $167 a ton delivered to $196 a ton."

Last year, he paid between $54 and $56 a ton.

"That's real high" Shepherd said.

Some locust plagues don't like it hot - environment - 26 November 2008 - New Scientist

It's not often we can report on some good news associated with climate change. But it seems that warming temperatures could give welcome respite to farmers - in China, at least - by suppressing locust plagues.

Carbon offsets could swamp EU carbon price -report

LONDON, Nov 25 (Reuters) - A ballooning global supply of carbon offsets could flood the European Union's emissions market and dent prices, according to a report to be published next month by Britain's Carbon Trust.

EU member states, lawmakers and the EU executive Commission are in negotiations now to revamp the bloc's emissions trading scheme (ETS) from 2013-2020, and face a mid-December deadline.

The EU ETS is the cornerstone of European climate policy. It distributes to industry a fixed quota of carbon emissions permits, which trade at a certain carbon price.

The scheme allows companies a cheap alternative way to meet their carbon caps, buying carbon offsets from developing countries, funding emissions cuts there instead.

A global offset glut may require tight import limits to maintain the edge of the EU scheme in driving domestic emissions curbs, the Carbon Trust's Chief Economist, Michael Grubb, said on Tuesday.

'The implication is the only way you have a carbon market at all is to have a fortress Europe,' he said, speaking at a conference in London organised by The Institue of Economic Affairs and Marketforce.

That assumed that the United States, Japan and Australia didn't collectively introduce ambitious cap and trade schemes which mopped up some of the carbon offset supply.