Friday, Dec 19th
Last update08:48:44 AM GMT
Environmental Glance
Fracking may be contaminating a Pennsylvania river with radioactive waste, a Duke University study to be published this week shows.
Scientists found elevated levels of radioactivity in river water at a site where treated fracking wastewater from oil and gas production sites in western Pennsylvania’s Marcellus shale is released into a creek.
The world's leading climate scientists have for the first time established a limit on the amount of greenhouse gases that can be released before the Earth reaches a tipping point and predicted that it will be surpassed within decades unless swift action is taken to curb the current pace of emissions.
The warning was issued Friday by a panel of U.N.-appointed climate change experts meeting in Stockholm.
A Russian court has ordered 20 Greenpeace activists from around the world to be held in custody for two months pending further investigation over a protest against offshore oil drilling in the Arctic, drawing condemnation and a vow to appeal.
In proceedings that Greenpeace said evoked Soviet-era scare tactics, activists from a ship used in the protest at an oil rig were led to court in the port of Murmansk in handcuffs and held in cages for a series of hearings that ended early on Friday.
Leading scientists said on Friday they were more certain than ever before that humans are the main culprits for climate change and predicted the impact from greenhouse gas emissions could linger for centuries.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in a report that the current hiatus in warming, when temperatures have risen more slowly despite growing emissions, was a natural variation that would not last.
Conditions that spawn severe thunderstorms – including tornado-makers – across the US are expected to appear more frequently by the end of the century, according to new research.
Until now, studies of the potential impact of global warming on severe and tornadic thunderstorms generally have concluded that a key element needed – a sudden change in wind speed or direction with altitude known as vertical wind shear – would weaken on average as the climate warmed.
Russia has been asked to free a Greenpeace ship and its crew detained during a protest at an arctic oil-drilling platform, the World Wildlife Fund said Monday.
The organization said more than 40 environmental groups signed a letter to President Vladimir Putin requesting the release of the Arctic Sunrise and the 30 people reported aboard, RIA Novosti reported.
Scientists will this week issue their starkest warning yet about the mounting dangers of global warming. In a report to be handed to political leaders in Stockholm on Monday, they will say that the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation have now led to a warming of the entire globe, including land surfaces, oceans and the atmosphere.
Extreme weather events, including heatwaves and storms, have increased in many regions while ice sheets are dwindling at an alarming rate. In addition, sea levels are rising while the oceans are being acidified – a development that could see the planet's coral reefs disappearing before the end of the century.
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