Monday, Jul 01st
Last update06:38:08 AM GMT
Environmental Glance
Melting sea ice, exposing huge parts of the ocean to the atmosphere, explains extreme weather both hot and cold.
Climate scientists have linked the massive snowstorms and bitter spring weather now being experienced across Britain and large parts of Europe and North America to the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice.
The neighborhood looks exceedingly normal: single-family homes and apartment buildings packed together, dogs barking from postage-stamp-size lawns, parents hustling down narrow sidewalks to fetch their children from school. But something with very dangerous potential lies below the surface, officials say.
The residents' toenails will provide confirmation.
A plume of hexavalent chromium, a metal used in industrial production that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls a "well-established carcinogen," has spread under Garfield, putting about one-tenth of the city's homes — about 600 structures and 3,600 residents — at risk.
Did you know that Utah has one of the worst air pollution problems in the country? The impacts are startling: The pollution is making people sick. Living under the smothering summer ozone or winter inversion is a big reality that many families and mothers have to endure.
Many studies point to the link between exposure to air pollutants and dangerous consequences to health. Asthma, respiratory diseases, strokes and heart attacks are just some of the health issues associated with bad air quality.
Range Resources, MarkWest Energy and Williams Gas agreed to settle a high profile contamination case in Washington County for $750,000, according to recently unsealed court records. An order to unseal the records was entered Wednesday in Washington County Court of Common Pleas by President Judge Debbie O’Dell-Seneca.
Judge O’Dell-Seneca reversed an earlier decision to permanently keep the more than 900 pages of court records secret. In the order she stated that the drilling company’s claims of privacy rights had no merit.
President Barack Obama’s nominee for energy secretary is drawing criticism for leading a study that minimized risks of natural gas while failing to disclose that some of its researchers had financial ties to the industry.
The nominee, Ernest Moniz, who now is the head of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Energy Institute, came out with its report in 2011 that said the environmental risks of increased drilling and production “are challenging but manageable.”
The historic drought that laid waste to America's grain and corn belt is unlikely to ease before the middle of this year, a government forecast warned on Thursday.
The annual spring outlook from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted hotter, drier conditions across much of the US, including parts of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas, where farmers have been fighting to hang on to crops of winter wheat.
In establishing natural gas and fracking as the clean alternative to coal and the “bridge” to a low-carbon future, the natural gas industry has relied on PR to smooth its way. While the most visible anti-fracking campaigns remain regional and local, tied to the politics of exploding water and poisoned wells, gas companies and lobbyists are moving to globalize the debate. Their message: rational environmentalists should embrace gas, because gas will save us from climate change.
That message was stimulated by 99 words in a 492-word press release from the International Energy Agency (IEA). Though it was contradicted in the same week by an IEA spokesperson and a much longer IEA report, the message spread — from the conservative press and gas lobbyists to the halls of government. Now, it’s simply taken as fact.
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