Greenland melting – ‘It’s hard to get your mind around how fast the Arctic is changing’

By Jeff Goodell 12 July 2013 (Rolling Stone) – A few weeks ago, on a blue-sky day on the west coast of Greenland, our helicopter swooped along the calving front of the Jakobshavn glacier, flying dangerously close to a 400-foot-high wall of ancient melting ice that stretches for about six miles across Disko Bay. Jakobshavn […]

Halliburton pleads guilty to destroying evidence after Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill

By CLIFFORD KRAUSS25 July 2013 HOUSTON (The New York Times) – Halliburton has agreed to plead guilty to destruction of critical evidence after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010, the Justice Department announced on Thursday. The oil services company said it would pay the maximum allowable fine of $200,000 and will be subject […]

The Deep South: Where the American Dream goes to die

By David Atkins 23 July 2013  (AlterNet) – David Leonhardt  has a fantastic piece about social mobility in the United States. It turns out that the American Dream, while getting more and more distant across the board, is still much more possible in some places than in others. What places? Well, surprise surprise: Climbing the […]

Arctic boreal forests burning at ‘unprecedented’ rate

By Andrew Freedman 22 July 2013 (Climate Central) – In a sign of how swiftly and extensively climate change is reshaping the Arctic environment, a new study has found that the region’s mighty boreal forests — stands of mighty spruce, fir, and larch trees that serve as the gateway to the Arctic Circle — have […]

North Pole now a lake – Arctic cyclone to further fracture ice and churn up warm ocean water

By Becky Oskin  23 July 2013 (LiveScience) – Instead of snow and ice whirling on the wind, a foot-deep aquamarine lake now sloshes around a webcam stationed at the North Pole. The meltwater lake started forming July 13, following two weeks of warm weather in the high Arctic. In early July, temperatures were 2 to […]

As Texas drought spreads, firms could be up the creek – ‘If you don’t have an active water management plan in place, you're courting disaster’

By Constance Gustke, Special to CNBC.com 17 Jul 2013 (CNBC) – Three straight years of blistering drought have strained Texas’ water resources. Some cities like Midland are already steeply raising their water prices. But it’s not just residents of the Lone Star State feeling parched. Texas-based companies are scrambling to reduce their water usage and […]

Forum: How daring is President Obama’s new climate plan?

President Obama has unveiled a proposal to combat global warming that would, for the first time, regulate carbon dioxide emissions from all U.S. coal-fired power plants. Yale Environment 360 asked a group of experts to assess the president’s climate strategy. 22 July 2013 (Yale Environment 360) – Stymied by Congress, and no longer weighed down […]

Climate change threatens New England coastal birds

By Evan J. Berkowitz18 July 2013 (Boston Globe) – Rising sea levels brought on by climate change are threatening some of New England’s signature coastal birds, according to a new study. The National Wildlife Federation recently released Shifting Skies, a large study accompanied by a more local report by the Natural Resources Council of Maine, […]

In rapidly changing Arctic, U.S. is playing catch-up

By Andrew Freedman22 July 2013 (Climate Central) – With Arctic sea ice thinning and shrinking rapidly in recent years, the US military and scientific agencies are scrambling to cope with the looming prospect of a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean. With Arctic sea ice thinning and shrinking rapidly in recent years, the US military and scientific […]

TEPCO admits Fukushima nuclear plant leaking radioactive water into Pacific ocean

TOKYO, 22 July 2013 (AFP) – The operator of the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant on Monday admitted for the first time that radioactive groundwater has leaked out to sea, fuelling fears of ocean contamination. The admission came the day after Japanese voters went to the polls in an election for the upper house, handing the […]

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