A coal carrier which ran aground and leaked about three tons of oil on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef completely pulverised parts of a shoal and caused damage so severe it could take marine life 20 years to recover, the reef’s chief scientist said today. Initial assessments by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority […]
Caption by M. Justin Wilkinson, NASA-JSC The Escondida copper-gold-silver mine produces more copper than any other mine in the world (1.483 million tons in 2007), amounting to 9.5% of world output and making it a major part of the Chilean economy. The mine is located 170 kilometers (110 miles) southeast of Chile’s port city of […]
In January through April of 2002, the Larsen B ice shelf collapsed in the Antarctic. This was a huge sheet of ice, about 3250 square kilometers (1250 square miles) in area, roughly equal to a square 57 km (34 miles) on a side. There had been a series of warm summers that weakened the shelf, […]
By Jaymi Heimbuch, San Francisco, California on 04.12.10 In Mundaka, an area west of Delhi, India, the largest plastics scrap market in Asia was set on fire. The entire area, about 4 kilometers, burned and goods worth Rs 50 crore were lost to the flames. The fire appears to have been set deliberately, potentially a […]
By KYM AGIUSApril 13, 2010 – 9:35AM Maritime authorities have pulled off an incredibly complex salvage operation without spilling any more oil into Great Barrier Reef waters. Nine days after the coal carrier Shen Neng 1 ran aground on Douglas Shoal off Rockhampton it’s been refloated, and is now anchored in safe waters. Maritime Safety […]
April 12, 2010 – 10:29AM (AFP) Around 50 people have suffered injuries in Peru after part of a glacier broke off and burst the Hualcan River banks in a disaster the local governor attributed to climate change. The mass of glacial ice and rock fell into the so-called “513 lake” in the northern Ancash region, […]
The cost of constructing a new coal-fired power plant has increased by 50% in the last year alone. Appalachian coal production is declining, coal prices are rising, and we’re importing coal from Indonesia. Now Dominion is promoting a plan to re-regulate electricity markets that would put all the risks onto Virginia’s rate payers. … Virginia […]
VIENNA, April 9 (AFP) Apr 09, 2010 Almost 90 percent of Austrian glaciers shrank in 2009, some by as much as 46 metres (150 feet), the Austrian Alpine Association (OeAV) said Friday. In a report, the OeAV said 85 out of 96 glaciers had shrunk over the past year. The biggest changes were seen in […]
By Jesse Fox, Tel Aviv, Israel on 04.11.10 The boundless growth of suburban sprawl in the US, long blamed for everything from climate change to social segregation, may finally be slowing down. According to a new study by the EPA, new construction in the urban cores and older suburbs of American cities is beginning […]
Upstream and lower dams could render the Mekong Delta unviable, and China’s intransigence in building them and refusing to share information about their operations will negatively impact the lives of more than 60 million people. “China has plans to construct up to eight dams in total, some sources say the number could rise to fourteen. […]
