Brick kiln emissions reduce crop yields, damage trees

By Faisal Raza Khan6 March 2012 ISLAMABAD – Hydrogen fluoride emissions from brick kilns have been found to damage trees and crops in new studies conducted by an international team of scientists in the Peshawar area of northern Pakistan. Peshawar has 450 brick kilns and hydrogen fluoride is also released by factories making aluminium, ceramics, […]

Mass extinction by global warming: Gradual doom as bad as abrupt

Media Contacts: Cheryl Dybas, NSF (703) 292-7734, cdybas@nsf.gov Greg Hand, University of Cincinnati, (513) 556-1822, handgl@ucmail.uc.edu 3 February 2012 The deadliest mass extinction of all took a long time to kill 90 percent of Earth’s marine life–and it killed in stages–according to a newly published report. It shows that mass extinctions need not be sudden […]

Graph of the Day: Life Expectancy Changes Near Mountaintop Removal Sites in Appalachia, 1997 – 2007

There’s a common saying in Appalachia: what we do to the land, we do to the people. Recently, 21 peer-reviewed scientific studies have confirmed the truth of those words. Not only has mountaintop removal permanently destroyed more than 500 Appalachian mountains, but people living near the destruction are 50% more likely to die of cancer […]

China energy consumption rises at fastest pace in four years

[cf. U.S. CO2 emissions to stay below 2005 levels as coal use shrinks] 22 February 2012 (Bloomberg News) – China’s energy use rose at the fastest pace in four years in 2011 and efficiency improved, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. Consumption climbed 7 percent to 3.48 billion metric tons of standard coal equivalent, […]

Australia to assess development pressure on Great Barrier Reef

Editing by Robert Birsel18 February 2012 SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia will carry out a comprehensive assessment of development pressure on the Great Barrier Reef to help preserve the world’s largest coral reef system, ministers said Saturday. The assessment will take into account how development along Australia’s northeast coast is affecting the reef, Environment Minister Tony […]

U.S. CO2 emissions to stay below 2005 levels as coal use shrinks

By Valerie Volcovici24 January 2012 NEW YORK – U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions will be 7 percent lower than their 2005 level of nearly 6 billion metric tons in 2020 as coal’s share of electricity production continues a steady descent over the next two decades, according to new government data. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) released […]

Graph of the Day: Map of All Mercury Emissions from U.S. Coal-fired Power Plants, November 2011

By Sue Sturgis2 November 2011 Rank of coal-fired power plants among America’s biggest sources of air pollution: 1 Of the five leading causes of death in the United States, number to which coal plant pollution contributes: 4 Number of U.S. water bodies impaired by mercury, a particularly toxic component of coal plant pollution: 3,781 Of […]

U.S. CO2 emissions to stay below 2005 levels as coal use shrinks

By Valerie Volcovici24 January 2012 NEW YORK – U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions will be 7 percent lower than their 2005 level of nearly 6 billion metric tons in 2020 as coal’s share of electricity production continues a steady descent over the next two decades, according to new government data. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) released […]

Activists crack China’s wall of denial about air pollution

By SHARON LaFRANIERE27 January 2012 BEIJING – Weary of waiting for the authorities to alert residents to the city’s most pernicious air pollutant, citizen activists last May took matters here into their own hands: they bought their own $4,000 air-quality monitor and posted its daily readings on the Internet. That began a chain reaction. Volunteers […]

Michael Mann: The climate scientist targeted by the fossil fuel industry – ‘Scientists have to recognise that they’re in a street fight’

  By Steve Connor16 January 2012 He is one of the most vilified men in the highly vilified field of climate science, yet Professor Michael Mann is surprisingly jolly. Despite being the focus of a brutal campaign orchestrated by the fossil-fuel industry and senior politicians within the US Republican Party, Mann’s cheery stoicism is positively […]

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