As Arizona fire rages, scientists warn of more unpredictable blazes – ‘These huge fires are the new normal’

By Julie Cart3 July 2013 BOISE, Idaho (Los Angeles Times) – Early morning is a frenetic time at a wildfire command post. Biologists, meteorologists, foresters and firefighters hustle into tents and grab laptops to review overnight reports, prepping for the day’s assault. Fire behavior analysts run computer models that spit out information crucial to putting […]

Photo gallery: Oil train explosion in Quebec town of Lac Mégantic – ‘Everything that was there is gone’

Smoke rises from railway cars that were carrying crude oil after derailing in downtown Lac Mégantic, Quebec, Saturday, 6 July 2013. Photo: Paul Chiasson / THE CANADIAN PRESS Train Derailment Sparks Explosions in Quebec Huge fire erupts in Lac-Mégantic, QC, Canada, as an oil train derails. All of downtown is burning right now. Vers 1:20am […]

Gearing up for an ‘extreme fire year’ in U.S. West – ‘We’re going to have to accept defeat when we're defeated’

By Kaci Poor for The Times-Standard, and Alicia Chang and Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writers6 July 2013 (Eureka Times-Standard) – […] An updated U.S. drought monitor map for California — released each Thursday by the National Drought Mitigation Center — shows nearly all of California, including Humboldt County, falling under a severe drought designation. ”This […]

How climate change affects Arizona wildfires – ‘We’ve been saying this for some time’

5 July 2013 (Associated Press) – There’s a dangerous but basic equation behind the killer Yarnell Hill, Arizona wildfire and other blazes raging across the West this summer: More heat, more drought, more fuel, and more people in the way are adding up to increasingly ferocious fires. Scientists say a hotter planet will only increase […]

Poachers are elusive catch in New York City waters – ‘You go to any market, and there’s people selling fish, anytime, that’s illegal’

By J. DAVID GOODMAN and SARAH MASLIN NIR3 July 2013 (The New York Times) – It sounds like something out of a James Bond movie: Lookouts. Scuba gear. Secret caches, hidden under floating docks. Horseshoe crabs. Horseshoe crabs? The crabs are among the incredible riches of Jamaica Bay, New York City’s wildest expanse of water, […]

Maine lobsters threatened by climate change, scientists and industry warn

By Roxanne Palmer3 July 2013 (Associated Press) – Polar bears aren’t the only animals affected by climate change — a warmer world could soon be threatening that centerpiece of a New England summer: the Maine lobster. And what’s bad news for the Maine lobster is likely bad news for Maine. These tasty cockroaches of the sea […]

Officials in the Florida Keys stop debating sea level rise, start adjusting infrastructure – ‘The rate’s doubled. It would be disingenuous and sloppy and irresponsible not to respond to it.’

KEY WEST, Florida, 2 July 2013 (Associated Press) – Hurricane storm surge can inundate the narrow, low-lying Florida Keys, but that is far from the only water worry for officials. A tidal gauge operating since before the Civil War has documented a sea level rise of 9 inches in the last century, and officials expect […]

Experts see new normal as a hotter, drier U.S. West faces more huge fires – ‘The fire season has lengthened substantially, by two months, over the last 30 years’

By FELICITY BARRINGER and KENNETH CHANG, with additional reporting by Fernanda Santos and John Dougherty from Prescott, Arizona, and Jonathan Weisman from Washington1 July 2013 (The New York Times) – One of the deadliest wildfires in a generation vastly expanded Monday to cover more than 8,000 acres, sweeping up sharp slopes through dry scrub and […]

Canada bees dying by the millions – ‘I think it’s criminal what is happening’

By Jon Radojkovic 19 June 2013 ELMWOOD (The Post) – Local beekeepers are finding millions of their bees dead just after corn was planted here in the last few weeks. Dave Schuit, who has a honey operation in Elmwood, lost 600 hives, a total of 37 million bees. “Once the corn started to get planted […]

U.S. coal exports have doubled during Obama’s so-called ‘war on coal’

By Carmel Lobello27 June 2013 (The Week) – In a speech on Tuesday, President Obama laid out a plan for reducing carbon emissions, directing the EPA to add new carbon limitations for coal plants that are already active — a move that opponents are likening to a “war on coal.” Coal, the largest source of […]

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