Insurers confirm growing risks of climate change – ‘The trend of increasing damage to property and threat to lives is clear’

Stakeholders from the insurance industry met with members of the U.S. Senate to acknowledge the role global warming plays in extreme weather-related losses, and to issue a call for action. By Pat Speer, Insurance Networking News2 March 2012 The politics of global warming have typically involved much debate as to the role climate change plays […]

BP, plaintiffs reach Gulf oil spill settlement worth $7.8 billion

By Harry R. Weber and Michael Kunzelman, from Associated Press wire2 March 2012 NEW ORLEANS – BP agreed late Friday to settle lawsuits brought by more than 100,000 fishermen who lost work, cleanup workers who got sick and others who claimed harm from the oil giant’s 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster, the worst offshore oil […]

Wyoming lawmaker introduces doomsday bill

By JEREMY PELZER Star-Tribune capital bureau23 February 2012 CHEYENNE – State Rep. David Miller, R-Riverton, has seen the national debt rise above $15 trillion and protest movements grow around the country. Wealthy Americans are fleeing the country, he says, and confidence in the dollar has taken a hit around the world. If America’s economic and […]

Pacific sea otters’ failure to thrive confounds wildlife sleuths

By INGFEI CHEN27 February 2012 MONTEREY, California – On a fog-shrouded morning in Monterey Bay, wildlife researchers are out to capture a southern sea otter named Blanca — part of a three-year project to learn why her species, hunted to near extinction a century ago, is still in trouble here despite decades of efforts to […]

Global warming feeds bark beetles: Are they unstoppable?

By Dean Kuipers27 February 2012 Hear the sound of chewing out in our vast forests of lodgepole pine, spruce and fir, the chewing that’s already destroyed half the commercial timber in important regions like British Columbia? That’s the sound of climate change, says biologist Reese Halter. Global warming in the form of a bark beetle. […]

On eve of Deepwater Horizon trial, Transocean says BP ignored well-test warning

By Jef Feeley and Laurel Brubaker Calkins25 February 2012 BP Plc (BP) officials overseeing the Macondo well that spewed millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico ignored questions about whether safety tests done hours before a fatal blast on the drilling rig were flawed, lawyers for Transocean Ltd. (RIG) said in a […]

Texas drought eases, but it’s too late for some – Drought worsens in western U.S.

By Andrew Freedman25 February 2012 (Climate Central) – Defying seasonal climate forecasts, this winter has been very good to Texas, which has been locked in the grips of one of the worst droughts in state history. But the unexpectedly generous winter storms have come too late for some, since water supplies are still running low. […]

U.S. urban forests losing four million trees per year

WASHINGTON, DC, 23 February 2012 (ENS) – New Orleans, Houston, and Albuquerque are losing trees faster than any other U.S. cities, and across the country tree cover is declining at a rate of about four million trees per year, finds new U.S. Forest Service research published in the journal Urban Forestry & Urban Greening. Researchers […]

Drought toll on urban forests in Texas: 5.6 million trees and counting

2010   2011 By Matt Dietrichson16 February 2012 About 5.6 million trees in cities and towns across Texas were killed by last year’s record-setting drought, the Texas Forest Service has estimated after studying before-and-after satellite imagery. This “dramatic” toll on the state’s urban forest is “a slow-moving disaster, not like a hurricane or ice storm,” […]

Will your kid be taught that climate change is a hoax?

By Brad Plumer23 February 2012 One revelation from the recent Heartland Institute document leak is that the group is crafting a K-12 curriculum to teach kids that global warming is “controversial.” Heartland officials have confirmed this. So is climate change set to join evolution as the next big classroom controversy? Things do seem to be […]

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