Manatee deaths jump to new record in Florida

Reporting by Tom Brown; Editing by Sandra Maler MIAMI (Reuters) – At least 431 manatees have died in Florida waters so far this year, exceeding in less than three months the total for any full calendar year on record, authorities said on Tuesday. A preliminary report from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission attributed […]

Silent streams: Freshwater animals are vanishing faster than those on land or at sea

By Doug ChadwickPhotograph by Joel Sartore …Lakes, swamps, and rivers make up less than 0.3 percent of fresh water and less than .01 percent of all the water on Earth. Yet these waters are home to as many as 126,000 of the world’s animal species, including snails, mussels, crocodiles, turtles, amphibians, and fish. Almost half […]

EPA report: Streams near mining toxic

By Ken Ward Jr., Staff writerMarch 15, 2010 CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Water quality downstream from surface coal-mining operations in West Virginia and Kentucky greatly exceeds recommended toxicity limits, according to previously unreleased sampling data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. EPA scientists found toxicity levels as high as 50 times the federal guidelines in water […]

Graph of the Day: Chinook Salmon Landings on the U.S. West Coast, 1950-2007

Landings refer to the amount of catch that is brought to land. Chinook salmon landings are most often reported in terms of numbers of individual fish. Numbers of fish caught are sometimes converted to estimates of weight, but this is primarily for the purpose of quantifying the economic value of the commercial catch. Salmon managers […]

Diversion of California water to save salmon ‘scientifically justified’

By Michaael Doyle | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — Controversial cuts in water deliveries to central California farms to protect endangered fish appear to be “scientifically justified” but still in need of further study, scientists have concluded in a report to be issued Friday. In a politically sensitive study, the National Research Council determined two federal […]

Monarch butterfly migration: ‘We've never seen it this bad before’

By BILL HANNA, billhanna@star-telegram.com Monarch butterflies, hit hard by strong storms at their winter home in Mexico, have dwindled to their lowest population levels in decades as they begin to return to Texas on their springtime flight back to the United States and Canada. The monarch loss is estimated at 50 to 60 percent and […]

New Jersey latest U.S. state to raid carbon auction funds

NJ moves $65 mln from climate fund to general fund – money came from Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by David Gregorio WASHINGTON, March 17 (Reuters) – New Jersey has become the latest state in a regional cap-and-trade market on greenhouse gases to take money meant to support clean energy programs […]

Most coal-fired power plants still spewing toxic mercury

By Renee Schoof | McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — Many of America’s coal-fired power plants lack widely available pollution controls for the highly toxic metal mercury, and mercury emissions recently increased at more than half of the country’s 50 largest mercury-emitting power plants, according to a report Wednesday. The nonpartisan Environmental Integrity Project reported that five […]

Graph of the Day: U.S. Real Consumption and Income Growth, 1933-2009

…Looking at real GDP growth over these periods, the 2002–09 era looks very weak, with only 1946–49 having a lower average annual rate of growth (in these years, GDP averaged an annual decline of 2.01 percent). Average annual real GDP growth was 1.72 percent for the 2002–09 period, much lower than the average of 3.97 […]

Urban CO2 domes increase city mortality rates

By LOUIS BERGERON In the first study ever done on the local health effects of the domes of carbon dioxide that develop above cities, Stanford researcher Mark Jacobson found that the domes increase the local death rate. The result provides a scientific basis for regulating CO2 emissions at the local level and points out a […]

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