By Mike Roddy14 February 2011 We came dressed for battle at Rancho Las Palmas Hotel. Gail Zawacki and I had matching tuxedo shirts, top hats, ghoul masks, and the best sign ever: KOCH KILLS, on an eight by two foot banner, painted in dripping red by Gail. We’d been planning it for weeks, and came […]
February 14, 2011 (Reuters) – A court in Ecuador’s Amazon jungle ordered Chevron Corp to pay more than $8 billion in damages on Monday in a closely watched environmental suit, the plaintiffs’ lawyer said. But the U.S. oil company vowed to appeal, meaning the long-running case dating from drilling in the South American nation during […]
Total additional radioactivity (in petabequerels) in the global environment after the Chernobyl catastrophe: (1) Am-241, (2) Pu (239 + 240), (3) Pu-241, (4) Sr-90, (5) Cs-137, (6) I-131. Mulev, 2008 As a result of the catastrophe, 40% of Europe was contaminated with dangerous radioactivity. Asia and North America were also exposed to significant amounts of […]
Sydney (AFP) Feb 6, 2011 – Hammered by a monster cyclone just weeks after flooding spewed toxic waste into its pristine waters, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef could face a slow recovery due to climate change, experts warn. Severe Tropical Cyclone Yasi, a top-category storm, ripped through Australia’s northeast tourist coast Thursday, levelling houses and decimating […]
Tokyo, Japan (SPX) Feb 08, 2011 – Pharmaceuticals, illicit drugs, shampoo, toothpaste, pesticides, chemical run-off from highways and many other pollutants infiltrate the giant aquifer under Mexico’s “Riviera Maya,” research shows. The wastes contaminate a vast labyrinth of water-filled caves under the popular tourist destination on the Yucatan Peninsula. The polluted water flows through the […]
By Matt Walker, Editor, Earth News 5 February 2011 Birds living around the site of the Chernobyl nuclear accident have 5% smaller brains, an effect directly linked to lingering background radiation. The finding comes from a study of 550 birds belonging to 48 different species living in the region, published in the journal PLoS One. […]
By Kate SpinnerThursday, February 3, 2011 at 1:00 a.m. From a distance the toxic goo looks like oil, but up close it smells like rotten eggs and wiggles like jelly. Scientists have no idea what it is or how it wound up in the northern Gulf of Mexico, near Perdido Pass. Just off the Florida […]
[We have other reports of increases in fish populations following the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Desdemona has been assuming that the oil/dispersant mixture selectively removed predator species and, possibly, entire trophic levels from the ecosystem, allowing some prey species to reproduce with greatly reduced predation pressure. Time will tell.] By Gigi DoubanFebruary 4, 2011 Dauphin Island–Since […]
By Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent, www.guardian.co.uk Monday 31 January 2011 10.40 GMT The deepest recession since the 1930s has failed to reverse rising global carbon emissions, as plummeting industrial output in the west was offset by the continuing rapid expansion of China and a handful of other emerging economies, new statistics for 2009 show. While […]
ScienceDaily (Jan. 29, 2011) — Scientists from Stony Brook University are reporting new evidence that cultivating coca bushes, the source of cocaine, is speeding up destruction of rainforests in Colombia and threatening the region’s “hotspots” of plant and animal diversity. The findings, which they say underscore the need for establishing larger protected areas to help […]
