By Kieran Cooke29 December 2016 LONDON (Climate News Network) – Gas flaring figures are an indictment of the global oil and gas industry. In 2015, 147 billion cubic metres (bcm) of natural gas was flared at oil production sites around the world – up from 145bcm in 2014 and 141bcm in 2013. That’s a waste […]
By Greg Keenan4 January 2017 (The Globe and Mail) – Canadians and Americans wore out the showroom floors of car dealerships in 2016, driving auto makers to record sales years in both markets. Auto makers sold 1.95 million vehicles in Canada, the fourth consecutive year that sales have hit a record. The 2016 level was […]
By Pam Wright4 January 2017 (weather.com) – China issued its first-ever national red alert for severe fog Tuesday after two dozen cities reported persistent air pollution issues. The red alert was issued by China’s national observatory for parts of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, as well as in the provinces of Henan, Shandong, Anhui and Jiangsu, according […]
By Gwyn Topham1 January 2017 (The Guardian) – The latest battleground for the future of fracking in Britain looks set to be Sherwood Forest, the legendary home of folk hero Robin Hood and now the target of a seismic survey by Ineos. The chemical multinational, which relocated its headquarters back to the UK last month, […]
By Olga Gertcyk20 December 2016 (The Siberian Times) – In just two years, since the sponge was last surveyed, it has entirely vanished in the area around popular tourist resort Listvyanka and Cape Tolsty, in Irkutsk region, and over a wide area in the north of the crescent-shaped lake which contains around 20% of the […]
By Patrick Winn 13 December 2016 (PRI) – Here in this fishing village, on the island of Java, the surf teems with kaleidoscopic color. Each wave is littered with garish bibs and bobs. The water is speckled with synthetic hues: Coca-Cola red, day-glo green and every other color in the crayon box. There are monochromes […]
By Ed Yong 2 December 2016 (The Atlantic) – In September, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned 19 common chemicals from common antibacterial washes, because manufacturers hadn’t shown that they were safe in the long run, or any better than plain soap and water. In October, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) updated a rule […]
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine, 29 November 2016 (AP) – Workers completed a massive shelter over the Chernobyl nuclear plant’s exploded reactor on Tuesday, one of the most ambitious engineering projects in the world that one expert said had closed “a nuclear wound.” The half cylinder-shaped shelter was locked in place over the plant’s reactor No. 4 after […]
[Expect these sorts of studies to stop when Scott Pruitt, longtime enemy of the EPA and Trump’s selection to head the EPA, takes control. –Des] By Patrick G. Lee14 December 2016 (ProPublica) – Starting in 2008, ProPublica published stories that found hydraulic fracking had damaged drinking water supplies across the country. The reporting examined how […]
By Valerie Volcovici and Timothy Gardner7 December 2016 (WASHINGTON) – Donald Trump will pick an ardent opponent of President Barack Obama’s measures to curb climate change as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, a Trump transition team source said on Wednesday, a choice that enraged green activists and cheered the oil industry. Trump’s choice, Oklahoma […]
