Archive for the ‘environment’ Category

Subway cars find new life on ocean floor

Saturday, May 17th, 2008

Jeff Tinsman, Delaware's reef program coordinator, said a 600-car reef in that state's waters had increased the local fish population by 400 times, and boosted the number of angling trips to 13,000 a year from 300 before the reef was created.Read the full story

Polar Bear to Be Designated As Threatened Species

Wednesday, May 14th, 2008

The Bush Administration Wednesday handed environmentalists a major victory, determining there was sufficient scientific evidence to declare the polar bear a threatened animal under the Endangered Species Act, the Interior Department said.Read the full story

Pollution a lifesaver for Midwest storm victims?

Sunday, May 11th, 2008

Ah yes, stupid media headlines: environmental degradation saving lives ... some say!Read the full story

Landslide hits village along China’s Three Gorges

Sunday, April 20th, 2008

BEIJING (Reuters) - A big landslide hit a village in the area of the Three Gorges Dam on Saturday, leaving nearly 200 people stranded, the official Xinhua news agency said on Sunday. Emergency workers were still working to rescue the 179 residents of Xiaohe Village, in Gaoyang Township of ...

So much talk about so few fish

Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

The salmon fisheries of the Northwest have spawned a new industry of bureaucrats, lawyers, environmentalists, sport fishers, commercial interests, scientists, and natives, all focused on the absence of fish. Meanwhile, four sockeye returned last summer to a lake in Idaho once teeming with tens of thousands.Read the full story

The new statistical rhetoric of climate change.

Sunday, April 13th, 2008

10 years' worth of new data have emboldened the researchers, and now they've replaced their hazy equivocations with percentage values. This shift in rhetoric-at base, from words to numbers-has made their conclusions more comprehensible and compelling. It's also made them less honest.Read the full story

Feds not addressing drugs in water

Sunday, April 13th, 2008

A White House task force that was supposed to devise a federal plan to research the issue of pharmaceuticals in drinking water has missed its deadline and failed to produce mandated reports and recommendations for coordination among numerous federal agencies, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.Read the full ...

Senate approves Wild Sky wilderness

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

For the fourth and what supporters hope is the final time, the Senate has approved a bill to create a Wild Sky Wilderness northeast of Seattle. If approved by the House and signed by President Bush, the bill would be the first new wilderness area in Washington state in more ...

Is the World Bank coal-fused?

Tuesday, April 8th, 2008

By Joseph RommYou knew it had to happen: the World Bank now has the same climate sensibility as ... the Kansas House. Scientist Jim Hansen, on the other hand, has requested a meeting with Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers, arguing for a moratorium on coal plants until ...

In U.S., Metal Theft Plagues Troubled Neighborhoods

Tuesday, April 8th, 2008

These kinds of stories make me wonder whether our society is in the process of crossing a tipping point beyond even relative sustainability: This New York Times story reports, "So many houses have been stripped of siding and copper pipes that neighborhoods must be abandoned and turned into green ...