One-third of the Chesapeake Bay is a dead zone this year. The Washington Post reports: Especially heavy flows of tainted water from the Susquehanna River brought as much nutrient pollution into the bay by May as normally comes in an entire average year, a Maryland Department of Natural Resources researcher said. As a result, “in Maryland we saw the worst June” ever for nutrient pollution, said Bruce Michael, director of the DNR’s resource assessment service. The dead zone could grow to be the largest ever. The way it works is that farm runoff leads to a bumper crop of bay …

Climate change isn't just killing polar bears, it's killing baby polar bears. YOU MONSTER. A study that tracked polar bears swimming long distances found cubs that swam more than 30 miles at a time were more likely to die than cubs that didn't. Baby polars have a hard time making those swims because: Like humans, they get water up their noses in rough seas. They haven't grown a very thick layer of insulating fat yet, so being in the cold water takes a toll. Their lack of fat also means they're not as buoyant as their parents and have a …

Turns out the nonsensical yuppie idea that bottled water is “cleaner” is actually true, in very very specific circumstances. In areas where it’s hard to find drinkable water, plastic bottles and sunlight can save lives. SODIS, or solar water disinfection, is a fancy way of saying, "Leave germy water in a plastic bottle out on your hot roof and eventually all the bad stuff will die." It's a simple idea, but remarkably effective at dealing with water contamination. Fast Company reports that it can cut incidence of diarrhea by more than 85 percent, that more than 5 million people in …

Activist Tim DeChristopher's sentencing is scheduled for today. He could go to prison for as many as 10 years. Congress is still hard at work cutting funding for all manner of environmental programs. With the West out as a customer, Iran is selling its natural gas to Iraq and Syria. An Australian company wants to build a 2,625-foot solar tower in Arizona that would produce 200 MW of energy, plus providing a nice physical challenge to any oversized gorillas in the area. (It would be twice as tall as the Empire State Building.) Visit Yellowstone National Park now, while there’s …

Yale Environment 360 asked a series of environmental thinkers, activists, and policymakers what they think of Barack Obama's record on the environmental record so far. The overwhelming response was that they didn't think very much of it at all. Here’s climate writer and activist Bill McKibben: President Obama hasn't yet caused "the rise of the oceans to begin to slow" or "the planet begin to heal," and since that was his promise, I guess it's been a less-than-stellar record … He put some decent money into the stimulus plan for green energy, and then he largely seemed to lose interest, …

California's Butte College has a 928-acre wildlife refuge. It promotes ride shares. It uses goats for landscaping, and worms for composting. It has LEED-certifiable buildings. And now it's going off the grid -- the first college in the country, the school claims, to be energy independent. The school added 15,000 panels to its existing 10,000 for a total of 25,000 panels on the ground, on rooftops, and in covered parking areas. Together, they generate 4.55 MW of energy -- more than the school needs for its own energy uses. That’s despite the fact that the school operates its own water …

Chris Drury, a British artist, created this sculpture, entitled Carbon Sink: What Goes Around Comes Around, to express the idea that (JUST POSSIBLY) Wyoming's coal industry and its contributions to climate change had something to do with the explosion of pine beetles in the state. (Warmer winters have allowed them to thrive.) The sculpture happens to be installed at the University of Wyoming, which receives just a tiiiiiny bit of funding from the coal industry, like only a couple million dollars. If the university's leaders thought principles of academic freedom and artistic expression would give them a pass on this …

Oak Ridge, Tenn., a city with a long history of living alongside nuclear industries, will be processing nuclear waste from Germany. They’ll be taking on almost 1,000 tons of material, and the shipments could start coming this year. NPR reports: Radioactive residue left over from the process will be sent back to Germany for disposal, but opponents have voiced concerns that the U.S. will become the world's radioactive waste processor ... "When you're starting to talk about managing the rest of the world's waste, the German waste looks like the beginning of what could be a large flood of material …

Melting Arctic ice is releasing banned chemicals like DDT, which were trapped there back when they were legal. Post-tornado clean-up in Joplin, Mo. is going slowly. Can water heaters store energy captured by wind turbines and solar panels? A startup called GridMobility thinks so. We all know that wind turbines can kill birds, but what if there's a high risk that those birds could be bald eagles? Then you've got a problem. First of all, you could get in big trouble with the feds if an eagle falls prey to your turbine, but second of all the symbolism is terrible. …

It's tricky to talk about the link between heat waves like the one half of America is suffering under and climate change. But climate scientist Peter Gleick does a good job. He writes: Not only is it hot, it's hotter than it used to be … It's going to get even hotter. A lot hotter. Global warming is causing or worsening some of the extreme weather we're seeing. This influence of climate change on some extremes, including especially heat waves and heavy precipitation and some kinds of storm and flood events must no longer be waved away, swept under the …