Climate Climate & Energy
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Weather Screen
U.K. Calls on PC Users to Help With Global Climate Experiment Concerned about the world’s climate and wondering how you can help improve scientific understanding of it? Wonder no more. If you own a PC, you can become part of what’s being billed as the world’s largest climate-prediction experiment. Organized by a coalition of British […]
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Hot Enough for Ya?
Earth’s Climate Hits a 2,000-Year High, Study Says If you thought the summer was hot, get a load of this: The Earth has been warmer since 1980 than at any time in the past 2,000 years, according to the most comprehensive study to date of climatic history. The study authors believe their research, published in […]
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Lessons from Blackout 2003
Things started to go awry near Cleveland at 3:06 p.m. on Aug. 14, more than an hour before the largest North American blackout in history. A transmission line carrying 345 kilovolts of power overheated, sagged into a tree, and automatically shut off to protect itself from melting entirely. Instantaneously, the colossal current of electricity it […]
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Global Warming, I Presume?
Lake Tanganyika Under Threat from Climate Change The ecology of Lake Tanganyika — Africa’s second-largest body of water and site of the famed encounter between Henry Stanley and David Livingstone — is under siege due to global climate change, according to studies by two independent teams of scientists. The scientists have found that rising air […]
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Hot Topic
Heat Wave in Europe Leads to Nuke Plant Worries The withering heat wave in Europe, which is believed to have led to dozens if not hundreds of deaths, is now causing problems at nuclear facilities and other power plants. Government authorities in France and Germany have announced that they are relaxing rules to let plants […]
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Zuni tribe member Pablo Padilla talks about beating back a strip mine
Earlier this week, Native Americans and environmentalists won a surprising victory when a power company abandoned plans to build a highly controversial coal mine in New Mexico. Zuni Salt Lake. Photo: Zuni Salt Lake Coalition. For 20 years, the Salt River Project, an Arizona-based utility company, had sought to build an 18,000-acre strip mine near […]
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Flexible Fools
Automakers Can Dodge Fuel-Economy Rules with Flex-Fuel Vehicles U.S. automakers are dramatically boosting production of “flexible-fuel” cars and trucks that can run on either gasoline or E85, a mixture of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gas that results in lower greenhouse gas emissions — but this trend is more likely to harm the environment […]
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Reservoir Dogged
Four elderly Pehuenche Indian women have thrown a big wrench into plans for a $570 million hydroelectric dam in southern Chile. Arguing that the hydro project would flood sacred land and destroy their traditional way of life, the four have refused to sell 103 acres they own along the Bio Bio River, land that would […]
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Michelle Nijhuis reviews Libby, Montana by Andrea Peacock
It's never been easy to make a living in Libby, Mont. Citizens in this town of 12,000, tucked into the dense, damp conifer forests of northwestern Montana, have long scraped by on seasonal logging jobs and other sporadic work. So in the 1920s, when local entrepreneur Edward Alley discovered that a nearby vermiculite deposit yielded an efficient, lightweight insulation and fireproofing material, Libbyites were thrilled.
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The Maine Event
Meanwhile, Maine is several steps ahead of the federal government when it comes to combating climate change: Today, the state will become the first in the nation to enact a law establishing specific goals and deadlines for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Other New England states have addressed carbon dioxide emissions through different means — such […]
