Climate Climate & Energy
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Flu Dunnit
Enviro Disruptions Will Cause More Animal Diseases to Jump to Humans In coming years, diseases — primarily viruses — passed from animals to human beings pose one of the principal threats to world health, warned a conference of scientists at the Royal Society in London yesterday. Environmental disruptions ranging from deforestation to population migration to […]
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Viscous Cycle
In Ironic Twist, Thawing Tundra Causes Trouble for Alaska’s Oil Industry Global warming — brought about in part by the burning of fossil fuels — has raised temperatures in Alaska and reduced the length of the “frozen season” during which oil-prospecting convoys are allowed to traverse the landscape. The past three decades have seen the […]
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Salt Water Daffy
Climate Change Alters Salt Levels in Atlantic Ocean, to Europe’s Dismay The Atlantic Ocean seems so vast that it’s almost impossible to imagine fundamentally altering it — and yet, its salt levels have changed so drastically over the last 40 years because of global warming that the whole flow of ocean water is being disrupted, […]
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Death Warmed Over
Climate Change Tied to 150,000 Deaths a Year, WHO Says How’s this for classic gloom and doom: Climate change led to 150,000 premature deaths in 2000, and the annual number of such deaths could double in 30 years if current warming trends are not reversed, according to a new report by the World Health Organization. […]
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Oil and World Bank Shouldn’t Mix
Report Recommends That World Bank Stop Backing Oil, Coal Projects The World Bank should phase out all investments in oil and coal projects by 2008 because the environmental risks are too high, an independent report has recommended. Now, the bank must figure out how to respond to the Extractive Industry Review, which it commissioned in […]
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His Park Is Bigger Than His Bite
Chile Dedicates New Nature Park on Land Purchased by Rich American Some 738,000 acres of pristine rainforest in southern Chile will get official billing as a nature sanctuary today, thanks to a deal between U.S. tycoon Doug Tompkins and the Chilean government. Tompkins, cofounder of the sportswear company Esprit, paid more than $30 million for […]
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Yeah, I’m the Tax, Man
British Think Tank Proposes a “Kyoto Tax” for the U.S. With Europeans none too happy about the U.S. having ditched the Kyoto Protocol, a British think tank has come up with an idea for making the U.S. pay its fair share to deal with climate change: trade sanctions. The New Economics Foundation has proposed that […]
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Hail to the Reef
Australia to Protect One-Third of Great Barrier Reef In a major boon to Down Under ecology, fully one-third of the Great Barrier Reef will receive protection, the Australian government announced this week. The move will increase the protected areas of the reef by 40,000 square miles, thereby establishing the largest network of marine reserves in […]
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Jumping for Joy
Famed Frog Rediscovered After Years of Presumed Local Extinction Speaking of Mark Twain, the amphibian he made famous in “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” has been discovered in the eponymous California region, 34 years after it was thought to have disappeared. A few of the threatened frogs were found by the 6- and […]
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What, Exxon Unethical? You’re Kidding Me!
Academics Up in Arms Over Exxon-Funded Research When Exxon went to court in 1997 to appeal a $5.3 billion punitive damage verdict over the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, it cited articles from respected journals and law reviews that found that high punitive damages were bad for society or based on the unjust whims of […]
