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  • Salmon Chanted Evening

    Historic Deal Will Help Atlantic Salmon in Maine In an unprecedented move intended to save plummeting populations of threatened Atlantic salmon, a coalition of environmental groups, government agencies, a Native American tribe, and a power company yesterday announced a plan to take down dams along the Penobscot River, Maine’s longest waterway. The project calls for […]

  • Detroit Yuck City

    Illegal Dumping Pushes Up Toxic Contamination in Great Lakes Toxic pollution in Great Lakes waterways has jumped 25 percent over the past six years, thanks at least in part to rampant illegal discharges from large industrial facilities and sewer plants. Meanwhile, government enforcement efforts on both the national and state levels are stagnating, meaning that […]

  • Dead Heat

    Global Warming May Be Killing 160,000 People a Year Climate change and its side effects may be killing about 160,000 people a year, with children in developing countries particularly vulnerable, according to a new report by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the World Health Organization. By 2020, the annual number of […]

  • Drowned and Out

    Three Gorges Dam Causing Unexpected Pollution Problems Unexpected environmental problems are already cropping up at China’s Three Gorges Dam, the world’s largest hydropower and construction project. After the dam went into operation in June, the reservoir behind it reached 443 feet and was supposed to stay at that level until 2006, but the Chinese government […]

  • The Ice, Man, Cometh

    Arctic’s Biggest Ice Shelf Breaks Apart, Signaling Increased Warming A 3,000-year-old ice shelf in the Arctic Ocean, the largest in the Northern Hemisphere, has broken into pieces over the past two years, highlighting significant warming trends, according to new research published in Geophysical Research Letters. Scientists said they couldn’t determine whether the melting was related […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]