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  • Sick ’em

    Global climate change isn’t just going to make our planet hotter — it’s going to make it sicker. That was the finding of a wide-ranging study of world ecosystems, published in today’s issue of Science and showing that warmer temperatures have sparked a plague of epidemics in plants and animals. From oysters to oak trees, […]

  • Natural Born Watt Killers

    Are you one of those people who obsessively turns off lights and other electric appliances when leaving the room? If so, it might be time to look for a job with the State of New Hampshire, where Gov. Jeanne Shaheen (D) is now offering up to $10,000 to state employees who devise innovative ways to […]

  • Citizens battle to keep Delta County from becoming the coal bed methane capital of Colorado

    It started out as a simple item on a regional planning commission agenda in remote Delta County, Colo. A recently reworked natural gas well in Delta County. Photo: Jeremy Puckett, WSERC. But since that meeting on April 9, the possibility that up to 600 coal bed methane wells could be drilled here has whipped up […]

  • Climate change is, like, inevitable, dude

    Note: You’ll need Flash Player to watch the movie. If you don’t have it, download it now.

  • The Little Solar Station That Could

    The Columbia Generating Station, a nuclear power plant at Washington state’s Hanford nuclear reservation, sits just one mile from the White Bluffs Solar Station. For the past three weeks, Energy Northwest, the Pacific Northwest’s nuclear power producer, has been generating a tiny amount of electricity from solar panels at White Bluffs and selling it to […]

  • Inuit Intuition

    There is no word in the Inuit language for a robin, but suddenly, there are robins in Inuit territory — the vast, frozen lands of the Arctic. Mostly frozen, that is; this spring, there are bare spots in the tundra snow, just one of many signs that the far north is thawing. Other signs include […]

  • Snoop Dog

    Almost everyone’s been embarrassed at one time or another by an over-eager dog sniffing in the wrong places. Now car owners have to worry about the “smog dog,” designed to “sniff” tailpipes to detect air pollution. Formally called the AccuScan Remote Vehicle Emissions Testing System, the smog dog analyzes exhaust from cars as they pass […]

  • Fatwa Alberta

    Canada’s already-tense internal battle over whether to ratify the Kyoto Treaty on climate change heated up further yesterday, when the province of Alberta withdrew from negotiations after its alternative emissions-cutting plan was rejected by the other provinces and territories. In response, Alberta resigned as co-chair of the commission formed to negotiate climate issues and refused […]

  • New Sue Review

    Oral arguments were heard yesterday in the U.S. EPA’s lawsuit against the Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation’s largest public power provider. Lawyers for the EPA argued that the TVA violated the New Source Review rule of the Clean Air Act by failing to install state-of-the-art pollution-control equipment when upgrading its older coal-burning power plants. Lawyers […]

  • Greener Pastures

    New Zealand is home to a staggering 45 million sheep and 8 million cattle, which together produce 90 percent of the country’s methane emissions — or about 43 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. To meet the terms of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, New Zealand has to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions […]