Climate Climate & Energy
All Stories
-
Murky Outcome
Environmentalists did constant battle with Frank Murkowski when he was a U.S. senator — and, if last night’s “State of the State” address was any indication, they will have to redouble their efforts now that he is the new Republican governor of Alaska. During the speech, Murkowski said he would push for more road development, […]
-
Mass. Devastation
Laws designed to protect the environment are only useful if they’re enforced — and in the state of Massachusetts, they often are not. Indeed, the Bay State has one of the nation’s worst enforcement records, according to a new federal website that allows the public to monitor enforcement of anti-pollution laws. Only 27 percent of […]
-
Giving Us Tropopause
The tropopause has risen by an average of 650 feet globally in the last 22 years because of global warming and ozone depletion, according to a study published in the latest issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research. For those of you who’ve forgotten your junior high school science, the tropopause is the atmospheric layer […]
-
The Rain in Lesotho Caused Mainly Lots of Pain
Rain. Drought. Hailstorms. Tornadoes. Frost. You’d be hard-pressed to name a weather phenomenon that hasn’t afflicted the African kingdom of Lesotho in recent times, destroying its crops and leaving one-third of its 2.1 million people on the brink of starvation. Now, many scientists are saying that those people, along with nearly 40 million other Africans […]
-
Caspian’s Unfriendly Ghost
The discovery of what may be one of the world’s largest oil fields under the Caspian Sea near Atyrau, Kazakhstan, has western oil companies excited, but environmentalists deeply concerned. The field, estimated to contain about 40 billion barrels of oil, 10 billion of them recoverable, is being developed by a consortium including British Gas, ExxonMobil, […]
-
Cell-ebrate
In what could be the first significant step toward mass-marketing fuel-cell vehicles, Toyota and Honda put the world’s first such cars on the road yesterday. The cars are being leased to the Japanese government and several public organizations in the U.S. — at the whopping price of between $6,500 and $9,800 per month, meaning the […]
-
Oil and Trouble
Coastal areas in Spain are suffering the effects of a Nov. 13 spill that sent millions of gallons of oil into the waters off the nation’s northwestern coast. Although high winds and strong currents have kept most of the spilled fuel oil farther out in Atlantic waters, waves of oil crashed over a 20-foot sea […]
-
Braked Alaska
The oil giant BP has withdrawn from the lobbying group that is leading the campaign to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to drilling, company spokesperson Paul Laird said yesterday. The decision underscores the growing concern among oil companies that the drilling debate could damage their public image. In the past, BP had […]
