Arctic
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The most heartbreaking polar bear picture, ever
I don't know if this guy is actually trying to push this icebreaker ship away from his home. Maybe he just thinks there's a free buffet if he can climb aboard. But in the context of the polar bears' plight, with their numbers dwindling due to climate change and habitat loss, this looks like a […]
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Rep. Don Young throws a weird tantrum over arctic drilling
Usually, we at Grist List try to make the news amusing for your entertainment. But sometimes Congress does the work for us. The scene: A committee hearing on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The characters: Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), drilling advocate, professional crank Douglas Brinkley, respected historian Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), committee chairman, […]
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U.S. release of British nature doc skips the part about climate change
Global warming is too hot for TV in the U.S., even when the TV is really cold. Frozen Planet, the BBC miniseries about the Arctic and Antarctic, has an episode about climate change impacts — but that episode's not being aired in the United States. The BBC made seven episodes of Frozen Planet. Six feature […]
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The Northern lights as you’ve never seen them before
As the International Space Station orbits Earth, it snaps images from a still camera affixed to its underside. String them together, and you get views of terrestrial phenomena as you've never seen them before. In this case, it’s the Aurora Borealis. The sun is in an active phase right now, leading to displays of "Northern" […]
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Facebook is building a renewable-powered mini-town in the Arctic
Facebook is building a server farm in northern Sweden, on the edge of the Arctic circle. The average temperatures there are so cold that they won't need to use anything but the outside air to cool 600,000 square feet of servers. But even so, the server farm will use as much power as 16,000 homes. […]
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Top Obama official warns of consequences of Arctic drilling
Photo: NASACross-posted from ThinkProgress Green. Jane Lubchenco, a top marine ecologist and senior Obama administration official, is concerned that opening the Arctic to oil and gas development brings unknown risks to human civilization. In an exclusive interview with ThinkProgress Green, Lubchenco, the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), discussed the vicious circle […]
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This is going to be the greatest documentary on the Arctic and Antarctic EVER
This month the BBC is debuting Frozen Planet, a Planet Earth-style nature doc that focuses on the Arctic and Antarctic. This is going to be massive, gorgeous, and probably depressing: The last of its seven episodes is all about the effect of climate change on the stunning vistas and incredible animals you've met in the […]
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Critical List: Enviro groups sue over Keystone XL; Energy Dept. considered second Solyndra loan
The Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, Inc., and Western Nebraska Resources Council sued the U.S. for starting work preemptively on the Keystone XL pipeline.
The Department of Energy thought (but not that hard! Really!) about giving Solyndra an additional $469 million loan.
The mystery of why the FBI kept British environmentalist John Stewart from entering the country: Explained. Apparently the bureau was concerned he would super-glue himself to Sarah Palin.
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Now we have two giant holes in the ozone layer
I hear New Zealand is beautiful, but I'm never going there, because the ozone is thin and I'll die of skin cancer. I hear Norway is beautiful, too, but it looks like I can't go there either, because now there's an unprecedentedly big ozone hole over the Arctic.
Winter often thins the ozone layer over the Arctic, but this year, for the first time, scientists are saying the hole is comparable to the one of over Antarctica. It's twice as bad as the two biggest holes scientists had previously observed over the Arctic, and in some sections, 80 percent of the ozone is gone.