In The News

Kirk Moore February 25, 2015
Frigid temperatures delight those who deny climate change, but the long-term outlook is unnerving. “Rutgers University climate scientist Jennifer Francis and colleagues link that wavy jet stream to a warming Arctic, where climate changes near the top of the world are happening faster than in Earth’s middle latitudes,” reports Kirk Moore for Rutgers Today. The melting Arctic is forcing upper...
February 13, 2015
Cleanup of the Fukushima nuclear plant, after three of four reactors went into meltdown, following an earthquake, tsunami and flooding in March 2011 is posing unprecedented engineering challenges, reports the Economist. Decommissioning could take more than four decades as engineers scramble to invent new technology and methods for handling the massive cleanup: They constructed a frozen wall of...
Dennis Dimick February 4, 2015
The year 2014 was the warmest on record, and evidence that human activity contributes to climate change is overwhelming. A Pew Research Center survey suggests only half of Americans accept evidence that carbon trapped in the atmosphere is putting the planet under stress, writes Dennis Dimick for National Geographic: “We are burning record levels of coal, oil, and natural gas to fuel modern...
Navin Singh Khadka January 28, 2015
Trade in rare-cat parts, including tigers, from Burma into China is growing. At the center of the surge is Mong La, a town bordering China, where 21 shops, triple the number from 2006, sell wildlife products, some from as far away as Africa, reports Navin Singh Khadka for BBC News. This trend raises concern among environmentalists – already the tiger population is down to 5 percent of what it was...
January 16, 2015
Janicki Bioenergy based in Seattle has devised an Omni Processor system that takes raw sewage, boils it, separating solids from water vapor. The solids are then used to produce electricity – with the extracted water used for drinking. Sewage contains about 80 percent water and 20 percent biomass; untreated, such sewage can be toxic to ingest. Bill Gates drank a glass of water made from sewage to...
January 16, 2015
The US Congress has inserted a provision in an appropriations act that requires greater “protection for the environment or for human rights than the bank’s current safeguards,” reports Environment News Service. The United States is the largest contributor for World Bank operations, and the measure formalizes criticism about the World Bank’s 2014 proposal on environmental and social safeguards: “...
Will Hickey January 13, 2015
Nations are wary about fast-dropping oil prices and just how long those prices could stay low. Some nations are lured into ongoing dependence on fossil fuels while others reduce consumer subsidies and redirect funds into infrastructure development. Will Hickey, associate professor at Linton Global College in Daejeon, urges careful management of the windfalls as the decisions will have lasting...