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Yahoo! News: Environment News
Sierra Club Received Millions from Natural Gas Industry
(ContributorNetwork)
ContributorNetwork – According to a blog post from Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune, the environmentalist organization accepted millions of donated dollars from the natural gas industry to fight against coal-fired plants nationwide. Here are the details.
Posted on 5 February 2012 | 9:26 pm
Fire at Moscow nuclear institute, Russia says no risk
(Reuters)
Reuters – There was no risk of a radiation leak after a fire broke out at a Moscow nuclear research center housing a non-operational 60-year-old atomic reactor Sunday, said officials, but Greenpeace Russia expressed serious concern about the incident.
Posted on 5 February 2012 | 6:15 pm
Canada, Alberta seek to assuage oil sands critics
(Reuters)
Reuters – Canada will set up a new environmental monitoring system for the northern Alberta oil sands as it seeks to fend off harsh international criticism following revelations that oversight of the huge petroleum development has been insufficient.
Posted on 3 February 2012 | 11:10 pm
USDA awards $40 million grants to boost local farm/food projects
(Reuters)
Reuters – The U.S. Agriculture Department on Friday awarded $40.2 million in grants to farmers, ranchers and farmer-controlled rural business ventures aimed at spurring locally produced food supplies and renewable energy ventures.
Posted on 3 February 2012 | 4:20 pm
NRC sets vote on approving Ga. nuclear plant
(AP)
AP – Federal safety officials will vote Feb. 9 on whether to approve what could become the nation’s first nuclear plant in a generation.
Posted on 3 February 2012 | 4:03 pm
Nature’s Surprise: 365 New Species Spotted in Peru
(LiveScience.com)
LiveScience.com – Hundreds of species never before seen in a Peruvian national park have been found during an inventory of the Amazonian forests there, according to a conservation group.
Posted on 3 February 2012 | 3:40 pm
UK minister quits Cabinet to fight criminal charge
(AP)
AP – British leader David Cameron made a third unwanted shake up of his government since 2010 on Friday after Cabinet minister Chris Huhne quit as prosecutors charged him over an alleged attempt to pin a speeding penalty on his ex-wife.
Posted on 3 February 2012 | 2:43 pm
58% vs. 27% – Sharp Divide Between Republicans and Democrats on Energy and the Environment
(Pew)
Pew – No issue divides more along partisan lines than the importance of environmental protection – 58% of Democrats say it is a top priority, compared with just 27% of Republicans.
Posted on 3 February 2012 | 5:00 am
Feds: Mid-Atlantic wind farms take step forward
(AP)
AP – The view off the mid-Atlantic shore in the next decade could include giant wind turbines generating electricity for homes in several states if federal efforts to speed approval for the projects shave years off the process as officials intend.
Posted on 2 February 2012 | 11:05 pm
Feds: ‘Unusual’ wear on new tubes at CA nuke plant
(AP)
AP – Unusual wear has been found on hundreds of tubes that carry radioactive water at Southern California’s San Onofre Unit 2 nuclear plant, raising questions about the integrity of equipment the company installed in a multimillion-dollar makeover in 2009.
Posted on 2 February 2012 | 10:48 pm
Green News – Environment and climate change news
Earth news from Telegraph Earth – your source for environment and green news and environment and green issues, with information on farming, climate change, global warming, pollution, green living and recycling, and all other environment issues.
Big freeze: Britain hit by temperatures of -12C
Air passengers and motorists face travel chaos as cold weather alerts were issued across much of the UK, bringing up to six inches of snow, freezing fog and icy roads.
Posted on 4 February 2012 | 3:04 pm
Animal pictures of the week: 3 February 2012
All creatures great and small in our ever popular animal gallery.
Posted on 3 February 2012 | 5:23 pm
Out of Africa, into Spain: photographs of the Cabarceno wildlife park by Marina Cano
African animals at the Cabarceno wildlife park in Cantabria, Spain.
Posted on 3 February 2012 | 2:10 pm
Prince of Wales hits out at modern buildings as ‘energy-guzzling glass boxes’
The Prince of Wales has criticised modern buildings as “energy guzzling glass boxes” which will be “ripe for demolition” within 30 years.
Posted on 3 February 2012 | 7:00 am
Big cat Britain: the sightings
A flurry of sightings of big cats emerged after the Dangerous Wild Animals Act of 1976 made it illegal to keep untamed pets. Many owners of exotic cats such as pumas or lynx simply freed their untamed pets into the countryside. Here is a round up sightings:
Posted on 2 February 2012 | 8:03 am
DNA tests to solve big cat mystery find a fox
DNA tests commissioned by the National Trust to find once and for all if there is a big cat on the prowl in Gloucestershire have confirmed it is a fox.
Posted on 2 February 2012 | 7:00 am
Walker the polar bear plays after being weighed at Highland Wildlife Park in Scotland
Walker the polar bear plays with toys at Highland Wildlife Park in Scotland.
Posted on 31 January 2012 | 5:39 pm
Terry Pratchett warns Britain’s hedgehogs and sparrows are dying out
Sir Terry Pratchett, the author, has warned that Britain’s hedgehogs and sparrows are in danger of dying out after being “orphaned by traffic, hurt by pollution and forced out of their natural habitat”.
Posted on 31 January 2012 | 1:25 pm
Sir David Attenborough hits back at Lord Lawson over Frozen Planet climate change row
Sir David Attenborough has accused Lord Lawson of “unacceptable” selective use of evidence in trying to deny the impacts of global warming.
Posted on 31 January 2012 | 7:00 am
Elephants took 24m generations to get this big
Elephants took 24 million generations to get to their current size, a study has shown.
Posted on 31 January 2012 | 7:00 am
ScienceDaily: Earth & Climate News
Global extinction: Gradual doom is just as bad as abrupt
Around 250 million years ago, most life on Earth was wiped out in an extinction known as the “Great Dying.” Geologists have learned that the end came slowly from thousands of centuries of volcanic activity.
Posted on 3 February 2012 | 4:33 pm
A battle of the vampires, 20 million years ago?
They are tiny, ugly, disease-carrying little blood-suckers that most people have never seen or heard of, but a new discovery in a one-of-a-kind fossil shows that “bat flies” have been doing their noxious business with bats for at least 20 million years.
Posted on 3 February 2012 | 3:24 pm
Parasites or not? Transposable elements in DNA of fruit flies may be beneficial
Many living organisms suffer from parasites, which use the hosts’ resources for their own purposes. The problem of parasitism occurs at all levels right down to the DNA scale. Genomes may contain up to 80% “foreign” DNA but details of the mechanisms by which this enters the host genome and how hosts attempt to combat its spread are still the subject of conjecture. Nearly all organisms contain pieces of DNA that do not really belong to them.
Posted on 3 February 2012 | 2:18 pm
Scientists coax shy microorganisms to stand out in a crowd
Scientists have advanced a method that allowed them to single out a marine microorganism and map its genome even though the organism made up less than 10 percent of a water sample teeming with many millions of individuals from dozens of identifiable groups of microbes.
Posted on 2 February 2012 | 9:48 pm
Google Earth ocean terrain receives major update: Data sharpen resolution of seafloor maps, correct ‘discovery’ of Atlantis
Internet information giant Google updated ocean data in its Google Earth application this week, reflecting new bathymetry data assembled by researchers from around the world. The newest version of Google Earth includes more accurate imagery in several key areas of ocean using data collected by research cruises over the past three years.
Posted on 2 February 2012 | 9:48 pm
New way to study ground fractures
Geophysics researchers have created a new way to study fractures by producing elastic waves, or vibrations, through using high-intensity light focused directly on the fracture itself.
Posted on 2 February 2012 | 8:16 pm
Some roads and playgrounds in North Dakota contain cancer causing erionite
What would you do if you found out that the roads you drive on could cause cancer? This is the reality that residents face in Dunn County, North Dakota. For roughly 30 years, gravel containing the potentially carcinogenic mineral erionite was spread on nearly 500 kilometers of roads, playgrounds, parking lots, and even flower beds throughout Dunn County.
Posted on 2 February 2012 | 8:14 pm
‘Yellow biotechnology’: Using plants to silence insect genes in a high-throughput manner
‘Yellow biotechnology’ refers to biotechnology with insects — analogous to the green (plants) and red (animals) biotechnology. Active ingredients or genes in insects are characterized and used for research or application in agriculture and medicine. Scientists in Germany are now using a procedure which brings forward ecological research on insects: They study gene functions in moth larvae by manipulating genes using the RNA interference technology (RNAi). RNAi is induced by feeding larvae with plants that have been treated with viral vectors. This method — called “plant virus based dsRNA producing system” (VDPS) — increases sample throughput compared to the use of genetically transformed plants.
Posted on 2 February 2012 | 8:12 pm
Castaway lizards provide insight into elusive evolutionary process, founder effects
A biologist who released lizards on tiny uninhabited islands in the Bahamas has shed light on the interaction between evolutionary processes that are seldom observed. He found that the lizards’ genetic and morphological traits were determined by both natural selection and a phenomenon called founder effects, which occur when species colonize new territory.
Posted on 2 February 2012 | 8:11 pm
Caribbean lizards settle ‘founder effect’ controversy
In the first experimental study of the founder effect in a natural setting, researchers found that natural selection does not overwhelm the founder effect.
Posted on 2 February 2012 | 8:11 pm
"Climate Change" – Bing News
Nino and Nina weather to become more dominant – Voxy
El Niño and La Niña weather patterns will become even more dominant in New Zealand with climate change, according to research from The University of Auckland published in Nature Climate Change. “As the world continues to warm New Zealand is likely to …
Posted on 5 February 2012 | 8:09 pm
Abhishek Bachchan: ‘I want to make a film about the environment’ – Digital Spy
Abhishek Bachchan has said that he is keen to make a film about climate change. The actor was recently honoured with the ‘Green Globe’ award for his efforts towards creating a better environment. “I want to make a film about saving the environment and …
Posted on 5 February 2012 | 2:39 pm
Wind farms create climate change and control the weather – Anorak
WIND farms can alter the weather. Yeah – wind farms can change climate and weather patterns. Somnath Roy, assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says: “In the daytime, temperatures downwind of a …
Posted on 5 February 2012 | 11:33 am
Maxwell T. Boykoff: When did ‘climate change’ become ‘clean energy’? – madison
What happened to “climate change” and “global warming”? The Earth is still getting hotter, but those terms have nearly disappeared from political vocabulary. Instead, they have been replaced by less charged and more consumer-friendly expressions …
Posted on 5 February 2012 | 10:57 am
Invasive insects evidence of climate change – Press Republican
The photo provided is courtesy of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. It shows a coal miner in the early 1900s with a canary in a cage. These birds, preferred over mice, were used to alert underground miners to the presence of carbon monoxide, a …
Posted on 5 February 2012 | 7:23 am
Storm over climate change among weather forecasters – msnbc.com
But weather forecasters, many of whom see climate change as a natural, cyclical phenomenon, are split over whether they have a responsibility to educate their viewers on the link between human activity and the change in the Earth’s climates.
Posted on 2 February 2012 | 9:02 pm
World Bank supports Vietnam to tackle its climate change challenges – Reliefweb.int
WASHINGTON, February 2, 2012 – The World Bank Board of Directors today approved the Vietnam Climate Change Development Policy Operation, the first of a series of three operations to support the development and adoption of priority actions to strengthen …
Posted on 2 February 2012 | 8:55 pm
Climate change precipitates food shortages, unrest – New Kerala
Sydney, Feb 2: Long-term climate change has often destabilized civilizations through food shortages, hunger, infectious disease and unrest, a study reveals. Historical records foreshadow a grim picture for a future threatened by even greater climate change …
Posted on 2 February 2012 | 3:11 pm
Tool is new weapon in fight against climate change – PhysOrg
The unique aid, launched this month online, will allow planners, policy makers, local people and developers to assess if new buildings and roads will make neighborhoods intolerably hot or more likely to suffer from flooding. It will also give …
Posted on 2 February 2012 | 1:31 pm
Fight against climate change is uphill ride – Jewish Chronicle
Many communities, commentators and politicians agree that climate change is the single greatest challenge facing humanity. To combat it requires people, business, government and international bodies to work together to make changes that will safeguard our …
Posted on 2 February 2012 | 11:15 am
