Vast reserves of freshwater have been discovered beneath the seabed of continental shelves off Australia, China, North America, and South Africa—a potentially valuable resource for coastal cities needing to alleviate water shortages or combat drought. The finding comes from a new analysis of seafloor water studies conducted for oil and gas exploration purposes. The total volume of these untapped reserves […]
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When communities like San Francisco and Seattle began banning plastic bags, said Ramesh Ponnuru, it seemed like a public-spirited thing to do. But’ benign-seeming laws often have unintended consequences— and the plastic-bag ban is now producing a sickening result. The reusable shopping bags that people now use to bring groceries home turn out to be breeding grounds for bacteria carried […]
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The pollster Ipsos MORI put the question to people in 20 countries. Here’s a sampling of how many said yes:
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A research paper published in Nature Climate Change predicts widespread death of needleleaf evergreen trees (NET) within the Southwest United States by the year 2100 under projected global warming scenarios. The research team that conducted the study, which includes University of Delaware’s Sara Rauscher, considered both field results and a range of validated regional predictions and global simulation models of […]
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It’s been five years since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 and releasing a torrent of petroleum into the sea. But despite a massive, multibillion-dollar cleanup effort, the effects of the largest marine oil spill in U.S. history may linger for decades. BP (British Petroleum), which operated the rig, has already paid […]
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Western Antarctica is heating up faster than almost any other region on earth, increasing the risk that a huge ice sheet there could collapse and cause a drastic rise in sea levels. That’s the alarming conclusion of climate researchers who used data from a remote weather station combined with other temperature readings on the continent to show that West Antarctica […]
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The monster forest fires rampaging across the Western states may soon be the norm, thanks to climate change. New research indicates that as rainfall diminishes and vegetation dries out on a warmer planet, the West is headed into a more fire-prone future,” wildfire specialist Max Moritz tells the Los Angeles Times. After studying satellite imaging of fires and data from […]
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An analysis of isotopes in marine fossils from around the world yielded the most complete record of Earth’s temperatures yet—and showed that the planet is heating up at a rate unprecedented in the past 11,300 years. Scientists say that if it weren’t for greenhouse gas emissions, a cooling trend that began 5,000 years ago after a shift in the planet’s […]
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Norway’s oil wealth has made us selfish and greedy, said Jan Kaerstad. Like other Scandinavians, we once embraced a third way between socialism and capitalism, believing that a more equitable society would result if we would take a bit from the rich and give it to the poor, and provide a decent level of services for all citizens. A few […]
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Thousands of pigs were found dead in rivers supplying Shanghai’s water, a grisly discovery that has drawn attention again to China’s toxic pollution, which contributes to some 700,000 deaths each year. Here are some points of concern: WASTE Tai Lake—a massive basin that holds China’s third largest body of freshwater, providing water for 30 million people—has been classified as a […]
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