How wasted food is destroying the environment

  By George Webster, CNN27 June 2012 (CNN) – At first glance, Austrian artist Klaus Pichler’s spell-binding photographs could be mistaken for a set of stylish advertisements. It takes a moment to digest — excuse the pun — that you’re staring at pictures of rotting food. Among them, a pineapple hangs suspended in negative space […]

How to track Colorado’s Waldo Canyon ‘super fire’ (and others)

By Matt Peckham 29 June 2012 As an uncontrolled “super fire” near Colorado Springs rages, feeding off parched terrain and forcing tens of thousands from their homes and businesses, high-tech mapping tools are dishing up highly detailed, bird’s eye views of the fire’s scope. Such tools offer everything from perimeter reports and pictures of the […]

Video: Millions without power as storms pound U.S. following record-setting heat

[Usual apology for the ad.] By Moni Basu, Fabi Rodriguez, Nick Valencia, Melissa Abbey, and Jake Carpenter 30 June 2012 (CNN) – Millions of people across nine states were left without power Saturday to deal with thermostat-popping temperatures after fierce storms pounded parts of the Midwest and Atlantic Seaboard. Six people were killed in Virginia, […]

Greenland ice sheet melt nears critical tipping point ‘into a state of inevitable decline’

By Andrew Freedman29 June 2012 The Greenland ice sheet is poised for another record melt this year, and is approaching a “tipping point” into a new and more dangerous melt regime in which the summer melt area covers the entire land mass, according to new findings from polar researchers. The ice sheet is the focus […]

Flood insurance premiums could rise 20 percent in Louisiana – $1.1 billion shortfall in state’s 2013 Medicaid budget

By Bruce Alpert, Times-Picayune28 June 2012 Washington – New federal flood insurance legislation could force some homeowners and commercial property owners to pay higher premiums, up to 20 percent a year for the next five years. Currently rate increases are limited to 10 percent annually. The legislation, added to a transportation funding bill expected to […]

Graph of the Day: Projected U.S. Energy Consumption and CO2 Emissions, 2008-2035

Carbon emissions keep going up, up, and up. The CAP report spends a lot of time dwelling on the consequences of unchecked global warming — e.g., by 2030 wildfires in Western states like Montana will increase by 300 percent. But they also point out that the sort of energy security promised by API is still […]

Stockton, California is largest U.S. city ever to file for bankruptcy

SAN FRANCISCO, 28 June 2012 (Reuters) – Stockton, California, became the largest city to file for bankruptcy in U.S. history on Thursday, after years of fiscal mismanagement and a housing market crash left it unable to pay its workers, pensioners and bondholders. The filing by the city of 300,000 people followed three months of confidential […]

Heat wave rolls through U.S., toppling records – Over 2,300 broken in June

By Michael Muskal28 June 2012 If you think “Heat Wave,” is just a song, odds are that you’ve been living in an air-conditioned bubble during the past week or so. According to records kept by the National Climatic Data Center, part of the federal government, the United States has been sweltering through a wave of […]

Wildfires in U.S. West a preview of changed climate: scientists

By Deborah Zabarenko and Laura Zuckerman; Editing by Stacey Joyce28 June 2012 (Reuters) – Scorching heat, high winds and bone-dry conditions are fueling catastrophic wildfires in the U.S. West that offer a preview of the kind of disasters that human-caused climate change could bring, a trio of scientists said on Thursday. “What we’re seeing is […]

Mercury from burning coal sickens Adirondacks loons

By KELLY SLIVKA28 June 2012 Many see New York State’s six-million-acre Adirondack Park as a place of respite where you go to gulp down the cool air and hear loon calls echoing through the hills. The landscape is unmarred, wild. Human hands do not have to physically touch a place, though, to disturb it. Mercury […]

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