Nadia Prupis – EPA Finally Concludes Fracking Pollutes Drinking Water

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) confirmed on Tuesday that hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, contaminates drinking water—but claimed a lack of information makes it impossible to determine how widespread the risks are. In a final report issued Tuesday, Hydraulic Fracturing for Oil and Gas: Impacts from the Hydraulic Fracturing Water Cycle on Drinking Water Resources, the EPA removed a finding included …

Lauren McCauley – Scientists Racing to Archive Climate Data Before Denier-in-Chief Trump Takes Office

Anticipating the worst under the incoming administration, a group of scientists are frantically trying to archive government climate data before President-elect Donald Trump’s “band of climate conspiracy theorists…storm the castle,” as one put it. On Saturday, Slate meterologist Eric Holthaus posed the question: “Scientists: Do you have a US.gov climate database that you don’t want to see disappear? Add it …

Mountain glaciers are showing some of the strongest responses to climate change

Mountain glaciers have long been a favorite poster child of climate change. The near-global retreat of glaciers of the last century provides some of the most iconic imagery for communicating the reality of human-driven climate change. But the scientific basis for their retreat has been less clear. Glaciers respond slowly to any climate changes, they are susceptible to year-to-year variations …

Tim Radford – Human ‘technosphere’ weighs 30 trillion tonnes

LONDON, 13 December, 2016 – Scientists have calculated the mass of that unnatural achievement called the “technosphere”, demonstrating the scale of human activity that drives climate change. The bleak conclusion is that cities, factories, cars, railways, cameras, computers, ballpoint pens, swords, machine guns and all other manmade things now weigh about 30 trillion tonnes. The scientists also estimate that the …

Surge in methane emissions threatens efforts to slow climate change

Global concentrations of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas and cause of climate change, are now growing faster in the atmosphere than at any other time in the past two decades. That is the message of a team of international scientists in an editorial to be published 12 December in the journal Environmental Research Letters. The group reports that methane concentrations …

Zenobia Jeffries – It Was a Blighted City Block. But This Woman Is Turning It Into a Solar-Powered Ecovillage

Shamayim Harris ran three times for city council in her hometown of Highland Park, Michigan. Each time the voters rejected her. “They didn’t want me,” she says, with a smile. But that didn’t stop her from fulfilling her plans to give Highland Park residents new opportunities, starting with her own block on Avalon Street. The city of Highland Park is …

Lorraine Chow – Trump Picks ‘Puppet of the Fossil Fuel Industry’ to Head EPA

Donald Trump has appointed Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The conservative Republican has close ties to the fossil fuel industry and has waged numerous legal wars against the EPA and President Obama’s environmental regulations, including the president’s signature Clean Power Plan. Pruitt, who was elected as Oklahoma’s top legal officer in November …

TIMOTHY CAMA – Trump taps Oklahoma attorney general to lead EPA

President-elect Donald Trump plans to nominate Scott Pruitt, the Republican attorney general of Oklahoma and a frequent legal adversary to President Obama, to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a transition official told The Hill. If confirmed by the Senate to oversee the 15,000-employee agency, Pruitt would take the lead on dismantling the EPA regulations that Trump targeted throughout his …

Dr. Mercola – Care What You Wear: Serious Concerns About Clothing

Microbeads, those tiny plastic pellets found in body washes, facial scrubs, toothpaste and other toiletries and even pharmaceuticals, go down your drain, through the filters at most wastewater treatment plants and out into the environment. Once in the water, microbeads easily absorb endocrine-disrupting and cancer-causing chemicals like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The chemical-laden beads, which resemble fish eggs, are then eaten …

Obama’s Environmental Legacy: How Much Can Trump Undo?

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to scrap U.S. involvement in the Paris climate accords, undo President Obama’s signature piece of domestic environmental legislation — the Clean Power Plan — and eviscerate the Environmental Protection Agency. These moves would effectively decimate what Obama considers one of his greatest achievements — his efforts to slow global warming. But are Trump’s threats just …