Environmental Glance
A joke, but a very unfunny one," is how Phil Ball, one of the Arctic 30, described hearing he faced a charge of piracy. "Even when lawyers, cellmates and yes, even the prosecutor, made jokes about parrots and tried to say 'Arrr' in a Russian accent," the father of three young children wrote, in the latest letter to be received from the bleak Murmansk jail cells which are holding the Greenpeace Arctic 30 in their eighth week of imprisonment.
In it Ball, 42, a cameraman from Oxford, said he was struggling to cope with the new charge the 28 activists and two journalists have now been told they face, an accusation of hooliganism that carries a sentence of seven years. Ball said he is appalled at the wording of the charge, which defines hooliganism as an act in "contempt of society", when he fervently believed the Greenpeace protest he was involved was quite the opposite. He accused "greedy mega-rich oil companies" of being themselves the hooligans, ignoring runaway climate change and acting "in contempt of the societies of our children and grandchildren".
Greenpeace: Arctic 30 protester writes defiant letter
California on course for driest year on record
Thirsty California may get a smidgen of rain this coming week, but it is not likely to change what, so far, has been the driest calendar year in recorded history.
No rain at all fell in San Francisco in October and only 3.95 inches has fallen since Jan. 1, the smallest amount of precipitation to date since record keeping began 164 years ago, according to the National Weather Service.
Things can still change, but the storm predicted to roll in Monday and Tuesday has already petered out, according to forecasters, who are expecting only sprinkles, if that.
Train carrying oil derails, explodes in Alabama
A 90-car train carrying crude oil derailed in western Alabama on Friday, causing flames to burst hundreds of feet into the air.
The train was heading from the oil boomtowns of North Dakota to a Shell chemical plant near Mobile, Alabama. Unlike in recent oil train derailments, there were no reports of injuries or deaths. But the incident was another reminder of the dangers of North America’s increased reliance on a patchwork of railroads used to transport billions of gallons of newly discovered oil across the United States and Canada.
Colorado cities’ fracking bans could be canary in a coalmine
Three Colorado cities voted Tuesday to ban fracking, the kind of test that might be coming to states from California to North Carolina as oil and gas drilling surges from coast to coast.
The Colorado vote, happening in a state with a long history of energy development, was a trial of whether the oil and gas industry could overcome passionate opposition to the drilling practice that’s helped create an American energy boom.
Super Typhoon Haiyan, one of strongest storms ever, heads for central Philippines
Thousands of people in vulnerable areas of the Philippines are being relocated as one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever observed spins toward the country.
With sustained winds of 315 kph (195 mph) and gusts as strong as 380 kph (235 mph), Super Typhoon Haiyan was churning across the Western Pacific toward the central Philippines.
Tsunami debris to wash onto US shores over next few years
Debris from the deadly tsunami that struck Japan in 2011 has been floating in the Pacific Ocean and will likely wash onto North American shores over the next few years, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
"A significant amount of debris has already arrived on U.S. and Canadian shores, and it will likely continue arriving in the same scattered way over the next several years," NOAA officials said in a statement.
UN: CO2 pollution levels at annual record high
World carbon dioxide pollution levels in the atmosphere are accelerating and reached a record high in 2012, the U.N. weather agency said Wednesday.
The heat-trapping gas, pumped into the air by cars and smokestacks, was measured at 393.1 parts per million last year, up 2.2 ppm from the previous year, said the Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization in its annual greenhouse gas inventory.
That is far beyond the 350 ppm that some scientists and environmental groups promote as the absolute upper limit for a safe level.
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