Environmental Glance
Researchers have published their most advanced calculation for the likely impact of melting ice on global sea levels. The EU funded team say the ice sheets and glaciers could add 36.8 centimetres to the oceans by 2100.
Adding in other factors, sea levels could rise by up to 69 centimetres, higher than previous predictions. The researchers say there is a very small chance that the seas around Britain could rise by a metre.
'Best estimate' for impact of melting ice on sea level rise
Alaska town to vanish by 2017, report says
When it comes to the fate of the 350 residents of Newtok, Alaska, the Guardian pulls no punches: "Exile is inevitable," it writes. That's because their coastal village, located about 480 miles west of Anchorage, is in the process of being washed into the Bering Sea.
As the Guardian explains in an in-depth look at the town, the Ninglick River flows past three of Newtok's sides on its path to the sea, and it's been chipping away at the village at a rate that's only grown more aggressive due to climate change (more than 100 feet of shoreline gone some years), which has been linked to melting permafrost and dwindling protective sea ice.
Grassroots campaigns can stop fracking one town at a time
New Yorkers worried about fracking have been looking at the impact it's had on their neighbors in Pennsylvania. Increasingly, they don't like what they see there. After a fact-finding tour to the town of Troy, in northern Pennsylvania, Terry Gipson, a New York state senator, reported that, despite signs of renewed economic activity in the region, he couldn't help wonder what will happen when the gas boom goes bust, as all booms inevitably do. Gipson asks:
"Envision a time when the trucks are gone, the lease money is spent, the trailers and the diners are empty, and all that is left is unusable farm land with a contaminated water supply. What will these people do then?"
The Mines that Fracking Built, Part Two
Keith Fossen never expected to join a grassroots environmental group, let alone help organize one from the ground up.
"I was so far over there on the conservative side … whenever I heard of anyone trying to do something for the environment, I was suspicious," Fossen said during an interview with Truthout. "I thought anything environmental was trying to control business."
Oklahoma order targets Keystone XL oil pipeline opponents
TransCanada said it filed a lawsuit in Oklahoma to ensure construction of the domestic leg of the Keystone XL pipeline is shielded from protesters.
TransCanada is building a 485-mile pipeline from the Cushing, Okla., oil storage hub to refineries along the southern U.S. coast. Construction crews have been met by activists from pipeline opposition group Great Plaints Tar Sands Resistance.
TransCanada filed a lawsuit seeking a restraining order against the group and about two dozen people involved in protests.
Fracking ourselves to death in Pennsylvania
More than 70 years ago, a chemical attack was launched against Washington state and Nevada. It poisoned people, animals, everything that grew, breathed air and drank water. The Marshall Islands were also struck. This formerly pristine Pacific atoll was branded "the most contaminated place in the world".
As their cancers developed, the victims of atomic testing and nuclear weapons development got a name: downwinders. What marked their tragedy was the darkness in which they were kept about what was being done to them. Proof of harm fell to them, not to the US government agencies responsible.
Global carbon dioxide in atmosphere passes milestone level
For the first time in human history, the concentration of climate-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has passed the milestone level of 400 parts per million (ppm). The last time so much greenhouse gas was in the air was several million years ago, when the Arctic was ice-free, savannah spread across the Sahara desert and sea level was up to 40 metres higher than today.
These conditions are expected to return in time, with devastating consequences for civilisation, unless emissions of CO2 from the burning of coal, gas and oil are rapidly curtailed. But despite increasingly severe warnings from scientists and a major economic recession, global emissions have continued to soar unchecked.
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