Public

"F. Sherwood Rowland, the Nobel prize-winning chemist who sounded the alarm on the thinning of the Earth's ozone layer, has died at 84."

"A new study has documented the rapid growth in Canada of ticks that can cause Lyme disease, and global warming is thought to be a factor."

"The average amount of ice covering the Great Lakes declined 71 percent over the past 40 winters, with Lake Superior ice down 79 percent, according to a report published by the American Meteorological Society.

'There was a significant downward trend in ice coverage from 1973 to the present for all of the lakes,' states the study appearing in the society’s Journal of Climate.

"WILLIAMSTOWN, Australia -- The whale conservation group Sea Shepherd is celebrating victory as Japan ends its whaling season with less than a third of its annual self-assigned quota."

When some 18 girls in the upstate New York town of Le Roy developed unexplained tics and twitches starting in August 2011, many were quick to suspect that the cause was toxic substances in the environment. There had been a major chemical spill there in 1970. Erin Brockovich, of movie fame, started an investigation (as did EPA). But many of the potential chemical causes were ultimately discounted. Later hypotheses about the cause included sociological, psychological, and infectious factors. Today, many of the victims are doing better.

"The complete melt of the Greenland ice sheet could occur at lower global temperatures than previously thought, a study in the journal Nature Climate Change showed on Sunday, increasing the threat and severity of a rise in sea level."

Is it safe to extend the life of the aging US fleet of nuclear power plants -- even those whose obsolete designs match those of the failed reactors at Fukushima?

"TOKYO -- A year after a huge earthquake and tsunami caused nearly catastrophic meltdowns at a nuclear plant, Japan is still grappling with a crucial question: was the accident simply the result of an unforeseeable natural disaster or something that could have been prevented?

"Regulators on Friday told the owners of the nation's nuclear reactors to implement new safety rules based on the lessons learned from the earthquake and tsunami that crippled Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant a year ago. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said it authorized its staff to issue three immediately effective orders implementing some of the more urgent recommendations."