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Think new climate report is scary? The food-pocalypse is already upon us

Guardian: The mother of all climate reports is so scary that one of its authors resigned from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in protest. "Farmers are not stupid," the Sussex University economist Richard Tol said this past week, as hundreds of researchers cloistered away in Yokohama, Japan, hammering out the final wording of a document that he called "alarmist" when it comes to the many threats of global warming. The people who grow our food will find ways to adapt, said the rogue climate...

Can the new EPA chief stop Obama approving the Keystone XL pipeline?

Guardian: Environmentalists got some bad news when the State Department released a report on Friday – a full month earlier than had been anticipated – saying that there are no convincing environmental reasons that the Keystone XL pipeline should not be built. This just two weeks after thousands of demonstrators gathered at the National Mall for what has been called the largest climate rally ever. Environmental groups have joined in a rare united front to block the pipeline. If built, activists predict that...

America’s nuclear safety under scrutiny after Oyster Creek’s Sandy alert | Richard Schiffman

Guardian: We know the bad news about superstorm Sandy: the Jersey shore was devastated and many towns remain waterlogged. New York suffered a direct hit, with the city's mass transit system flooded and part-paralyzed for days to come. But there is good news, too, and that is all that it failed to do. Sandy did not kill hundreds – as Hurricane Katrina did in New Orleans in 2005 – thanks, in part, to timely evacuations and rescue efforts. And luckily, it did not trigger an even greater disaster at one of...