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Lead Test Results Confirm Worst Fears for Flint Family
Posted by NBC: None Given on February 5th, 2016
NBC: Deep down, the Brown family knew the water that had flowed through the pipes in their home in Flint, Michigan -- the water that 3-year-old Dana had been drinking for months before anyone was warned -- probably contained toxic lead.
This week, they got test results that confirmed their fears.
Water Defense, the anti-fracking and safe-water activist group headed by actor Mark Ruffalo, collected samples from Oscar and Elizabeth Brown's home last weekend and brought them to an independent lab in...
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At least 73 dead in guatemala mudslide, hundreds feared lost
Posted by NBC: None Given on October 4th, 2015
NBC: Hopes faded of finding any remaining survivors of a massive landslide in Guatemala that killed at least 73 people, even as families scrabbled through rubble hoping to find the bodies of loved-ones, with hundreds of others still missing.
Distraught relatives of the victims shoveled alongside diggers through the mounds of earth that destroyed homes in Santa Catarina Pinula on the southeastern flank of Guatemala City after the collapse of a hillside on Thursday night.
Every fresh batch of earth...
California Gov. Jerry Brown to Meet With Pope on Climate Change
Posted by NBC: None Given on July 10th, 2015
NBC: California Gov. Jerry Brown announced Thursday that he will travel to Vatican City later this month to discuss climate change and modern slavery with dignitaries including Pope Francis as the governor seeks to burnish his legacy as a climate change activist.
Brown, a former Jesuit seminarian, plans to attend a two-day event starting July 21 hosted by the Pontifical Academies of Sciences and Social Sciences.
The focus is on two issues highlighted in the pope's recent teaching document, called...
Study: Rising Ocean, Extreme Heat, Other Climate Change Effects Could Cost CA Billions
Posted by NBC: None Given on April 3rd, 2015
NBC: While a parched California copes with a long-term drought, water threatens to cost the state billions in a much different way if climate change continues unchecked, according to a new study. By 2050, rising sea levels could engulf between $8 and $10 billion in coastal property, with up to $10 billion more susceptible to tidal flooding, according to the study by climate change research group Risky Business. Gov. Brown Orders Unprecedented Water Reductions Climate change will likely deepen the drought,...
Climate Change Will Hit America in Breadbasket, Scientists Say
Posted by NBC: None Given on February 25th, 2015
NBC: Climate experts have seen the future of America's breadbasket — and from their perspective, it doesn't look pretty.
"I don't want to be a wheat farmer in Kansas in the future," said Harold Brooks, a senior scientist at the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, Oklahoma.
Brooks isn't a wheat farmer. He's a researcher who has analyzed how climate change could affect the weather in America's midsection, based on historical data and computer modeling. Last year, he and his colleagues found...
That Sinking Feeling: Rising Sea Level Isn’t Cities’ Only Water Worry
Posted by NBC: None Given on November 1st, 2014
NBC: Some of the world’s expanding coastal cities face a two-pronged threat involving water: Sticking giant straws into the ground to suck up freshwater can cause the ground below to sink at the same time that sea levels are rising.
That interplay between subsiding land and rising seas highlights an underappreciated risk in global climate change, according to scientists.
It’s not known how many people live on coastal lands that are sinking due to excessive groundwater pumping, but about 150 million...
California Drought Threatens Nation’s Most Productive Farming Valley
Posted by NBC: None Given on August 30th, 2014
NBC: In the rich farmland of the San Joaquin Valley it's summertime , peak growing season for many crops. But every sunbaked, scorching day brings another test of water reserves in a region running on empty.
The dearth of irrigation water from rivers or reservoirs has forced growers in the valley 80 miles north of Los Angeles to rely almost entirely on water pumped from wells. "I'm worried from a couple of standpoints," said grower Stuart Woolf, as he stood in a field of tomatoes at harvest time....
Heartland Water Crisis: Why the Planet Depends on These Kansas Farmers
Posted by NBC: None Given on July 13th, 2014
NBC: In America’s Breadbasket, a battle of ideas is underway on the most fundamental topics of all: food, water, and the future of the planet. Last August, in a still-echoing blockbuster study, Dave Steward, Ph.D., and his colleagues at Kansas State University, informed the $15 billion Kansas agricultural economy that it was on a fast track to oblivion. The reason: The precipitous, calamitous withdrawal rates of the Ogallala Aquifer. The Ogallala is little known outside this part of the world, but it’s...
Climate warming driving native trout to extinction, study says
Posted by NBC: None Given on May 26th, 2014
NBC: Montana fly fishing guide and shop owner Jason Lanier hooks a feisty rainbow trout almost every day he hits the waters in the lower valley of the Flathead River system. From an angler's perspective, the catch is a thrill. Rainbows put up a good fight, much better than the one offered by the state's native westslope cutthroat trout.
"And cutthroats that have some rainbow genetics in them typically fight harder for sure," the owner of the Bigfork Anglers Fly Shop told NBC News.
About 20 million...
Scientists: “Antarctic ice sheet collapse now unstoppable”
Posted by NBC: None Given on May 17th, 2014
NBC: The consequences of the warming planet are being quantified in a new report from ice researchers in the Antarctic. They say the collapse of the massive “West Antarctic Ice Sheet” has already begun, and the melting of this ice sheet into the ocean could raise sea levels by as much as 15 feet in the coming centuries. wo teams of scientists say the long-feared collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has begun, kicking off what they say will be a centuries-long, “unstoppable” process that could raise...