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NASA: Massive Antarctic Ice Shelf Disappear Completely Few Years

ThinkProgress: An Antarctic ice shelf roughly half the size of Rhode Island will disintegrate completely within the next few years, according to a NASA study released Thursday. In 2002, two-thirds of the Larsen B Ice Shelf - which had been intact for more than 10,000 years - broke up in less than six weeks. The remaining portion of the ice shelf covers about 625 square miles along the Antarctic Peninsula, extending toward the southern tip of South America. Using data collected from airborne surveys and radar,...

Fracking Wells Could Pollute the Air Hundreds of Miles Away

ThinkProgress: Air pollution from hydraulic fracturing operations can likely travel hundreds of miles, even into states with little or no fracking, a new study has found. The study, published in the journal Atmospheric Environment, looked at hourly measurements of air pollutants like ethane and methane - gases that are found in natural gas - in Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, D.C. between 2010 and 2013. It found that ethane measurements increased by 30 percent between 2010 and 2013 in the region. The...

Big Insurance Companies Warning US To Prepare For Climate Change

ThinkProgress: A coalition of big insurance companies, consumer groups, and environmental advocates are urging the United States to overhaul its disaster policies in the face of increasingly extreme weather due to human-caused climate change. According to a report released Tuesday by the SmarterSafer coalition, the U.S. needs to increase how much it spends on pre-disaster mitigation efforts and infrastructure protection. That way, it asserts, the U.S. can stop wasting so much money on cleaning up after a disaster...

Climate Change Must Factor Into Decisions To Drill On Public Lands

ThinkProgress: Secretary Sally Jewell yesterday called for reform to the way that the Department of the Interior manages America’s energy resources in order to address the causes of climate change. In a bold speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Secretary Jewell outlined the Department of the Interior’s energy priorities and laid out three goals of “safe and responsible energy development, good government, and encouraging innovation” in the final two years of the Obama Administration....

TransCanada Seizing People’s Land to Build Keystone; Conservatives Silent

ThinkProgress: For Julia Trigg Crawford, watching TransCanada construct the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline on a corner of her 600-acre farm was “gut-wrenching.” Crawford, who lives in Direct, Texas, had been trying since 2011 to keep the pipeline company off her property. But she ultimately lost, the portion of her land needed for the pipeline condemned through eminent domain - a process by which government can force citizens to sell their property for "public use," such as the building of roads, railroads,...

Kentucky Coal Company Falsified Water Pollution Reports, Environmental Group Alleges

ThinkProgress: A major Kentucky coal company falsified its pollution reports in the first quarter of 2014, according to multiple environmental groups that filed an intent to sue notice against the company this week. Appalachian Voices, Kentucky Riverkeeper, Kentuckians For The Commonwealth, and the Waterkeeper Alliance sent a notice of intent to sue to Frasure Creek Mining Monday, alleging that the company failed to report water pollution to Kentucky regulators in late summer and early fall of 2014, instead...

Lake Erie Toxic Algae, Blame Climate Change And Invasive Mussels

ThinkProgress: Lake Erie is increasingly plagued by toxic algae blooms each summer, and a new study suggests how climate change and mussels, of all things, may be to blame. On Thursday, the Columbus Dispatch reported on the new research and computer modeling, which show neither rising water temperatures nor runoff from fertilizers and sewage - the traditional causes cited - fully account for the blooms. According to the paper, published in Water Resources Research, climate change may be providing cyanobacteria...

Denying Climate Change ‘Will Cost Us Billions Of Dollars”

ThinkProgress: The new U.S. director of the Office of Management and Budget used his first speech to talk about the dangers not acting on climate change poses to the federal budget. Shaun Donovan, head of the OMB, said in a speech at the Center for American Progress Friday that acting on climate change is "tremendously important" to him and that it`s "critical to our ability to operate and fund the government in a responsible manner." "From where I sit, climate action is a must do; climate inaction is a can’t...

Historic Wildfires Burn Through Canada As Sub-Arctic Forests Heat Up

ThinkProgress: Wildfires are taking off in Canada as the country goes through one of its hottest and driest summers in decades. Wildfire activity in the Northwest Territories is more than six times higher than its 25-year average, and as of August 23 a total of 162 wildfires were burning in British Columbia. The latter province has seen 1,269 wildfires so far this year, along with 314,895 hectares of land burned - almost equivalent to 2010, when the province lost 337,149 hectares to various blazes. The fires...

Fire At Ohio Fracking Well Forced Evacuations And Likely Contributed Fish Kill

ThinkProgress: An explosive fire at an Ohio fracking well was likely the cause of a chemical leak into a stream that contributed to the death of fish as far as five miles away from the the fire`s site, Ohio officials said Monday. Over the weekend, a mechanical malfunction sparked a fire on the well pad of a fracking operation in Monroe County, Ohio, a blaze that caused explosions and forced evacuations of people who lived within a mile of the well. The people were evacuated as a precaution "because of the chemicals...