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Environmental advocates in states along the Mississippi River have won a round toward a long-term goal of having federal standards created to regulate farmland runoff and other pollution blamed for the oxygen-depleted “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico and problems in other bodies of water. In a ruling Friday, U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey in New Orleans gave the Environmental Protection Agency six months to decide whether to set Clean Water Act standards for nitrogen and phosphorous in all U.S. waterways or explain why they’re not needed. The EPA describes the nutrients on its website as “one of America’s...

How often do whales clean their ears? Well, never. And so, year after year, their ear wax builds up, layer upon layer. According to a study published Monday, these columns of ear wax contain a record of chemical pollution in the oceans. The study used the ear wax extracted from the carcass of a blue whale that washed ashore on a California beach back in 2007. Scientists at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History collected the wax from inside the skull of the dead whale and preserved it. The column of wax was almost a foot long. "It's kind...

MARTIN COUNTY — Algae found in the St. Lucie River is toxic, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection confirmed Tuesday. Martin County health officials have warned residents to stay out of the water. Check back for developments. Read more: http://www.wptv.com/dpp/news/region_martin_county/toxic-algae-confirmed-in-st-lucie-river-health-officials-warn-to-stay-out-of-water#ixzz2bEpjxEuk

For the past several years, those seeking to strangle the world economy by denying it access to carbon have tried to gain support for their initiatives by inventing a concept called “the social cost of carbon.” According to this notion, the use of carbon imposes a cost on society through global warming, and therefore regulations to restrict the use of carbon create benefits that can be measured in dollar terms. Pursuant to this strategy, the Environmental Protection Agency in 2010 hired a crowd of consultants to generate estimates that would be useful for the cause. This they dutifully did, producing...

Former Electric-car Engineer: Electric Cars Pollute More Than Gas The New American 12 July 2013 Is the only "green" aspect of electric cars the money some companies make off them? If former plug-in advocate and General Motors engineer Ozzie Zehner (shown) is correct, this is exactly the case. Author of the book Green Illusions, Zehner once built his own hybrid car that could run on electricity or natural gas. And, he writes in a recent article entitled "Unclean at Any Speed," he was convinced cars such as his "would help reduce both pollution and fossil-fuel dependence." But he now...

Pollution is killing the world; a strong statement, but true. Certain levels of pollution are considered acceptable by many, such as vehicle exhaust fumes, but large levels of pollution must be controlled. Unfortunately the general attitude towards pollution in many countries, especially the US, is pretty lax. People do go to jail for crimes against the environment, but it is very rare, with soft fines usually the main form of punishment. In Europe environmental regulations are far tougher, and jail terms and hefty fines are far more common. Yet still pollution continues. Maybe in order to fully dissuade companies from...

A Mongolian neo-Nazi group has rebranded itself as an environmentalist organization fighting pollution by foreign-owned mines, seeking legitimacy as it sends Swastika-wearing members to check mining permits. Tsagaan Khass, or White Swastika, has only 100-plus members but it is one of several groups with names like Dayar Mongol (Whole Mongolia), Gal Undesten (Fire Nation) and Khukh Mongol (Blue Mongolia), expanding a wave of resource nationalism as foreign firms seek to exploit the mineral wealth of the vast country, landlocked between Russia and China. From an office behind a lingerie store in the Mongolian capital, the shaven-headed, jackbooted Tsagaan Khass stormtroopers...

The shocking minutes relating to President Putin’s meeting this past week with US Secretary of State John Kerry reveal the Russian leaders “extreme outrage” over the Obama regimes continued protection of global seed and plant bio-genetic giants Syngenta and Monsanto in the face of a growing “bee apocalypse” that the Kremlin warns “will most certainly” lead to world war. According to these minutes, released in the Kremlin today by the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation (MNRE), Putin was so incensed over the Obama regimes refusal to discuss this grave matter that he refused for three...

Breathing Emission Particles Turns HDL Cholesterol From 'Good' To 'Bad' Article Date: 18 May 2013 Academic researchers have found that breathing motor vehicle emissions triggers a change in high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, altering its cardiovascular protective qualities so that it actually contributes to clogged arteries. In addition to changing HDL from "good" to "bad," the inhalation of emissions activates other components of oxidation, the early cell and tissue damage that causes inflammation, leading to hardening of the arteries, according to the research team, which included scientists from UCLA and other institutions. The findings of this early study, done in mice,...

Despite the improvements, 4 in 10 Americans live where pollution levels are often dangerous to breathe. Since the ALA began studying particle pollution, almost all of the most polluted cities have consistently remained among the worst. Pittsburgh has been one of the 10 most polluted cities since 2004. The cities of Bakersfield and Merced, in California, are the most polluted cities in the U.S. this year and have been among the 25 most polluted since at least 2004. They are among many California cities, including Los Angeles, that have struggled with pollution for some time. The ALA’s 2013 “State of...

Previewing an upcoming story for NBC's Rock Center on Friday's Today, correspondent Ann Curry warned that tribes of the Amazon rain forest "are sharpening their spears and preparing their blow guns to fight Ecuador's new plan to auction as much as 8 million acres of the rain forest for oil drilling." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] She then cited Boston University biology professor Kelly Swing arguing that "America, a top importer of oil from Ecuador, shares responsibility for this coming conflict....And the toxic legacy of past oil drilling in other parts of the rain...

BOSTON — San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer is giving Democrats a taste of the divisive, big-spending primary battles that have caused Republicans so much heartburn over the past four years.And he says it’s for their own good.The former hedge fund trader-turned-philanthropist is bankrolling a far-flung political operation pushing environmental causes and candidates, including his pricey effort to torpedo the Keystone XL oil pipeline. He's increasingly drawing scrutiny for trying to take down the Senate candidacy of Massachusetts Rep. Stephen Lynch, a Democrat who has expressed support for Keystone.Steyer is signaling that his efforts against Lynch are just the beginning of...

When you buy a car, there are various ratings outfits in the business of calculating the true cost of owning that particular vehicle, inc. insurance, depreciation, maintenance, cost of repairs, etc. Such a comprehensive model is surely more realistic than just looking at the monthly payment or sticker price, and the customer knows if they're actually making a cost-effective, bottom-line decision. But even if you buy-into the now imploding globaloney scam, wouldn't it make sense to apply similar logic to calculate the entire environmental impact of electric vs. internal combustion cars over the full service life... esp since the actual...

And the environmental pressure groups wanted you to believe solar energy was “clean” and “green.” If that’s true, then why do we keep hearing the words “toxic” and “hazardous” connected with the production of solar panels – especially with the companies that fail? The latest example of phony eco-purity is Abound Solar, which declared bankruptcy last summer after it had received $70 million of a $400 million Department of Energystimulus loan guarantee. According to news reports from Colorado, where Abound was based, the state Department of Public Health and Environment found 2,000 pallets of solar panels that couldn’t be sold...

The import or export of mercury is set to be banned © ShutterstockAfter six days of complex discussions in Geneva last week, governments from around the world agreed to a global, legally-binding treaty on Saturday to limit mercury use. This is the first new major environmental treaty in over a decade.The Minamata Convention on Mercury – named after the Japanese city where thousands of residents fell ill with mercury poisoning in the 1950s – covers a range of products and processes where mercury is used or released. Countries will be invited to ratify the treaty, which took four years to...

People have been warning us for years that drilling for oil in the Alaskan arctic would lead to big environmental trouble. It’s not that the technology hasn’t advanced to the point where it can be done safely, but those nasty people in charge of the projects just don’t care about the environment. These Mother Earth Hating Monsters would clearly let the whole thing go to H. E. double toothpicks and ruin the pristine beauty of the wilderness. Well, I guess they turned out to be right. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has agreed to plug at least one additional...

Are the stars finally aligned for a global climate change treaty? After years of frustration, momentum seemed to change in an instant last Monday. President Obama’s second inaugural address made it clear he was going to lead the world on the issue, his words a “clarion call to action” as one observer put it. Obama’s first term was marked by one failure after another on the climate issue. For instance, his efforts to craft an agreement at Copenhagen in December 2009 were frustrated by developing nations, and subsequent conferences, such as the one last November and December in Doha, have...

A wayward dolphin that meandered into a polluted urban canal, riveting onlookers as it splashed around in the filthy water and shook black gunk from its snout, died Friday evening, marine experts said. The deep-freeze weather hadn’t seemed to faze the dolphin as it swam in the Gowanus Canal, which runs 1.5 miles through a narrow industrial zone near some of Brooklyn’s wealthiest neighborhoods. … The filthy canal was named a Superfund site in 2010, meaning the government can force polluters to pay for its restoration. For more than a century before, coal yards, chemical factories and fuel refineries on...

In a court settlement with the EPA, Edge Products, a manufacturer of electronic power modules for diesel engines, has agreed to pay a $500,000 fine for manufacturing and selling electronic devices that allowed owners of Chevy, GMC, Ford and Dodge/Ram diesel pickup trucks (2007 and later) to remove the programming for diesel particulate filters from their vehicles. The Ogden, Utah, company is reported to have sold more than 9,000 units from January 2009 through April 2011. This is said to have resulted in an estimated 158 tons of excess particulate matter emissions — the equivalent of 422 new long-haul semitrailers...

BEIJING is frequently shrouded in dense, yellowish smog so thick that the other side of the road is obscured. But the deadly smog that enveloped the city over the past weekend was so bad that air-quality readings from a monitor on the roof of the American Embassy said simply: "Beyond Index". The embassy uses the US Environmental Protection Agency's air-quality index (AQI), which measures the concentration of PM 2.5 (total mass of particulate matter of 2.5-micron diameter or smaller per cubic metre). Such particles are small enough to be inhaled and can damage lungs. The AQI range ends at 500;...