Free Republic

The world's first boardwalk was nailed down at the Jersey Shore in 1870 to solve the nuisance of sand being tracked into hotels. Now boardwalks themselves are the problem in some Shore towns. Plans to redo the fabled boards of Wildwood and Ocean City this fall have environmentalists and activists fighting local officials over the wood for the projects. In bid specifications for the work, both Cape May County towns have requested wood from the ipe, a tropical tree that grows in Central and South American rainforests, fragile regions some environmental groups argue are being ravaged by unscrupulous loggers. The...

Last year was the hottest on record, or the second hottest, depending on the records climatologists look at. The planet has warmed .8 degrees C over the past 150 years, and scientists are generally agreed that greenhouse gases have played a major part in that warming. They also agree that the warming will continue in the decades to come. Many experts are concerned that warming may make two unpleasant things more common: extinctions and diseases. In tomorrow's issue of Nature (link to come here), a team of scientists report on a case that ties these two dangers together: frogs have...