Stormwater pollution from cities and suburbs is fouling the nation's waterways, and the U.S. EPA is failing to do much about it, says a new National Academy of Sciences report commissioned by the EPA itself. Rain and melted snow run along paved surfaces -- which show up more and more frequently these days -- picking up oil, trash, motor fuels, dog poo, chemicals, and more, and dumping it all in rivers, lakes, and streams. "EPA's current approach is not likely to produce an accurate picture of the extent of the problem, nor is it likely to control stormwater's contribution to impairing water quality," says the report; "radical changes" are needed to rein in runoff and keep waterways swimmable and fishable. The authors suggest putting local governments in charge of stormwater management instead of developers, emphasizing volume control, taking watershed location into account when issuing pollution permits, and (duh) conserving natural space.

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

Related Links:

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Cast your vote for the best climate journalism

The science behind a climate headline

A 17-member panel of researchers from the National Academy of Sciences released a report yesterday discouraging President Bush from continuing on his quest to resume U.S. nuclear waste reprocessing. The researchers said the president's proposed Global Nuclear Energy Partnership plan has not been adequately peer reviewed and relies on unproven technology. Instead, the panel suggested that money currently going to GNEP should be redirected -- to speeding construction of new nuclear power plants. Sigh, and we were all set to be cheery there for a moment.

Related Links:

Science historian Weart on global warming

Michael Mann updates the world on the latest climate science

Contest — Rename “Climategate” after the crime, not the victim

Wind power is controversial but should keep on keeping on, says report

U.S. wind-power capacity has quadrupled in the past six years and could eventually produce up to 7 percent of the nation's electricity. Easy-breezy? Not quite: Wind-industry growth lacks "any truly coordinated planning," says a report from the National Academy of Sciences. Developers and officials should receive more guidance, particularly around siting, NAS says; in the helpful words of contributor Paul G. Risser, "The human impacts of wind farms can be both positive and negative." Among the positives are global effects like cleaner air and less oil use, but those are balanced, according to NAS, by negative local effects like noise, disrupted views, and effects on bats and birds. The report cites inadequate research on feathered-friend fatalities, but grants that more birds are killed by foes like vehicles, buildings, power lines, and cats than turbines. To sum up: keep on with the wind power, as it helps mitigate The Most Important Problem of Our Time. Just don't make decisions on the fly.

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

EPA should reassess dioxin risk, science panel says

The U.S. EPA may be overestimating the cancer-causing risk of the chemical dioxin at very low doses, and should crunch the numbers in new ways before setting a cleanup standard, says a research council from the National Academy of Sciences. The EPA published a draft report on dioxin in 2003 indicating that the level of dioxin exposure assessed as safe in 1985 could be up to 10 times too high, but the agency has made no policy decisions based on that assessment in the meantime. The NAS council did confirm that dioxin causes cancer and reproductive and immune-system problems in humans. Dioxin, a component of Agent Orange, is emitted by various industries (particularly those that use chlorine) and accumulates in fatty meat and dairy products. The EPA estimates that U.S. dioxin emissions have been cut by 92 percent since 1987, but the slow-degrading chemical is widespread in the environment and human population and can take decades to leave the body.

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

Some scientists look to geoengineering to stave off climate change

What will it take to stop global warming? Reducing developed-world consumption and funding clean technologies in the developing world? Boooring. Human-engineered ultra-reflecting clouds, altered carbon-soaking oceans, trillions of little sunshades floating in space? Now we're talking! "We should treat these ideas like any other research and get into the mind-set of taking them seriously," says the president of the National Academy of Sciences. Geoengineering -- large-scale rearranging of the earth's environment so that we can continue to live here comfortably -- has produced such suggestions as reflecting the sun's rays with white plastic islands in the oceans or injecting the stratosphere with sulfur dioxide, increasing reflectivity (and acid rain). If international efforts to curb emissions (such as they are) fail, geoengineering "is the only option available to rapidly reduce temperature rises," wrote Nobel laureate researcher Paul Crutzen. He added, "So far, there is little reason to be optimistic." Yippee.

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Expert panel backs Energy Department nuke-waste transport plan

An expert panel organized by the National Academy of Sciences has concluded that it's likely safe to ship tens of thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel to Nevada for disposal. After all, what could go wrong? [Spends a moment in terrified contemplation.] The panel reviewed the Department of Energy's plans for trucking and train-transporting about 70,000 tons of nuclear waste from some 70 sites in over 30 states to Nevada's Yucca Mountain disposal facility -- a process DOE estimates could take 24 years. It found that risks of radiation and other health-negative impacts from shipments were "generally low." But the experts also noted that they couldn't assess risks to shipments because they couldn't access classified information, and called for an investigation of such security issues by a body independent of both the nuclear industry and the government. We're sure the Bush administration will get all over that.

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Science academies from 11 countries say global warming is, yes, real

Yesterday, national science academies from 11 nations cosigned a letter to the world's leaders, making an unprecedented joint statement: Global warming is almost certainly caused by human activity; it's the biggest risk we've ever faced as a species; please #$&!*% do something about it. Signatories include science organizations from every member of the G8 group of industrialized nations, plus Brazil, China, and India, the three leading greenhouse-gas emitters in the developing world. The agitated scientists released the statement a month ahead of the G8's July summit, where summit leader U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair will push for a strong, unified statement on climate change. What's more, they spoke up on the very day that Blair was meeting with President Bush -- a tireless advocate of, uh, studying the problem more -- in Washington, D.C. Known for his indifference toward international opinion, Bush was no doubt relieved that at least the U.S. National Academy of Sciences never signs on to these things ... oh, wait, this time it did.

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Spent nuclear fuel vulnerable to terrorist attacks, experts warn

Despite its renewed popularity (even Umbra's giving it a second look!), nuclear power makes the eggheads at the National Academy of Sciences nervous. Specifically, a new NAS report raises red flags about the dangers posed by possible terrorist attacks on the pools of spent fuel rods stored at nuclear reactors all over the country. Such attacks could set off fires and spread radiation in the surrounding environment, the scientists warn, urging that each of the country's 103 commercial reactors be evaluated to determine if alternative storage methods would be safer. Nuclear-safety advocates praised the report, saying it acknowledged for the first time the vulnerability of spent fuel. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and nuke-industry officials disagree with the report's authors and say the spent-fuel pools would not make for easy targets. Says industry spokesflack Craig Nesbit, "I am more worried about getting hit by a meteor walking out of my front door in the morning." We think he intends that to be comforting.

Related Links:

Obama headed to Copenhagen, sets the bar for success

Obama going to Copenhagen

‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science

Pombo says: Eat up!

House Resources Committee Chair Richard Pombo (R-Calif.) -- longtime bete noire of the environmental community -- cooked up what appears to be some fishy science in a report released last week titled "Mercury in Perspective: Fact and Fiction About the Debate Over Mercury" [PDF].

The report -- written not by scientists but rather by aides to Pombo and another member of his committee, Rep. Jim Gibbons (R-Nev.) -- aims to downplay the overwhelming evidence that mercury from coal-burning power plants poses a significant health risk to Americans. Two of the report's claims are particularly stunning, as science journalist Chris C. Mooney points out. One: "There has been no credible evidence of harm to pregnant women or their unborn children from regular consumption of fish." And two: "Current, peer-reviewed scientific literature does not show any link between U.S. power-plant emissions and mercury in fish."

The report ignores reams of data indicating that mercury disrupts fetal development and can cause learning and memory disabilities in children, as well as recent research linking mercury exposure to increased risk of cardiac problems in adults. And it gives short shrift to the well-established fact that coal-burning power plants are the major industrial source of mercury pollution in the U.S.

The national controversy over mercury pollution, having simmered for more than a year, will finally come to a boil on March 15, when the Bush EPA is legally required to finalize its rule determining how rigorously the toxic pollutant will be regulated. The first draft of the rule, published in January 2004, was roundly criticized by dozens of members of Congress, public-health advocates, and environmental groups for being notably weaker than a rule proposed during the Clinton administration.

The Clinton-era proposal would have required mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants to be aggressively reduced using the best technology available on the market -- or, as the wonks put it, maximum achievable control technology (MACT) -- which would slash emissions by as much as 90 percent within a year, starting in 2008. In contrast, the Bush administration's draft rule proposes a cap-and-trade program requiring smaller and slower reductions of 70 percent from 2005 levels by 2018. And critics argue that these results would not be fully achieved until 2025, due to the nature of the market-based trading system.

Richard Pombo.

The Pombo-Gibbons report argues in favor of the Bush administration's mercury-reduction plan, just in time to feed the heated tussle expected to break out in coming weeks as the final rule is released. "The report is essentially a preemptive strike," said John Walke, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, the environmental group that sued the EPA over delays on its mercury rule and forced it to comply with a March 15 deadline.

According to Walke, the report repeatedly references data from industry-funded groups such as the Edison Electric Institute and the Electric Power Research Institute, the latter a "quasi-scientific body that has repackaged the basic talking points that the utility industry has been relying on for years," he said. Walke accuses congressional Republicans of trying to drum up "wildly off-base claims about mercury just to make EPA's abominable rule look good by comparison."

But Pombo counters that it's the environmentalists who are wildly off-base. "[I]t is clear that some special-interest groups are crying wolf," he said last week in a public statement. Matt Streit, a spokesperson for the House Resources Committee, echoed this sentiment: "Any single green group you can name has something to say on mercury, and probably it's half truth and half misinformation. The risk has been overplayed by environmentalists."

The report itself slams greens: "As a result of the well-funded effort to push their political agenda, environmentalists have caused American citizens to become unnecessarily concerned about possible adverse health effects from exposure to trace amounts of mercury," it reads.

Of course, environmental groups are hardly alone in declaring mercury a public-health danger. The National Academy of Sciences and the EPA have warned of the risks of mercury exposure and determined that individuals should restrict their intake of fish and other seafood in order to limit exposure. And the Food and Drug Administration, along with at least 45 state agencies, have released health advisories warning of dangerous mercury contamination in fish.

Add to that the tri-partisan coalition of 45 senators which last April sent a letter to the EPA exhorting the agency to draft a stronger mercury plan, saying current proposals "fall far short of what the law requires and they fail to protect the health of our children and our environment. ... We do not believe [they] are sufficient or defensible."

Nevertheless, the Pombo-Gibbons report repeatedly criticizes the EPA's current standards for safe levels of mercury in fish. "Scaring people away from consuming fish is creating a public health crisis in its own right," it claims.

According to Streit, Americans "are on the bottom of the scale" of worldwide fish consumption. "We actually don't consume enough fish as it is," he said. When asked whether women of childbearing age should heed government advisories on fish consumption, Streit conceded, "Yes, but there are segments of the population that aren't at risk, and even they are reducing their fish intake, despite the fact that it's an important part of their diet. Like, I don't have to worry about eating fish."

Environmentalists argue that this attitude disregards evidence that mercury can impair the cardiovascular health of adult men and women. Moreover, they say, the report's boosters are trotting out these fish-consumption worries as a red herring, when their real concern is a threat to the coal and power industries' bottom lines.

As Gibbons said last week, "With a more restrictive, unnecessary regulation we could see a large portion of this country's coal supplies become useless." And the report itself argues, "Issuing an inflexible MACT rule without a commercially available and cost-effective technology that has been proven reliable is irresponsible and will force the premature closure of some coal-fired plants and/or encourage fuel switching. Either scenario exacerbates our existing energy problems."

Environmentalists dismiss the argument that MACT technology is too expensive, saying that the economic benefits of curbing mercury emissions -- which would come from reduced medical costs for those affected by exposure, higher demand for fish, and revitalized tourism at fishing destinations -- would far outweigh the cost of using pollution-control technologies. Moreover, recent innovations have already reduced the cost of these technologies in response to newly implemented state-level mercury regulations.

According to a report [PDF] by the National Wildlife Federation, implementing the MACT rule would be affordable even without these innovations: "If you spread the cost of applying pollution controls out to average households it would be the equivalent of about a cup of coffee a month -- ranging from less than a dollar to three dollars, depending on the utility," said Olivia Campbell of NWF, who worked on the report.

These costs look trivial relative to the human health threat posed by the neurotoxin. Oh, and last we checked, the EPA was an agency designed to protect public health, not the well-being of King Coal.

Related Links:

Vinod Khosla Nonesense

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

Clean Air Act more effective than proposed Clear Skies bill, panel says

A new report by the National Academy of Sciences suggests that the Bush administration's proposed reform of current air-quality standards will effectively do less to reduce pollution than existing Clean Air Act regulations, much as critics, including John Kerry (remember him?), charged during the presidential campaign. The NAS assessment states that the 28-year-old new-source review rules requiring emissions-reducing upgrades in existing power plants is more stringent than the cap-and-trade program proposed in the Clear Skies legislation. Industry groups disagree, as does Will Hart, spokesflack for Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chair James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who says, "It's the same argument we've had before." Exactly.

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Obama administration may (finally) offer greenhouse-gas targets

The Climate Post: You heard it here first—Copenhagen a success

NAS report on safe perchlorate levels creating controversy

A National Academy of Sciences panel report on safe levels of perchlorate -- an ingredient in rocket fuel, firecrackers, and road flares -- in drinking water has some enviros up in arms. The report, released yesterday, suggests that levels of perchlorate about 20 times higher than the U.S. EPA's proposed guideline of 1 part per billion may be safe for ingestion. But the Natural Resources Defense Council claims the panel was strong-armed into producing results that would save the defense industry billions of dollars in cleanup costs at the 250-some areas in 35 states with affected water supplies. "We've never seen such a brazen campaign to pressure the National Academy of Sciences to downplay the hazards of a chemical, but it fits the pattern of this administration manipulating science at the expense of public health," NRDC said. Other enviros, including Bill Walker of the Environmental Working Group, say that they accept the findings and that the panel's numbers are much closer to the EPA's than the "absurdly high levels" the Pentagon has been saying are safe.

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Obama administration may (finally) offer greenhouse-gas targets

Toward a medically defensible energy policy

Basically, the Army Corps has flipped us the bird -- at a time when it's supposed to be saving the birds."

Hello, Big Muddy.

Photo: FWS.

That's how Eric Eckl, spokesperson for American Rivers, sums up the Army Corps of Engineers' new plan to manage the Missouri River, released on Friday to blistering protest and threats of a new round of lawsuits from the environmental community.

The plan disregards more than a decade of calls to restore the natural flows of the beloved "Big Muddy" -- calls from scientists at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Academy of Sciences, and from a federal court last year that demanded the Corps change river flows to comply with the Endangered Species Act.

Since about 1990, scientists have identified an increasingly pressing need to recreate more natural spring and summer flows in the Missouri -- whose waters are controlled by six enormous hydroelectric dams -- to prevent extinction of the river's endangered and threatened populations of sturgeon, tern, and plover and guard against future flooding. Just this past December, scientists from the FWS confirmed once again the need to alter flows, even after the research team was replaced at the 11th hour with new scientists at the Corps' behest.

The environmental community was generally pleased with the new team's results, but according to Chad Smith, director of the Nebraska field office for American Rivers, "In retrospect, it's become clear that the new team amended a 300-page report in such a hurry that they created loopholes which the Corps has been able to exploit."

Smith argues that the loopholes allow the Corps to manufacture 1,200 acres of artificial habitat for imperiled species rather than take the more effective and less costly route of restoring the river's natural flows. And the Corps plans to do it in a mere four months, by July 1, rather than in the several-year time frame that FWS scientists predicted it would take.

"This would not only be an extraordinarily irresponsible rush job," said Smith. "It's impossible. It simply can't be done."

But Craig Manson, assistant secretary of the interior for fish, wildlife, and parks, says his agency supports the Corps' interpretation of the scientific results. "This is not a loophole, it's written in black and white," says Manson. "The biological opinion says that if the Corps can create the new habitat, they can operate at higher flows. Only the Corps knows if they can recreate the habitat effectively in that time frame; and if they can, that's just fine."

Tom Daschle.

Photo: U.S. Senate.

Beltway politicians have also jumped into the fray. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), whose state straddles a northern section of the Missouri and would benefit from increased recreation as a result of healthier fish and bird populations and higher water levels in reservoirs, criticized the plan in a statement on Friday: "I am disappointed that the best the Corps can come up with is a document that provides little more than the status quo [and] blatantly ignores sound science."

On the other side of the boxing ring is Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), who objects vehemently to river-flow changes, arguing that they would cripple the barge industry in his state as well as the farmers who ship their cargo up and down the river. Bond is so vocal about the issue that when President Bush attended a fundraiser for the senator this past summer, he appeased Bond with a declaration that no federal agency should govern the flow of the longest river in America.

Less than a week before the Corps came out with its revised plan, Bond was sounding his battle cry against river-flow changes. "Unless clarified, the Department of Interior's 2003 Missouri River biological opinion will cause extreme harm to farmers, transporters, electrical consumers, and municipalities on the lower Missouri and Mississippi rivers," Bond said at a meeting with industry representatives on Feb. 21.

Endangered Missouri River sturgeon could be up a creek.

Photo: FWS.

After the plan was unveiled, Bond's office issued a press release that evoked Bush's commitment, saying the senator has "talked to the president and high-level administration officials on a number of occasions, and will continue to push the administration to make good on its promise."

But environmental groups are also ready to rumble. "We've been fighting this fight for years, with the support of local communities, federal courts, and the soundest science. You can be sure we aren't going to stop now," says Eckl, whose organization is in the midst of a lawsuit against the Corps and intends to integrate these new developments into the case. "The scientific evidence is so overwhelmingly stacked against this plan that there's simply no way a federal court can condone it."

Enviros are up against a formidable foe, given that Bush himself has a vested interest in Missouri, a swing state with more electoral votes than any of the six other states that share the river. But the president has been conspicuously quiet on the issue lately, having said nothing about it in his recent campaign visits to the state, despite election-year pressure to keep his Missouri constituency happy. Perhaps he realizes that this issue is a political lightning rod -- if he grabs hold of it, environmentalists may use it to fry him in other Missouri River basin states this election season.

The Corps will accept public comments on its Missouri River management plan between March 5 and March 19.

Related Links:

Water, conflict, and security on the banks of the Hudson

Will EPA veto or regulate the plunder of Appalachia?

Mountaintop Removal Hearings Get Tense

Enviro Groups Ask EPA to Halt Ash Dumping

A coalition of 125 environmental groups has filed a petition with the U.S. EPA, asking it to immediately halt the dumping of waste ash from coal-fired power plants. They claim the ash contains a variety of toxins and pollutes ground, surface, and drinking water. The EPA promised in 2000 to develop regulations but has yet to take any action; a spokesperson said that the agency is waiting for the National Academy of Sciences to complete a study in 18 months so they can review its findings. Meanwhile, 130 million tons of waste ash are produced annually. Said Lisa Graves Marcucci, director of a coalition member group, "EPA's legacy to my children and community shouldn't be cancer, learning disabilities, or other health problems simply because they wouldn't take precautionary steps to protect us."

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Capturing the massive social benefits of fuel efficiency requires regulation

Toward a medically defensible energy policy

Lest you think environmental news is all gloom, all the time, here's a little pick-me-up: Thanks to the Clean Air Act, the U.S. has all but eradicated carbon monoxide pollution, one of the most hazardous air emissions, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences reported yesterday. In 1971, when the act set federal standards for carbon monoxide, 90 percent of monitored areas violated them. Now, just a handful of places still have CO troubles (including Anchorage, Alaska, and some Southern California cities), and usually only for one or two days per year. As a result, the health impacts, which include accidental poisoning and premature death from heart disease, have also radically declined. The NAS attributed the success to stringent emissions standards for automobiles and refineries.

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Ask Umbra on trash, toxics, and tots

Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change

The Bush administration's proposal for addressing climate change was subjected to withering criticism by 17 experts in a report released yesterday. The experts, who were convened by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences at the request of the administration, said that the proposal lacked "a guiding vision, executable goals, [and] clear timetables" and that its goal -- to determine the seriousness of global warming in order to make sound decisions about how to address it -- could never be achieved at the current funding level sought by the White House. The panel also criticized parts of the proposal for seeking to fund research on questions about which there is already a scientific consensus: One expert said, "It's as if these people were not cognizant of the existing science. Stuff that would have been cutting edge in 1980 is listed as a priority for the future." The Bush administration said it welcomed the recommendations and pledged that some of them would be reflected in the final proposal, slated to be released in April.

Related Links:

EPA not great at regulating stormwater pollution, says report

A look back at James Hansen’s seminal testimony on climate, part one

Research panel discourages presidential plan for U.S. nuclear-waste reprocessing

Researchers at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, have established a first-ever link between urban air pollution and genetic damage that can be passed on from generation to generation. In a study published in the most recent issue of the U.S. journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, biologists at the university found that male laboratory mice that were placed downwind of two different steel mills in and around Hamilton for 10 weeks underwent one and a half to two times as many genetic mutations as a control group placed in a rural, mill-less area; the damaged genes were then passed on to the mice's offspring. The scientists warned that genetic mutations can increase the risk of cancer and birth defects and said human genes were likely to be affected in the same way, but stopped short of making a direct comparison between the fate of the lab mice and human health.

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Toward a medically defensible energy policy

Ask Umbra on trash, toxics, and tots

In the name of keeping sensitive information out of the hands of terrorists, the Bush administration has restricted access to a broad range of scientific research -- removing Internet links, deleting information from websites, and even requiring federal librarians to destroy a CD-ROM about public water supplies. The information lockdown is making it tough for scientists to get their work done and for the public to keep an eye on government goings-on; for example, researchers at the University of Michigan lost access to a U.S. EPA database that was crucial to their three-year study of hazardous-waste facilities. Environmental organizations are dismayed by the limited, expensive, or nonexistent access -- as are the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and National Institute of Medicine. The heads of the three independent academies sent a letter to President Bush Friday criticizing his administration's creation of an ill-defined category of "sensitive but unclassified" research that has been used to withdraw thousands of reports and papers from the public eye.

Related Links:

Obama administration may (finally) offer greenhouse-gas targets

The Climate Post: You heard it here first—Copenhagen a success

Copenhagen panic is premature

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the nation's highest scientific authority, has issued a long-awaited report cautioning that genetic manipulation of animals could pose a serious threat to the environment and human health. The report identifies a series of concerns about cloning and other genetic alteration of animals, ranging from fears that such animals could escape into the wild and change or destroy natural gene pools to the possibility that gene-altered meat, milk, or eggs could harm people. The report also cited potential benefits of biotechnology, including cheaper, more healthful food and new medical treatments. Overall, it emphasized the need for better and more coordinated regulation of bioengineering. The report was particularly concerned about genetically altered fish and insects, which are difficult to contain and could drive their wild relatives to extinction.

Related Links:

Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change

Tweet for the bees

Sen. Inhofe and U.S. Farm Bureau chief casually chat about destroying the climate bill

Global warming is typically thought of as a gradual process, but a report released this week by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences warns that greenhouse gases and other atmospheric pollutants could cause massive, sudden, and potentially disastrous climate shifts. The authors of the report relied on paleontological evidence, the historical record, and computer modeling to demonstrate that in the past, gradual climate change was punctuated by sudden temperature increases. For example, the report concluded that roughly half of the warming that has taken place in the northern Atlantic Ocean since the last ice age occurred in just one decade, triggering floods and droughts across the globe.

Related Links:

EPA not great at regulating stormwater pollution, says report

A look back at James Hansen’s seminal testimony on climate, part one

Research panel discourages presidential plan for U.S. nuclear-waste reprocessing