Some new lines of evidence are confirming a decades-old conclusion that climate change was the key cause for the end of the ancient Harappan civilization in what is now the Indus valley of India, Pakistan, and neighboring regions.
"An advance guard of 18-wheelers is scheduled to roll into a business park in Cheyenne, Wyo., this week to unload components of a supercomputer called Yellowstone. This 1.5-quadrillion-calculations-per-second crystal ball will model future climate and forecast extreme weather."
"Canada is dismantling the nation's entire ocean contaminants program as part of massive layoffs at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans."
"The White House appears to be blocking Environmental Protection Agency efforts to tighten oversight of engineered nanoscale pesticides and other chemicals, according to environmental and safety advocates."
"Earlier this month, the State University of New York at Buffalo released a report concluding that fracking is getting safer, as both industry and regulators are doing a better job. The study got plenty of coverage--the Associated Press, Forbes, WGRZ, Buffalo News--but in the week since it was released, it's been attacked for a number of flaws."
"The ultra-conservative group's climate conference showed how far it has fallen after an internet sting and a disastrous ad."
"It was an odd choice of icon for the ultra-conservative Heartland Institute. But there he was in round glasses, beard, and halo of curls staring out from T-shirts and coffee mugs at their gathering of climate change contrarians this week, the scientist whose internet sting set Heartland on its current course of collapse.
"Like evolution, climate science has opened rifts in classrooms across the United States. Educators are lifting climate out of its narrow unit in middle school science – an effort, they hope, that will improve science literacy overall."
Budget and management problems have wracked the National Children's Study, once the most ambitious effort to document the effects of many factors -- including environmental ones -- on children's health during the entire time they are growing up.
Houston-based freelance writer and photographer Wendee Holtcamp has covered conservation, adventure travel, environmental issues and science for magazines and websites since 1997. She offers an online writing class, teaching aspiring and established writers everything from improving one's writing through observation journaling to crafting killer queries to the business end of building a successful and lucrative freelance career. Next class starts June 2.
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