Public

"The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) released a long overdue new version of their Plant Hardiness Zone Map yesterday—the first update since 1990."

"How out of date was the 1990 map? It was based on data from 1974 to 1986. That's 26 years ago.

The new map is interactive, which is cool, and based on a much finer data scale than the old one, which is great. And guess what. It shows that things are getting warmer. The USDA managed to pretty much bury that fact in Bureaucratese in their press release ... ."

"The United States must urgently work to find a new central site to house its spent nuclear fuel and probe whether Japan's nuclear disaster has any safety implications for storage at the country's plants, a federal panel said on Thursday."

"Industrial agricultural has significant socioeconomic and environmental costs, although scientists are bringing solutions."

"House Democrats took the political offensive on Keystone Wednesday, seeking to probe connections between the multi-billion dollar project and Koch Industries, the Kansas-based energy conglomerate that has funded many a conservative cause."

"In a move that could reshape the American automobile industry, California regulators Thursday are expected to approve sweeping new rules requiring that 15 percent of new cars sold in California by 2025 run on electricity, hydrogen or other systems producing little or no smog."

"The regulations by the California Air Resources Board, dubbed the 'advanced clean car rules,' would start in 2018, ramping up each year and ultimately resulting in 1.4 million 'zero emission' vehicles on California roads by 2025. Today there are only about 10,000 such vehicles in the state. ...

The shine of a new iPad and Apple's record profits come at a steep cost: the health of the Chinese workers who make them possible.

"Each day, American municipalities discharge treated wastewater back into natural sources at a rate that would fill an empty Lake Champlain within six months. Growing pressure on water supplies and calls for updating the ancient subterranean piping infrastructure have brought new scrutiny to this step in the treatment process, which is labeled wasteful and unnecessary by a spectrum of voices."

Artificially created wetlands may not really compensate well enough for the loss of natural wetlands they replace.

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"To many, it’s a familiar scenario: a strip mall suddenly pops up in what was once a desolate quagmire or boggy boondock.