"A new scientific survey has found that the glaciers of the Arctic are the world’s biggest contributors to rising seas, shedding ice at an accelerating rate that now adds well over a millimeter to the level of the ocean every year."
The new year will likely mean subpoenas on EPA’s FOIA response policies, as a Democrat takes the chair in the House Oversight Committee amid charges the agency is choking off politically sensitive record requests. And are new laws in a dozen states making coverage of pipeline protests a felony? That, plus air emission exemptions for animal feedlot operators and data on illegal fishing. All in the latest issue of the WatchDog.
The Trump administration’s “war on science” is playing out not just at the EPA, with its controversial proposed “secret science” rule, but at federal agencies throughout the government. This special TipSheet lays out the conflict, and offers guidance on how to turn the overarching issue into a story with character and a regional or local sense of place. Plus, see more in our ongoing 2019 Journalists’ Guide to Energy & Environment.
"Gulping down oysters has long been a favourite New Year's Eve ritual for the French, but as winters get warmer and summers get drier many growers worry there will soon be fewer of the prized mollusks to go around."
"Tens of thousands of U.S. residents were displaced by climate change-fueled disasters in 2018. California saw a string of massive wildfires — from the Mendocino Complex in July, which became the state’s largest wildfire on record, to the Camp fire in November, which was the deadliest. Meanwhile, Hurricane Florence, the second rainiest storm in 70 years of U.S. record-keeping, was quickly forgotten as Hurricane Michael slammed into the Gulf Coast, the third strongest ever to make landfall in the U.S."
"House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi appointed Rep. Kathy Castor on Friday to lead a select committee on climate change when Democrats retake the majority in the new year."
"As global warming changes the Texas coast and cheap food imports flood the country, the people who make their living off oysters and shrimp are disappearing."
"As the risks of climate grow increasingly clear and the damage rises, communities around the country are fighting back in their own ways."
"In just two years, President Trump has unleashed a regulatory rollback, lobbied for and cheered on by industry, with little parallel in the past half-century. ... The trade-offs, while often out of public view, are real — frighteningly so, for some people — imperiling progress in cleaning up the air we breathe and the water we drink, and in some cases upending the very relationship with the environment around us."
"Rep. Lamar Smith's cattle brand is shaped like the number 2, with a check mark in the top right corner. It's supposed to be burned in the right hip of an animal."
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