Canada's New Confidentiality Rules on Arctic Project Called 'Chilling'
"A bid by [Canada's] federal government to impose sweeping confidentiality rules on an Arctic science project has run into serious resistance in the United States."
"A bid by [Canada's] federal government to impose sweeping confidentiality rules on an Arctic science project has run into serious resistance in the United States."
"In 2007, when Deborah Rice was appointed chair of an Environmental Protection Agency panel assessing the safety levels of flame retardants, she arrived as a respected Maine toxicologist with no ties to industry."
EPA scientists in 2010 were ready to declare that even small amounts of hexavalent chromium -- found in the drinking water of some 70 million Americans -- may cause cancer. But the American Chemistry Council, the main industry lobby group, urged delay. EPA did delay, on the recommendation of a science panel that was supposed to be independent -- but was secretly stacked with panelists tied to the industry. In fact, they had helped industry oppose hexavalent chromium lawsuits instigated by Erin Brocovich.
"A new federal advisory panel report makes a forceful case for more research into environmental causes of breast cancer, which was diagnosed in 227,000 women, killed 40,000 and cost more than $17 billion to treat in the United States last year."
"If the weather holds, NASA will launch its newest Earth-observing satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base in southern California late Monday morning."
"For the first time, scientists report, they have found bacteria living in the cold and dark deep under the Antarctic ice, a discovery that might advance knowledge of how life could survive on other planets or moons and that offers the first glimpse of a vast ecosystem of microscopic life in underground lakes in Antarctica."
"Every summer, millions of sockeye salmon flood into the Fraser River in British Columbia, clogging its shivering waters with their brilliant blushing bodies."
An asthma inhaler rigged to a GPS device? Just as this new medical tech device may help researchers determine the precise triggers of asthma attacks, the emerging field of geomedicine promises to help correlate environmental conditions with health risks.
The release this month of the draft National Climate Assessment garnered many headlines. But little notice went to the fact that it was released at all. Earlier versions of this assessment of climate change's impacts on the U.S. were suppressed — and even "unpublished". But a few voices did take note of the Assessment's release.
It's not just that the billionaire Koch brothers have spent tens of millions to undermine science and stifle debate on climate change. It's that they do it in secret.