Canadian forestry firm sues over environmental audit
Montreal (AFP) May 20, 2014 -
Canada's largest forest products company is suing over an audit that criticized the company's logging practices for violating environmental standards, according to court documents obtained by AFP Tuesday.
Resolute Forest Products, which makes pulp and paper from wood, has filed the lawsuit against the Rainforest Alliance, a global group that certifies best forestry practices.
After its 2 ...
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High-speed solar winds increase lightning strikes on Earth
London, UK (SPX) May 19, 2014 -
Scientists have discovered new evidence to suggest that lightning on Earth is triggered not only by cosmic rays from space, but also by energetic particles from the Sun.
University of Reading researchers found a link between increased thunderstorm activity on Earth and streams of high-energy particles accelerated by the solar wind, offering compelling evidence that particles from space hel ...
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NASA's Newest Wind Watcher Arrives at Launch Site
Pasadena CA (JPL) May 19, 2014 -
A new NASA Earth-observing mission that will measure ocean winds from the International Space Station has arrived at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to begin final preparations for launch.
The International Space Station (ISS)-RapidScat scatterometer instrument arrived May 12 after a cross-country trip from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The instrument, bu ...
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First 'heavy mouse' leads to first lab-grown tissue mapped from atomic life
Cambridge, UK (SPX) May 16, 2014 -
Scientists have created a 'heavy' mouse, the world's first animal enriched with heavy but non-radioactive isotopes - enabling them to capture in unprecedented detail the molecular structure of natural tissue by reading the magnetism inherent in the isotopes.
This data has been used to grow biological tissue in the lab practically identical to native tissue, which can be manipulated and ana ...
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CryoSat finds sharp increase in Antarctica's ice losses
Paris (ESA) May 21, 2014 -
Three years of observations from ESA's CryoSat satellite show that the Antarctic ice sheet is now losing 159 billion tonnes of ice each year - twice as much as when it was last surveyed. The polar ice sheets are a major contributor to the rise in global sea levels, and these newly measured losses from Antarctica alone are enough to raise global sea levels by 0.45 mm each year.
These latest ...
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Control methane now, greenhouse gas expert warns
Ithaca NY (SPX) May 21, 2014 -
As the shale gas boom continues, the atmosphere receives more methane, adding to Earth's greenhouse gas problem. Robert Howarth, greenhouse gas expert and ecology and environmental biology professor, fears that we may not be many years away from an environmental tipping point - and disaster.
"We have to control methane immediately, and natural gas is the largest methane pollution source in ...
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Different Types of El Nino Have Different Effects on Global Temperature
New York NY (SPX) May 21, 2014 -
The El Nino-Southern Oscillation is known to influence global surface temperatures, with El Nino conditions leading to warmer temperatures and La Nina conditions leading to colder temperatures.
However, a new study in Geophysical Research Letters shows that some types of El Nino do not have this effect, a finding that could explain recent decade-scale slowdowns in global warming.
The ...
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