Ice to the rescue!: Mere hours after Shell plunged its drill bit into the Arctic seabed for the first time, a passing ice floe halted the drilling operations in Alaska's Chukchi Sea. Now, now environmentalists, it's not polite to gloat (). Shell, unfazed, plans to restart the drilling in a few days, after the threatening ice floe passes (or melts). The company must cease drilling activity in the Arctic on September 24. Anchorage Daily News
Calling all little Dutch boys: For a town once called New Amsterdam, you'd think that New York City would have some flood-proofing in its DNA. Yet the city, with a full 520 miles of coastline and more than 200,000 residents living within four feet of high tide, is ill-prepared for rising sea levels and storm flooding. In fact, the Big Apple will need a couple decades and billions of dollars to address its high water problems. Meanwhile, swimming lessons remain affordable at the Y. New York Times
Screw the planet, save yourself?: Should climate activists stop talking about global warming as an environmental problem and start portraying it as a health issue? It couldn't hurt to try. New research suggests that folks who are dismissive (or even hostile!) to the climate realities take the issue more seriously when it’s discussed in the context of personal and family health. NPR
Coral kill-off: The coral reefs of the Caribbean are a whole lot less colorful than they used to be. Sadly, the ecosystems might be on the verge of a full-on collapse. Live coral covers less than 10 percent of the reefs today -- down from 50 percent in the 1970s -- and the rate of coral death is showing no signs of slowing. The Guardian, New York Times
I am a scientist (and you are, too!): So what gets you going? Star mapping? Bird-watching? Turtle tracking? Cheerleading? There's something for just about everyone in the citizen science revolution. Come join up! OnEarth
Gusty: Enough wind blows across the surface of the planet to power all humanity’s demands 20 times over. Add in the atmospheric (or high-altitude) winds, and you’ve got another 100 times worth of global energy demand. Our power problems are solved! Wait ... the researchers that came up with these numbers looked only at geophysical restraints and not the political, technological, economic, and social hurdles. Well then. Science Daily
Arriba! Arriba!: Frequent OnEarth contributor Elizabeth Kolbert treks to the “perfect laboratory” for studying the effects of climate change: the Andes in eastern Peru. There, on steep slopes that teem with “extreme biodiversity,” species are fleeing uphill to outrun warming temperatures below. But will tree populations be able climb fast enough? Yale Environment 360
Hot water: Before the great dinosaur extinction, caused by what many believe was an asteroid, there was another massive planetary die-off. This one took place underwater, with many marine species going extinct. The likely culprit? Volcanoes spewing out greenhouse gases, which triggered massive warming. Hmm ... sounds familiar. The Epoch Times
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