Articles by Julia Whitty

Massive Methane Melt off Siberia

Julia Whitty March 8, 2010 Julia Whitty

Source: Mother Jones

– Image courtesy NOAA

Arctic seabed stores of methane are now destabilizing and venting vast stores of frozen methane-a greenhouse gas 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The paper, in the prestigious journal Science, reports the permafrost under the East Siberian Arctic Shelf-long thought to be an impermeable barrier sealing in methane-is instead perforated and leaking large amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Melting of even a fraction of the clathrates stored in that shelf could trigger abrupt climate warming. Lead author Natalia Shakhova Shakhova of the International Arctic Research Center tells U of Alaska Fairbanks: read more

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Where Plastics Go to Kill

Julia Whitty May 11, 2009 Julia Whitty

It's an oil spill. Only solid, and far more deadly. The average liquid spill of petroleum will kill marine life for a year, maybe 10. But it could take 400 years for that petroleum-based six-pack ring holding your beer to break down. Each year, undegraded plastic chokes to death some 100,000 whales, dolphins, seals, manatees, plus an unknown number of sea turtles and about 2 million birds. And once it has broken down, it becomes deadlier still.