EJToday is SEJ's selection of new and outstanding stories on environmental topics in print and on the air, updated every weekday. SEJ also offers a free e-mailed digest of the day's EJToday postings, called SEJ-beat. SEJ members are subscribed automatically, but may opt out here. Non-members may subscribe here. EJToday is also available via RSS feed. Please see Editorial Guidelines for EJToday content.
"Watching Sandy, Ignoring Climate Change"
New Yorker, 10/31/2012"A couple of weeks ago, Munich Re, one of the world’s largest reinsurance firms, issued a study titled 'Severe Weather in North America.' According to the press release that accompanied the report, 'Nowhere in the world is the rising number of natural catastrophes more evident than in North America.' The number of what Munich Re refers to as 'weather-related loss events,' and what the rest of us would probably call weather-related disasters, has quintupled over the last three decades."
"Art That Irked Energy Execs Is Gone, but Wyoming Dispute Whirls On"
NY Times, 10/30/2012"LARAMIE, Wyo. -- The idea behind the sculpture that appeared on the University of Wyoming campus about 16 months ago was simple but provocative: a swirl of dead wood and lumps of coal, intended to show the link between global warming and the pine beetle infestation that has ravaged forests across the Rockies."
'Frankenstorm' Newspaper Coverage Ignores Connection To Climate Change
Climate Progress, 10/29/2012"Media have dubbed the hurricane barreling toward the mid-Atlantic and northeast a 'Frankenstorm.' But despite the hysteria surrounding Hurricane Sandy, not one major newspaper has reported the scientifically established link that carbon pollution fuels more extreme weather."
"Scientists See Double Standard in Critique of Altered Foods"
LA Times, 10/25/2012"Genetic engineering of crops is essentially the same as centuries-old, conventional plant breeding, except more precise, scientists say." As voting time nears on California's Proposition 37, arguments about science, safety, and the public's right to know intensify.
"US Downplayed Effect of Deepwater Oil Spill on Whales, Emails Reveal"
Guardian, 10/25/2012"Documents obtained by Greenpeace show officials controlling information about wildlife affected by the disaster."
"The Issue That Dare Not Speak Its Name"
Green/NYT, 10/24/2012President Obama, GOP contender Mitt Romney, and the U.S. news media moderators pointedly refused to mention climate change once during the series of four presidential debates.
"Google's Street View Goes Into The Wild"
NPR, 10/24/2012"Google's Street View maps are headed into the backcountry. Earlier this week, two teams from Google strapped on sophisticated backpacks jammed with cameras, gyroscopes and other gadgets and descended to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. But this is just the first step in the search giant's plan to digitally map and photograph the world's wild places."
"Penn State Climate Scientist Files Defamation Suit"
McClatchy, 10/24/2012"Penn State University scientist Michael Mann, whose work showed that Earth’s temperatures have risen along with increased fossil fuel use, announced Tuesday he had filed a lawsuit against the conservative National Review and the Competitive Enterprise Institute for defamation, complaining that they falsely accused him of academic fraud and compared him to convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky."
Ohio Energy Data Regs Make It One Of Nation"s Least Transparent States
Reuters, 10/23/2012"NEW YORK -- Dozens of wells drilled this year across rural Ohio are quietly pumping out the answer to the U.S. energy industry's most loaded question: Is the Utica shale formation, touted as a potentially $500 billion frontier, a boom or a bust? Yet the answer is likely to remain concealed for some time."
NRC Hid Meltdown Threats to Nuke Plants from Dam Failures: Watchdogs
Huffington Post, 10/22/2012"An un-redacted version of a recently released Nuclear Regulatory Commission report highlights the threat that flooding poses to nuclear power plants located near large dams -- and suggests that the NRC has misled the public for years about the severity of the threat, according to engineers and nuclear safety advocates."
Right-Wing Cato Fakes 'Addendum', Tries To Undo U.S. Climate Report
Daily Climate, 10/22/2012"A new 'addendum' to be released as soon as this week purports to update with the latest science a 2009 federal assessment on the impacts to the United States of climate change. The addendum matches the layout and design of the original, published by the U.S. Global Change Research Program: Cover art, 'key message' sections, table of contents are all virtually identical, down to the chapter heads, fonts and footnotes. But the new report comes from the conservative Washington, D.C.-based Cato Institute."
"Redford Rejects Calls for Public Inquiry Into Tainted Beef"
Calgary Herald, 10/12/2012"CALGARY — [Alberta] Premier Alison Redford shot down calls from opposition parties and the union representing workers at the XL Foods plant for a public inquiry to get to the bottom of the huge beef recall stemming from E. coli tainted product at the Brooks facility."
"NYT Journalists Detained at Keystone Pipeline Protest"
FuelFix, 10/12/2012"Two New York Times journalists were detained briefly by law enforcement officers while reporting on demonstrations against the Keystone XL pipeline in northeast Texas, the newspaper said Thursday."
"Lawyer in Climate Science Case May Have Broken Ethics Rules"
Mother Jones, 10/12/2012A lawyer for a climate-change-denial group seeking records from scientist Michael Mann apparently failed to get advance permission from his then-employer EPA to work on the case pro bono.
Coal Company Fined in Fake Pollution Reports Case
Louisville Courier-Journal, 10/09/2012"A high-profile Kentucky environmental enforcement action involving hundreds of alleged clean-water violations at dozens of mining operations in Eastern Kentucky apparently is coming to a close."

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