"As moldy drywall thudded to the curb in a depressing drumbeat throughout Breezy Point, Queens, Thomas Ryan’s reciprocating saw stood out like a growling declaration of impatience."

"A forthcoming federal report on pipeline safety has found that members of the general public are more likely to identify oil and gas spills than the pipeline companies’ own leak detection systems."

"In a letter sent Wednesday, a pair of nuclear engineers -- one of them an employee at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- implored outgoing Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) to use his remaining days as chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs to investigate potential threats at two nuclear power facilities."

Will the world end Friday? Well, actually, it's already Friday in Kiribati (a Pacific island vulnerable to sea-level rise), and we have no reports of apocalypse. NASA scientists were so confident that they issued their retrospective world-didn't-end video 10 days ahead of time. Turns out the whole story was whomped up by some stoned hippies decades ago. Mayan scholars call it baloney. As to climate-caused sea-level rise, NASA is still issuing warnings. The entire nation of Kiribati is still planning to relocate ahead of rising seas.

"A major snowstorm sweeping across the Midwest brought blizzard warnings Thursday and threatened to dump more than a foot of snow on parts of the Central Plains."

"TOKYO -- Japan's plans to phase out nuclear power and boost reliance on renewable energy are likely to be reversed with the victory of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in parliamentary elections."

"As economic activity and populations continue to expand in coastal urban areas, particularly in Asia, hundreds of trillions of dollars of infrastructure, industrial and office buildings, and homes are increasingly at risk from intensifying storms and rising sea levels."

"The operator of a Japanese nuclear power plant that blew up after a tsunami last year said on Friday its lack of safety and bad habits were behind the world's worst nuclear accident in 25 years, its most forthright admission of culpability."

"When a government deadline for new safety management programs at offshore drilling rigs and wells approached in November 2011, oil and gas industry leaders were bracing for tough scrutiny and plenty of penalties. But that scrutiny never materialized."

"Drought continued to expand through many key farming states within the central United States in the past week, as scattered rainfall failed to replenish parched soils, according to a report issued Thursday by state and federal climatology experts."