"Shell cleared a major hurdle Thursday in its effort to begin a two-year drilling program in the Arctic Ocean next summer, receiving a conditional exploration permit from the federal agency that oversees offshore oil development."

"Raising its forecast, the U.S. government's weather agency on Thursday predicted the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season will produce 14 to 19 named storms, 7 to 10 of them becoming hurricanes."

"Drought worsened in the Midwest during the last week as record-high temperatures stressed the developing corn and soybean crops, while cotton and pastures eroded amid a historic drought in the southern Plains."

Oil and gas executives have long claimed that there is no case in which hydraulic fracturing has contaminated a drinking water aquifer. But such a case exists. And one of the biggest bars to enumerating suspected additional cases is the oil and gas industry's refusal to allow disclosure of them -- a condition of court settlements with landowners.

"Conservation groups working across the Gulf of Mexico are supporting a bipartisan bill in the Senate that would direct to five Gulf states the billions of dollars in fines that may be imposed on BP and other companies found responsible for the last year's oil spill."

The Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, unveiled an online tool allowing users to look up the potential health effects of climate change by zip code.

"The USDA announced the recall of 36 million pounds of Cargill ground turkey linked to multiple deaths."

"It's been called a crisis in amphibian biology: more than a third of amphibian species are at risk of extinction. Habitat loss and climate change are both causes, but so is an invasive disease that's been called the smallpox of the amphibian world. Researchers from D.C., Virginia, and Maryland recently traveled to Panama to try to help limit the effects of the disease."

"The White House budget office raised flags about the first energy loan guarantee awarded under the Obama administration, adding another layer of questions to the taxpayer backed financing now at the center of a House investigation."

The good news is that the Gulf of Mexico dead zone, expected to be bigger this year because of high runoff and the BP spill, did not set a record for size. The bad news is that oxygen levels in the dead zone that did develop this year are extremely low.