Biology
Breach
December 17, 2013, from Washington Post
The White House systematically delayed enacting a series of rules on the environment, worker safety and health care to prevent them from becoming points of contention before the 2012 election, according to documents and interviews with current and former administration officials... The Obama administration has repeatedly said that any delays until after the election were coincidental and that such decisions were made without regard to politics. But seven current and former administration officials told The Washington Post that the motives behind many of the delays were clearly political, as Obama's top aides focused on avoiding controversy before his reelection.
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Climate
Chaos
December 17, 2013, from London Guardian
It is a story that flummoxed investigators - how a highly paid climate-change expert at the Environmental Protection Agency managed to defraud the government of nearly $1m, by pretending for a decade to be an undercover CIA agent.
John Beale, 65, is to undergo sentencing in a DC federal court on Wednesday, after pleading guilty to defrauding the government of $900,000 in salary and other benefits. Beale, who used his ruse to disappear for months at a time, has agreed to pay some $1.3m in restitution. He faces up to three years in jail... His fraud consisted largely of failing to turn up for work - in one instance for 18 months - and offering excuses connected to his fake intelligence role at the CIA.
December 17, 2013, from Reuters
Earth's upper atmosphere is still so saturated with ozone-eating chlorine that it will take about another decade for evidence that a nearly 25-year-old ban on such destructive chemicals is working, scientists said.
Full recovery of the ozone layer, which shields Earth from the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation, should occur around 2070... Researchers report puzzlingly large variations in the size of the annual ozone hole over Antarctica.
In 2012 for example, the ozone hole was the second smallest on record, an apparently positive sign that the 1989 Montreal Protocol agreement - which called for the phasing out of Freon and other damaging chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs - was working.
But scientists say that meteorological effects masked the hole's true size. The year before, they point out, the ozone hole was nearly as big as it was in 2006, the largest on record.
December 17, 2012, from National Journal
President Obama will nominate Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., to be secretary of State, sources tell ABC News and CNN.
Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has long been viewed as a likely candidate to replace Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton ... If Kerry becomes the next secretary of State, he will likely raise climate change to a top-tier priority.
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Resource
Depletion
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Recovery
December 17, 2009, from The Daily Climate
Mayors of some of the world's largest cities flexed their muscle at the United Nations climate talks Wednesday, warning that "billions of people" are prepared to cut emissions far beyond whatever agreement world leaders may ink this week....The discussion came a day after California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger called for a UN climate summit for cities and regions.
"We at the local level have too much to lose," said Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels. "We will go further, and we will make it safe for (politicians) to go further. We will push the envelope." Nickels and mayors of Delhi, Mexico City, Johannesburg, Melbourne – representing some 45 million people total – said they were pushing forward with ambitious climate adaptation and mitigation efforts, even as their national leaders remained stuck on those very points.
They had no choice, said Melbourne Mayor Robert Doyle. Earlier this year the worst wildfires in Australia's history grazed the outskirts of his city, killing more than 75 people. Experts attributed the exceptionally fierce blaze to drought conditions that scientists predict will become increasingly common as emissions increase.
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