For more than seven months, the nation’s top public health agency has blocked the publication of an exhaustive federal study of environmental hazards in the eight Great Lakes states, reportedly because it contains such potentially “alarming information” as evidence of elevated infant mortality and cancer rates.

The Center for Public Integrity has obtained the study, which warns that more than nine million people who live in the more than two dozen “areas of concern”—including such major metropolitan areas as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Milwaukee—may face elevated health risks from being exposed to dioxin, PCBs, pesticides, lead, mercury, or six other hazardous pollutants.

Open water now stretches all the way round the Arctic, making it possible for the first time in human history to circumnavigate the North Pole, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. New satellite images, taken only two days ago, show that melting ice last week opened up both the fabled North-west and North-east passages, in the most important geographical landmark to date to signal the unexpectedly rapid progress of global warming.

Climate change could release unexpectedly huge stores of carbon dioxide from Arctic soils, which would in turn fuel a vicious circle of global warming, a new study warned Sunday.

And according to one commentary on the research, current models of climate change have not taken this extra source of greenhouse gas into account.

Scientists have long known that organic carbon trapped inside a blanket of frozen permafrost covering one fifth of the world’s land mass would, if thawed, release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Parts of the Endangered Species Act, which has protected nature in the United States for 3 1/2 decades, soon may be extinct. The new regulations, which do not require Congress’ approval, would reduce the numbers of mandatory, independent reviews government scientists have been performing for 35 years, according to a draft first obtained and reported by The Associated Press.

As world oil production has never peaked before, there is no historical basis for making informed judgments as to what is going to happen.

All we know is that some six billion people, living in some 200 economies on this earth are soon going to be confronted with getting by on less than the 86 million barrels of oil per day (b/d) that we currently consume. The outcome of the interaction among all those people, all those countries and all that oil is too complex to foresee with any clarity.