If the U.S. went vegan, emissions would drop. But there’s a catch, a new study says

Sacramentobee.com - If the entire United States went vegan, it could be great for the environment. But it’s a lot more complicated than advocates for an all-vegan country might hope, a new study found.

Agriculture and forestry alone make up a quarter of the United States’ total greenhouse emissions, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — and animals produce roughly half of those agricultural emissions, Science Magazine reported.

That means animal agriculture is a perennial target for those hoping to cut emissions and tackle global warming. So what would happen if all 320 million Americans went vegan, entirely eliminating animals from our diets — and from our farming and ranching practices?

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that such a radical diet change would slash U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture by 28 percent. But the study — authored by Robin White, of the Virginia Tech department of animal and poultry science, and Mary Beth Hall, a U.S. Department of Agriculture researcher in Madison, Wisc. — also found that an animal-free diet would harm Americans’ nutrition.

And you might be wondering about the math, too: If animals produce 49 percent of U.S. agriculture’s greenhouse emissions, shouldn’t eliminating animals cut emissions by the same amount — that is, 49 percent?

For better or worse, it’s not that simple, scientists told Science Magazine. Eliminating animals altogether would leave behind tons of corn stalks, potato waste and other plant byproducts that right now end up in livestocks’ stomachs. And if that uneaten waste got burned to eliminate it, the waste would churn out 2 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, the researchers told Science Magazine.

With no more livestock-produced manure, demand for artificial fertilizer would rise as well, Science Magazine reported, driving an additional 23 million tons in carbon emissions each year.

So even though 65 percent of farm-related emissions come from methane belched by cows and from putting nitrous oxide fertilizer and waste in the ground, according to the World Resources Institute, a Washington-based think tank, taking animals out of agriculture altogether doesn’t solve the problem.

Cutting out animals would hurt Americans’ diets, too.

“Although modeled plants-only agriculture produced 23% more food, it met fewer of the US population’s requirements for essential nutrients,” the study says.

White, one of the study’s authors, told Science Magazine that it’s not surprising an all-vegan diet in the U.S. would lead to deficiencies in calcium, vitamins A and B12, and important fatty acids.

“With carefully balanced rations, you can meet all of your nutrient requirements with a vegetarian diet,” White told the magazine. “But the types of foods that seem to do that, we don’t currently produce in sufficient quantities to make it a sustainable diet for the entire population.”

That’s not to say that eating a little (or a lot) less meat on an individual level can’t have an impact on your carbon footprint, though – especially considering how much of our individual greenhouse emissions come from meat consumption.

The meat consumed by the average family of four, for example, puts out more greenhouse emissions than driving two cars would produce, according to the BBC. Yet it’s fuel efficiency – not hamburger and chicken nugget bans – that policymakers hoping to tackle greenhouse emissions focus on.

“Most people don’t think of the consequences of food on climate change,” Tim Benton, a food security expert at the University of Leeds, told the BBC. “But just eating a little less meat right now might make things a whole lot better for our children and grandchildren.” (ontinueReading

Scientists warn Earth is on the road to ruin

bostonglobe.com - More than 15,000 scientists from 184 countries worldwide, including scores from Massachusetts universities, have signed a letter warning that Earth’s environment is on the road to destruction.

The “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: Second Notice,” calls for action to avert irreversible damage to the planet. The letter was published as a Viewpoint article in Monday’s edition of the journal Bioscience.

The number of signatories may be the largest for any published scientific paper ever, said co-author Thomas Newsome, a research fellow at Deakin University and The University of Sydney.

“It’s an overwhelming response we didn’t quite expect,” he said in a statement. “People just started sharing the letter; it was added to a few e-mail lists and things just took off from there.”

The paper is a “second notice” because 25 years ago, a majority of the world’s Nobel laureates and other scientists signed a warning letter, saying issues such as ozone depletion, forest loss, climate change, and population growth needed to be addressed.

“In this paper we look back on these trends and evaluate the subsequent human response by exploring the available data,” Newsome said. Of nine areas, only one has seen improvement: There’s been a reduction in chemicals that harm the ozone layer, the university said.

The scientists said that especially troubling was the “current trajectory of potentially catastrophic climate change.”

The letter is being released as the UN Climate Change Conference is underway in Bonn, Germany, amid what organizers say is a renewed urgency due to extreme weather events like this year’s hurricanes and wildfires..

“To prevent widespread misery and catastrophic biodiversity loss, humanity must practice a more environmentally sustainable alternative to business as usual. This prescription was well articulated by the world’s leading scientists 25 years ago, but in most respects, we have not heeded their warning,” the article said.

“Soon it will be too late to shift course away from our failing trajectory, and time is running out. We must recognize, in our day-to-day lives and in our governing institutions, that Earth with all its life is our only home,” the article said. (ontinueReading

Researchers say ocean winds could power all of human civilization

- If you have ever been to a beach anywhere, you know that the wind blows constantly onto the land from the water. Researchers published a report this week that claims there is so much wind energy potential over the oceans that it could be used to generate “civilization scale power.” The catch is that we would need to put ugly wind turbines all along the coast over huge areas of the sea.

Another big catch for wind power over large swaths of the ocean is that we would need to learn how to maintain and install the turbines in extreme ocean environments. The scientists who conducted the research say that wind energy gathered from floating wind farms over very deep ocean waters could be the next big step for wind energy technology.

The study notes that wind energy gathered on land has an upper limit due to how structures on the land, both natural and manmade, can slow wind speeds. Land-based turbines themselves slow the air reducing the amount of energy subsequent rows of turbines can generate. The ocean, on the other hand, has a much higher limit.

Wind speeds on the ocean can be as much as 70% higher than on land. The scientists also note that storms over the mid-latitude oceans regularly transfer wind energy down to the surface from high altitudes making a much higher upper limit on how much energy wind turbines can capture than on land.

The study compares two theoretical wind farms with one centered on Kansas in the US measuring 2 million square kilometers. On land, that wind farm would be unable to power the U.S. and China. A wind farm of the same size over the North Atlantic could power those two countries and then some. The crux is the scientists found that the potential energy over the ocean is three times higher than land given the same area. We talked about the Sea Horse project last month that aimed to use the motion f the ocean, rather than wind, to generate electricity. (ontinueReading

Australia: Great Barrier Reef Avoids UNESCO's 'In Danger' Status: Is This A Good Thing?

via techtimes.com - The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has decided that the massive coral bleaching that has been happening to the Great Barrier Reef is not enough to consider it "In Danger."

The Australian government is celebrating UNESCO's decision and calls it a "big win" for the continent, but things may not be as well as it seems.

According to Federal Environment Minister Josh Freedenberg, they have received reports that the government's Reef 2050 plan — an integrated government strategy aimed at improving the Great Barrier Reef's condition — has been showing positive results.

"Of course coral bleaching has been significant but we've also seen the health of the reef be encouraged in the years leading up to the most recent bleaching event," he expressed.

However, there is still a big possibility that avoiding the "In Danger" status may or may not be helpful for the reef's restoration.

Some believe that UNESCO decided against labeling the Great Barrier Reef as "In Danger" in order to help the Australian government avoid embarrassment. By doing so, tourism in Australia would also be able to avoid a negative impact on its tourism sector, which could also affect the nation's economy.

"It supports more than 69,000 Queensland jobs, provides billions of dollars into the Queensland economy each and every year," Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said.

This is because, once the reef is added to the list of world heritage sites "In Danger," the government would have to take drastic actions to save the reef and may even be forced to limit or close off the site for tourism.

Since Premier Palaszczuk already revealed that the Great Barrier Reef supports the livelihood of thousands of people in Queensland, one can only rightly assume that any move to limit tourism in the reef would affect at least 69,000 people. (ontinueReading

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Related: Great Barrier Reef: Reports of its demise have been exaggerated locals claim

Disclaimer: Posted links are not direct endorsements. 

Macron hopes to convince Trump on climate, calls Paris conference

- Paris will host a second climate change conference on 12 December with particular emphasis on finance , French President Emmanuel Macron announced at the end of the G20 talks in Hamburg on Saturday. He hopes to convince US President Donald Trump to change his mind on fighting global warming, he added.

"On 12 December [...] I will organise a new summit in order to take new action for the climate, including on the issue of financing," Macron said, noting that the date is the second anniversary of the Cop21 Paris climate agreement.

It will attempt to facilitate the payment of private and public finance promised during those talks, he said.

It will also "identify projects that can be financed and will represent a concrete advance".

The G20 final statement noted the US's decision to pull out of the Paris deal but insisted that "the leaders of the other member states confirm that the Paris accord is irreversible".

Macron said that there could be no going back on climate questions, warning that the accord could not be taken "à la carte".

Asked if he hoped to change Trump's mind when the US president attends next week's Bastille Day parade in Paris, Macron commented "I never give up hope of convincing, because I think it is a duty [...] it's part of my character.

"So I confirm, I hope to convince him." (ontinueReading

Spiders top the global predator charts

(BBC) - Biologists have calculated that the global population of spiders consumes 400 million to 800 million tonnes of primarily insect prey every year.

Researchers set out to put a value on the ecological importance of the arachnids.

They say their appetite for prey means they consume approximately the same amount as the weight of meat and fish eaten every year by humans.

The findings are published in the journal the Science of Nature.

Dr Martin Nyffeler, the University of Basel scientist who led this study, was inspired by a 1958 book called The World of Spiders, in which a British arachnologist author William Bristowe speculated that the weight of insects killed each year by the British spider population exceeded the combined weight of the British human population.

Since he first considered that, the Swiss arachnologist spent hundreds of hours of recording spider behaviour in the field, and gathering spider ecology studies published around the world.

"These 40 years of gathering experience - spending thousands of hours dealing with spider prey capture rates and prey selection - was needed to be able to write this paper on the global annual prey kill of the spiders," he said in an email.

After these four decades of data-gathering, he had enough information to work out how much the eight-legged creatures consumed.

His numbers are enough to haunt any arachnophobe; Dr Nyffeler says the entire population of the world's spiders - weighing 25 million tonnes - hunts and eats between 400 million and 800 million tonnes of insect prey annually.

But these numbers are not meant to terrify anyone, the scientists hope their study will raise awareness of the importance of spiders in the global food web.

"Spiders kill large numbers of herbivorous insects - and by doing so they help to protect the plants from herbivore damage," said Dr Nyffeler.

"They serve as food for thousands of arthropod-eating animals - an estimated 8,000-10,000 specialised insect species and many passerine birds (an estimated 3,000-5,000 species) feed on spiders." (ontinueReading

Polluted environments kill 1.7 million children each year, UN health agency reports

6 March 2017 – Unhealthy environments are responsible for one-quarter of young child deaths, according to two new reports from the United Nations health agency, which reviewed the threats from pollutants such as second-hand smoke, UV radiation, unsafe water and e-waste.

According to the latest information, polluted environments take the lives of 1.7 million children under the age of five.

“A polluted environment is a deadly one – particularly for young children,” said Margaret Chan, Director-General of the UN World Health Organization (WHO). “Their developing organs and immune systems, and smaller bodies and airways, make them especially vulnerable to dirty air and water.”

In one of the two reports, Inheriting a Sustainable World: Atlas on Children's Health and the Environment , WHO announced that many of the common causes of death among children aged between one month and five years of age are preventable with safe water and clear cooking fuels. These include diarrhoea, malaria and pneumonia.

The main pollutant is in the air, resulting in 570,000 deaths each year among children under five years old. Air pollution can stunt brain development and reduce lung function and trigger asthma. In the longer-term, exposure to air pollution can increase the child's risk of contracting heart disease, a stroke or cancer.

To counter such exposure, WHO recommends reducing air pollution, improving safe water and sanitation, and protecting pregnant women and building safer environments, among other actions described in Don't pollute my future! The impact of the environment on children's health .

“Investing in the removal of environmental risks to health, such as improving water quality or using cleaner fuels, will result in massive health benefits,” said Maria Neira, WHO Director, Department of Public Health, Environmental and Social Determinants of Health.

One of the emerging environmental threats to children is electronic and electrical waste, according to the second WHO report. Appliances such as old mobile phones that are improperly recycled “expose children to toxins which can lead to reduced intelligence, attention deficit, lung damage, and cancer,” the UN agency reported.

At the current rate, the amount of such waste is expected to increase by 19 per cent between 2014 and 2018, up to 50 million metric tonnes.

The reports also point out harmful chemicals that work themselves through the food chain – such as fluoride, lead and mercury, as well as the impact that climate change and UV rays have on children's development. (ontinueReading

China, India account for half world's pollution deaths in 2015: study

Reuters - China and India accounted for more than half of the total number of global deaths attributable to air pollution in 2015, researchers said in a study published on Tuesday.

The U.S.-based Health Effects Institute (HEI) found that air pollution caused more than 4.2 million early deaths worldwide in 2015, making it the fifth highest cause of death, with about 2.2 million deaths in China and India.

The institute's study, the first of its kind, was based on the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) project, a database backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that tracks the role that behavioral, dietary and environmental factors play in deaths across 195 countries.

New evidence and methodologies mean that the estimate is significantly higher than the figure published by the World Health Organization last year, which put the number of global air pollution-related deaths in 2012 at 3 million, HEI said.

The institute, which has also launched an online database showing the global impact of pollution on health (www.stateofglobalair.org), said 92 percent of the world's population lives in areas with unhealthy air.

Air pollution has been linked to higher rates of cancer, stroke and heart disease, as well as chronic respiratory conditions such as asthma.

China and India, the world's two most populous countries, each accounted for 1.1 million deaths, the findings showed, but China is pushing ahead when it comes to taking action, HEI president Dan Greenbaum told Reuters.

"(India) has got a longer way to go, and they still appear to have some ministers who say there is not a strong connection between air pollution and mortality in spite of quite a lot of evidence," he said.

A spokesman for India's environment ministry could not be reached for comment, but minister Anil Madhav Dave said last week that "there is no conclusive data available" on the link between pollution and mortality, media reported.

China's environment ministry did not respond to a request to comment on whether the estimate of 1.1 million deaths was accurate.

Though China has launched a campaign to improve air quality, authorities have been reluctant to draw direct links between air pollution and mortality, with the health ministry saying it had "no data" linking smog to higher incidences of cancer.

"It is currently too early to draw conclusions about the extent of the impact of smog on health, especially its long-term impact on the body," a ministry spokesman told media during a press briefing in January.

In a long-term national healthcare plan published last October, the government acknowledged the link between health and pollution, and pledged to assess the precise impacts as well as boost environmental monitoring capabilities. (ontinueReading

Watch a sunflower dance in the sun: Now scientists know how it’s done

(WashingtonPost) - Young sunflowers follow the sun, their still-green buds arcing from east to west across the summer sky as dawn turns to noon turns to dusk. Each night they reverse their dance, swinging from west to east in order to be the first to see the sun when it crests over the horizon at daybreak.

But do you know they do it?

In a study published in the journal Science this week, researchers say they've found an answer: Sunflowers, like animals, have a circadian rhythm — an internal clock that can be set to the external world. During the day, this system sends messages to the eastern sides of their stems, telling those cells to grow slightly longer, which causes the sunflower to lean westward. At night, the message reverses, and the sunflowers tilt back toward the east.

"It's the first example of a plant's clock modulating growth in a natural environment, and having real repercussions for the plant," Stacey Harmer, professor of plant biology at University of California-Davis and senior author on the paper, said in a statement.

Even though they don't sleep, many plants have "clock genes" similar to those that direct the sleep-wake cycle in animals. For years, Harmer had been looking for a link between those genes and the release of a hormone called auxin, which controls stem growth.

Sunflowers seemed like a likely candidate to help that search. Scientists have known about the plants' sun-seeking behavior since 1898, when botanist John Schaffner described a summer he spent observing an especially "abundant and luxuriant crop of this characteristic western weed" for the journal Botanical Gazette.

So Harmer tasked a graduate student, Hagop Atamian, with putting the flowers through their paces. First Atamian staked the sunflowers so they couldn't move. The constrained flowers were smaller and frailer than their free-moving counterparts, proving that the flowers really do benefit from following the sun.

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Related - (Mentalfloss) 10 Glorious Facts About Sunflowers

US Secret Wildlife Killing Program Killed 3.2 Million Animals in 2015

Shocking!

(natureworldnews.com) - Amid public protest against animal killing practices, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Wildlife Services killed a total of 3.2 million animals in 2015.
The number was revealed in a report conducted by its highly selective arm.

Aside from highlighting the numbers, the report also detailed whether the animals were killed, euthanized, relocated or dispersed. It also described whether the acts were intentional or unintentional.
Figures show that red-winged blackbirds and brown-headed cowbirds at the top of the list, with 708,486 and 475,905 kills respectively.
The group also slaughtered 69,905 coyotes, 385 gray wolves, 480 black bears, 284 mountain lions, 731 bobcats, 492 river otters, 3,437 foxes, two bald eagles and 21,559 beavers. Oone critically endangered Mexican wolf was also killed.
Former Wildlife Services employees estimate that these numbers are likely hugely short of the actual numbers.
According to the Center for Biodiversity, the century-old Wildlife Services was created in 1915 to eliminate invasive species that weaken the livestock and agricultural sector. But for the past years, the agency had been highly criticized because it targets even innocent animals, including pets.
It has reportedly killed 32 million native animals since 1996.
The killings destroy the balance of nature as many of the species they kill are at the top of the food chain, making them beneficial to the health of ecosystem.

"It is a tragedy that our government continues to needlessly slaughter America's wildlife year to year," said Kelly Nokes, carnivore campaign lead for WildEarth Guardians. "Wildlife Services' cruel killing of native animals is based on disproven anti-wildlife bias and undermines the critical natural systems upon which we all depend."
The program uses inhumane ways to kill; some of which include the use of cruel tools, including trapping, poisoning and shooting from airplanes.

California: Activist spends one year in freezer to denounce global warming

(Worldnewsdailyreport.com) 10/07/15

San Francisco| A Californian woman certainly found an original way to raise popular consciousness about the climate changes affecting the planet.

26-year old Greenpeace activist, Jade Martens, spent an entire year in a small commercial freezer, in order to denounce the poor results of the Obama administration on the subject of carbon dioxide emissions.

The young woman eats, sleeps and even relieves herself in a small chest freezer of 6′x3′x4′, located in the hall of the San Francisco Congress Center, only allowing herself to stand up a few times a day to stretch.

She hopes that her incredible stunt will help to educate people on the importance of the environment.

“The government and the corporations aren’t doing anything for the environment,”she told reporters. “Somebody had to do something, so I decided to take action myself. I hope that my actions can help raise awareness about global warming, and can eventually bring some political change.”

According to Miss Martens, her action is putting a great strain on her mental and physical condition, but she intends to remain in her freezer for at least another year, and possibly even more, if her health allows her.

“This is an important political action for which I have already made a lot of sacrifices” she says. “There is no way I am going to abandon now! The stakes are too high, I can’t give up. I am doing this for Mother Earth!”

Even if most people passing by at the San Francisco Congress Center seem to be either indifferent or amused by Ms. Martens’ stunt, she believes that her sacrifice is necessary and that, with time, it can generate some important changes.

Pope Francis, in Ecuador, Calls for More Protection of Rain Forest and Its People

(nytimes.com) QUITO, Ecuador — Pope Francis on Tuesday called for increased protection of the Amazon rain forest and the indigenous people who live there, declaring that Ecuador must resist exploiting natural riches for “short-term benefits,” an implicit rebuke of the policies of President Rafael Correa.

In his final stops of a busy day, Francis made environmental protection a central theme, invoking the biblical tenet for humans to be guardians of creation, while praising the way of life of indigenous peoples living in the rain forests. Several indigenous leaders attending Francis’ final event of the day have been fighting the policies of Mr. Correa to expand oil exploration in the Ecuadorean Amazon.

“The tapping of natural resources, which are so abundant in Ecuador, must not be concerned with short-term benefits,” Francis told a group of civil society leaders at his final stop of the day. “As stewards of these riches which we have received, we have an obligation toward society as a whole, and toward future generations.”

Francis had been expected to address the exploitation of the Amazon, after specifically including the issue in “Laudato Si’,” the environmental encyclical he released to worldwide attention last month. In the document, Francis warned against the perils of climate change but also highlighted the link between environmental destruction and the plight of the poor, including indigenous groups in South America. Full Story

Nicaragua Is Going Ahead With a Massive Canal That Will Bisect the Country

Up yours Panama!

- On December 22, Nicaragua will begin construction on a massive canal that will bisect the country. Numerous independent scientists and engineers believe that the canal will be a disaster for both the people and environment of Nicaragua, and although the company hired to build the canal promised to study its environmental and social impacts, that work won't be complete until until April 2015—four months into the project. The Nicaraguan government, though, is celebrating the project's launch: one presidential confidante is calling the canal "a Christmas present" for the country.

Since Nicaragua signed a contract in June 2013 with the Hong Kong Nicaragua Canal Development Investment Company, scientists have been scrambling to evaluate the project's potential impacts, as Smithsonian reported in February. Last October, the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation—the world's largest scientific organization devoted to tropical ecosystems—urged the Nicaraguan government to stop construction plans until adequate studies could be carried out. Local people, many of whom will be forced to evacuate their homes, have also been protesting the canal.

Based on the studies that have been conducted, the project's likely impacts include: 

1,500 square miles of forest, wetlands and coastlines dug up or disrupted, including in 9 protected areas

Losses to endangered species such as Baird’s tapirs, spider monkeys, jaguars, harpy eagles and nesting sea turtles 

Water contamination in Lake Nicaragua, which supplies most of the country's drinking water
Violations of the Nicaraguan Constitution, which protects the land rights of indigenous and afro-descendant peoplearmers and indigenous people

Loss of hurricane-buffering mangroves, replaced by a flood-prone waterway

Earlier this month, following an international scientific workshop, a group of multi-disciplinary experts concluded: "The proposed Canal and sub-projects will provide no economic benefit to the nation if the Project ultimately proves to be economically unfeasible." The Christmas presents they're looking for are a little different—"an exhaustive cost-benefits analysis, as well as analyses of the effects on national development, human rights, and legal and national security issues."

Read more: smithsonianmag.com

Prince Charles: reform capitalism to save the planet

(telegraph) - Prince Charles has called for an end to capitalism as we know it in order to save the planet from global warming.

In a speech to business leaders in London, the Prince said that a “fundamental transformation of global capitalism” was necessary in order to halt “dangerously accelerating climate change” that would “bring us to our own destruction”.

He called for companies to focus on “approaches that achieve lasting and meaningful returns” by protecting the environment, improving their employment practices and helping the vulnerable to develop a new "inclusive capitalism".

The Prince was taking part in his first major UK public engagement since sparking a diplomatic row last week by likening the behaviour of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, to Adolf Hitler.

We like fracking and We like to frack

 With the recent anti fracking protests by eco terrorists & their allies in eastern Canada, I thought this would be appropriate to post in light of the events.

 (thespoof) - Another day another punning newspaper headline about shale gas extraction. The industry has been a godsend for copywriters everywhere. Said one fleet street hack, "the great thing about Fracking is that it's possible to replace the word 'fuck', with the word 'Frack' for comic effect. Obviously, if we could think of a way making something like wind power funny we would, but sadly, there's nothing amusing about inappropriate wind."

Many environmental pressure groups have already got in on the act. Most people are familiar with bandwagon jumpers "Frack Off" but lately a number of new pressure groups have joined the scene. One such group is, "Frack Me Where the Sun Don't Shine", who describe themselves as a pro-fracking anti-solar power group. Roderick Smythley Wittington founder of FMWSDS, is highly critical of solar power - "When I was a lad we used to have these solar power calculators and digital watches - They were rubbish! Do we really want our energy needs to be reliant on solar powered calculators. I think not! We at Frack Me where the Sun Don't Shine say, Frack me Silly! We love Fracking and we like to Frack!'"

In response to public concerns about the dangers of Fracking, the government have set up a new industry watchdog. OffFrack will be responsible for regulating the shale gas extraction industry. Said a spokesdrone for the Department of the Environment, "We just couldn't miss out on an opportunity to set up an industry watchdog, which sounds a lot like the insult, 'Fuck Off', except with the words swapped around. I mean why should the hacks and the environmentalists have all the fun?"

(source)

Environmental Catastrophe: Train Hauling Canadian Oil Derails In Minnesota.

(Reuters) - A mile-long train hauling oil from Canada derailed, spilling 30,000 gallons of crude in western Minnesota on Wednesday, as debate rages over the environmental risks of transporting tar sands across the border.

The major spill, the first since the start of a boom in North American crude-by-rail transport three years ago, came when 14 cars on a 94-car Canadian Pacific train left the tracks about 150 miles northwest of Minneapolis near the town of Parkers Prairie, the Otter Tail Sheriff's Department said.

Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd, the country's second-largest railroad, said only one 26,000-gallon tank car had ruptured, adding it was a mixed freight train.

CP spokesman Ed Greenberg said he did not know if the crude was from Canada's tar sands or from conventional oil fields.

Minnesota Pollution Control Agency spokesman Dan Olson said up to three tank cars were ruptured and an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 gallons - or 475 to 715 barrels - leaked out.

Full Story

10 'Terrorist' Organizations Operating In The US.

  (Listverse) - Since the attacks on September 11, global initiatives to stop terrorism have taken place around the globe, most notably in the Middle East. With so much attention focused on one particular area, it is easy to forget that their are domestic terrorist groups in our own back yard. Unlike foreign terrorist organizations, these criminals do not need to attempt a risky border crossing; they’re already here. Despite their lack of publicity, these homegrown organizations do cause internal problems, more regularly than many would believe.