Another database upgrade that will help environmental journalists is available from the group Southeast Coal Ash. This database site covers Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.
U.S. EPA's refinement of ECHO's search engine for drinking water violations should make it possible for journalists to ask much more sophisticated and complex questions — but the usual caveats apply.
"Some specially trained dogs are helping humans curb themselves. A company that has trained dogs to recognize the smell of human fecal bacteria has been sniffing out sources of water pollution nationwide, discovering broken sewer pipes, leaking septic tanks and illegal sewage discharges, to the delight of environmental groups and government agencies."
"Tesla Motors said on Wednesday that it would equip all of its new vehicles with technology that enables fully autonomous driving, but would not activate the system until it undergoes further testing."
"The U.S. Air Force is spending nearly $1 billion to build a radar installation that will help keep astronauts and satellites safe by tracking pieces of space junk as small as a baseball. That is, if global warming doesn't get in the way. The Space Fence is being constructed on a tiny atoll in the Marshall Islands that scientists say could be regularly swamped by rising seas within a couple of decades as a result of climate change."
"Negotiators from more than 170 countries on Saturday reached a legally binding accord to counter climate change by cutting the worldwide use of a powerful planet-warming chemical used in air-conditioners and refrigerators."
Scientists in a new paper warn that the widely discussed idea of relying on carbon-removal technology in future years to remove climate-altering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is a mistake.
The Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy publishes leaked copies of Congressional Research Service research papers. Here are a few recent ones of use to environmental journalists.
Investigative journalism is hardly about paper documents anymore. The cutting edge today is more likely to be requests for emails, as well as text messages, chats and other electronic communications such as Slack. This big challenge was front and center at the recent meeting of the National Freedom of Information Coalition.
"Exxon’s ambitious work on powering clean vehicles 40 years ago parallels its cutting-edge research on climate change during the same era."
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