TV News LIES

Switching from burning coal to natural gas won't have an appreciable effect on global warming, at least not in the next few decades, a study suggests.

In fact, cutting worldwide coal burning by half and using natural gas instead would increase global temperatures over the next four decades by about one-tenth of a degree Fahrenheit, according to Tom Wigley, a senior research associate at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

Japan has been slow to admit the scale of the meltdown. But now the truth is coming out.

This nation has recovered from worse natural – and manmade – catastrophes. But it is the triple meltdown and its aftermath at the Fukushima nuclear power plant 40km down the coast from Soma that has elevated Japan into unknown, and unknowable, terrain. Across the northeast, millions of people are living with its consequences and searching for a consensus on a safe radiation level that does not exist. Experts give bewilderingly different assessments of its dangers.

The editor of a science journal has resigned after admitting that a recent paper casting doubt on man-made climate change should not have been published.

The paper, by US scientists Roy Spencer and William Braswell, claimed that computer models of climate inflated projections of temperature increase. It was seized on by "sceptic" bloggers, but attacked by mainstream scientists.

The area being tested was the site of a deadly Marine helicopter crash that resulted in the release of radioactive material.

Environmental activist Carroll Cox says a helicopter that crashed onto the Kaneohe Sandbar on the evening of March 29, killing one marine and injuring three others, released radioactive material into the surrounding area.

One of the nation's foremost experts on climate change was arrested outside the White House on Monday morning after he joined a protest against a planned Canadian tar sands pipeline.

Dr. James Hansen (pictured), who runs NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, was arrested along with 139 other protesters taking part in a series of demonstrations against the planned $7-billion Keystone XL pipeline, which would transport 500,000 barrels of crude per day from America's neighbor to the north all the way to the Gulf coast of Texas.

A gay former Army lieutenant arrested for handcuffing himself to a White House fence during a protest is being treated differently because he is a prominent voice for gay rights, his lawyer said Monday.

Dan Choi, a West Point graduate and Iraq War veteran, is charged with disobeying police orders to leave an area in front of the White House during a November 2010 protest of the military's "don't ask, don't tell policy." During the protest, 13 people handcuffed themselves to the fence, some in uniform, chanting slogans including "let us serve."

Thousands of fishermen and business owners in a multi-billion-dollar legal battle with BP over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill have won the right to sue for punitive damages, in a fresh defeat for the oil major.

More than 100,000 individuals, companies and authorities have filed cases claiming they suffered economic loss as a result of the leak last year. A judge, Carl Barbier, is considering 500 cases, many of them class actions, against BP and its main co-defendants, including Transocean, the rig owner.

Shortly before midnight Mountain Time on August 23, the largest earthquake in Colorado in more than a century, with a magnitude of 5.3, sent tremors as far away as Kansas.

Some twelve hours later, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake centered in Northern Virginia sent shock waves as far away as Toronto. The local damage in each event did not appear extensive, though structural effects, on bridges, tunnels, nuclear power plants and more are yet to be determined.