Author name: Sandy Dechert

covers environmental, health, renewable and conventional energy, and climate change news. She's worked for groundbreaking environmental consultants and a Fortune 100 health care firm, writes two top-level blogs on Examiner.com, ranked #2 on ONPP's 2011 Top 50 blogs on Women's Health, and attributes her modest success to an "indelible habit of poking around to satisfy my own curiosity."

What Makes A Town An "EV Town" — Normal & Others Show Leadership

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How come Normal, Illinois–about 150 miles south of Chicago–has ten times as many electric vehicles per capita than the U.S. average? (You’re right; it’s not just coincidence.) A coalition of business, industry, nonprofits, all levels of government, and farsighted individuals has converged to transform Normal into an EV town. And it’s not an exclusive community. […]

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Squat To Trot

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Commuters can now get both daily exercise and a free subway ticket by doing a 30-squat fitness session in the Moscow subways. No, really. It’s a promotion for the upcoming 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics (photo/inset compiled from Mashable). How about New York? Times Square, 8 a.m.?

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New HIV/AIDS A3/02 Strain Faster, Deadlier

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“Determining the HIV-1 subtype of infected individuals could be important in the management of HIV-1 infections,” say A3/O2 study authors.‪ (Photo: GIZMODO) Guinea-Bissau, West Africa, appears to have generated the newest strain of the HIV/AIDS virus. In recent years, health experts have begun to think of HIV/AIDS as a treatable, nonlethal disease. Seventeen people treated

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UN Nails Forest Risks, Strategy In Warsaw With REDD+

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At the late November meeting of UN climate delegates in Warsaw, negotiators from Canada–once a strong supporter of fast-start financing to limit greenhouse gas emissions from developing countries–and Australia, now led by a rashly conservative government, sat on their hands. Reeling from the costs of mitigation at Fukushima and a stopgap return to fossil fuels,

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BREAKING: Today's Illinois Tornadoes

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Tornado watches and warnings in the Midwest, Sunday, November 17, 2013. On their way to Chicago. Peoria. Jennifer Wojcicki ☈ ‏‪@WxWithJenny‬ 20m RT ‪@TomPurdyWI‬: Beautiful wall cloud near Harvard, Illinois earlier, inflow screaming in on right side there. ‪#ilwx‬ ‪pic.twitter.com/8JvW8Hwfiq‬ Chicago Tribune ‏‪@chicagotribune‬ 58m Tornado touching down in LaSalle County ‪http://trib.in/1bwjOO7 ‬ ‪pic.twitter.com/zBOT9eyAH8‬ ChuckGoudieABC ‏‪@ChuckGoudieABC7‬ Twister

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Unprecedented Fukushima Operation Starts Monday

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With a photo of fuel rod assemblies in the background, nuclear engineer, former executive, and educator Arnie Gundersen explains his doubts yesterday about the nuclear fuel relocation at Fukushima Unit 4 (screenshot). Brace yourselves. Japanese media and the UPI reported early today that TEPCO has scheduled the ticklish job of relocating highly radioactive nuclear fuel

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"Lousy, Spoilt, and Defiled Planet" Climate Talks Begin In Warsaw

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Officials open the 2013 UNFCCC meetings with determination and louder warnings…. (Photo source: http://ow.ly/qL43P) It’s time for the governments of the world to struggle with climate change policy again. Every year, late in November and early in December, representatives of 195 nations gather for two weeks to try to negotiate global responses to the increasingly

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Preliminary Test Now Required For Fukushima Nuclear Cleanup

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Readying Fukushima 1 Unit 4 for decommission operation, but… (Kyodo News/flickr.com/photos/simplyinfo/) Not so fast with the Fukushima decommissioning, TEPCO. A Japanese government-affiliated agency (the Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization) has advised the Tokyo Electric Power Company that its proposed method of clearing Reactor Unit 4’s exposed cooling pool needs a test run before anyone commits

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U.S. To Aid TEPCO In Moving Hot Fukushima Fuel

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Preparing to decommission the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, TEPCO recently dismantled the damaged roof parapet of Unit 4 and removed debris there. (Screenshot source: Enformable.com/Lucas W. Hixson.) As early as next Friday (November 8), the scariest decommissioning work at the ruined nuclear power complex may begin. Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO), the largest electrical utility in

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Brewers And Wineries Must Brace For Climate Change

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Today’s suds are an endangered species, says Willy Blackmore, food editor for TakePart. (Photo: Cafe Bink, Carefree, Arizona.) So are the grapes and wines of the 20th century. Blackmore relates the phenomena to the power of climate change. The geography of earth’s agriculture will shift as global climate alterations disrupt historic weather patterns and raise

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Long-jawed Croc Fossil Comes To Life In 3-D, Full-color, Micro Detail

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Thoracosaurus neocesariensis, a fossil crocodile that lived 65 million to 100 million years ago, when the oceans were higher, in the ancient warm, carbon-dioxide-rich mangrove swamps of present-day southern New Jersey. Crocodiles have been chasing fish for a very, very long time–since the Late Cretaceous, in fact–says paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara of Philadelphia’s Drexel University. The

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Make-believe "Polarization" In 1st Hearing On Climate Plan

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President Obama’s Plan to Fight Climate Change has an initial Congressional hearing (whitehouse.gov). Here’s what happened: Perhaps the second great step the Obama Administration has made this year with respect to climate change–after the President’s June 25 iteration of his sketchy but essentially solid outline for a new climate plan–happened this past week. The House

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Shutter 1.2% Of Power Plants, Cut Carbon Costs By 20%

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The nation’s most-polluting power plant, Georgia Power Company’s Plant Scherer in Juliette, Georgia, emits more carbon dioxide than all of Maine’s energy emissions. Here’s more from Environment America: On September 10, the Environment America Research & Policy Center, an independent nonprofit, and the Frontier Group presented a mighty appealing fast track toward limiting the U.S.

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Declining And Misused Federal Fire Dollars: The Rim Fire

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“Monster” fire consumes almost 10% of Yosemite National Park, August-September 2013 (Photo: U.S. Forest Service) Annual costs of fighting wildfires have grown exponentially over the past decade. They now surpass the value of resources reclaimed. The Rim Fire burning in and near Yosemite National Park has already cost over $65 million, and it is less

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Obesity Research Breakthrough

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Reposted from Examiner.com: Most of us have never heard of ghrelin (pronounced GRELL-in). The hormone has made headline news because a study published [this week] has explained how it interacts with FTO (fat mass and obesity-associated protein), the gene that researchers first linked to obesity in 2007. Here’s a closer look at the details of the new discovery. While only

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Runaway Oil Train Causes Deadly Explosion In Eastern Quebec

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At about 1:15 Saturday morning, a 72-freightcar train carrying crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken shale development, bound for Irving Oil’s plant in Saint John, New Brunswick, slipped its brakes in the eastern Quebec town of Nantes. The train’s only human passenger — the engineer — had checked into a nearby hotel. Driverless and continually

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American Medical Association: "You're Not Fat, Just Sick; And You Can Get Over It"

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It’s time for us to start changing the way we think about “fatties” — especially because so many of us now fit into that category. At its recent annual meeting in Chicago (June 16-19, 2013), the nation’s largest physician group, the American Medical Association, officially recognized obesity as a disease — in fact, as a

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