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NPR on how wastewater wells can cause earthquakes We have correlation: There have been a lot more earthquakes than normal in the middle of the United States in recent years, and they tend to cluster around industrial wastewater wells in Colorado and Oklahoma. That much is easy to demonstrate. But do we have causation? That's the question scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey are addressing now, and they think the answer is yes. As natural gas drilling booms in Middle America, wastewater wells are multiplying and dramatically growing in size, and the injections of wastewater raise pressure on the bedrock and increase seismic activity, they think. "It's kind of like sticking a straw into a soupy souffle and blowing water into it. It moves things around underground, things like a fault. That's when you get a quake."
The Guardian on wind power and birds One of the major perceived drawbacks to wind power as a large-scale sustainable energy source is the extent to which windmills disrupt birds in their migrations, in particular offshore wind farms. But a new study found that most British species don't experience much of a disruption from offshore windmills. A few did, however, especially during the windmills' construction. What it means for this side of the pond is that we're going to have to do our own careful, species-specific research on the wind farms' effect on birds if we really want to know. But we can extrapolate that construction is a hazardous time all around.