 | | Article Details: In the United States, “energy policy” essentially means one thing: oil policy. The New York Times reported today that the U.S. Congress is serious about producing a new energy policy after years of stalemates and inaction. But read carefully. All the talk about a new energy policy is driven by one thing: consumer anxiety about the high cost of gasoline (petrol). It is not unreasonable to assume that any energy policy will be a reactionary response to this concern versus a much-needed re-alignmen | |
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 | | Article Details: The world will experience a growing risk of conflicts over food, energy and water in coming years. The population rises each year by about 80 million people, with most of the increase in impoverished regions already facing environmental stress. Climate change, water scarcity and tighter oil supplies will add to the stresses. The tendency might be to look to the military for solutions. We'll need to keep in mind that engineers and doctors will be the only ones who can truly keep us safe. | |
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 | | Article Details: The U.S. has done the least among the world's eight largest economies to address global warming, a study released Thursday found. The G-8 Climate Scorecards 2008, released Thursday ahead of next week's gathering of the Group of Eight, also found that none of the eight countries are making improvements large enough to prevent temperature increases that scientists think would cause catastrophic climate changes. | |
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 | | Article Details: From the simplest methods to the most technologically advanced, the strategies employed around the world to be more environmentally friendly and reduce reliance on fossil fuels are as varied as the people that inhabit the planet. | |
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| | Article Details: It seems unthinkable, but for the first time in human history, ice is on course to disappear entirely from the North Pole this year. The disappearance of the Arctic sea ice, making it possible to reach the Pole sailing in a boat through open water, would be one of the most dramatic – and worrying – examples of the impact of global warming on the planet. | |
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| | Article: | | | | Published: | 6/26/2008 by Huffington Post (Stephanie S. Garlow) | | | Submitted by: | Frank K 25 days ago | | | Categories: | Food & Animals |
| Article Details: Food prices could rise even more unless the mysterious decline in honey bees is solved, farmers and businessmen told lawmakers Thursday. Bee pollination is responsible for $15 billion annually in crop value.
In 2006, beekeepers began reporting losing 30 percent to 90 percent of their hives. This phenomenon has become known as Colony Collapse Disorder. | |
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| | Article: | | | | Published: | 5/30/2008 by New York Times (Matthew L. Wald) | | | Submitted by: | Frank K 52 days ago | | | Categories: | Energy & Fossil Fuels |
| Article Details: Coal is abundant and cheap, assuring that it will continue to be used. But the failure to start building, testing, tweaking and perfecting carbon capture and storage means that developing the technology may come too late to make coal compatible with limiting global warming. The Electric Power Research Institute, a utility consortium, estimated that it would take as long as 15 years to go from starting a pilot plant to proving the technology will work. | |
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 | | Article Details: Convinced the planet's oil supply is dwindling and the world's economies are heading for a crash, some people around the country are moving onto homesteads, learning to live off their land, conserving fuel and, in some cases, stocking up on guns they expect to use to defend themselves and their supplies from desperate crowds of people who didn't prepare. | |
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 | | Article Details: The US government on Wednesday declared the polar bear a threatened species under federal environmental protection laws, a ruling that may further limit efforts to develop US energy resources in Alaska. Advocates of increased US domestic energy development have long sought access to oil and gas reserves in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) on Alaska’s north coast. Environmentalists have opposed drilling in the refuge on grounds it would disrupt and endanger the wildlife that ANWR was cr | |
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 | | Article: | | | | Published: | 4/30/2008 by L.A. Times (Gary Ferguson) | | | Submitted by: | Frank K 52 days ago | | | Categories: | Habitats & Animals |
| Article Details: The gray wolf was removed from the endangered species list on March 28, 2008, an act which has since ignited a killing spree in the northern Rocky Mountains. In Wyoming alone, at least 16 wolves have been shot since they came off the federal endangered species list on March 28 -- including two within the first 24 hours, ambushed by hunters waiting near an elk wintering ground. | |
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 | | Article Details: Last year global levels of atmospheric CO2, the primary driver of global climate change, increased by 0.6 pct, or 19 billion tons. In addition methane rose by 27 million tons after nearly a decade with little or no increase. The burning of coal, oil, and gas, is the primary source of increasing CO2 emissions. Oceans, vegetation, and soils soak up half of these emissions. The rest stays in the air for centuries. | |
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 | | Article: | | | | Published: | 4/24/2008 by The Nation (Mark Hertsgaard ) | | | Submitted by: | Frank K 52 days ago | | | Categories: | Energy & Fossil Fuels |
| Article Details: The arrival of $119 bbl crude and $4 gal gasoline are obvious signs that global oil production has or soon will peak. With global demand rising and supplies limited, higher, more volatile prices and shortages could provoke--to quote the title of the must-see peak oil documentary--the end of suburbia. The world's economy and, paradoxically, the fight against climate change could be in deep trouble. | |
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 | | Article Details: In an effort to jump-start a "nuclear renaissance," the Bush Administration has pushed one package of subsidies after another. A program of federal loan guarantees amounting to $18.5 billion has sat waiting for utilities to build nukes. So why is the much-storied "nuclear renaissance" so slow to get rolling? In a nutshell, blame Warren Buffett, and the banks--they won't put up the cash. | |
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 | | Article Details: Patrick Moore, one of the co-founders of Greenpeace, left abruptly, and, in a controversial reversal, has become an outspoken advocate of some of the environmental movement's most detested causes, chief among them nuclear energy. He states that "other than hydroelectric energy nuclear is the only technology besides fossil fuels available as a large-scale continuous power source, and I mean one you can rely on to be running 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Wind and solar energy are intermittent | |
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 | | Article Details: A fast-unfolding food shortage is engulfing the entire world, driving food prices to record highs. Population growth, increased affluence and demand for more grain-intensive livestock products, and the use of more grain to produce ethanol for cars have contributed to rising food prices, spreading of hunger, social unrest and political instability. If food security cannot be restored the number of failing states will likely increase dramatically, threatening the very stability of civilization it | |
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 | | Article Details: A report by the Ocean Conservancy catalogues nearly 7.2 million items (6 million pounds) that were collected by volunteers on a single day in September as they combed beaches and rocky shorelines in 76 countries. The volunteers collected nearly 2.3 million cigarette butts, filters and cigar tips; 587,827 bags; more than 1.7 million food wrappers, containers, lids, cups, plates and eating utensils; and nearly 1.2 million bottles and beverage cans. | |
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 | | Article Details: Thousands of farmers are taking their fields out of the government’s biggest conservation program, which pays them not to cultivate. They are spurning guaranteed annual payments for a chance to cash in on the boom in wheat, soybeans, corn and other crops. Last fall, they took back as many acres as are in Rhode Island and Delaware combined. Environmental and hunting groups are warning that years of progress could soon be lost. | |
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 | | Article Details: The troubling tension between propelling prosperity and limiting climate risks is on full display this week. India’s Tata Power group just gained important financial backing from the International Finance Corporation, a branch of the World Bank for its planned $4 billion, 4-billion watt “Ultra Mega” coal-burning power plant complex in Gujarat state. The plant will emit about 23 million tons of carbon dioxide a year. | |
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 | | Article: | | | | Published: | 4/1/2008 by Heartland Institute (James M. Taylor) | | | Submitted by: | Frank K 52 days ago | | | Categories: | Habitats & Wetlands |
| Article Details: The U.S. EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers are squaring off over an Army Corps proposal to seasonally drain 67,000 acres of wetlands adjacent to the lower Mississippi River. The Army Corps wants to spend $220 million to build a pumping station in the Yazoo River Basin arguing that the project is necessary to protect agricultural lands and approximately 1,000 homes from potential flooding. | |
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 | | Article Details: When the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) released its annual environmental rankings last month, McCain - whose campaign website declares him “a leader on the issue of global warming” - earned a zero for missing all of the group’s votes on key green issues. He was one of nine Republicans scoring the lowest possible rating. | |
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 | | Article Details: Long considered an abundant, reliable and relatively cheap source of energy, coal is suddenly in short supply and high demand worldwide. An untimely confluence of bad weather, flawed energy policies, low stockpiles and voracious growth in Asia's appetite has driven international spot prices of coal up by 50 percent. Freight cars in Appalachia are brimming with coal for export. The boom in coal exports and prices has helped lower the trade deficit for the USA. | |
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 | | Article Details: Finland is developing a broad mix of environmentally friendly, economically competitive energy sources. Nuclear energy is an important part of that effort. Not only has Finland begun to construct a new, modern 1,600-megawatt reactor, but it is successfully executing a cohesive, workable strategy to manage spent fuel. The United States has done neither. | |
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 | | Article Details: The task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions enough to avert a dangerous rise in global temperatures may be far more difficult than previous research suggested, say scientists who have just published studies indicating that it would require the world to cease carbon emissions altogether within a matter of decades. | |
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 | | Article Details: Food security and the rapid rise in food prices make up the "elephant in the room" that politicians must face up to quickly. Professor John Beddington said the global rush to grow biofuels was compounding the problem, and cutting down rainforest to produce biofuel crops was "profoundly stupid". It is very hard to see a world growing enough crops to produce renewable energy and at the same time meet the enormous demand for food to alleviate poverty. | |
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 | | Article Details: Government practice is to rid lakes and rivers of raw sewage and industrial pollution by converting it all into a free, nutrient-rich fertilizer. A farmer's cows died by the hundreds after his land was poisoned by sludge from the waste treatment plant. A 30-year government policy encourages farmers to spread millions of tons of sewage sludge over thousands of acres each year as an alternative to commercial fertilizers. The program is still in effect. | |
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 | | Article Details: Concerns about global warming and rising building costs are blocking construction of new coal-fired power plants in the United States and pushing utilities to turn to natural gas and renewable power instead. Utilities canceled or put on hold at least 45 coal plants in development last year. This is a sharp reversal from a year ago, when the industry had more than 150 such plants in development and signals the waning of a major US expansion into coal. | |
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 | | Article Details: The extraordinary winter conditions over the past year: snow in Johannesburg and Baghdad, Arctic sea ice returning with a vengeance, blizzards in China, and a sharp drop in the globe’s average temperature, have stimulated more debate on global warming. However, a host of climate experts say it is mostly good old-fashioned weather, along with a cold kick from the tropical Pacific Ocean, which is in its La Niña phase for a few more months. | |
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 | | Article Details: A water crisis is impending. In a new book, Jeffrey Sachs outlines easy, low-cost technical and economic strategies to avoid disaster. But implementing any of these takes planning, organization and leadership. "Politicians don't want to bear the costs of adjustment," Sachs says. "So they ignore the problem and continue the same unsustainable practices." | |
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 | | Article Details: Semiconductor light emitting diodes (LEDs) are finally on the verge of having the capability to radically alter the entire lighting landscape with staggering improvements in both lighting efficiency and efficacy. LEDs have already achieved 100 lumens per watt, with 200 visible. Incandescent bulbs yield some 15 lumens a watt, CFLs about 80. LEDs last 50,000, and soon 100,000, hours. | |
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 | | Article: | | | | Published: | 2/24/2008 | | | Submitted by: | Jason K 151 days ago | | | Category: | Biofuels |
| Article Details: Virgin Atlantic carried out the world's first flight of a commercial aircraft powered with biofuel on Sunday in an effort to show it can produce less carbon dioxide than normal jet fuels. | |
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