Pacific Garbage Patch

08-21-2010 • arclein

Simply put, it's a swirling mass of plastic in the middle of the Pacific ocean that is big enough to qualify as the planet's largest landfill. Roughly located in an area between 135° to 155°W and 35° to 42°N,

U.S. Officials Saw Drilling Ban Costing Jobs: Report

08-20-2010 • Reuters

Senior U.S. officials expected the deepwater drilling ban to cost about 23,000 jobs and hold up $10.2 billion in investments. The ban spurred opposition from oil companies and local lawmakers who said it would exact a heavy toll in jobs and hurt crud

BP Settlements Likely to Shield Top Defendants

08-19-2010 • NY Times

People and businesses seeking a lump-sum settlement from BP’s $20 billion oil spill compensation fund will have to waive their right to sue not only BP, but also all the other major defendants involved with the spill, according to lawyers handling th

Gulf surface cleaner, but questions lurk far below

08-18-2010 • AP

Researchers are warning that the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is a bigger mess than the government claims and that a lot of crude is lurking deep below the surface, some of it settling perhaps in a critical undersea canyon off the Florida Panhandle.

US Senate Hearing on Autism: It's The Environment Not The Gene Pool

08-16-2010 • Anne Dachel via Daily Paul

With barely any notice, the autism community heard that the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Children's Health would be holding a hearing entitled, "State of Research on Potential Environmental Health Factors with Autism and Related Neurodevelopment Disor

Russian Wildfires Reach Chernobyl Site, Recontamination Likely (Video)

08-13-2010 • cares2

Over 500 wildfires have been raging across Russia for the past week, and now forest service officials are reporting that blazes have reached lands already contaminated by radioactive waste from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.

BP plugs well with mud; feds say much of oil gone

08-04-2010 • AP

BP claimed a key victory in the effort to plug its blown-out well and the government said much of the spilled oil is gone—though what's left is still at least quadruple the amount that poured from the Exxon Valdez.

'Static kill' mud starts flowing into BP well

08-03-2010 • Washington Post

The static kill is underway. Whether it will kill, slightly impede, or merely pester BP's Macondo well remained unknown late Tuesday, as engineers and scientists at BP's headquarters in suburban Houston scrutinized pressure readings from the hole in

Reducing Soot Might Be Shortcut to Reverse Climate Change, New Study Says

08-01-2010 • Rebecca Boyle via PopSci

The quickest way to slow the melting of Arctic sea ice is through reducing soot emissions, according to a new study of soot's climate effects. Eliminating soot entirely could undo nearly a century of global warming, the study says.

Should we Release Genetically Engineered Mosquitoes into the Environment?

07-31-2010 • The Real News

Scientists in the US have managed to genetically engineer a malaria-resistant mosquito. The tremendous event has been hailed as the first of its kind and a breakthrough in the scientific community, but is all the speculation true? Is it a good idea t

Battle Creek oil spill among largest in Midwest history

07-27-2010 • Detroit News

"The EPA is estimating 1 million gallons (spilled). ... This feels like déja vu all over again with regard to what happened in the Gulf." The oil spilled into Talmadge Creek, which flows northwest into the Kalamazoo River. May have been leaking for m

Oil spewing from well near Louisiana marsh

07-27-2010 • NBC News

Adding insult to the Gulf's injury, an oil platform hit by a tugboat early Tuesday is now spewing oil and natural gas near a Louisiana marsh area. While there was no estimate of how much oil was gushing, officials said the mile-long slick it crea

Gulf focus shifts, but where is all the oil?

07-27-2010 • AFP

With BP's leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico finally capped, the focus shifts to the surface clean-up and the question on everyone's lips is: where is all the oil? For three long months a massive slick threatened the shorelines of Louisiana and ot

Catherine Mohr builds green

07-27-2010 • Catherine Mohr via TED

In a short, funny, data-packed talk at TED U, Catherine Mohr walks through all the geeky decisions she made when building a green new house -- looking at real energy numbers, not hype. What choices matter most? Not the ones you think.

BP accused of 'buying academic silence'

07-23-2010 • BBC News

The head of the American Association of Professors has accused BP of trying to "buy" the best scientists and academics to help its defence against litigation after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. "This is really one huge corporation trying to buy fa

"Cap and Trade" is Dead

07-22-2010 • The Washington Post

Conceding that they can't find enough votes for the legislation, Senate Democrats on Thursday abandoned efforts to put together a comprehensive energy bill that would seek to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

Ships leave leaky oil well as storm brews

07-22-2010 • AP

Crew members aboard dozens of ships in the Gulf of Mexico prepared Thursday to evacuate as a tropical rainstorm brewing in the Caribbean brought the deep-sea effort to plug BP's ruptured oil well to a near standstill. Though the rough weather was

Oil cleanup workers protest ‘flotel’ housing

07-22-2010 • AP

[oh, it gets worse] BP told a New Orleans Fox affiliate that the flotels were useful for keeping workers close to cleanup sites, thereby eliminating travel time. But some aren't happy about it. In fact, a group of fishermen decided to go on strike

Almost invisible mirrored tree house built in Sweden

07-21-2010 • Yahoo! Green

They said it couldn't be done. When we first wrote about the almost invisible tree house to be built in Sweden by Tham & Videgard, 899 commenters thought it was computer-generated eye candy, impossible to build, and death for birds. But the archit

Gulf oil spill: Hearings on BP disaster canceled as witnesses say they won't show

07/21/2010 • godlikeproductions.com

None of the five witnesses called to testify will appear at Wednesday’s hearing of the U.S. Coast Guard-Interior Department probe into what caused the Deepwater Horizon oil rig to explode. U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Hung Nguyen said the panel was noti

California bud growers worry about ‘Wal-Marting’ of weed

07-18-2010 • The Associated Press

After weathering the fear of federal prosecution and competition from drug cartels, California's medical marijuana growers see a new threat to their tenuous existence: the "Wal-Marting" of weed.

27,000 Potential Leaks

07-18-2010 • Al Gore via The Huffingtion Post

"More than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells lurk in the hard rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades. No one -- not industry, not government -- is checking to see if they are leaking, an Associa

The Climategate Whitewash Continues

07-12-2010 • Patrick J. Michaels via Wall St. Journal

Last November there was a world-wide outcry when a trove of emails were released suggesting some of the world’s leading climate scientists engaged in professional misconduct, data manipulation and jiggering of both the scientific literature and clima

NASA Will Rescue Thousands of Sea Turtle Eggs from Oil Leak Areas

07-10-2010 • Laurie J. Schmidt via PopSci

NASA's latest mission doesn't have anything to do with spacecraft or satellites. The space agency is helping thousands of baby sea turtles make their successful pilgrimage to the ocean. Biologists are digging up some 700 turtle nests on northern Gulf

National Academy of Sciences blacklists "Climate Deniers"

07-09-2010 • Pajamas Media

The National Academy of Sciences has published a blacklist of nearly 500 eminent scientists who the N.A.S. says shouldn't be believed on global warming, calling them "climate deniers".

Obama Science Czar Called For Global Carbon Tax

07-09-2010 • Steve Watxon via Prison Planet.com

Immediately prior to his nomination as White House Science Czar, John P. Holdren called for a global carbon tax in order to “redistribute” wealth to the Southern Hemisphere.

Infographic: Earth's Atmosphere Top to Bottom

07-08-2010 • Our Amazing Planet

The air you breathe is precious, and the farther from Earth's surface you go, the less there is. But Earth's atmosphere extends farther into space than you might realize, affecting the orbits of spacecraft more than 200 miles high.