Kingish.com It's a way of life

NPR: This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR. I'm Ira Flatow. Up first this hour: Has the environmental movement lost its mojo? The election of President Obama two years ago was supposed to be a turning point, when Congress and the White House would finally act on climate change legislation. Here's the president speaking in 2008 to the Global Climate Summit, right after he was elected, saying that while a number of businesses were doing their part to fight global warming by investing in clean ...

Sacramento Bee: An oil company headed by billionaires David and Charles Koch has contributed $1 million to the campaign to suspend California's landmark climate change law. Flint Hills Resources does not have any oil interests in California but is a big opponent of climate change legislation around the country. On Thursday, the Kansas-based refining and chemicals manufacturer threw its weight behind Proposition 23, the ballot initiative that seeks to suspend California's greenhouse gas ...

IPS: A surprisingly small number of scientists have studied the impacts of the oil spill resulting from the 1979 blowout at the Ixtoc I oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Wes Tunnell, who first studied the spill's effects in July and August of 1980 and has returned many times since, is one of the few exceptions. Days after speaking to IPS in June, he flew back to Veracruz to see what remnants, if any, are still present from the disaster - the largest accidental oil spill in history before the ...

AFP: Shipowners are showing growing interest in a fabled trade route to Asia which climate change is beginning to open up at last as polar ice recedes. On Saturday the first non-Russian vessel to make an intercontinental commercial voyage through the Arctic Northeast passage will set sail from Norway for China. The route is thousands of kilometres (miles) shorter than traditional passages, promising to reduce travel time dramatically, along with fuel consumption and carbon dioxide ...

SciDev.Net: A huge effort to collect and analyse data on the devastating floods wreaking havoc in northern Pakistan has been severely undermined by a lack of strategies for disaster management and the dissemination of information, scientists and disaster experts have said. The Pakistan Meteorological Department's flood forecasting division provides information on the size and flow of the floods using data from an extensive network of weather radars along the Indus river as well as an Indus flood ...

AFP: Forty-six countries gained a clearer view on Friday of what it may take to secure a deal worth hundreds of billions of dollars in climate aid, an issue that threatens hopes for a treaty on global warming. A two-day informal meeting of the biggest players in the world climate haggle indicated growing support for a "Green Fund" to help dispense up to 100 billion dollars annually by 2020, said several of those attending. Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa said it was ...

Guardian: Plans for the largest offshore mussel farm in Europe, to be set up in Lyme Bay, were announced today. The company behind the project hopes it will produce up to 10,000 tonnes of mussels a year – more than the entire annual production of Scotland, where much of the UK industry is based. The project, using 15.4 square kilometres of seabed leased from the Crown Estate, will be on three sites in the bay. Offshore Shellfish (OSL), which is to begin a pilot project, hopes eventually ...

Inter Press Service: Sugarcane could replace the energy produced by three hydroelectric dams like the Belo Monte in the Amazon, claims the Brazilian sugarcane industry, which remains relegated to marginal participation in the national electricity matrix. Brazil's sugarcane straw and pulp could generate 12,200 megawatts, while the Belo Monte dam, to be built on the northern Amazonian Xingú River, will generate just 4,571 megawatts on average, according to UNICA, the sugarcane industry association, in the ...

Economist: OVER the course of the next ten years a company called Geodynamics, based in Queensland, Australia, is planning to drill as many as 90 wells, each 4,500-5,000 metres deep, in the Cooper Basin, a desert region in South Australia with large energy reserves. But the company is not drilling for oil or gas. It is looking for an energy source that is far cleaner and more abundant than any fossil fuel: heat emanating from hot rocks deep beneath the Earth's surface, a promising emerging form of ...

AP: Mexico's foreign minister today dampened hopes of a breakthrough deal at the Cancun climate change talks in November, saying negotiators are focusing on making progress on smaller issues before perhaps seeking a comprehensive agreement in 2011 or later. Speaking after a two-day meeting in Geneva that dealt with how to pay for carbon-cutting projects in developing countries, Patricia Espinosa said the public should not measure the success of the Cancun talks by whether countries agree ...

Boston Globe: The large waves, storm surge, and flooding that Hurricane Earl will spawn as it strikes Massachusetts tomorrow night comes with an added dollop of trouble; Sea level rise. Very gradual -- and in some cases accelerating -- rises in sea level off our coast over the last century will boost the height of Earl's storm surge -- expected to be one to four feet -- meaning the wall of water will be able to travel that much farther inland and over higher elevations to flood basements, streets, ...

AP: What now for the Gulf? News of another oil rig fire in the Gulf of Mexico, so soon after the BP oil spill, has set off a wave of anxiety along the Gulf Coast and prompted calls for the government to extend its six-month ban on deepwater drilling. Just when it seemed the Obama administration might be ready to lift the unpopular ban, the fire raises new questions about the dangers of offshore drilling, leaving the industry wondering when it can get back to work. "Anything ...

Guardian: The UN has called an urgent meeting on rising global food prices in an attempt to head off a repeat of the 2008 crisis that sparked riots around the world. Seven people, including two children, were killed in Mozambique this week during three days of protests triggered by a rise in the cost of bread. There has also been anger over increasing prices in Egypt, Serbia and Pakistan, where floods destroyed a fifth of the country's crops. The UN's announcement came after Russian ...

National Geographic: Changes in the towering wall of vertical clouds surrounding the storm's eye helped diminish Hurricane Earl's intensity as it roared toward North Carolina's Outer Banks (map) Thursday morning, meteorologists say. Earl was a very intense storm with winds exceeding 140 miles (225 kilometers) an hour as it moved northward along the U.S. East Coast. But as of Friday morning, Earl had diminished to a Category 1 hurricane with peak winds of about 85 miles (137 kilometers) an ...

Reuters: Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said on Friday he cannot predict whether Royal Dutch Shell, which has invested $3.5 billion in an offshore Arctic oil-development program, will be allowed to drill the five wells it plans next year in Alaska's Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. "We will be making that decision in the several months ahead," he said at an Anchorage news conference, citing pending reports on offshore drilling safety and the results of an investigation into the Deepwater Horizon ...

Reuters: Drought has cut Peru's Amazon River to its lowest level in 40 years and it is already below the minimum set in 2005, when a devastating dry spell damaged vast swaths of South American rainforest in the worst drought in decades. Scientists in Peru and Brazil say the lack of rainfall, which is typical for this time of year, should continue for a few more weeks until the start of the rainy season. But there is some concern that the dryness could persist as what is shaping up to be ...

Independent: Photovoltaic cells provide environmental benefits but unless properly disposed of they could amount to over 600,000 tons of un-recycled waste per year. The rapidly expanding market for photovoltaic (solar) cells brings obvious environmental benefits, encouraging the use of alternative energy resources and reducing the world's reliance on oil. Yet despite these advantages, the disposal of photovoltaic cells creates an environmental problem: it is estimated that 1.4 million tons ...

AP: A weakening Hurricane Earl swiped past North Carolina on Friday on its way to New England, where officials urged residents to stay vigilant even as the area threatened by storm's full force was shrinking. The storm blew sustained winds of 85 mph, a Category 1 storm, and was 350 miles south-southwest of Nantucket as of 11 a.m., according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. The storm was expected to pass about 50 to 75 miles southeast of Nantucket on Friday ...

Guardian: BP said today it is a fortnight away from sealing the ruptured oil well in the Gulf of Mexico for good, as it revealed that the bill for containing and cleaning up the oil spill – the largest in American history – has reached $8bn. Depending on the weather, the oil giant hopes to seal the well for good in mid-September. Since 15 July, no new oil had flowed into the gulf from the ruptured well, BP said. It continues to search for oil on the surface. The bill has steadily risen ...

IPS: Quality of life in Eastern European cities will continue to fall unless outdated systems of city life dominated by cars are abandoned, NGOs in the region say. At a meeting in Prague last week environmental groups from countries from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia said city authorities were failing to address growing traffic problems and lagging far behind the West in approaches to what has become a serious problem in some parts of the region. They said that ...