Month: March 2010

  • Deal nearing on Senate climate bill

    The Senate is close to wrapping up talks ahead of introducing a compromise climate change bill, said a top Democratic lawmaker who discussed ideas with industry groups on Wednesday. “We’re planning to button up our efforts somewhere I hope next week,” Senator John Kerry told reporters after meeting with a coalition that represents automakers, forestry…

  • Blue Fin Tuna Decline and Fall

    The Atlantic blue fin tuna is one of the largest, fastest, and most gorgeously colored of all the world’s fishes. Their torpedo shaped, streamlined bodies are built for speed and endurance. Their coloring (metallic blue on top and silver white on the bottom) helps camouflage them from above and below. They have an average size…

  • Are Utilities Ready for Smart Meters?

    The rollout of the highly touted Smart Grid ran into another buzz saw this week, this time in Texas, when a hundreds of consumers showed up at a town hall meeting, and the Grand Prairie City Hall, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, complaining that their recently installed wireless Smart Meters were responsible for higher electric…

  • New Analysis: 15% Cut in U.S. Carbon Emissions Achievable Through Simple Inexpensive Personal Actions

    NEW YORK (March 12, 2010) – New analysis released today at a symposium on “Climate, Mind and Behavior” reveals that Americans can reduce U.S. carbon pollution by 15 percent – or one billion tons of global warming pollution – through collective personal actions that require little to no cost. The analysis released by NRDC and…

  • Waste Management To Deploy First Plasma Gasification System

    S4 Energy Solutions LLC, a joint venture by Waste Management, Inc. (NYSE: WM) and InEnTec LLC, announced plans to develop a plasma gasification facility at Waste Management’s Columbia Ridge Landfill in Arlington, Oregon. The planned facility will convert municipal solid waste into fuels and energy. Construction is expected to begin in the early summer, with…

  • California to get more water

    California’s drought-baked cities and farms will get considerably more water this year than last from federal officials, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said on Tuesday, making good on forecasts issued in February after a series of strong winter storms. Irrigation districts south of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, which represent farmers on the west side of…

  • Shrimp Under Glacier

    Life thrives where one least expects it. In a surprising discovery about where life can exist, scientists for the first time found a curious shrimp like creature and a piece of a jellyfish beneath a massive Antarctic ice sheet. Six hundred feet below the ice where no light shines, scientists had figured nothing much more…

  • Life-Cycle Studies: Beer

    Enkidu, a man raised by wild animals in the classic Sumerian poem Epic of Gilgamesh, knew nothing of beer until a prostitute guided him to a shepherd’s camp. Upon finishing seven full cups, “his soul became free and cheerful, his heart rejoiced, his face glowed…. He became human.” Beer was so popular throughout ancient Mesopotamia…

  • China must boost its global science impact, study finds

    [BEIJING] China’s international science influence is still weak, even though its investment in science has rapidly increased in recent years, a report has found.

  • CO2 at new highs despite economic slowdown

    Levels of the main greenhouse gas in the atmosphere have risen to new highs in 2010 despite an economic slowdown in many nations that braked industrial output, data showed on Monday. Carbon dioxide, measured at Norway’s Zeppelin station on the Arctic Svalbard archipelago, rose to a median 393.71 parts per million of the atmosphere in…