Month: September 2010

  • Sea Mountain Life

    There are mountains on land and there are mountains under the sea. The vast ocean seems flat but under that water are mountains, valleys and plains. These mountain chains rival the Alps, the Andes and the Himalayas in size and little is known about seamounts, the vast mountains hidden under the world’s oceans. Now in…

  • Toyota to Launch Host of New Hybrid Vehicles

    The Prius has been the top selling hybrid automobile of all time. Toyota is taking the success of the Prius and expanding their clout in the green vehicles market. By the end of 2012, the Japan-based automaker is set to introduce six new hybrid models, two of which will be in the Lexus luxury brand,…

  • Johnson Controls HQ Earns LEED Platinum

    Though their greening of the Empire State Building may garner more headlines, Johnson Control’s renovated headquarters building deserves its share of kudos too. The Glendale, WI complex has just been honored with a LEED platinum rating by the US Green Building Council which makes it (probably) the “greenest” headquarters among the Fortune 500. More importantly,…

  • Walrus Again Forced to Flee Melting Arctic Sea Ice

    We first reported in 2007 of Walrus pushed off Arctic sea ice due to unusually low Arctic sea ice extent in the eastern Chukchi Sea, where they normally spend their summers breeding and feeding in the shallow waters of the continental shelf. For the third time in the past four years Walrus again find themselves…

  • The Middle East’s Tradition of Environmental Protection

    Hima, practised for over 14,000 years in the Arabian Peninsula, is believed to be the most widespread system of traditional conservation in the Middle East, and perhaps the entire earth. In these modern times, it’s easy to think of environmental protection as a new concept which has emerged in response to modern problems linked to…

  • BP permanently “kills” Gulf of Mexico well

    With a final shot of cement, BP Plc permanently “killed” its deep-sea well in the Gulf of Mexico that ruptured in April and unleashed the worst oil spill in U.S. history, the top U.S. spill official said on Sunday. Some 153 days after the Macondo well ruptured, the U.S. government confirmed that BP had succeeded…

  • U.S. Wind Industry Poised for a Steep Decline?

    As of the summer of 2010, the landscape for the wind industry has changed dramatically from last year, when the U.S. set a record by installing over 10 GW in a single year and claiming the title of the world’s top wind power producer for the second year in a row.

  • Hurricane Igor heads toward Bermuda – batten down the hatches!

    Hurricane Igor approached Bermuda on Saturday packing powerful winds and heavy rains as the island’s premier warned residents to prepare for “one of the worst hurricanes to ever threaten our shores.” Squalls were spreading across the British overseas territory as the center of the Category 2 storm moved to within 285 miles of the tiny…

  • FINALLY – BP relief well intercepts ruptured well

    Efforts to permanently plug the world’s largest offshore oil spill reached a milestone when BP Plc’s crucial relief well reached its target — the blown-out Macondo well that began spewing oil almost five months ago, a U.S. official said. Now that the relief well has intersected with BP’s well, workers have an opening through which…

  • 2010: A Hot Year Indeed

    Weather is always an easy topic of conversation. The first eight months of 2010 tied the same period in 1998 for the warmest combined land and ocean surface temperature on record worldwide. Meanwhile, the June–August summer was the second warmest on record globally after 1998, and last month was the third warmest August on record.…