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Australia: Climate scientists cross with Abbott for taking Christ's name in vain - Sydney Morning Herald: TONY ABBOTT is under pressure to justify telling students it was considerably warmer when Jesus was alive after leading scientists said his claim was wrong. He urged year 5 and 6 pupils at an Adelaide school to be sceptical about the human contribution to climate change, saying it was an open question. In a question-and-answer session on Friday, the Opposition Leader said it was warmer "at the time of Julius Caesar and Jesus of Nazareth" than now. Leading scientists said ...

Australia: Abbott evokes Jesus to teach pupils all about 'natural' climate change - Australian: TONY Abbott has urged primary school students to be sceptical about man-made climate change, saying it was warmer during the time of Julius Caesar and Jesus than it is now. The Opposition Leader, wrapping up a two-day visit to South Australia yesterday, told Year 5 and 6 students that climate change had always happened and, historically, humans had not been responsible. Climate Change Minister Penny Wong said it was "irresponsible and disappointing" for the Liberal leader to ...

United States: Utility agrees to buy power from Cape Wind - Washington Post: BOSTON -- The nation's inaugural offshore wind farm, planned for waters off Cape Cod, has reached its first deal with a utility to purchase its power. Under the agreement announced by both companies Friday, National Grid would pay 20.7 cents per kilowatt hour starting in 2013 for half the power produced by the 130-turbine Cape Wind project planned for Nantucket Sound. The price would go up by 3.5 percent annually to keep pace with inflation. The deal is considered ...

Canada: British consumers unwitting users of fuel from tar sands, study says - Guardian: British motorists are unwitting users of diesel and petrol derived from the Canadian tar sands whose carbon-heavy production methods make it particularly damaging to the environment, Greenpeace claims. The green group is calling for urgent action by the European Commission to strengthen Fuel Quality Directive regulations to restrict the import of petroleum products which are made in a carbon-intensive way. The move comes as the tar sands producers appear to be trying to use the ...

Flights to offshore wildlife refuge in La. halted - Associated Press: Federal officials have halted flights to the Breton National Wildlife Refuge off the Louisiana coast, saying aircraft hired by news organizations threaten the birds nesting in the barrier islands. A statement Saturday from the Coast Guard and other officials overseeing the oil spill cleanup said the flights and landings threaten the very birds that the media are covering. All access to the refuge has been closed as cleanup crews assess the damage from oil leaking from a well in ...

Democratic Republic of Congo: UN flies to rescue of Congo gorillas - Guardian: Extraordinary causes sometimes require extraordinary measures, and so it was that four young gorillas found themselves being airlifted to sanctuary last month. UN peacekeepers used helicopters to fly the apes from a battle zone in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The gorillas had been rescued from traffickers in the country's rebel-infested east and faced being eaten. These animals are eastern lowland gorillas – a species that only survives in the DRC – and were flown from Goma to ...

Lieberman Predicts Support for Climate Bill - FOXNews: Sen. Joe Lieberman said Sunday that he and Sen. John Kerry are pressing forward with climate change legislation despite losing the support of a key senator, telling "Fox News Sunday" the bill has a "real shot" at passing. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who had been negotiating with Lieberman, I-Conn., and Kerry, D-Mass., for months on the package, backed away Friday citing complaints about lawmakers' attempts to tackle immigration reform at the same time. The BP oil spill spreading in ...

China: Power points to boost green buses and cars - China Daily: Charging stations for electric vehicles are to be placed throughout this East China metropolis to make it easier to run more green buses on its streets. The city will have 400 more roadside charging points and seven to 10 large stations by the end of this year, said Zhou Minhao, deputy director of its economics and information committee, on Friday. The stations will be essential to meet the needs of the "dozens" of electric buses that will be running on a daily basis, he ...

Nigeria's islands lost to Atlantic ocean - NGR Guardian: There are strong indications that Nigeria has lost some of its Islands to the problem of erosion from the Atlantic ocean. Experts two Fridays ago, linked the loss to global warming and climate change-related problems. The lost Islands are in the Delta region, where Nigeria earns about 90 per cent of her foreign exchange revenue. The revelation about the vanished Islands emerged at the workshop on Coastal States in Nigeria and the problem of climate change put up by the Federal ...

BP seeks solution after U.S. oil spill setback - Reuters: BP Plc engineers searched on Sunday for ways to control gushing oil from a ruptured Gulf of Mexico well after a setback with a huge metal containment dome dashed hopes for a quick, temporary solution to a growing environmental disaster. BP was pondering its next move after a buildup of crystallized gas in the dome forced engineers to suspend efforts to place the four-story chamber over the rupture, the company's best short-term solution to containing the spill. The mammoth dome ...

U-Va. urged to fight subpoena of climate scientist's documents - Washington Post: Academics from across the country are rallying against a subpoena issued by Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II seeking documents related to the work of a former University of Virginia climate scientist, even as the university says it is preparing to comply with Cuccinelli's request. Cuccinelli (R) issued the civil investigative demand to the university last month for all documents related to five grant applications made by Michael Mann, a climate-change expert who joined Penn ...

Topography makes wind power nearly absent in Conn - Associated Press: In the drive for renewable energy, Connecticut is giving up on large-scale wind power, surrendering to poor topography and the limited reach of a shoreline that stops short of the Atlantic Ocean. Connecticut set goals 10 years ago to increase renewable energy in its portfolio of power sources. An annual plan recently submitted to state regulators seeks significant increases in megawatts generated by landfill gas, hydro power, biomass, fuel cells and solar energy by 2030. Wind ...

Japan: Offshore wind farms planned - Kyodo News: A senior government panel has drafted a plan calling for the establishment by 2020 of massive offshore wind farms capable of producing at least 1,000 megawatts of power, equivalent to the output of roughly 10 nuclear power plants, a source said Saturday. The panel on comprehensive ocean policy, headed by Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, is planning to work out in about one year financing and other specifics of the plan that it hopes will reduce greenhouse gases and reinvigorate the ...

Australia: Industry wants funds to prepare for ETS - AAP: Labor's emissions trading scheme may have been shelved but a leading business group says industry still needs money to prepare for the day it's back on the table. Australian Industry Group (Ai Group) chief executive Heather Ridout wants extra cash put into the Rudd government's two-billion-dollar climate change action fund as part of Tuesday's budget. The fund was established to help businesses and others enjoy a "smooth transition to a low-pollution economy". Prime ...

United Kingdom: Garden ponds unwittingly polluted by tap water - Guardian: British garden ponds are unwittingly being polluted by people topping them up with tap water, a survey has found. Around half of 250 ponds examined are in "poorer" condition, three in 10 are "good" and only one in 10 was rated as "excellent", said the organisers of the Big Pond Dip, Pond ConservatioLord and Lady Hollinscoughn. Water boatmen, beetles, snails, alderflies and damselfly larvae are among the pond life affected by the problem, which occurred in more than half the ...

Fighting for 'made in the USA' - LA Times: Yet-Ming Chiang relishes his 20-mile drive to work. His hybrid car gets more than 100 miles per gallon, recharges by plugging into a regular wall outlet and purrs so quietly that it's his favorite place for making important phone calls. But what makes Chiang's ordinary-looking beige Toyota Prius even more special is that it's powered by a breakthrough battery that he invented and is working to turn into the kind of high-tech, green, "Made in America" product that many see as the key ...

Deep-sea ice crystals stymie Gulf oil leak fix - Associated Press: A novel but risky attempt to use a 100-ton steel-and-concrete box to cover a deepwater oil well gushing toxic crude into the Gulf of Mexico was aborted Saturday after ice crystals encased it, an ominous development as thick blobs of tar began washing up on Alabama's white sand beaches. The setback left the mission to cap the ruptured well in doubt. It had taken about two weeks to build the box and three days to cart it 50 miles out then slowly lower it to the well a mile below the ...

Is the US ready for a 24-hour coastal oil spill response corps? - Christian Science Monitor: With the Deepwater Horizon oil spill there's new interest in a national coastal rescue corps to augment the kind of industry and US Coast Guard safeguards that haven't adequately protected sensitive shorelines and economies. "What you need are local watchdogs to monitor oil exploration and transportation," says Steven Picou, a sociologist at the University of South Alabama who studied the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez disaster. "The tragedy is that such programs usually come about only after ...

BP suffers snag in Gulf oil containment effort - Reuters: BP Plc suffered a setback on Saturday in an attempt to contain oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico with a huge metal dome when crystallized gas filled the structure, a blow to hopes of a quick, temporary solution to a growing environmental disaster. Word of the snag came as balls of tar appeared in waters off a popular Alabama island beach in what may be the first evidence of spilled oil washing into a populated area. BP engineers have moved the four-story containment dome -- ...

United Kingdom: Fishermen face ever harder task as stocks dwindle - Guardian: And they call it progress. Today's giant mechanised ships that hoover fish from the ocean depths are less effective than 19th-century sailing vessels, a study has discovered. In fact, the UK's modern fishing fleet must work 17 times harder for the same catch as its Victorian counterparts. The nets are not the problem, nor the men who haul them in. It is the fish. All the fish in the sea doesn't mean the same any more. Over-fishing is not a new environmental problem but, like its ...

Cuba: Fidel Castro: Oil spill shows corporate domination - Associated Press: Fidel Castro says the spreading oil slick fouling the Gulf of Mexico is proof that the world's most powerful governments cannot control large corporations that now dictate the public's destiny. Officials are rushing to seal an underwater oil gusher triggered after a deep-water rig operated by BP PLC exploded and sank on April 20, killing 11 people. It still is unclear whether some of the 3 million gallons of spilled crude could eventually reach Cuba's shores -- though government ...

Oil catcher dome hits snag near leak site: BP exec - Reuters: London-based BP Plc's plan to lower a giant containment dome to trap oil from a blown-out Gulf of Mexico oil well on the sea floor hit a technical obstacle on Saturday in the form of methane hydrates, or flammable ice, a BP executive said on Saturday. BP officials are scrambling for a solution after methane hydrates stopped up the 98-ton containment dome as they were maneuvering it into place, Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer, told reporters at a briefing in ...

BP removes containment dome from oil leak site - Agence France-Presse: BP was dealt a setback Saturday to capping a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico after a containment dome encountered flammable hydrate formations as it was lowered onto the leak site. The gas hydrates, similar to ice crystals, formed on the inside of the 100-ton (90-tonne) chamber as it neared the seabed nearly a mile (1,500 meters below the surface, making it too buoyant and clogging it up, BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles told reporters. Workers have moved the ...

US oil spill no Chernobyl, but still toxic: biologist - Agence France-Presse: The huge oil spill inching closer to shore in the Gulf of Mexico is no Chernobyl disaster but will have a huge impact on the key fishing industry, a marine biologist said here. A ruptured well from the sunken Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling platform has spewed out more than three million barrels of crude so far, encroaching on prized southern US coast wetlands and wildlife preserves, as well as billion-dollar fishing and tourism destinations. "There will be no Chernobyl in ...

Spill impact 'significant... regardless:' top EPA official - Agence France-Presse: Even if BP manages to quickly cap oil gushing at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, the environmental impact from the massive slick will still be "significant," a senior EPA official said Friday. "There already is going to be a significant environmental impact here, even if it stops leaking now," Environmental Protection Agency Deputy Administrator Bob Perciasepe told AFP. "Everything we are doing is to try to continue to minimize the amount of environmental damages. But ...

BP has a long record of legal, ethical violations - McClatchy Newspapers: The causes of the disastrous blowout and gas explosion on BP's leased Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico are a long way from being determined. Yet already BP's actions are facing unprecedented scrutiny, thanks to a years-long history of legal and ethical violations that critics, judges and members of Congress say shows that the London -based company has a penchant for putting profits ahead of just about everything else. Over the past two decades, BP ...

In icy depths, clinging crystals halt oil capture - Associated Press: A petroleum chemist and geologist says the icy hydrates that have halted an effort to slow the Gulf oil spill can float like ice cubes and can form less than a quarter-mile from the surface. Authorities said Saturday those hydrates clogged the giant box that crews were trying to put over the leaking well nearly 5,000 feet deep. Art Johnson, chief of exploration for Hydrate Energy International, said hydrates form when gases such as methane mix with water under high pressure and ...

Third of all plants and animals face extinction - Times (UK): ANIMAL and plant species are being killed off faster than ever before as human populations surge and people consume more, a United Nations report is expected to say this week. It will warn that the expansion of countries such as China, India and Brazil is adding hugely to the environmental threats already generated by developed western nations, and that a third of species could face extinction this century. The report is one of the starkest issued by the UN and the decision to ...

Bill Gates pays for 'artificial' clouds to beat greenhouse gases - Times (UK): The first trials of controversial sunshielding technology are being planned after the United Nations failed to secure agreement on cutting greenhouse gases. Bill Gates, the Microsoft billionaire, is funding research into machines to suck up ten tonnes of seawater every second and spray it upwards. This would seed vast banks of white clouds to reflect the Sun's rays away from Earth. The British and American scientists involved do not intend to wait for international rules on ...

Greenland oil rush looms - Bloomberg: Cairn Energy is betting $400 million this year on striking oil off Greenland, a campaign that will be closely watched by producers such as Exxon Mobil and Chevron that hold rights off the island. The potential rewards may justify the cost of Arctic drilling: Greenland's waters could hold 50 billion barrels of crude and gas, the U.S. Geological Survey estimates, enough to meet Europe's energy demand for almost two years. More companies are on the way. Royal Dutch Shell and Statoil were ...

Save the trees save the world - Ottawa Citizen: Diana Beresford-Kroeger lets out a laugh as she talks about her grand-uncle Lord Beresford and how his wild spree became part of the English language. Henry de la Poer Beresford, the Marquis of Waterford, was celebrating a successful fox-hunt with some friends one day in 1837. The roisterers got hold of some paint, according to legend, and began daubing it on buildings in the town of Melton Mobray in England. "He was drunk, and he painted the town red. That's where the ...

China reiterates climate change principle of "common but differentiated responsibility" - Xinhua: To achieve equitable development globally, China adheres to a principle of "common but differentiated responsibility" on climate change, a senior official said at a conference here Saturday. Xie Zhenhua, vice minister of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), made the remarks at the International Cooperative Conference on Green Economy and Climate Change. "Developed countries discharged a great amount of greenhouse gases during their industrialization in the ...

Deepwater Horizon blast triggered by methane bubble, report shows - Guardian: The deadly blast on board the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was triggered by a bubble of methane gas, an investigation by BP has revealed. A report into last month's blast said the gas escaped from the oil well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as it burst through several seals and barriers before exploding. The sequence of events, described in the interviews with rig workers, provides the most detailed account of the blast that killed 11 workers ...

Jordan River could die by 2011 - Agence France-Presse: The once mighty Jordan River, where Christians believe Jesus was baptised, is now little more than a polluted stream that could die next year unless the decay is halted, environmentalists said on Monday. The famed river "has been reduced to a trickle south of the Sea of Galilee, devastated by overexploitation, pollution and lack of regional management," Friends of the Earth, Middle East (FoEME) said in a report. More than 98 percent of the river's flow has been diverted by ...

Climate scientists decry 'political assaults' - San Francisco Chronicle: In an unusually strong attack on politically powerful deniers of global warming, 255 members of the National Academy of Sciences, including 32 from Northern California, have charged that opponents are using "McCarthy-like tactics" against legitimate climate scientists. The letter condemning "political assaults" on climate researchers was published Friday in the journal Science, and was sent earlier to the White House Office of Science and Technology, where John Holdren, its director, ...

Mexico: Oil Spill Fuels Debate on Environmental Safety - Inter Press Service: The spreading oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has highlighted the urgent need for stricter environmental rules and standards for deep sea oil rigs. A moratorium on drilling for oil along the maritime frontier between Mexico and the United States in the Gulf of Mexico expires in January 2011. Mexico is planning to speed up exploration on its side of the frontier -- something the U.S. has been doing since 1996. "The accident has fuelled the debate on regulations for deep ...

Mali: Farmers Restore Forests - Inter Press Service: Villagers in the interior delta of the Niger River, already experiencing the harsh impacts of climate change, have a good understanding of the need to restore forests decimated by drought. Where forest cover has been rehabilitated, it is already reshaping the surrounding environment - and economy. "It is important to set regulations to protect the restored forests against fresh destruction by drought," Yaya Bocoum, an elder from the Malian village of Youwarou, told IPS. "I can ...

Dark tales emerge of oil cesspool - Sydney Morning Herald: US government workers accepted gifts and gratuities at least 135 times from oil and gas corporations, writes Simon Mann. New Orleans is the big uneasy, waiting anxiously as the massive uncontrolled oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico creeps ever closer to shore and towards likely environmental and economic calamity. Amid the rallying this week of a community whose memory is seared by images of Hurricane Katrina, of death, despair and national neglect, uncertainty was the common ...

Gulf wildlife 'dead zone' keeps growing - Discovery News: An over 7,000-square-mile wildlife "dead zone" located in the center of the Gulf of Mexico has grown from being a curiosity to a colossus over the past two decades, according to the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), and scientists are now concerned the recent oil spill and other emerging chemical threats could widen the zone even further. The NWF describes the dead zone as being "the largest on record in the hemisphere in coastal waters and one of the biggest in the ...

Containment effort inches closer to oil target - New York Times: A giant steel container meant to capture oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico was lowered to within 200 feet of the seafloor on Friday afternoon, officials said. Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer, with Rear Adm. Mary Landry of the Coast Guard. "We're committed to trying to make this work,"� Mr. Suttles said Friday of the containment effort. The container was positioned slightly to the side of where it needed to be placed to capture the gushing crude nearly a mile below ...

World's biggest beaver dam discovered in northern Canada - Agence France-Presse: A Canadian ecologist has discovered the world's largest beaver dam in a remote area of northern Alberta, an animal-made structure so large it is visible from space. Researcher Jean Thie said Wednesday he used satellite imagery and Google Earth software to locate the dam, which is about 850 metres (2,800 feet) long on the southern edge of Wood Buffalo National Park. Average beaver dams in Canada are 10 to 100 metres long, and only rarely do they reach 500 metres. First ...

Vietnamese, Cambodian fishermen among hardest hit by BP oil spill - Christian Science Monitor: While the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has idled hundreds of fishing boats in coastal Louisiana, the disaster has hit the close knit community of Vietnamese and Cambodian shrimpers in Plaquemines Parish particularly hard. "I don't know how I'm going to pay my car insurance," Cung "Kim" Tran, a deckhand on a commercial fishing boat, declared at a community meeting Thursday at the China Sea Restaurant in the town of Buras. "I don't know how I'm going to pay the note on my car or my ...

Gulf oil spill setback: Dome didn't work as planned - McClatchy Newspapers: Efforts to cap a leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico suffered a major setback Saturday, after ice-like crystals clogged the inside of a massive dome meant to contain an 18-day-long spill. The crystals forced officials to move the steel-and-concrete dome, which is still on the sea bed, some 650 feet away from the well -- and to scramble to find ways to stop the water-and-gas crystals from forming. "I wouldn't say it failed yet," said Doug Suttles , chief operating officer of ...

China says new global climate deal still far away - Reuters: China's top climate negotiator said on Saturday although progress had been made in negotiations for a new accord to combat global warming, there was still some distance to go before a binding deal could be secured. At a conference of ministers and environmental organizations in Beijing, Xie Zhenhua, also vice-chairman of China's National Development and Reform Commission, said all sides needed to "strengthen trust" and "deepen cooperation" in order to achieve positive results at the ...

More than 2M gallons of oil-water mix collected - Associated Press: The Coast Guard says about 2.1 million gallons of an oil-water mix has been collected since a spill in the Gulf of Mexico. BP PLC chief operating officer Doug Suttles has said the mix collected is about 10 percent oil and the rest water. The Coast Guard said Saturday that nearly 190 vessels are involved in the cleanup efforts. More than 160 miles of boom to contain the oil has been put out and crews have used nearly 275,000 gallons of chemicals to break up the oil on the ...

Cause Of Rig's Blast: Methane Bubble - National Public Radio: Crews in the Gulf of Mexico are reevaluating plans to use a 100-ton steel-and-concrete dome to contain oil gushing from a blown-out well on the seafloor after gas hydrates -- a slushy mix of water crystals and gas -- plugged a hole in the top of the experimental device. The buildup made the white dome too buoyant and clogged it up, BP chief operating officer Doug Suttles said. Workers who had carefully lowered the massive box over the leak nearly a mile below the surface had to lift ...

Agencies to hold oil spill probe hearing Tues. - Associated Press: The Coast Guard and the Minerals Management Service are holding public hearings on the investigation into what caused an oil rig explosion off the Louisiana coast. The agencies said Saturday that the hearings will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday in New Orleans. The joint investigation will be co-chaired and staffed by members of both agencies. The board is tasked with probing the cause of an April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers at an oil rig operated by BP PLC. BP is ...

At UN, Bolivia's Morales Hits Obama "Blackmail" and Lack of Change, "Sign Kyoto" - Inner City Press: "Maybe the color of the skin of the U.S. President has changed," Bolivian President Evo Morales told the Press on Friday, "but nothing else has changed." Video here, from Minute 47:45. Inner City Press asked Morales about reports in the Latin American press that the U.S. had "blackmailed" Bolivia and Ecuador by cutting off aid for not signing the Copenhagen Accord on climate change. Video here, from Minute 26:24. Morales confirmed that "Ecuador lost $2 million, and Bolivia lost ...

United States: Protesters rally against drilling after oil spill - Associated Press: About 200 people protested the dangers of offshore drilling at a rally in New Orleans. Protesters signed a large banner Saturday that said "This Is Your Crude Awakening," in reference to the April 20 oil rig explosion that killed 11 people and so far has spilled at least three million of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Some protesters held signs with slogans such as "Clean, Baby, Clean" and "Save Our Wetlands Now." Sierra Club President Allison Chin says America ...

We have lots of water, but Metro urges residents to conserve - Vancouver Sun: When it comes to water, Metro Vancouver has a plentiful supply, with cool, wet summers, huge snowpacks and heavy rainfalls topping up the region's reservoirs. But with a warming climate, global water shortages and a steadily climbing population, Metro Vancouver is once again warning residents to conserve water -- or face the consequences. This could include water metering so residents pay for the water they use or, one day -- far into the future -- treating the Fraser River to ...