Archive for the 'Environment' Category
Big Picture Gallery: Disaster Unfolds Slowly in the Gulf of Mexico
May 13th, 2010Via: Boston Globe: In the three weeks since the April 20th explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, and the start of the subsequent massive (and ongoing) oil leak, many attempts have been made to contain and control the scale of the environmental disaster. Oil dispersants are being […]
Bill Gates Funds Geoengineering Company That Will Make Clouds Out of Sea Water
May 12th, 2010Via: Mother Nature Network: Basically a fleet of ships equipped with screens & vacuums pump up millions of gallons of ocean water and using high-powered water canons introduce the water some 3000 feet in the air, where clouds are formed. The added moisture content would increase the thickness of the water vapor, making the clouds […]
Swiss Artist Catalogs Mutant Insects Around Nuke Plants
May 12th, 2010Via: Wired: Conventional wisdom holds that nuclear power stations don’t leak enough radiation to create malformed organisms. But in some locations, Hesse-Honegger discovered mutations — curtailed feelers, misshapen legs, asymmetrical wings — in as many as 30 percent of the bugs she gathered. That’s 10 times the overall rate of about 3 percent for insects […]
BP Oil-Collection Chamber Clogs, Removed From Leaking Gulf Well
May 9th, 2010Via: Bloomberg: BP Plc’s latest effort to prevent oil leaks from damaging wildlife and tourism on the U.S. coast are being stymied as cold and pressure a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico formed ice that clogged a containment device. The device, a 40-foot-tall steel chamber BP hoped would capture the gushing […]
Tainted Nuclear Power Plant Water Reaches Major NJ Aquifer
May 8th, 2010Via: AP: Radioactive water that leaked from the nation’s oldest nuclear power plant has now reached a major underground aquifer that supplies drinking water to much of southern New Jersey, the state’s environmental chief said Friday. The state Department of Environmental Protection has ordered the Oyster Creek Nuclear Generating Station to halt the spread of […]
Whistleblower: BP Risks More Massive Catastrophes in Gulf
May 7th, 2010Via: Truthout: A former contractor who worked for BP claims the oil conglomerate broke federal laws and violated its own internal procedures by failing to maintain crucial safety and engineering documents related to one of the firms other deepwater production projects in the Gulf of Mexico, according to internal emails and other documents obtained by […]
U.S. Not Accepting Foreign Help On Oil Spill
May 6th, 2010Any ideas as to why not? Via: Foreign Policy: When State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley refused to tell reporters which countries have offered assistance to help respond to the BP oil spill, the State Department press corps was flabbergasted. “As a policy matter, we’re not going to identify those offers of assistance until we are […]
Oil Slickonomics
May 3rd, 2010Via: The Big Picture: Three scenarios lie ahead. They rank as bad, worse, and ugliest (the latter being catastrophic and unprecedented). There is no “good” here. The Bad. Containment chambers are put in place and they catch the outflow from the three ruptures that are currently pouring 200,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf every […]
Using Lasers to Create Clouds and Rain
May 3rd, 2010Via: New Scientist: A laser has been used to generate small clouds on demand in lab, and real-world experiments suggest this could be a way to call down rain when it’s needed. People have experimented with cloud seeding for decades in the hope of boosting rainfall, usually by sprinkling silver iodide crystals into clouds high […]
Third of U.S. Bee Colonies Did Not Survive the Winter
May 3rd, 2010Via: Guardian: Disturbing evidence that honeybees are in terminal decline has emerged from the United States where, for the fourth year in a row, more than a third of colonies have failed to survive the winter. The decline of the country’s estimated 2.4 million beehives began in 2006, when a phenomenon dubbed colony collapse disorder […]
