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Archive for February 3rd, 2012
House GOP seeks to tie Keystone to highway bill
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 3rd, 2012
Reuters: Republican lawmakers hope to move one step closer next week to linking a measure approving the controversial Canada-to-Texas Keystone XL oil pipeline to a highway funding bill.
The House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee will vote on Tuesday on a bill that would transfer permitting authority over TransCanada's planned pipeline to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and direct the commission to approve the project within 30 days.
"It's time for Congress to take this decision...
Posted in 
U.S. to require disclosure of fracking fluids on public
Posted by Reuters: Timothy Gardner and Ayesha Rascoe on February 3rd, 2012
Reuters: The U.S. government will require natural gas drillers to disclose which chemicals they use in hydraulic fracturing on public lands, according to draft rules crafted by the Interior Department.
President Barack Obama pledged in the State of the Union address last week that the government would develop a road map for responsible natural gas production and roll out new rules to ensure drillers protect the environment.
Companies would be required to disclose the "complete chemical makeup of all...
Bill would block export of Keystone fuels
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 3rd, 2012
Reuters: Democrats unveiled legislation on Friday that would block export of any oil transported by the Keystone XL pipeline, as they challenged claims that the delayed project would boost U.S. energy security.
TransCanada's $7 billion Keystone pipeline has become a political lightning rod this election year, with Republicans arguing that the pipeline will provide a critical link to Canada's vast oil sands crude and lessen U.S. dependence on oil from more hostile regimes.
But critics of the project...
Canada, Alberta set up oil sands monitoring
Posted by Reuters: Jeffrey Jones and Scott Haggett on February 3rd, 2012
Reuters: Canada will set up a new environmental monitoring system for the northern Alberta oil sands as it seeks to fend off harsh international criticism following revelations that oversight of the huge petroleum development has been insufficient.
The federal and the Alberta provincial governments said on Friday the new plan that will boost water sampling and increase information available to the public.
They said they will take three years to implement a joint program that will continuously study...
Elephants Took 24 Million Generations to Evolve From Mouse-Size
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 3rd, 2012
National Geographic: Some mammals need roughly 24 million generations to go from mouse-size to elephant-size, a new study says.
Using both fossil and living specimens, scientists calculated growth rates for 28 different mammalian groups during the past 65 million years-and found that, for mammals, getting big takes longer than shrinking.
It takes a minimum of 1.6 million generations for mammals to achieve a hundredfold increase in body size, about 5 million generations for a thousandfold increase, and about 10...
SolarCity IPO expected in third quarter: source
Posted by Reuters: Nichola Groom on February 3rd, 2012
Reuters: Solar power company SolarCity is expected to debut on U.S. markets in the third quarter this year and has hired Goldman Sachs to underwrite its initial public offering, a source close to the company said on Thursday.
The San Mateo, California-based startup will file its IPO plans with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission "within a few weeks," the source said. The deal is expected to value the company at around $1.5 billion.
Spokesmen for both SolarCity and Goldman would not comment....
How the Sierra Club Took Millions From the Natural Gas Industry—and Why They Stopped
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 3rd, 2012
Time: Mainstream environmental groups have struggled to find the right line on shale natural gas and the hydraulic fracturing or fracking process. Gas has a much smaller carbon footprint than coal--according to most scientists--and produces far fewer air pollutants. That was enough for many major green groups to give support to gas as a "bridge fuel" to a cleaner energy future--the next best domestic alternative to coal as an electricity source while alternatives like wind and solar scaled up. But for...
Zoos tighten security as threat of animal poaching grows
Posted by Guardian: Lizzy Davies on February 3rd, 2012
Guardian: Opening the door to the animal house, passing a rhino on the way and patting the giraffe inside, Sarah Forsyth points out small white boxes that dot the walls. "Everywhere you look there's a detector or a motion sensor," she says, chuckling in front of one that presented the security firm with a peculiarly zoo-specific problem. "These are the ones the giraffe were licking."
She can laugh about it now, but two months ago, when Colchester zoo decided to put in place the £300,000 alarm system, Forsyth's...
World soy supplier Argentina needs wider rains
Posted by Reuters: Hugh Bronstein on February 3rd, 2012
Reuters: Farm analysts living in Argentina's capital city went to sleep on Thursday soothed by the welcome sound of rainstorms, but the showers failed to relieve many of the country's drought-hit soy fields.
While the streets and wide avenues of Buenos Aires were deluged late Thursday, causing traffic jams and a breakdown in train service, some key soy producing areas remained dry after months of below-average precipitation.
Argentina supplies nearly half the world's soymeal, used for animal feed, and...
Kenyan drought puts traditional weather forecasters on the defensive
Posted by AlertNet: Abjata Khalif on February 3rd, 2012
AlertNet: Nomadic communities living off the dry terrain of northern Kenya have relied for generations on the powers of village elders to predict the weather. But the divinations of traditional forecasters were confounded by an unexpectedly severe drought in 2011, threatening herders' livelihoods.
Now pastoralists and meteorological experts are trying to find better ways to cope with regional weather that is increasingly difficult to anticipate - a situation some believe is linked to climate change.
Herders...