Climate Climate & Energy

What Are We Gonna Do, Walk?

Rising Gas Prices Don’t Keep Americans Out of Their Cars Enviros hoping that rising gas prices would change Americans’ driving behavior have been bitterly disappointed. Although gas prices have reached a national average of $1.80 per gallon, American drivers are buying more gas than ever, and big, gas-guzzling SUVs are flying off showroom floors like […]

Liquefied Natural Gas Boom Sparks Safety Worries

The surging popularity of liquefied natural gas (LNG) has local communities where LNG terminals are planned worried about safety. Ships carrying five LNG tanks contain as much energy as a nuclear weapon. If even one of the tanks spilled and the gas ignited, it could cause a fire up to half a mile wide, and […]

Seas the Day

Enviros Push California to Buy Ocean Areas and Fishing Boats Environmental groups, buoyed by their success in channeling government money to buy large swaths of California coast to protect it from development, have set their sights on the Pacific Ocean. They hope to secure funding to buy boats, fishing permits, and even plots of ocean […]

Drilling on a Texas barrier island could mess with sea turtles and other critters

Life’s a beach — and then you die. Photo: NPS. This time of year, a slim strip of Texas beach known as South Padre Island is hopping with bikini-wearing, hard-drinking college students on spring break. On neighboring North Padre Island, however, the scene tends to be quite a bit calmer. Nearly 70 miles of this […]

School of Continuing Fish Education

Crystallized Meth

Methane Hydrates Could Be Next Big Energy Source; Enviros Concerned Methane hydrates deep under the ocean floor and the Alaskan permafrost may represent the world’s next big energy source, if they can be extracted safely. Some 10 trillion tons of carbon are trapped in the strange ice-like compounds, which form when flammable methane gas is […]

Out With the Old Growth, in With the Nu

Nu River Dam Threatens Unique Chinese Ecosystem A massive dam project planned for the Nu River in southwestern China threatens to wreak havoc on a region that contains one of the world’s least-disturbed temperate ecosystems. The area, designated by the U.N. as a World Heritage Site, contains old-growth forests, 7,000 species of plants, and 80 […]

There’s Coal in Them Thar Hills

New Coal-Fired Power Plants on the Horizon Coal, for decades the reviled stepchild of the U.S. energy family, is about to become the prodigal son. Stoked by easy availability, the rising costs of other fuels, and a growing desire to reduce dependence on foreign oil and gas, coal is roaring back: Plans are in the […]

Wham, Bam, Thank You, Dam

Embrey Dam Removal Heralds Larger Trend The Army Corps of Engineers blew up the Embrey Dam in Fredericksburg, Va., yesterday, allowing the Rappahannock River to flow unmolested from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Chesapeake Bay for the first time since 1910 — and making it the longest free-flowing river feeding into the Chesapeake, a […]

Turning Over an Old Reef

Great Barrier Reef Is Doomed, Says Report Australia’s Great Barrier Reef — the world’s largest chain of living coral and one of the seven wonders of the natural world — will be almost completely destroyed by rising sea temperatures by 2050, predicts a new report released by Queensland University’s Center for Marine Studies. “Coral cover […]