EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - European Union leaders have agreed to offer around €7.2 billion to help developing countries deal with the effects of climate change over the next three years. After a hard push by the Swedish presidency of the EU at a summit of the bloc's premiers and presidents in Brussels on Friday to get every single member state on board with a contribution to the pool of money, by mid-morning, each capital had signed up with a figure, even if from some of the poorer countries the amount was only symbolic.
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - European Union leaders have agreed to offer around €7.2 billion to help developing countries deal with the effects of climate change over the next three years.
After a hard push by the Swedish presidency of the EU at a summit of the bloc's premiers and presidents in Brussels on Friday to get every single member state on board with a contribution to the pool of money, by mid-morning, each capital had signed up with a figure, even if from some of the poorer countries the amount was only symbolic.
European Union leaders meeting in Brussels have agreed on funds to help the developing world address climate change and demanded the same from the US. German Chancellor Merkel also says that Washington's emissions reduction pledge doesn't go far enough.
(That's all nice, but what about giving out bank data?...) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
What would happen in physics or economics if someone claims some earth-shattering theory and then reguse to provide the data? Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
The "central estimate" of their forecast is that the global average surface temperature for 2010 will be 0.58 degrees C above the long-term average for 1961-1990 (which is 14 degrees C), compared to the average for 1998, which was 0.52 degrees above.If a new hottest year is indeed recorded, it will undermine the argument of climate change sceptics that the actual warming of the atmosphere ceased in 1998. Earlier this week the head of the World Meteorological Organisation, Michel Jarraud, insisted the world was "still in a warming trend". The new record is likely to be broken, the Met Office said, because of a combination of global warming and El Nino, the periodic, natural warming of the waters of the eastern tropical Pacific, which is currently pushing up world temperatures.
The "central estimate" of their forecast is that the global average surface temperature for 2010 will be 0.58 degrees C above the long-term average for 1961-1990 (which is 14 degrees C), compared to the average for 1998, which was 0.52 degrees above.
If a new hottest year is indeed recorded, it will undermine the argument of climate change sceptics that the actual warming of the atmosphere ceased in 1998. Earlier this week the head of the World Meteorological Organisation, Michel Jarraud, insisted the world was "still in a warming trend". The new record is likely to be broken, the Met Office said, because of a combination of global warming and El Nino, the periodic, natural warming of the waters of the eastern tropical Pacific, which is currently pushing up world temperatures.
AFP - A bankrupt Arizona copper mining firm has paid 1.79 billion dollars for environmental cleanup and restoration in the largest such payout in US history, US federal agencies said Thursday. The funds, obtained through Asarco's bankruptcy reorganization, will be used to pay for past and future costs to clean up hazardous mining waste at more than 80 sites in 19 states.
AFP - A bankrupt Arizona copper mining firm has paid 1.79 billion dollars for environmental cleanup and restoration in the largest such payout in US history, US federal agencies said Thursday.
The funds, obtained through Asarco's bankruptcy reorganization, will be used to pay for past and future costs to clean up hazardous mining waste at more than 80 sites in 19 states.
Researchers have solved what may be the oldest mystery in planetary science, the two-tone surface of Saturn's moon Iapetus. The odd feature -- the moon's trailing side is about 10 times brighter than its leading side -- has been a mystery since it was first observed by Giovanni Cassini in 1671. In two papers published online by Science, researchers have unraveled the mystery, using images and data from instruments aboard the spacecraft named for Cassini. The studies confirm an earlier idea that dust, most likely from another of Saturn's moons, falls on the leading side of Iapetus as it orbits the planet. "It's just like a motorcyclist, who only gets the flies on the leading side of the helmet rather than the trailing side," said Tillmann Denk of the Free University of Berlin, an author (with John R. Spencer of the Southwest Research Institute) of one of the papers and lead author of the other. But the pattern of the surface features -- the dark area extends to the trailing side at the equator, for example -- is not fully explained by the deposition dust. Rather, the researchers say, the reason has a lot to do with the moon's rotation on its axis, which takes 80 earth days. Such a slow rotation ("mid-day" lasts for a couple of weeks) allows the distant sun to warm the dark dust-covered areas enough that water ice becomes vapor. The vapor migrates elsewhere, freezing to ice again when it reaches colder areas. The areas where the ice was lost become darker, and those that gained ice become brighter.
The odd feature -- the moon's trailing side is about 10 times brighter than its leading side -- has been a mystery since it was first observed by Giovanni Cassini in 1671. In two papers published online by Science, researchers have unraveled the mystery, using images and data from instruments aboard the spacecraft named for Cassini.
The studies confirm an earlier idea that dust, most likely from another of Saturn's moons, falls on the leading side of Iapetus as it orbits the planet. "It's just like a motorcyclist, who only gets the flies on the leading side of the helmet rather than the trailing side," said Tillmann Denk of the Free University of Berlin, an author (with John R. Spencer of the Southwest Research Institute) of one of the papers and lead author of the other.
But the pattern of the surface features -- the dark area extends to the trailing side at the equator, for example -- is not fully explained by the deposition dust. Rather, the researchers say, the reason has a lot to do with the moon's rotation on its axis, which takes 80 earth days.
Such a slow rotation ("mid-day" lasts for a couple of weeks) allows the distant sun to warm the dark dust-covered areas enough that water ice becomes vapor. The vapor migrates elsewhere, freezing to ice again when it reaches colder areas. The areas where the ice was lost become darker, and those that gained ice become brighter.
The company in charge of a California project to extract vast amounts of renewable energy from deep, hot bedrock has removed its drill rig and informed federal officials that the government project will be abandoned. The project by the company, AltaRock Energy, was the Obama administration's first major test of geothermal energy as a significant alternative to fossil fuels and the project was being financed with federal Department of Energy money at a site about 100 miles north of San Francisco called the Geysers. But on Friday, the Energy Department said that AltaRock had given notice this week that "it will not be continuing work at the Geysers" as part of the agency's geothermal development program. The project's apparent collapse comes a day after Swiss government officials permanently shut down a similar project in Basel, because of the damaging earthquakes it produced in 2006 and 2007. Taken together, the two setbacks could change the direction of the Obama administration's geothermal program, which had raised hopes that the earth's bedrock could be quickly tapped as a clean and almost limitless energy source. The Energy Department referred other questions about the project's shutdown to AltaRock, a startup company based in Seattle. Reached by telephone, the company's chief operations officer, James T. Turner, confirmed that the rig had been removed but said he had not been informed of the notice that the company had given the government. Two other senior company officials did not respond to requests for comment, and it was unclear whether AltaRock might try to restart the project with private money.
The project by the company, AltaRock Energy, was the Obama administration's first major test of geothermal energy as a significant alternative to fossil fuels and the project was being financed with federal Department of Energy money at a site about 100 miles north of San Francisco called the Geysers. But on Friday, the Energy Department said that AltaRock had given notice this week that "it will not be continuing work at the Geysers" as part of the agency's geothermal development program.
The project's apparent collapse comes a day after Swiss government officials permanently shut down a similar project in Basel, because of the damaging earthquakes it produced in 2006 and 2007. Taken together, the two setbacks could change the direction of the Obama administration's geothermal program, which had raised hopes that the earth's bedrock could be quickly tapped as a clean and almost limitless energy source.
The Energy Department referred other questions about the project's shutdown to AltaRock, a startup company based in Seattle. Reached by telephone, the company's chief operations officer, James T. Turner, confirmed that the rig had been removed but said he had not been informed of the notice that the company had given the government. Two other senior company officials did not respond to requests for comment, and it was unclear whether AltaRock might try to restart the project with private money.
Paging Nomad... En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
A critical note; unlike earthquakes caused by mining or hydropower, these quakes aren't the result of extra stresses but that of the lubrication and early triggering of existing stresses. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
