| Christian Science Monitor: The Deepwater Horizon oil well blowout that killed 11 men and resulted in the largest oil spill in US history was the result of a series of human and mechanical failures by "multiple companies and work teams," including the companies' own representatives, according to a report by BP released Wednesday. The failures contributed to an accident in the Gulf of Mexico that, BP says, was caused by "a complex and interlinked series of mechanical failures, human judgments, engineering design, ... |
| IPS: A primary topic of discussion at a weeklong international water conference here can best be summed up in two words: "dirty water". Ironically, the venue for the vibrant debate - focusing mostly on pollutants, industrial waste and human sewage - is a city described as home for "world class water". And rightly so, claims Gosta Lindh, managing director of the municipally-owned Stockholm Water Company. Unlike people in most other parts of the world, "We are blessed with an almost ... |
| National Geographic: This story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge. No matter how bad coal might be for the planet, the conventional wisdom is that there is so much of it underground that the world's leading fuel for electricity will continue to dominate the energy scene unless global action is taken on climate change. But what if conventional wisdom is wrong? A new study seeks to shake up the assumption that use of coal, the ... |
| Guardian: It is not often we are given a very public – and highly critical – insight into an industry as private as oil. This is a sector that is used to secrecy, and one before which many governments, never mind members of the public, are forced to bend the knee. Big Oil is used to waving away questions about the way it operates with the assuring mantra that "safety always comes first", but the blowout on board the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig last April blew away some of the ... |
| NYT: Regulators who are supposed to police offshore oil and gas drilling are spread too thinly, poorly trained and hampered by outdated technology, according to a study by an Interior Department review board appointed after the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The Outer Continental Shelf Safety Oversight Board noted in a report on Wednesday that oil and gas leasing off the nation's coastlines had nearly tripled since 1982, while the size of the regulatory staff had declined by a ... |
| Time: Say this about Marshall Burke and Halvard Buhaug--they know how to title their papers. Late last year Burke, an economist at the University of California-Berkeley, co-authored a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) titled "Warming increases the risk of civil war in Africa," which sums up the argument pretty well. Then on Sept. 6 Buhaug, a senior researcher at the Centre for the Study of Civil War in Oslo, published a new paper titled "Climate not to blame for ... |
| ClimateWire: Barack Obama was considered a climate change savior 20 months ago, rushing into the White House with promises to price carbon, accelerate renewable energy technology and participate in a worldwide effort against global warming. He was a champion to environmentalists and sometimes described the atmospheric impacts of unregulated emissions as a threat to his own family. Global warming, he said in 2007, is not "a someday problem; it is now." But the legislative remedy would have ... |
| Business Green: In a move apparently taken straight from David Cameron's vision for more open government, Defra has today launched an online survey calling on the public to help shape its up-coming overhaul of the UK's water policy. The department, which is currently working on a major Water White Paper designed to address rising climate change risks and fears over water supplies and affordability, will ask for ideas from the public on how to improve the UK's water industry. "There's a growing ... |
| AP: The Obama administration says it will reinforce and expand reforms being carried out by the beleaguered agency that oversees offshore drilling. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar says a report issued Wednesday provides a blueprint to solve problems at the agency formerly known as the Minerals Management Service. The report recommends that the agency -- now known as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement -- should increase the number and training of ... |
| AFP: The glaciers atop Mount Ararat, the peak in eastern Turkey where Noah's Ark is believed by devotees to have settled after the biblical flood, have shrunk by 30 percent in surface area over the last 30 years, a researcher said Wednesday. "We used satellite images to analyse the response of glaciers at the summit of Mount Ararat to climate change," geologist Mehmet Akif Sarikaya told AFP. "The glacier surface area decreased from eight square kilometres (3.04 square miles) in 1976 ... |
| Reuters: BP Plc's internal probe of the deadly April 20 blowout that unleashed the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill will assign blame to BP as well as other companies involved in the well's operations, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. The BP probe, which will be released on Wednesday, is one of many launched after the blowout led to an explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that killed 11 men and caused the worst offshore oil spill in history. The Journal said ... |
| BBC: Todmorden, in West Yorkshire, is striving to become self sufficient by growing fruit and vegetables and keeping livestock. Some unusual spaces have been taken over to producing food, with a group of gardeners working to cultivate enough for the whole community. Jenny Hill reports. |
| BBC: An investigation carried out by BP said it was responsible in part for the disaster, but it also blamed other companies working on the well. BP faces billions of dollars worth of legal claims for compensation over the spill, the worst in recent US history. An estimated 4.9m barrels of oil leaked into the Gulf after the blast. The well was capped on 15 July, and an operation to permanently seal it is due to take place in the next few weeks. In the 193-page internal ... |
| LA Times: A November ballot measure that would rescind California's landmark global warming bill until unemployment drops significantly has become an albatross for the Republican candidates for governor and U.S. Senate. For months, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina have struggled with competing imperatives: appeasing members of their party who want to suspend the global warming bill while wooing environmentally-conscious independent voters who could carry them to victory in ... |
| Associated Press: In an internal report released Wednesday, BP blames itself, other companies' workers and a complex series of failures for the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the drilling rig explosion that preceded it. The 193-page report was posted on the company's website even though investigators have not yet begun to fully analyze a key piece of equipment, the blowout preventer, that should have cut off the flow of oil from the ruptured well but did not. That means BP's report is far ... |
| AFP: A string of failures by BP and other companies led to the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, the British energy giant concluded Wednesday as it sought to head off possible multi-billion-dollar US lawsuits. As expected in the findings of its own inquiry, BP did not admit "gross negligence" for the rig explosion in late April that killed 11 people and caused the worst ever US environmental disaster. It put a share of the blame contractors Transocean and Halliburton, but it also ... |
| NPR: BP is releasing a 200-page assessment Wednesday, detailing the cause of the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The spill ultimately put more than four million barrels of oil into the Gulf. In addition, a new federal study finds that oil is gradually disappearing, as bacteria continue to gobble it up. |
| ABC: Greens MP Adam Bandt and the independents who threw their lot in with Labor have made it clear they would like to see the Federal Government take action to address climate change. In its negotiations to form government, Labor agreed to convene a climate change committee made up of MPs and experts that would work towards putting a price on carbon. The Climate Institute says it is hopeful the new Government will act more promptly and decisively than the previous Labor government, ... |
| Reuters: Roadside air pollution in Hong Kong hit record highs in the first six months of the year, hurting public health and economic competitiveness compared with Asian rivals, activists and lawmakers said Tuesday. The city's air quality hit "unhealthy" levels about 10 percent of the time between January and June, the highest level in five years, said environmental group Friends of the Earth. The government advises people with heart or respiratory problems to avoid lingering in ... |
| Sydney Morning Herald: A new face may become the federal climate change minister, with Penny Wong tipped to stand aside after a difficult tenure. Her replacement faces the tough task of crafting a new climate policy - possibly involving a carbon price - out of a hung parliament. It will be an important decision for Prime Minister Julia Gillard; climate change became Labor's Achilles heel as the party struggled to come up with a policy. Senator Wong was one of Labor's most promising MPs when it ... |
| ANI: Expanded irrigation might mitigate the effects of climate change in some areas, a new study has revealed. But some major groundwater aquifers, a source of irrigation water, are projected to dry up in coming decades from continuing overuse, and when they do, people may face the double whammy of food shortages and higher temperatures. "An important question for the future is what happens to the climate if the water goes dry and the cooling disappears? How much warming is being ... |
| Business Green: China has surged ahead of the United States in the race to become the most attractive place for renewable energy investment, according to a report today from Ernst & Young. Last year, China and the US tied for first place in the consultancy giant's annual Renewable Energy Country Attractiveness Indicies. However, this year's report shows the US has dropped two points in the official league table allowing China to top the list. The US fell back after it failed to incorporate ... |
| Reuters: A BP Plc investigation of the Gulf of Mexico disaster played down the company's role in the world's worst offshore oil spill, seeking to share the blame with its contractors. The 193-page internal report made public on Wednesday drew fire from U.S. lawmakers and one of the contractors, Transocean, called it a "self-serving" attempt by the British energy giant to escape responsibility for the "fatally flawed" design of its deepsea Macondo well. The report threatened to reignite ... |
| Business Green: The agreement between the US and China to co-operate on the development of critical clean technologies has delivered some of its first tangible results this week after US Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced a $125m joint US-Chinese research programme that will provide funding to two academic consortia. The funding, awarded as part the U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Centre initiative, will focus on advances in clean vehicles, along with developments in clean coal, including carbon ... |
| Business Green: Australia's new prime minister Julia Gillard has signalled for the first time that she will move away from her predecessor's climate change policy and find a new way of pricing carbon emissions across the country. Speaking late yesterday in her first interview since securing the support necessary to form a minority Labor government, Gillard revealed she was keen to scrap controversial plans for an emissions cap-and-trade scheme in favour of a new approach to curbing carbon ... |
| BBC: Domestic heat pumps need to be subject to tighter regulations in order for them to deliver widespread energy savings, a report has concluded. The study called for better standards to ensure the technology consistently delivered energy savings. The devices transfer heat from the air or ground outside into a building, cutting the use of boilers or heaters. The study, described as the most comprehensive of its kind, was compiled by the Energy Saving Trust (EST). The ... |
| National Public Radio: In the 193-page internal report posted Wednesday on BP's website, the British oil giant says the April disaster was caused by "a sequence of failures involving a number of different parties." "It is evident that a series of complex events, rather than a single mistake or failure, led to the tragedy. Multiple parties, including BP, Halliburton and Transocean, were involved," outgoing CEO Tony Hayward said in the report. The accident killed 11 workers aboard the Deepwater Horizon ... |
| Reuters: Oil giant BP (BP.L) is open to talks about selling assets to Russian companies as part of its $30 billion fund raising programme to help pay for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the group's Russia chief said on Wednesday. "If Russian companies like Lukoil (LKOH.MM) and TNK-BP are interested, we are happy to talk ... and could give them the opportunity to expand outside Russia," Jeremy Huck told reporters. He added that the company had no plans to sell the group's stakes in ... |
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| AFP: BP sought to spread the blame for the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster Wednesday, setting off a battle of oil industry giants with tens of billions of dollars in potential fines and legal liabilities at stake. The British energy giant released a report concluding that a "sequence of failures" were to blame for the April 20 explosion that killed 11 people and unleashed 4.9 million barrels of oil in the worst-ever maritime spill. While admitting some mistakes, BP exonerated its well ... |
