Below you'll find a list of all posts that have been categorized as “Energy”
ow it’s official: using the wrong kitty litter can cause a severe and expensive nuclear accident at the nation’s unique underground radioactive waste containment facility, shutting it down indefinitely. What’s NOT official yet is why the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) used organic kitty litter that caused the nuclear waste accident in the first place, or why LANL used that …
Clearing grasslands to make way for biofuels may seem counterproductive, but University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers show in a study today (April 2, 2015) that crops, including the corn and soy commonly used for biofuels, expanded onto 7 million acres of new land in the U.S. over a recent four-year period, replacing millions of acres of grasslands. The study — from …
A slew of studies released this week, each examining different aspects of the fossil fuel extraction method known as ‘fracking,’ provide new evidence of problems with the practice. The first, an investigation by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the FracTracker Alliance into oil and gas company violations, found that information about such transgressions is only publicly accessible in three …
In a stunning but little-known speech delivered in 2007, Gen. Wesley K. Clark claimed that America underwent a ‘policy coup’ at the time of the 9/11 attacks. He had documented the progress of that coup in a book titled Winning modern wars, Iraq, terrorism and the American Empire that Gen. Clark had published in 2003. He was not just the usual retired general. He …
Coffee is one of the most consumed beverages in the world. It’s grown in over 70 countries and amounts to over 16 billion pounds of beans every year. That’s a lot of beans… and when they’re only used once and thrown away, it also amounts to a huge amount of waste. If you drink a lot of coffee or have worked …
The U.K.’s former top climate change diplomat says Shell and other oil companies are fighting tooth and nail to stifle climate change action. The United Kingdom’s former climate change envoy John Ashton has accused Shell of engineering a “psychopathic” attempt to block action on climate change. In an open letter to Shell Chief Executive Ben van Beurden published by the U.K.’s Guardian …
A study published today in the journal Science found that government biofuel policies rely on reductions in food consumption to generate greenhouse gas savings. Shrinking the amount of food that people and livestock eat decreases the amount of carbon dioxide that they breathe out or excrete as waste. The reduction in food available for consumption, rather than any inherent fuel efficiency, drives …
From the looks of it, the nation’s boomtown is still booming. Big rigs, cement mixers and oil tankers still clog streets built for lighter loads. The air still smells like diesel fuel and looks like a dust bowl— all that traffic — and natural gas flares, wasted byproducts of the oil wells, still glare out at the night sky like …
As its battle against the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan intensifies, Big Coal is getting a lot of help from friends in high places. Leading the rush to the industry’s defense is Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, who has launched an underhanded campaign to undermine the Environmental Protection Agency’s new rules for greenhouse gases from power plants. In a March 3 op-ed, McConnell …
A gas explosion leveled two buildings in New York’s East Village this past week, with two neighboring structures damaged, one still at risk for collapse, and 22 people injured, four of them severely. The fire raged from early afternoon into the next morning with more than 250 firefighters responding. Just over a year ago, a gas explosion leveled two buildings …
