"Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine was a 'ticking time bomb' where workers feared for their lives but worried that complaints about growing safety problems would cost them their jobs, members of a congressional committee heard Monday."
"Greenhouse gas emissions from medium-duty and heavy-duty trucks and buses will be regulated by the federal government for the first time beginning in model year 2014 under an official Memorandum issued [May 21] by President Barack Obama."
"The federal agency responsible for regulating U.S. offshore oil drilling repeatedly ignored warnings from government scientists about environmental risks in its push to approve energy exploration activities quickly, according to numerous documents and interviews."
The "citizens" initiatives on California's ballot are increasingly being sponsored by corporations. Opponents of Proposition 16 say it would lock into the state constitution a perpetual monopoly for Pacific Gas & Electric.
Water and energy -- two critical and often finite resources -- are today more than ever connected in complex ways. A new feature package explores the connection in stories that range from solar thermal plants in the Mojave Desert to an ocean thermal project near Tahiti. And the ongoing Gulf oil spill provides yet another lurid example.
"The upper ocean warmed considerably over the past decade and a half, according to a new study that attempts to make sense of conflicting analyses of the amount of heat stored in the world's seas."
"President Barack Obama, seeking a gas-sipping fleet of the future, will order the government to begin working on fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and trucks in the 2017 model year and beyond."
"The coal baron who runs the West Virginia mine that last month saw the deadliest U.S. mine accident in 40 years came unbowed to Capitol Hill today, insisting that his company 'does not place profits over safety.'"
"Today the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) took steps to increase the transparency of the response to BP's catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil company's actions have been criticized for failing to disclose or monitor important information about the spill, including the quantity of oil erupting into the Gulf, the potential health impacts of the oil and the chemicals used to disperse it, and water and air quality information."
The vast deposits of deepwater methane hydrates may have been a major factor in the Deepwater Horizon blowout and explosion. Methane hydrates expand 164 times in volume when destablilized by heat and reduction in pressure. Such conditions may have existed the night of the explosion, causing a quickly expanding bubble of methane gas to shoot up the drill column before exploding on the platform on the ocean's surface.
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