coondoggie writes "NASA today said it had picked five experiments that will ride aboard one of its most ambitious space missions to explore the Sun....

An anonymous reader writes "I have an 18-month-old who loves bright screens (TV and computer), loves loud noises, and loves to mash buttons. He targets...

An anonymous reader writes "It looks like Brazil may be the country to watch if you're interested in much more consumer-friendly copyright laws (assuming US...

An anonymous reader writes "TorrentFreak has shed some light on the dark practice of installing stealth-mode P2P clients during game downloads and using unsuspecting gamers'...

pickens writes "Erik Hayden writes in the Atlantic that children will see endearing portraits of Chewbacca rendered in the style of "Winnie-the-Pooh" in the book...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 2, 2010 — Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced research awards under a joint DOE-USDA program aimed at improving and accelerating genetic breeding programs to create plants better suited for bioenergy production.  The $8.9 million investment is part of the Obama Administration’s broader effort to diversify the nation’s energy [...]

We hear lots of concerned chatter these days – not least, here on this site – about peak oil, peak water, deforestation, resource depletion and the like, but a popular riposte offered by those doubting such concerns is something commonly referred to as the “Environmentalist’s Paradox”. The argument goes thus: “Why, despite resource depletion and the degradation of ecosystems, [...]

By Angus Mcdowall You could be excused for seeing a grim metaphor for the death of the oil age in the scenes of destruction visited on the U.S. Gulf coast this summer. However, production from the ocean floor is growing more quickly than from any other type of reserve and is supposed to allay concerns about ‘peak [...]

People shouldn’t drink water from 40 wells in and around this central Wyoming farming and ranching community, federal officials said Tuesday. The announcement by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services coincided with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency releasing its latest findings from testing water wells in the Pavillion area. Meanwhile, Encana Oil & Gas, a [...]

Even if you have just your little toe dipped in the oil trading markets, you know there’s change afoot. The the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act passed this year may have been triggered by the implosion of the mortgage securitization markets, but it expands regulation of all over-the-counter trading — including energy commodities. True, energy [...]

This week a study on peak oil by a German military think tank was leaked on the Internet. The document shows that the German government is closely studying the issue of peak oil, and is aware of the potential for serious consequences as oil production declines. The study is reminiscent of the Hirsch Report, commissioned by [...]

I wake up every morning in a state of profound grief. We humans have been given a privileged place in a world that is beautiful beyond description, and we are destroying it and destroying each other. I cope with that by building temporary psychological damns and dikes to hold back that grief. ... If I weren’t politically active, I would lose my mind. The only way I know how to cope is to use some of my energy in collective efforts to try to build something positive.
(Interview with journalism professor at U of Texas)

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One of the most successful performance artists of the 21st century has returned to the stage—and we’re not talking about Lady Gaga here.

Instead, I draw your attention to Bjorn Lomborg, who has just unleashed a dramatic reverse back-flip of his stance on global warming that may very well restore him, at least briefly, to the heights of the media firmament he first enjoyed in 2001, when he announced his apostasy from his (alleged) environmental roots with the publication of the global best-seller, The Skeptical Environmentalist.

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A short history of the peak oil movement and reflections on wizards, Transition and the interstices of reason. Let us start with persona, since one goes to any prizefight to see the metaphorical battle of two created characters, embodying sides, virtues, faults.
In this Corna... John Michael Greer, owner (by a whisker over Bob Waldrop) of the finest beard in Peak Oildom, Archdruid, moral descendent of Toynbee and Gibbon, considerer of declines in centuries, not weekends. No Zombies for Greer - we are Rome, and we might as well deal with it, dammit.

in this Corna...Rob Hopkins, beardless founder of the Transition movement, permaculturist, endless energetic optimist and municipal leader, student of the first half of the British century, bent of reorganizing his community and the world to adapt to energy descent. If we could live without that energy once before, well, we can do it now, and let's get at it.

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The peak oil debate is a case of history repeating itself: people have been ignoring warnings about exponential use of finite resources for a century and a half. No-one wants to hear the argument. Even International Energy Agency forecasts of record world oil demand, and warnings that the “era of cheap oil is over” made barely a ripple in the media.

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