“South Korea relies on imports to meet about 97% of its energy demand as a result of insufficient domestic resources, and the country is one of the world’s leading energy importers. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that South Korea was the world’s ninth-largest energy consumer in 2011. Korea is one of the top energy… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Energy
IPCC report: climate change felt ‘on all continents and across the oceans’
Guardian: “Climate change has already left its mark “on all continents and across the oceans“, damaging food crops, spreading disease, and melting glaciers, according to the leaked text of a blockbuster UN climate science report due out on Monday. Government officials and scientists are gathered in Yokohama this week to wrangle over every line of a summary of the report before… Continue Reading
Energy Boom Fuels Rapid Population Growth in Parts of Great Plains, Gulf Coast
News release: “Oil- and gas-rich areas in and near the Great Plains contained many of the fastest-growing areas in the U.S. last year, according to U.S. Census Bureau population estimates released today. Areas along and near the Gulf Coast were also home to several high-growth communities. Of the nation’s 10 fastest-growing metropolitan statistical areas in the… Continue Reading
On Ravaged Tar Sands Lands, Big Challenges for Reclamation
Ed Struzik: “The challenges of restoring a landscape uprooted by the destructive practice of oil sands mining — which involves strip mining the earth to depths of up to 250 feet — are enormous. Oil sands mining occurs primarily in complex wetland ecosystems of boreal swamps, bogs, and peatland fens that were formed over thousands of… Continue Reading
Mining, Quarrying, Oil and Gas Extraction Booming
From Utilities to Health Care to Manufacturing, Census Bureau Statistics Provide Look at U.S. Economy Since Recession: “The mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction sector of the economy showed tremendous growth from 2007 to 2012 as the number of establishments rose by 26.4 percent, according to the 2012 Economic Census Advance Report released today by the U.S.… Continue Reading
Scout – Open Source tool to get alerts on issues you care about
“Scout is a free service that provides daily insight to how our laws and regulations are shaped in Washington, DC and our state capitols. These days, you can receive electronic alerts to know when a company is in the news, when a TV show is scheduled to air or when a sports team wins. Now, you… Continue Reading
CRS – Cars, Trucks, and Climate
Cars, Trucks, and Climate: EPA Regulation of Greenhouse Gases from Mobile Sources. James E. McCarthy, Specialist in Environmental Policy; Brent D. Yacobucci, Section Research Manager. March 13, 2014. “By issuing endangerment findings similar to the one it issued for motor vehicles, EPA could move forward to control GHG emissions from other categories of mobile sources and/or their fuels. On the other hand,… Continue Reading
Research – Plastic shopping bags make a fine diesel fuel
Brajendra K. Sharma, Bryan R. Moser, Karl E. Vermillion, Kenneth M. Doll, Nandakishore Rajagopalan. Production, characterization and fuel properties of alternative diesel fuel from pyrolysis of waste plastic grocery bags. Fuel Processing Technology, 2014; 122: 79 DOI: 10.1016/j.fuproc.2014.01.019: “Plastic shopping bags, an abundant source of litter on land and at sea, can be converted into diesel, natural gas… Continue Reading
New Field Guide Explores Open Data Innovations in Disaster Risk and Resilience
World Bank: “From Indonesia to Bangladesh to Nepal, community members armed with smartphones and GPS systems are contributing to some of the most extensive and versatile maps ever created, helping inform policy and better prepare their communities for disaster risk. In Jakarta, more than 500 community members have been trained to collect data on thousands of… Continue Reading
The Association of Ambient Air Pollution and Physical Inactivity in the United States
Roberts JD, Voss JD, Knight B (2014) The Association of Ambient Air Pollution and Physical Inactivity in the United States. PLoS ONE 9(3): e90143. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0090143 “In this cross-sectional study, we assessed leisure-time physical inactivity using individual self-reported survey data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2011 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. These data… Continue Reading
New Government Report Warns of ‘Cascading System Failures’ Caused By Climate Change
Kate Sheppard: “From roads and bridges to power plants and gas pipelines, American infrastructure is vulnerable to the effects of climate change, according to a pair of government reports released Thursday. The reports are technical documents supporting the National Climate Assessment, a major review compiled by 13 government agencies that the U.S. Global Change Research Program is expected… Continue Reading
Russian Political, Economic, and Security Issues and U.S. Interests
CRS – Russian Political, Economic, and Security Issues and U.S. Interests. Jim Nichol, Coordinator, Specialist in Russian and Eurasian Affairs. March 5, 2014. “Russia made uneven progress in democratization during the 1990s, but this limited progress was reversed after Vladimir Putin rose to power in 1999-2000, according to many observers. During this period, the State Duma (lower legislative chamber) became dominated by… Continue Reading
