We should think twice before messing with nature, in big ways or small.

The House Natural Resources Committee voted unanimously on Wednesday to form a new panel to investigate the BP Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill, following similar action by the Senate late last month. The action is a direct challenge to the commission formed by President Obama that met for the first time this week in New Orleans. Members of Congress from both parties have questioned the independence, impartiality and credentials of the presidential panel, saying t...

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that last month was the warmest June on record. What is more, average temperatures from April to June and January to June were the highest ever recorded in those time periods.

A look at whether roads, dams and oil extraction can coexist with thriving rain forests.

The Obama administration’s threat to curtail a major mountaintop mining project could signal a shift in policy.

Oil has stopped flowing into the gulf as a test unfolds.

Company officials say the cap is keeping oil from gushing for the first time since April -- the most significant milestone yet in BP's effort to control the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. Engineers dialed down the flow to test the cap and are monitoring the pressure to see if the broken well holds. » E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

What's missing from this picture? Oil. Photo: BP This Doesn't Mean We're Out of the Woods (Yet) As announced earlier today, BP has started the pressure test on the leaking oil well in the Gulf of Mexico. While the test is running, the flow of oil is stopped, something that hasn't happened since April. Engineers are now monitoring the pressure coming out of the well; If it stays high, this means that the well is probably intact and has maintained its physical integrity des...

The E.P.A. said that Monsanto had sold cotton seeds regulated as pesticides in counties in Texas where they were banned.

Stories: 1) From Safe To A Flood Zone, Without Moving An Inch 2) Mouse Sleeps With Scientist, Scientist Thrilled 3) Inventor Takes Tip From Whales To Clean Oil 4) Oil Predicted To Hit Florida's Atlantic Coast, Not Gulf 5) A High-Risk Egg Race To Save The Sea Turtles 6) Spill-Soaked Town's Fourth Is No Celebration

Does a warming world really mean that more conflict is inevitable? AS THE planet warms, floods, storms, rising seas and drought will uproot millions of people, and with dire wider consequences. Barack Obama, collecting his Nobel peace prize, said that climate change “will fuel more conflict for decades”. He took the analysis not from environmental scaremongers but from a group of American generals. The forecast is close to becoming received wisdom. A flurry ...

Two new reports say the science of climate change is fine, but that some scientists and the institutions they work in need to change their attitudes THE winter of 2009 was a rough time for climate science. In November, in the run-up to the Copenhagen climate conference, over 1,000 private e-mails from and to researchers at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU), a part of the University of East Anglia (UEA) in Britain, appeared on the internet, presumably after being stol...

Stories: 1) Forget Hybrids; Make Your Own Electric Car 2) Fishermen Flout Ban In Gulf, Despite Oil Spill 3) In The Line Of Fire: Rare Turtles Near Gulf Flames 4) On The Gulf, Oily Ships Cleaned One At A Time 5) Gulf Fund Administrator: No Sense Bankrupting BP 6) An Evangelical Crusade To Go Green With God

Acidification threatens the world’s oceans, but quantifying the risks is hard IN THE waters of Kongsfjord, an inlet on the coast of Spitsbergen, sit nine contraptions that bring nothing to mind as much as monster condoms. Each is a transparent sheath of plastic 17-metres long, mostly underwater, held in place by a floating collar. The seawater sealed within them is being mixed with different levels of carbon dioxide to see what will happen to the ecology of the Ar...

How Asian cities are built will determine the prospects for global carbon emissions. Oh dear IF YOU are the sort to worry at night about man-induced climate change, then book a stay at any of the new high-rise hotels going up on the edge of China’s big cities—start looking for them around the third ring road. When you stagger red-eyed out of bed to peer into the murky dawn, you will see rank upon serried rank of raw “superblock” developments, a mile apart, m...

Designing the tax is not uncomplicated, but it is a promising way forward THIS newspaper has long advocated a carbon tax as the best way to deal with a warming climate. This month we asked Cambridge Econometrics, an economic-modelling firm, to assess the impact of a carbon tax on the economy. To keep things simple and allow for gradual adjustment, we proposed that it should raise revenues equal to 1% of GDP by 2020, and that other policies with similar objectives (f...

BP counts the political and financial cost of Deepwater Horizon “WHO cares, it’s done, end of story, will probably be fine.” Thus, in an e-mail, a manager at BP wrote of the decision to use only a few “centralisers” when cementing into place the pipe that ran from an oil reservoir 13,000 feet (4,000 metres) below the sea floor to Deepwater Horizon, the drilling rig floating 5,000 feet above it. The cement failed—considerably more likely with fewer centra...

Governments are reviewing plans to open Arctic waters to oilmen WHEN BP’s Macondo well began spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the firm was in the midst of an effort to persuade Canada’s energy regulator that safety standards for offshore drilling in the Canadian Arctic were expensive, impractical and should be relaxed. Hearings on the subject were promptly suspended and the regulator declared that no new drilling permits would be issued pending a review of e...

Controversy surrounds the argument for dam-building in Africa AFRICA is the “underdammed” continent. It is the least irrigated and electrified, yet it uses only 3% of its renewable water, against 52% in South Asia. So there is plenty of scope for an African dam-building boom. Ghana long ago dammed the River Volta, Egypt the Nile, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique the Zambezi. But there are new projects aplenty. Sudan’s president, Omar al-Bashir, for instance...

A pragmatic effort to tackle an emotional issue has started making waves WHALES seem to stir up strong feelings. For conservationists, the majestic mammals have been in urgent need of protection ever since factory ships began slaughtering them in the middle of the last century. But advocates of whaling present themselves as protectors of traditional culture, diets and the rights of indigenous people. It is difficult to find any common ground, even when—as has just...