Every year since 1990, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has released an annual report detailing the state of the climate. Early versions were typewritten and authored by a handful of experts. The new version is a shiny, 218-page PDF penned by more than 300 scientists from around the world. Nevertheless, the message has [...]

The Three Gorges Dam is a hydroelectric dam that spans the Yangtze River by the town of Sandouping, located in the Yiling District of Yichang, in Hubei province, China. It is the world’s largest electricity-generating plant of any kind.
The dam body was completed in 2006. Except for a ship lift, the originally planned components [...]

China overtook the USA last year to become the World’s # 1 energy user, the International Energy Agency reported Monday.
Beijing’s new status is expected to make it even more influential in global energy markets, in determining prices and how it is used.
China clinched the top slot more quickly than had been expected because the USA [...]

TEXAS CITY, Texas – More than two months after oil from BP’s blown-out seafloor well first reached Louisiana, a bucket’s worth of tar balls that washed onto a Texas beach means the crude has arrived in every Gulf state.
Oil is still on the move, but the fleet of skimmers tapped to clean the worst-hit [...]

Twentythree people have died, four have been reported missing and over 11,000 were evacuated from homes in northern, northeastern and part of central regions in Romania, which have been severely affected by floods. Emergency teams rescued dozens of people after a flash flood swept through five villages in Romania Tuesday, inundating houses and damaging roads [...]

YORBA LINDA — Documents released Friday by the Nixon Presidential Library show members of President Richard Nixon’s inner circle discussing the possibilities of global warming more than 30 years ago.
Adviser Daniel Patrick Moynihan, notable as a Democrat in the administration, urged the administration to initiate a worldwide system of monitoring carbon dioxide in the [...]

WASHINGTON – BP will set aside $20 billion to pay the victims of the massive oil spill in the Gulf, senior administration officials said Wednesday, a move made under pressure by the White House as the company copes with causing the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.
The independent fund will be led by lawyer Kenneth [...]

STOCKHOLM – The U.S. government is not alone in ceding responsibility to the oil industry for the design of key safety features on offshore rigs, a trend coming under scrutiny worldwide following the deadly blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.
Across the globe, industry-driven regulation is the norm, not the exception — and critics are calling [...]

The Gulf of Mexico oil disaster comes during spring spawning season, an especially bad time for aquatic life making them extraordinarily vulnerable to the toxic effects of the oil itself, says Doug Rader, chief oceans scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund.
“Now the same thing is happening with birdlife migrating to and from the tropics. Those [...]

Tim Kiladze, Forbes.com
The metro areas with the nation’s poorest air quality
President Obama’s recent proposal to open some areas along the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic coastline and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling elicited praise from drilling advocates and oil companies as well as sharp criticism from environmental [...]