The proposed electricity market reform is set to rig the energy market in favour of nuclear – with the introduction of a carbon price floor likely to result in huge windfall handouts of around £50m a year to existing nuclear generators. Despite persistent denials by ministers, this is clearly a subsidy by another name, making [...]

A minority partner in BP’s blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico agreed Friday to pay $90 million in a settlement with the federal government and Gulf states over the 2010 oil spill. It includes the largest civil penalty ever recovered under the federal Clean Water Act. MOEX Offshore 2007 LLC owned 10 percent interest [...]

If there’s anything the Tea Party hates, it’s whatever the government is doing right now. Which means greens have picked up some unusual allies in the fight against the Keystone XL pipeline: Texas Tea Partiers who think the project violates property rights. “Crippling someone’s water supply knows no party line,” said Rita Beving, consultant to [...]

Eight Nobel laureates including Archbishop Desmond Tutu have written to the prime minister to argue that oil derived from Canadian tar sands “threatens the health of the planet” and that the UK should support European moves to classify the controversial energy source as highly polluting. A similar letter has been sent this week to the [...]

An exploratory well being drilled on the North Slope by the Spanish oil company Repsol suffered an apparent blowout Wednesday morning when drillers were unable to control pressure from a pocket of natural gas, state and company officials said. Drilling mud and methane gas shot from the well through a diverter pipe, but none of [...]

The World Press Photo Awards — the most prestigious photojournalism awards in the world — were announced on 10 February 2012. Jenny was awarded first prize in the Nature single image category. Jenny is tremendously honored and gratified to have her work recognized by this very important award. LiveBetter Magazine has published an article about [...]

The inner workings of a libertarian thinktank working to discredit the established science on climate change have been exposed by a leak of confidential documents detailing its strategy and fundraising networks. DeSmogBlog, which broke the story, said it had received the confidential documents from an “insider” at the Heartland Institute, which is based in Chicago. [...]

A group of American scientists fear that recent job cuts at Environment Canada are curtailing research into the ozone layer and atmospheric pollution — and are also keeping Canada from meeting its international monitoring commitments. The scientists, who work at US universities and NASA, published their commentary in the current issue of Eos. By losing [...]

Breathing dirty air may be linked to a higher chance of suffering a heart attack a few days afterward, according to a French analysis of past studies. Researchers led by Hazrije Mustafic from the Paris Cardiovascular Research Center found that heart attacks were slightly more common at high levels of every main pollutant except ozone, [...]

Aside from water vapour, the four principal greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and the halocarbons or CFCs (gases containing fluorine, chlorine and bromine). These gases – described in more detail here – can remain in the atmosphere for different amounts of time, from months to millennia, and affect the [...]