"Over the last thirty years, just under 9,000 significant pipeline-related incidents have taken place nationwide, according to data from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. (Not counted in this total are thousands of less “significant" pipeline-related malfunctions.)"
"To better understand the extent of this damage, CityLab mapped out all significant pipeline accidents between 1986 and 2016, based on data compiled by Richard Stover, an environmental advocate and former research astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. According to Stover, these accidents have resulted in 548 deaths, 2,576 injuries, and over $8.5 billion in financial damages."
"The thrill of theoretical experimentation in the laboratory may be exciting for young engineers. But they shouldn’t get our money. Nor should we hand these aspiring atomic alchemists the mandate to cure climate change. That race is already being won by renewable energy research and implementation. It is in this field where the real “innovation” lies and where Congress should be directing their mandate and funding dollars."
The U.S. has a science problem. Around half of the country's citizens reject the facts of evolution; fewer than a third agree there is a scientific consensus on human-caused climate change, and the number who accept the importance of vaccines is ticking downward.
Those numbers, all gleaned from recent Pew and Gallup research polls, might suggest that Americans are an anti-science bunch. But yet, Americans love science. Even as many in the U.S. reject certain scientific conclusions, National Science Foundation surveys have found that public support of science is high, with more than 75 percent of Americans saying they are in favor of taxpayer-funded basic research.
The Priebus memo states that federal agencies cannot send new regulations to the Office of the Federal Register — a key step in the finalization of new rules — until Trump’s administration has leaders in place to approve what these agencies are doing. Moreover, it also states that regulations that have been sent to the office but have not yet made it into the published register need to be withdrawn. The Obama administration issued a similar memorandum right after the president took office in 2009.
[On White House website, Obama climate priorities vanish, replaced by Trump’s focus on energy production]
In this case, the language would appear to snag four energy efficiency regulations released very late in the Obama administration that, because of recently issued departmental rules designed to prevent errors, could not be published to the Federal Register for 45 days after their posting by the agency — a timeline that pushed their finalization past the end of the Obama administration.
The Obama administration, in part driven by ambitions to fight climate change, had been issuing a slew of energy efficiency standards, or regulations, each of which took a small bite out of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions by requiring a line of products to use less energy.
The regulations that would go into limbo affect portable air conditioners, walk-in coolers and freezers, commercial boilers and uninterruptible power supplies. According to analyses by Appliance Standards Awareness Project, which tracks these standards, over the long term these regulations would save consumers billions of dollars in energy costs by requiring manufacturers to make these products more efficient.
"Global warming is going to steal away some of those postcard-perfect weather days in the future, according to a first-of-its-kind projection of nice weather."
"On average, Earth will have 10 fewer days of mild and mostly dry weather by the end of the century, the researchers estimate. Some places will get more days perfect for picnics or outdoor weddings, while other places will lose a lot. Rio de Janeiro, Miami and much of Africa are big losers, while Europe and Seattle will gain nicer weather."
Because China is such a behemoth, its energy decisions absolutely dwarf anything any other country is doing right now. Case in point: Over the weekend, the Chinese government ordered 13 provinces to cancel 104 coal-fired projects in development, amounting to a whopping 120 gigawatts of capacity in all.
To put that in perspective, the United States has about 305 gigawatts of coal capacity total. The projects that China just halted are equal in size to one-third of the US coal fleet. It’s potentially a very, very big deal for efforts to fight climate change.