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Trump was particularly agitated that the rest of the world, particularly developing countries such as China and India, had corralled Washington into the Paris Accord on climate change and put the onus on the US to clean up the planet while themsel... (This story originally appeared in The Times of India https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/donald-trump-raises-stink-claiming-garbage-from-india-reaches-los-angeles/articleshow/72043638.cms on Nov 13, 2019) WASHINGTON: As if its own woes with air pollution is not enough of a headache, New Delhi has to deal with another pointless stink bomb: US President Donald Trump claimed on Tuesday that garbage from India is floating all the way to Los Angeles....

The United States' surging oil and gas production will soon allow the country to surpass Saudi Arabia in liquid petroleum exports. While Saudi Arabia will remain the top crude oil exporter, the U.S. is destined to usurp the kingdom as soon as late 2019 when it comes to overall liquid petroleum exports, including fuels and some natural gas liquids, according to a new report from the Norwegian research firm Rystad Energy. "Increasingly profitable shale production and a robust global appetite for light oil and gasoline is poised to bring the U.S. to a position of oil dominance in the next...

Renewable fuels developer Joule Unlimited Inc. said John Podesta, a veteran of two White House administrations, has joined its board of directors. Podesta was previously White House chief of staff under President Clinton, and more recently served as co-chair of President Obama’s transition. He is currently president and CEO of the Center for American Progress, a think tank he founded in 2003. “I have seen and heard many proposals by renewable energy companies, and can unequivocally say that Joule has a technology and a system unlike any other, with industrial viability and a clear path to market within the next...

The shale revolution hit America and the world with such speed and suddenness that it surprised almost everyone—investors, businessmen, economists and politicians. Soon the implications of this dramatic development seeped into the national consciousness and spread optimism that the United States could ride it to a wave of prosperity. And the new techniques for extracting "unconventional" oil and gas from shale rock, which America possesses in such abundance, do indeed pose prospects for an economic boom. They also pose prospects for changes in the defense posture of many nations. Anything of value that a nation possesses must be protected, and...

A new computational study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals how hydrocarbons may be formed from methane in deep Earth at extreme pressures and temperatures. The thermodynamic and kinetic properties of hydrocarbons at high pressures and temperatures are important for understanding carbon reservoirs and fluxes in Earth. The work provides a basis for understanding experiments that demonstrated polymerization of methane to form high hydrocarbons and earlier methane forming reactions under pressure. Hydrocarbons (molecules composed of the elements hydrogen and carbon) are the main building block of crude oil and natural gas. Hydrocarbons contribute to the...

After three years of clandestine development, a Georgia company is now going public with a simple, natural way to convert anything that grows out of the Earth into oil. J.C. Bell, an agricultural researcher and CEO of Bell Bio-Energy, Inc., says he's isolated and modified specific bacteria that will, on a very large scale, naturally change plant material – including the leftovers from food – into hydrocarbons to fuel cars and trucks.

PARIS (AFP) - Lakes of methane have been spotted on Saturn's largest moon, Titan, boosting the theory that this strange, distant world bears beguiling similarities to Earth , according to a new study. Titan has long intrigued space scientists, as it is the only moon in the Solar System to have a dense atmosphere -- and its atmosphere, like Earth's, mainly comprises nitrogen. Titan's atmosphere is also rich in methane, although the source for this vast store of hydrocarbons is unclear. Methane, on the geological scale, has a relatively limited life. A molecule of the compound lasts several tens of...

Scientists said Monday they have found the first widespread evidence of giant hydrocarbon lakes on the surface of Saturn's planet-size moon Titan. The cluster of hydrocarbon lakes was spotted near Titan's frigid north pole during a weekend flyby by the international Cassini spacecraft, which flew within 590 miles of the moon. Researchers counted about a dozen lakes ranging from 6 miles to 62 miles wide. Some lakes, which appeared as dark patches in radar images, were connected by channels while others had tributaries flowing into them. Several were dried up, but the ones that contained liquid were most likely a...

China’s top offshore oil and gas producer, CNOOC Ltd., will begin operations this year at a gas field in the East China Sea despite a territorial dispute with Japan. ..CNOOC Chairman Fu Chengyu told reporters on Tuesday he expected the Chunxiao field, located south of Japan, to begin operations in August and September... ....On Monday Japanese media reported Japan had demanded that China halt construction at the Chunxiao natural gas field. Hydrocarbon deposits were found in the early 1970s... In 2004 China’s construction of the Chunxiao natural gas production plant 5 kilometres (3 miles) from the disputed area aggravated tensions...

More on Environmentalism Science, Politics and Deathby Arthur B. Robinson & Jane M. OrientEnvironmental extremism kills. Millions die annually because of restrictions on DDT, and imposing the "Kyoto" regulations would kill many more.Dr. Arthur B. Robinson, a professor of chemistry, is the founder of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, and editor of the newsletter Access to Energy. Dr. Jane Orient, a specialist in internal medicine, has a private practice and is the executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Easily usable energy is the currency of human progress. Without it, stagnation, regression and untold...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – What are the limits of organic life in planetary systems? It’s a heady question that, if answered, may reveal just how crowded the cosmos could be with alien biology. A study arm of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Research Council (NRC), has pulled together a task group of specialists to tackle the issue of alternative life forms -- a.k.a. "weird life". To get things rolling, a workshop on the prospects for finding life on other worlds is being held here May 10-11. The meeting is a joint activity of the NRC’s Space Studies Board's Task...