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(CNSNews.com) – The Department of Interior is providing $472,150 grant funding to increase the survival of two endangered fish species by “training” them to “recognize and avoid predators.” “The objective of the proposed project is to determine if training increases Bonytail and Razorback Sucker survival when exposed to predators,” the grant abstract states. “This proposal builds upon the 2012 Bureau of Reclamation assistance agreement with the Arizona Game and Fish Department (AZGFD) tasked with investigating the potential for training Bonytail and Razorback Suckers to recognize and avoid predators. “One of the early conclusions of the prior work is that the...

N. Nitrogen. Atomic number seven. Unnoticed, untasted, it nevertheless fills our stomachs. It is the engine of agriculture, the key to plenty in our crowded, hungry world. Without this independent-minded element, disinclined to associate with other gases, the machinery of photosynthesis cannot function—no protein can form, and no plant can grow. Corn, wheat, and rice, the fast-growing crops on which humanity depends for survival, are among the most nitrogen hungry of all plants. They demand more, in fact, than nature alone can provide. Enter modern chemistry. Giant factories capture inert nitrogen gas from the vast stores in our atmosphere and...

Following up on last week’s piece detailing the reasons why the Shale oil and natural gas boom has taken place in Texas, but not in other states like California and New York, we’ve seen quite a bit of interesting, related news pieces over the last several days. On Monday, the Wall Street Journal published a very informative op/ed in its Review & Outlook section, titled “A Tale of Two Oil States”, which made more detailed comparisons between the economic performance between Texas and California, and the ways in which each state’s policy decisions related to shale development have affected that...

Heavy use of the world’s most popular herbicide, Roundup, could be linked to a range of health problems and diseases, including Parkinson’s, infertility and cancers, according to a new study. The peer-reviewed report, published last week in the scientific journal Entropy, said evidence indicates that residues of “glyphosate,” the chief ingredient in Roundup weed killer, which is sprayed over millions of acres of crops, has been found in food. Those residues enhance the damaging effects of other food-borne chemical residues and toxins in the environment to disrupt normal body functions and induce disease, according to the report, authored by Stephanie...

Eight million people live in Switzerland. It may not seem much, but this is a small country. The Alpine nation has now a high density population due to the demographic boom through immigration that it has recently experienced, with an increase in its population size from 7.2 million in 2000 to 8 million in 2012, and a rise of 140% from 1990 to now. Moreover, almost a quarter, or 1.8 million people, are foreign, and one person in five in the Swiss Confederation does not have a Swiss passport. The country's environmentalists are now acting like an improbable nationalist...

With massive protests already planned, environmentalists see new signs Obama is going their way. Environmentalists are promising mass arrests and acts of civil disobedience if the Obama administration moves forward with a controversial pipeline project through the Midwest — even as Obama's political arm seeks to use the project in its latest fundraiser. Opponents to the Keystone XL pipeline, which would run from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico, said they have more than 50,000 recruits ready to be jailed as part of one of the largest broad-scale direct-action protests in their movement's history. "With our Keystone XL pledge of...

The State Department released preliminary findings of a new environmental impact study surrounding the controversial Keystone XL pipeline on Friday, but made no clear recommendation as to whether the the pipeline should be held up for environmental or economic reasons. Reporters trying to make sense of the nearly 2,000 pages of findings were flummoxed by one senior State Department official who stressed that the document “does not come out one way or the other and make a decision” about whether the U.S. should or should not go forward with the project. Years of heated debate have surrounded the proposed 1,700...

Environmentalists have cheered the decision by the Obama administration to tap Recreational Equipment Inc. CEO Sally Jewell as secretary of the interior, a position to be vacated by Ken Salazar. “In Jewell, President Obama chose a leader with a demonstrated commitment to preserving the higher purposes public lands hold for all Americans – recreation, adventure, and enjoyment,” Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune said in a statement. “Jewell’s unique experience and her love of America’s outdoors will be invaluable to the stewardship of the waters, lands and wildlife we’ve been entrusted to protect for our children,” said Frances Beinecke, president...

Hubby snapped photo of some anti-fracking grafitti in the People's Republic of Ithaca.

FrackNation is the film that will tell the truth about fracking. There are two sides of every story and then there is the truth. FrackNation is the film that will tell the truth about fracking. People across the US told us that everything we had heard about fracking was wrong. They say that anti-fracking campaigns, one-sided media coverage and moratoriums and bans have damaged the lives of thousands of people who are now desperate to have their voices heard. Journalist Phelim McAleer faces threats, cops and bogus lawsuits questioning green extremists for the truth about fracking. McAleer uncovers fracking facts...

France's Green party has proposed to parliament a law which extends the nation's ban on shale oil and gas exploration to all drilling methods, Green party MP Francois-Michel Lambert said in a statement Wednesday. The question of whether France should mine its significant shale gas potential is high on the agenda of a national debate on energy which will frame 2013 policy decisions. "It is time to definitively close the door on non-conventional hydrocarbon [drilling]" said Lambert, proponent of the draft law. This is something the Socialist government has not been willing to do, instead choosing to outlaw hydraulic fracturing,...

SUPERIOR, Arizona — An Arizona mining company announced Friday it will suspend shaft and drilling work at its Superior operation and eliminate about 400 jobs, saying the moves are the result of continued uncertainty around a proposed land exchange. Resolution Copper Mining officials said they will try to place affected workers in other jobs within the company. Some workers could be placed in positions with one of Resolution's owners, London-based Rio Tinto...

Early on last night, a voter asked about gas prices, leading to a rather heated exchange about a variety of energy-policy measures, including drilling leases. Eventually, moderator Candy Crowley tried to focus on a narrow point: "Mr. President, could you address ... what the governor said, which is: If your energy policy was working, the price of gasoline would not be $4 a gallon here. Is that true?" President Obama explained that "world demand's gone up," but I suspect some viewers were still confused about the overarching policy. We haven't really delved into this in earnest since February, so let's...

In its strongest ever warning, Ofgem said there may have to be “controlled disconnections” of homes and businesses in the middle of this decade because Britain has not done enough to make sure it has enough electricity. The regulator's new analysis reveals the risk of power-cuts is almost 50 per cent in 2015 if a very cold winter causes high demand for electricity. It predicts Britain will face power shortages because old coal and oil plants are being forced to shut down under the European Union’s environmental regulations. This will partly be replaced by wind farms, but they are less...

DETROIT: The fledgling electric car business is in turmoil as predictions about potential sales have proven to be wildly optimistic despite volatile fuel prices and plenty of media hype. Weak consumer demand is hitting both the big automakers like General Motors and Nissan -- which have failed to meet sales targets on the plug-in Volt and all-electric Leaf -- and smaller start-up firms trying to carve out a piece of a very small niche. "Electric vehicles don't make any more sense today than they did in 1912," says Sean McAlinden, an analyst with the Center for Automotive Research in Ann...

Pew and their posse have underwritten a crusade by Canadian environmentalist nonprofits to obstruct the development of the Great White North’s oil sands resources. That obstruction in turn obstructs the possibility of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would connect Canada’s booming oil production with American refineries, and thereby boost both nations’ GDP, create thousands of new jobs, and reduce America’s dependence on oil from nations that are rather less friendly than Canada.

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. (AP) -- Former Vice President Al Gore is slated to speak at the opening of Nova Southeastern University's $50 million coral reef research center. The South Florida center will focus on protecting coral reefs around the world and will cultivate coral species in nurseries for re-introduction to the ocean. Florida is home to most of the nation's coral reefs. Nova received a $15 million dollar federal stimulus grant to help fund the center. University officials said the center has created 22 new academic jobs, 300 construction jobs and will employ 50 graduate students....

John Lennon's son has said that a woman who disagreed with his viewpoint 'should have been aborted'. Sean Ono Lennon, the musician son of the late Beatle and Yoko Ono, became so enraged with a woman on Twitter who called him and his mother hypocritical that he told her: 'You are an argument for abortion.'

Called "arguably the greatest American in the 20th century," during his 95 years, Norman Borlaug probably saved more lives than any other person. He is one of just six people to win the Nobel Peace Prize, the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And yet Borlaug, who died three years ago today, is scarcely known in his own country. Born in Iowa in 1914, Borlaug spent most of his life in impoverished nations inventing, improving and teaching the "Green Revolution." His idea was simple: Make developing countries self sufficient in food by teaching them how to use...

When President Barack Obama blocked the Keystone Pipeline, Republicans said the move would encourage Canada to pursue oil deals with China instead of the United States and cede a massive chunk of North American oil assets to the communist nation. Now, with China's state-run oil company CNOOC poised to cut a $15.1 billion deal--the largest ever foreign acquisition for a Chinese company--with Canadian oil company Nexen, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) are in full backpedal mode.

Like this wasn't exactly the way we expected this to go...Remember last year when the admin was all about how awesome the drilling jobs in Alaska were? Not so fast, buddy. Now, though, the re-energized environmental lobby is pressuring the Administration to drag its feet on the OCS exploration. At the heart of the environmental lobby’s argument is a false choice between economic development and environmental preservation. In fact, Shell’s efforts to advance scientific understanding of the Arctic’s oceans, wildlife and coastal areas has been praised by the Alaska SeaLife Center, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Obama’s...

Shooters have been blamed for starting a number of fires recently in tinder-dry western states, where conflagrations have erupted near shooting ranges. One, Arizona’s Sunflower Fire, has been positively traced to irresponsible members of a bachelor party who fired an incendiary shotgun shell into the underbrush: The Sunflower Fire — which has burned nearly 18,000 acres of the Tonto National Forest and is not fully contained — began in mid-May after five Arizona men gathered to celebrate the upcoming May 19 nuptials of Bryan Reeder. The group — all in their mid-20s — traveled from Mesa to the Sycamore Creek...

The massive western wildfires could have been avoided with intelligent forest management and less hysteria from the greens. As I write these lines, vast wildfires are sweeping through my home state of Colorado and other areas of the American west. Last week, two of my employees had to leave work early to rush home to evacuate their families from imminent danger. Hundreds of houses have already been destroyed, and thousands of acres of trees incinerated, and unknown myriads of wild animals burned alive. This disaster was predictable, and promises to get worse. Over the past decade, from British Columbia to...

We, perhaps, will never be able to reckon the entire extent to which the Environmentally ill and the EPA have caused the loss of life, limb, and monetary resources due to their obsessive love for Gaia, their Mother Earth. Frankly, I think they have done more harm to their Ma, than we could ever guess.New Mexico, as well as other western states, have been the latest victims of an out of control environmental policy as directed by out of control Democrats, especially in the Obama administration as of late. As Spain goes broke from going solar, as Obama works toward...

The Obama administration backtracked Wednesday and announced it will not declare the dunes sagebrush lizard an endangered species, saying voluntary efforts by New Mexico and Texas have headed off the need for the federal government to step in. The listing of the lizard as endangered become a major test case of the Endangered Species Act as energy companies and local residents battled the federal government for 18 months, declaring victory after the government said it wouldn’t invoke the act. Environmental groups criticized the move, saying the Interior Department ignored the science that shows the lizard’s habitat is threatened — which...

When Sacramento officials proposed putting solar panels on an old city landfill two years ago, they did so with the intention of providing clean energy to thousands of homes. However, in a twist that surprised many at City Hall, the people who might be expected to celebrate such a green venture ended up being the plan's loudest critics. Environmentalists and wildlife advocates argued that the field in Sutter's Landing Park – sitting atop a mound of buried trash that boasts majestic views of the downtown skyline – is a key feeding ground for the threatened Swainson's hawk. The hawks, a...

The Environmental Protection Agency held 12 hours of stacked hearings in Washington, D.C. and Chicago on Thursday in favor of a regulation that analysts have concluded would kill the building of new conventional coal plants in the U.S. Among the participants scheduled to testify in consecutive five minute blocks throughout the day were multiple representatives from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and environmental activists from the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council and Greenpeace. The proposed rule, reported by The Washington Post in March, limits the amount of greenhouse gases emitted...

The stunning repudiation of Sen. Richard Lugar's, R-Ind., bid for a seventh term has sent shock waves through Washington's internationalist lobby. A former Rhodes Scholar, Lugar has spent his career promoting a globalist agenda, since he succeeded the late Jesse Helms as the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. One day after Indiana Republicans handed Lugar his walking papers, an outfit called the Atlantic Council held a forum to promote the discredited Law of the Sea Treaty. As former Republican U.S. Sens. Chuck Hagel and John Warner beamed their approval, Obama's Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta declared that...

A sharp-eyed Power Line reader directed us to this C-SPAN video featuring Van Jones, President Obama’s short-lived “green jobs” czar, admitting around the 19:14 mark what is plain to anyone who pays attention, namely, that the environmental movement is basically an adjunct of the Democratic Party:

Deep-pocketed environmental groups are collecting millions of dollars from the federal agencies they regularly sue under a little-known federal law, and the government is not even keeping track of the payouts, according to two new studies. Under the Equal Access to Justice Act, or EAJA — which was signed into law by President Carter in 1980 to help the little guy stand up to federal agencies — litigants with modest means who successfully show government agencies wronged them can get their legal fees back from the taxpayer. But the act also covers 501(c)(3) nonprofits, including environmental groups that aggressively sue...

My apologies to the memories of the late Richard Llewellyn and late John Ford; but I just had to borrow their title for this post. This paragraph from a 2010 Telegraph article really says it all… Its 500,000 photovoltaic panels will generate 30 megawatts of electricity, enough, in the popular measurement, to power 9,000 homes. It is costing about $250 million to build, significantly less than a gas, coal or nuclear power station, which can easily exceed $1 billion. And it represents a sea-change in America’s energy business.America has been notoriously devoted to hydrocarbon fuels. Big Oil, Big Coal and...

A new study has raised fresh concerns about the safety of gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale, concluding that fracking chemicals injected into the ground could migrate toward drinking water supplies far more quickly than experts have previously predicted. More than 5,000 wells were drilled in the Marcellus between mid-2009 and mid-2010, according to the study, which was published in the journal Ground Water two weeks ago. Operators inject up to 4 million gallons of fluid, under more than 10,000 pounds of pressure, to drill and frack each well. Scientists have theorized that impermeable layers of rock would keep the...

Cove Point in Southern Maryland has become the latest flash point in the fight between the fossil fuels industry and its longtime foes in the environmental movement. Citing a unique Carter-era agreement, the Sierra Club says it will veto plans by energy giant Dominion to build the first natural gas liquefaction and export facility on the East Coast, a site that would handle booming supplies from the Marcellus Shale and other vast deposits for shipment to Asia and elsewhere. The 1970s legal settlement, the Sierra Club argues, gives it the authority to halt any project that would “change the footprint”...

When Concord’s Town Meeting voted to ban the sale of bottled water Wednesday night, one of the ban’s supporters told her fellow Condordians, “We’re not gonna solve all the problems of the world, but this is our one chance to make a really huge statement to the world.” And she’s right, they made a huge statement: “Hello, World! If you’re looking for the dumbest voters in the United States of America, you found us!” The town of Concord — not state, county or even city — is waging war on the evil of convenient, easily-portable water by outlawing something many...

Vandals are responsible for at least $300,000 in damage at a property owned by Chesapeake Energy in Bradford County, according to state police. Troopers said someone sliced cuts in a polyethylene liner of a water holding tank sometime over the weekend at a Chesapeake facility near Towanda. There was no water in the holding tank at the time. Anyone with information about the vandalism is asked to call state police at Towanda at 570-265-2186

........."If you believe that freedom is at the core of what it means to be human, then theWarmists and what they stand for are instinctively repulsive to you. On the other hand, if you believe that human society must be organized into a moral collective for the betterment of all, then theWarmist idea provides a wake up call compelling us to form into ranks and goose step in recycled rubber boots into the green future. It’s an exaggeration, but that’s what debates over the proper role of man tend to become. We don’t fight wars over temperature gradients. The passions...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration says new rules to manage nearly 200 million acres of national forests will protect watersheds and wildlife while promoting uses ranging from recreation to logging. The new rules, to replace guidelines thrown out by a federal court in 2009, are set to take effect in early March. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the rule change on Thursday. Vilsack said in an interview that the rules reflect more than 300,000 comments received since a draft plan was released last year. The new rules strengthen a requirement that decisions be based on the best available science...

It’s been a few days since our last Global Warming Quote of the Day, and because our readers probably have yearned for another, we bring you without further ado, today’s Global Warming Quote of the Day. “I don’t pursue the electrification of the automobile out of any fear I might have of planetary meltdown. . .

The Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) left the BlueGreen Alliance on Friday, citing a disagreement with the group’s members over the Keystone XL pipeline. LIUNA, a vocal Keystone supporter, took aim at other unions for opposing the project. “We’re repulsed by some of our supposed brothers and sisters lining up with job killers like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council to destroy the lives of working men and women,” LIUNA General President Terry O’Sullivan said in a statement. The BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of environmental groups and labor unions, confirmed LIUNA’s exit Friday afternoon. “The...

A review of Love Your Monsters, a collection of essays on a new kind of environmentalism. Environmentalists Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus famously proclaimed The Death of Environmentalism in 2004. Now they're back with an ambitious new collection of essays titled Love Your Monsters: Postenvironmentalism and the Anthropocene. Their goal is to dismantle the neo-Malthusian environmentalism of sacrifice and collapse and replace it with a new environmentalism that celebrates human creativity and technological abundance. Hooray! In their introductory essay, Shellenberger and Nordhaus make the case that technological progress and economic growth is the road to salvation, not the highway to...

I confess I am not a zealous football fan, and until a month ago, I hoped Tim Tebow would don a Colorado Rockies uniform so I could get really excited about him. But like the other five million residents of Colorado, I have come to love the amazing Broncos quarterback who does not hide his evangelical Christian faith. According to a poll by a national sports magazine, Tebow is today the most popular American athlete, ahead of Kobe Bryant, Tiger Woods, Peyton Manning, and (no surprise here) Tom Brady. Tim Tebow has made believers out of millions in more ways...

Sir Fred Hoyle Vindicated (Via Dr. Benny Peiser of the GWPF) According to new research to be published in Nature Geoscience  (embargoed until 1800 GMT/10AM PST, Sunday 8 January 2012), the next ice age could set in any time this millennium where it not for increases in anthropogenic CO2 emissions that are preventing such a global disaster from occurring. The new research confirms the theory developed by the late Sir Fred Hoyle and Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe in the 1990s that without increased levels of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere ‘the drift into new ice-age conditions would be inevitable.’Hoyle and Wickramasinghe...

The recent killing of an aggressive Mexican gray wolf by federal agents at a ranch near Winston could lead to a reassessment of the already struggling recovery effort for that species. The wolf was reportedly shot by agents with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services division on Dec. 14, after it paced across the porch and gazed through the window of John and Crystal Diamond’s Beaverhead Ranch home. The Diamond residence is located in Catron County, although near enough to Sierra County to be in the Winston mailing area. The wolf was killed just weeks after the Arizona Game...

Houston-based Pelican Refining Co. has been fined $12 million for felony violations of the Clean Air Act at its Louisiana refinery. A federal judge in Lafayette, La., imposed the fine - the largest ever in Louisiana for violations of the act - after the company pleaded guilty in October. The violations were ...

The Nature Conservancy — a tax-exempt corporation — is a pretty aggressive purchaser of land in the Third World in the name of environmentalism. One of its mottoes is “Donate to The Nature Conservancy and give back to nature.” In Kenya, a gift may have gone a little to far back to nature — all the way to the law of the jungle. From the Guardian: Members of the Samburu people in Kenya have been abused, beaten and raped by police after the land they lived on for two decades was sold to two US-based wildlife charities, a rights group...

The 20th century will be remembered for the totalitarian monsters of various stripes who conceived, planned and executed programs of selective mass extermination of humans. I think that all Leftists, without exception, including the meekest of democratic socialists, have been implicated - knowingly or in consciously cultivated ignorance – as apologists for, or accomplices and abettors to the crimes of the totalitarians. I am stating this categorical proposition so bluntly rather late in life, although I have been convinced of its verity for as long as I can remember being able to recognize the evidence, i.e. since my teens. I...

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has settled with Lafarge North America Inc., a large construction materials supplier in the United States and Canada, as well as four of its U.S. subsidiaries, to resolve alleged Clean Water Act violations. The settlement includes a fine and the creation, within the company, of the positions of environmental vice president and ...

Animal rights groups suffered a setback as the Appellate Division of the New Jersey state Superior Court....

What we instead need are more free markets and more liberty – for history has shown that this is the way for our country’s restored greatness – both as a nation but also for the general populace. To that end, we will be rallying on December 3rd at 11:30 a.m. on the West Steps of the Colorado State Capitol to show support for free market capitalism. Additionally, we will be having a charity drive for a charity to be determined to help show that voluntary contributions – not forced altruism at the hand of the government – is the most...

Like a good neighbor, Canada is there—offering America tens of thousands of jobs, protection against soaring gas prices and up to 700,000 barrels of crude oil a day for Oklahoma and Gulf Coast refineries to process—if America accepts TransCanada’s proposal to build the Keystone XL pipeline from Alberta’s tar sands to the Gulf Coast. Let’s say your neighbor invites you over to her holiday party and you respond: “No way, you’re an animal killer. Last year, you served meatballs at your party and I’m against animal cruelty.” Don’t expect your neighbor to ever talk to you again. Likewise, Canada has...