Free Republic

Well, Brown(gov) is at it again. This time, he’s passing legislation targeting dairy cows for the horrific crime of releasing methane when they pass gas, belch or defecate. Brown has decided that he knows more than centuries of farmers—all over the globe—who have used and prized manure as a fertilizer. “Manure is a valuable fertilizer for any farming operation and has been used for centuries to supply needed nutrients for crop growth,” according to researchers at the University of Minnesota. Organic! Natural! Free-range! Environmentalists routinely employ these words to make themselves sound hip and helpful. But if you’re truly “green,”...

Scientists have found 500 seabed vents bubbling methane into the Pacific Ocean off the United States, roughly doubling the number of known U.S. seeps of the powerful greenhouse gas, a study showed on Wednesday. Methane naturally escapes from the sea floor in many places around the world and can stoke global warming if it reaches the atmosphere. Worldwide, scientists are trying to see if rising ocean temperatures cause more leaks. "It appears that the entire coast off Washington, Oregon and California is a giant methane seep," Robert Ballard, who is famed for finding the wreck of the Titanic and has...

Hydropower has always been touted as a clean source of generating electricity, despite of the facts that it displaces thousands of people from their natural abodes, destroys their lives and livelihoods and submerges huge amounts of lands and forests. Now, a new study claims that it is also accelerating global warming. […] The study is done by Washington State University the has found that during times of drawdown — a period in which the water level behind a dam is rapidly lowered — temperate reservoirs can produce up 20 times more methane than normal. …

SACRAMENTO (AP) — Gov. Jerry Brown has signed legislation that regulates emissions from dairy cows and landfills for the first time as California broadens its efforts to fight climate change beyond carbon-based greenhouse gases. Brown’s move Monday targets a category of gases known as short-lived climate pollutants, which have an outsize effect on global warming despite their relatively short life in the atmosphere.

California legislators have approved a bill targeting cow flatulence and manure, which lawmakers blame for releasing greenhouse gases. The legislation aims to reduce methane emissions related to manure to 40 percent below 2013 levels by 2030. Senator Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens) authored the bill, which passed shortly before the end of the legislative session. Lara agreed to a compromise that will give dairy farms more time to comply with the new regulations. Critics have expressed concerns the new regulations will result in an increase in the price of milk from California cows. Proponents of the bill say methane emissions have...

(Phys.org)—A team of researchers from Belgium and the U.S. has identified the active site of an iron-containing catalyst that has raised hopes for designing a practically useful catalyst that might make converting methane to methanol a possibility. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the researchers describe their efforts, what they discovered and why they believe their findings may lead to a practical way to convert methane to a more efficient energy resource. Jay Labinger, with the California Institute of Technology offers a News & Views piece outlining the work done by the team in the same journal issue....

California’s attempt to curb emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, is facing vocal opposition from a dairy industry that fears government meddling in the flatulence of its cows. The California Air Resources Board (ARB) has set a goal of slashing methane emissions by 40% by 2030, from 2013 levels, and has targeted the belching and farting – known as “enteric fermentation” – of California’s 5.5 million beef and dairy cows, as well as the manure they create. A strategy document produced by the regulator states that improved manure management practices, new diets for cattle and “gut microbial interventions”...

An animal rights group is up in arms after a study suggested that beef from cows that graze naturally outside has a higher environmental impact than beef from cows fattened on farms. The study, published by the Swiss federal government’s agricultural research body, Agroscope, last month, compared the environmental effect of cows raised on alpine pastures in the summer and those reared on farms complying with the Terra-Suisse label. The report found that, since cows reared on pastures graze on natural grasses, they take around 20 months to reach the required weight for slaughter, compared with 15 months for cows...

Falling prices at the pump have given motorists reason to rejoice continuously over the last year and a half, but they’re not good news for everyone. At least, not for the people who are about fuel economy. The latest sales-weighted fuel economy ratings report by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute revealed that in June, the value of the indicator was 25.3 miles per gallon, down from 25.4 mpg in May. Now, that’s not a huge dip, as Road Show author Andrew Krok notes, but it follows a pattern of declining fuel economy that parallels the decline in gas...

ISIS is now issuing its own currency referred to as the ‘Golden Dinar,’ with engravings bearing the words “Islamic State.” The coins, currently being released in limited quantity, are to primarily be used by traders in the oil industry in areas under Islamic State control, according to reports on jihadi online forums. Activists in Deir ez-Zor, Syria reported oil traders have been ordered to use the new Dinar when purchasing from ISIS-held oil fields. Reports from the Iraqi city of Mosul have indicated the Golden Dinar is being introduced to the currency market as part of a serious attempt to...

The consistent theme from my travels so far in Europe– the UK, Scandinavia, Lithuania– has been noticeably higher prices. Shockingly so, in some instances. London, where I spent a rather pleasant and rare sunny weekend with friends and colleagues, has gone from being ‘stupid’ pricey, to just plain absurd. Tube prices, taxi fares, food prices, restaurant bills, train fares… it all keeps going up. And to cap it all off, the British government’s VAT increases have ensured that absolutely everyone is paying a little bit more. Here in Lithuania, the buzz around town is the spiraling gasoline prices, which have...

The Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) were a major driver of the rally in oil markets over the past several months, as the outage of roughly 600,000 barrels per day helped push up crude oil prices. In June, a 30-day ceasefire between the NDA and the Nigerian government led to a few weeks of relative calm, and Nigeria’s oil minister said that the country was able to bring back a large chunk of the disrupted supply, bringing output up from 1.4 million barrels per day to 1.9 mb/d at the end of June, but still down from the 2.2 mb/d Nigeria...

ExxonMobil and British Petroleum have been facing off over the terms of the renewal of the “contract of the century” in Azerbaijan, according to sources that spoke to Reuters. BP currently operates the Azeri-Chigar-Guneshi fields in the middle of the Caspian Sea—a region that contributes a tenth of the firm’s global output. The British company has reportedly agreed with the Azeri government on the terms of a 30-year contract, but in an effort to expand its presence in the ACG region, Exxon has been pushing for a piece of the $100 billion pie.

In an early Wednesday attack, Niger Delta militants have blown up two Chevron oil wells in Warri, leading a shut down in the wells and promising further output drops for Nigeria. The Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) have claimed responsibility for the attack via their Twitter feed, not that they “blew up Chevron oil well RMP 23 and 24 [at] 3:44 am this morning.” These are Chevron’s Bibi oil wells, run by Chevron Nigeria Limited. The militant group also noted that it had a “heavy presence of 100 gunboats, 4 warships and jet bombers,” and that the attack was meant “to...

The absence of strong Western leadership against the Boko Haram terror state has created an opportunity Iran seems ready to exploit. The Premium Times of Nigeria reports that Iran is stepping forward to offer assistance to the African Union against the savage caliphate spilling out of northern Nigeria into Cameroon and menacing the entire region: ... Abdollohian said the activities of the Boko Haram militants and that of Al-Shabaab in the Somalia were similar to that of Al-Qaeda and the ISIS and other terrorist groups in the Middle East. ... Iran was willing to share its experiences on terrorist activities...

DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran denied on Friday Nigerian allegations that it had trained militants arrested in Nigeria on charges of planning attacks on U.S. and Israeli targets there. Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said such allegations were "made up as the result of the ill will of the enemies of the two countries' good relations", Iranian state television reported. "Iran and Nigeria have friendly and close relations and despite the vast efforts of the two countries' enemies in recent years relations and cooperations have always improved," he said. Nigeria's secret service said on Thursday it had arrested Abdullahi Mustapha Berende...

It hasn't made much noise worldwide, but Iran's rapidly deteriorating relationships with several African countries is huge news across the continent. On February 16, the Nigerian Federal High Court in Lagos began the prosecution of an alleged member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), Azim Aghajani, and a Nigerian associate, Usman Abbas Jega. They are accused of arms smuggling. This video link is in Arabic, but is very self-explanatory. It is of the opening day of the court proceedings.The story is a classic, just one of many on the Dark Continent nowadays: In late October 2010, Nigerian intelligence officials...

Iran said on Monday an arms shipment sent from an Iranian port and discovered in Lagos was heading to a West African country and the "misunderstanding" had since been cleared up with the Nigerian authorities. "A private company which had sold conventional defence weapons to another country in West Africa had transferred the shipment via Nigeria which raised some doubts with relevant officials," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki told reporters.

An illegal arms shipment including rockets and grenades discovered in Nigeria this week was loaded in Iran by an Iranian trader, the firm that operates the vessel that delivered it said on Friday. Security agents this week intercepted 13 containers declared as building materials and discharged from the CMA CGM Everest vessel at the country's busiest port of Apapa in Nigeria's economic hub of Lagos. "The shipment in question was booked as a 'shippers owned container' and supplied loaded and sealed by the shipper, an Iranian trader who does not appear on any 'forbidden persons' listing," said CMA CGM, which...

Nigeria's secret service said on Tuesday it had intercepted 13 containers of weapons from Iran in what Israeli defense sources believe may be part of a new smuggling route from Iran to Hamas in Gaza. Rocket launchers, grenades and other explosives camouflaged as building material were seized in the Nigerian port of Lagos after being unloaded from an Iranian ship. Nigerian media reports said the ship, which came from Iran, docked in Lagos port for a few hours only, unloaded 13 containers and sailed on.