Free Republic

The Trump administration has rejected a permit for the controversial Pebble Mine in Alaska, likely dealing the project’s final blow even before President-elect Joe Biden takes office.

he smartwatch market has hit its first bump, and it’s all Apple’s fault. Vendors shipped a total of 3.5 million smartwatches worldwide last quarter. This Q2 2016 figure is down 32 percent from the 5.1 million units shipped in Q2 2016, marking the first decline on record. .... As you can see above, Apple’s market share decreased 25 percentage points (from 72 percent to 47 percent) and it shipped less than half the smartwatches (1.6 million). But the company still holds almost half the market, with every other vendor shipping fewer than a million units.

Retired EPA scientist Phil North, the man the Pebble Partnership says was the mastermind behind the effort to block its proposed mine in southwest Alaska, spent a full day answering questions from a congressional committee Thursday. ... North’s whereabouts were unknown – at least to Pebble executives – for nearly two years. But the company eventually found him. Pebble compelled his return to the U.S. from the Asia-Pacific, where he was on a grand tour with his family, to answer questions related to a lawsuit over the proposed Pebble mine. North sat for questions from Pebble attorneys in Washington, D.C....

Agency officials coached tribes on how to oppose Alaska’s Pebble Mine. Obama has repeatedly urged that science guide environmental decisions, regulators inside the Environmental Protection Agency secretly worked with tribal and environmental activists to preempt a full review of an Alaskan mine and veto the project before the owners’ permits could be considered, internal memos show. Charged with being neutral arbiters, EPA officials instead began advocating for a preemptive veto of the Pebble Mine project in western Alaska as early as 2008, long before any scientific studies were conducted or the permit applications for the project were even filed, ......

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) -- Build-out of a large-scale mine near the headwaters of a world-class salmon fishery in Alaska could wipe out as many as 90 miles of streams and alter stream flows, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in a revised assessment released Friday. The report said mining activity would claim at least 24 miles of streams in the Bristol Bay region, based on the scenarios evaluated, with the loss of wetlands ranging from 1,200 to 4,800 acres. The EPA focused on the Pebble deposit and took into account information related to the proposed Pebble Mine but also noted...

Going on walks with my darling wife is a great joy to me. Sixteen years ago we used to walk almost six miles daily. These days we don’t get out as often as we did, but we still do get out and walk together. Holding her hand makes me feel happy and secure. Sometimes we “exer-walk” so there isn’t much hand holding going on, but I still enjoy her presence. As we pop along we talk about the scenery, family, hopes, dreams, politics, religion and other stimulating topics. What I have observed over the years (and what my wife will...

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. - Teenager Jeffrey Aronson lucked into a thrilling opportunity at the U.S. Open: caddie for a practice round. Aronson, a 13-year-old junior golfer who just finished seventh grade back home in Los Angeles, was with his mother, Shelly, watching players on the putting green Sunday when amateur Russell Henley approached him to see if he would carry his bag for Monday's round at Pebble Beach. "It's a great way to kick off the summer," Aronson said. "I'll do whatever he needs, get range balls and carry his bags. It's perfect." That was a no-brainer for a kid...

It's easy to lose track of how long your shower's getting--especially when it's 10 degrees out and the only thing that roused you from bed was the vision of a steamy cascade of water. Well, Waterpebble is here to guilt you out of your wasteful ways. The little round device monitors water going down the drain. It records the length of your first Waterpebble shower and uses that as a benchmark, then indicating via a series of gently flashing "traffic lights" when you need to get out of the shower already! Green tells you to start showering, amber means you're...

One of the more promising nuclear reactor technologies known today is the pebble bed nuclear reactor. Offering many advantages over conventional reactors, the pebble bed reactor gets its name from the type of the nuclear fuel it consumes. Just like conventional reactors, the pebble bed reactor can fission uranium, thorium and/or plutonium as its nuclear fuel. But the similarities end there. Instead of forming the fuel into plates or pellets as in conventional reactors, the pebble bed reactor fuel is manufactured into spheres, known as “pebbles,” slightly smaller than a tennis ball. Simply stacking the pebbles together in a pebble...