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Israeli scientists have cultivated a cannabis plant that doesn't get people stoned in a development that may help those smoking marijuana for medical purposes, a newspaper said on Wednesday. According to the Maariv daily, the new cannabis looks, smells and even tastes the same, but does not induce any of the feelings normally associated with smoking marijuana that are brought on by the substance THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol. "It has the same scent, shape and taste as the original plant -- it's all the same -- but the numbing sensation that users are accustomed to has disappeared," said Tzahi Klein, head...

As I report in Friday’s Times, disposing of the waste produced by natural gas drilling will become a larger and more contentious issue if New York State gives the go-ahead to horizontal hydraulic fracturing, which uses millions of gallons of fluids per well to release gas from the Marcellus Shale. New York already deals with waste from about 6,800 active vertical and horizontal gas wells upstate. Although these wells require just a fraction of the water that would be needed for fracking in the Marcellus, they still produce waste that needs to go somewhere. Officials with the New York Department...

Human trials vainly tried to prove air pollution is deadly Which do you find more shocking: that the Environmental Protection Agency conducts experiments on humans that its own risk assessments would deem potentially lethal, or that it hides the results of those experiments from Congress and the public because they debunk those very same risk assessments? JunkScience.com recently obtained through the Freedom of Information Act the results of tests conducted on 41 people who were exposed by EPA researchers to high levels of airborne fine particulate matter - soot and dust known as PM2.5. [snip] Just to clarify what Ms....

Although negotiations over a package of tax increases and a proposed casino collapsed Monday night, the Maryland General Assembly passed a lot of bills this session — 791, to be exact. Of those, 96 percent were passed in the last week, including hundreds in the hours and minutes before midnight on Monday. Here are some highlights from the 90-day session’s last day: STORMWATER FEE The Senate spent much of the session’s waning hours fiercely debating a stormwater fee bill that was on few people’s radar earlier in the session. The bill requires localities to fund projects to reduce polluted runoff...

Credit: NASA; (inset) Chi M. Phan Two years ago, the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig covered hundreds of square miles of the Gulf of Mexico with oil (main image). The oil floated because it is less dense, and therefore lighter, than water. But now scientists say that water can sometimes float on oil—and their findings, which were published last month in Langmuir, could help to mop up oil slicks like the one created by the 2010 disaster. Using a theoretical model, the scientists calculated the forces acting on water when it is dripped onto an oil surface....

Won’t those tax-subsidized electric cars solve heaps of problems? Not exactly. There are two examples that run against the politically correct grain: . . .

Every year, coal-fired power plants produce more than 386,000 tons of hazardous air pollutants -- including mercury, arsenic, lead and acid gases. Mercury, a potent neurotoxin, is a particular threat to pregnant women and young children. The Environmental Protection Agency has announced plans to issue strong, sensible protections from power plant pollution on December 16th of this year. Unfortunately, industry special interests are trying to block this critical safeguard. Tell President Obama to strongly support the EPA's efforts to clean up mercury pollution and protect the health of mothers, children and families. This is an email that I received from...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Democrat-controlled Senate on Thursday rejected a Republican attempt to block a regulation intended to curb power plant pollution that blows downwind into other states. By a 56-41 vote, senators defeated a resolution by Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who said the step was needed to rein in what he called the Obama administration's overzealous job-killing approach to environmental protection. "We are simply asking that the clean air regulations already on the books stay in place and we do not make the regulations so onerous that they put utility plants out of business and we have an...

It is time for Lisa P. Jackson to resign. Last Friday at Howard University, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) railed against the coal industry, saying, “In [the coal industry’s] entire history - 50, 60, 70 years or even 30 - they never found the time or the reason to clean up their act. They’re literally on life support. And the people keeping them on life support are all of us.” This is patently false, of course, as emissions from U.S. coal-fired power plants are quite heavily regulated. Those emissions controls are the reason U.S. air is clean...

SALT LAKE CITY — Motorists who leave their vehicles idling for more than two minutes in Utah's capital city run the risk of being fined. The Salt Lake City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to approve an ordinance making idling of vehicle engines a crime punishable by a fine of between $50 and $210, depending on the number of offenses and how quickly fines are paid. The goal, city leaders said, is to improve air quality in the Salt Lake Valley, where more than 50 percent of air pollution comes from vehicle exhaust. "Anything we can do to reduce pollution on...

Those bracing dips in the local lake or river may not be as healthy as they were cracked up to be judging by a new list of polluted waterways released last week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Recent tests have found more toxic material, bacteria and pollution in California rivers, streams, bays and lakes than has ever been documented before, according to the federal agency. The study shows a 170 percent increase in the number of waterways showing toxicity in 2010 compared with 2006, the last time the study was done. Less than half of the state's lakes, bays...

Any American watching cable TV over the past few months can hardly fail to have noticed the seemingly ubiquitous advertisements extolling the virtues of extracting oil from Canadian oil sands, which the commentators assure their audience has a carbon footprint largely comparable with traditional fossil fuels, and which, if developed will provide not only millions of new jobs but billions of dollars for governments as well as energy security by weaning the Western Hemisphere off its addiction to terrorism-tainted Middle East oil. But don’t break out your checkbook just yet. Apparently those pesky Eurocrats in Brussels haven’t gotten the message,...

Insisting that “things are much better than most people think,” Vice-President Joe Biden said he is “comfortable with the idea of phasing former President George Bush out of the conversation when it comes to the economy.” “A narrow focus on unemployment and deficits misses the overarching improvements we have achieved since Barack Obama took office,” Biden cautioned. “Look, if you’re among the 9% who are unemployed it’s a bummer. But if you’re one of the 91% who has a job your commute to work is easier since fewer people will be driving to jobs on the streets you use. So,...

Palm oil may not be 'environmentally friendly' as commonly believed, researchers say Thirty years after tropical rain forests were cleared and replaced with oil palms, the amount of carbon being stored is 65 percent less than the original amount, a National Institute for Environmental Studies (NIES) team has found. Carbon that was once stored in forest is feared to have been released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, contributing to global warming. Oil palm cultivation has expanded dramatically in recent years, as the demand for palm oil in making environmentally-friendly soaps and biofuel has risen. The latest analysis results, which...

(CNSNews.com) - Sept. 30 is the deadline for thousands of American businesses -- including power plants, petroleum refineries, landfills and large engine manufacturers -- to report their greenhouse gas emissions to the U.S. government for the first time. The EPA on Monday announced a new tool that will allow 7,000 companies in “all sectors” of the U.S. economy to submit their greenhouse gas pollution data electronically. Electronic submission of the data is supposed to make the process easier. But the reporting process is complex and cumbersome. For starters, the EPA's ‘Frequently-Asked Questions” Web page includes 21 sections that cover 390...

$12 Pollution Assessment To Be Added To Car Registration FeesEvery person who owns a non-commercial vehicle in the San Joaquin Valley will begin paying a fine for violating federal air quality standards starting in October, said the San Joaquin Valley Pollution Control District. The fine will show up as a $12 pollution assessment on a resident's annual car registration bill. "We will pay this fine every year until we go three straight years without violating tougher federal air quality standards," said Anthony Presto, a spokesman for the pollution control district. The reason for the fine is that the San Joaquin...

Energy: It won't matter which light bulbs we use as the administration's implementation of cross-state pollution rules shuts down coal plants across the country. Where will the jobs be when the lights go out? It's called the Cross-State Pollution Rule, announced last month, and its implementation over the next 18 months will likely result in the loss of a fifth of the nation's electricity-generating capacity. The result will be likely power shortages, skyrocketing rates and inevitable brownouts and rolling blackouts. Based on Bush-era EPA proposals that the federal courts threw out in 2008, this latest example of legislation is designed...

HYANNISPORT — A renter with the famous Kennedy name has some local residents complaining about his allegedly messy ways. This month, the Barnstable police and Barnstable Health Department investigated several complaints about the 70 Longwood Ave. property being rented by Matthew Maxwell Kennedy, one of nine surviving children of Ethel Kennedy and the late Robert F. Kennedy. Neighbors who asked to remain anonymous say the location looks like a "junk yard" thanks to a jumble of boat trailers, pickup trucks, wheelbarrows, coolers, a Wave Runner, and even a huge buoy out in full view. "If it was trash or...

More than a year after the largest oil spill in history, perhaps the dominant lingering question about the Deepwater Horizon spill is, "What happened to the oil?" Now, in the first published study to explain the role of microbes in breaking down the oil slick on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) researchers have come up with answers that represent both surprisingly good news and a head-scratching mystery. In research scheduled to be published in the Aug. 2 online edition of Environmental Research Letters, the WHOI team studied samples from the surface oil slick...

Don't expect to beat the heat this weekend in a canoe, a kayak or a windsurfing board off Manhattan. City officials declared the Hudson River, the East River south of the RFK Bridge and the Harlem River unfit for recreational activity due to raw sewage spilled by a treatment plant fire. "Right now, there's no impact on public beaches," Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Cas Holloway said. "However, you should not be doing contact recreation on the Hudson River." People splashing in the tainted water risk vomiting, diarrhea and fever. The warning to avoid the waterways is in effect through...