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Guardian: The soaring price of wheat has raised questions about the UK's commitment to biofuels as it attempts to wean itself from its dependence on oil. A network of biorefineries that convert wheat and other crops into bioethanol that can then be blended with petrol are being developed as the UK looks to meet its EU renewable transport fuels obligations. But the huge amounts of wheat that will be used in the process – up to a fifth of the UK's current annual production within four ...

LiveScience: As the Deepwater Horizon oil spill unfolded earlier this summer, a mechanical engineer helped cleanup crews keep up with the moving target by developing a steady stream of forecasts that predicted where the oil slick would spread several days in advance. The engineer's three-day forecasts successfully showed where and when oil would wash ashore in the Mississippi River Delta locations of Plaquemines Parish and Grand Isle, La., as well as on the white-sand beaches of Pensacola, Fla., ...

NYT: Crews hoisted the blowout preventer that once sat atop BP's stricken well to the surface of the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday night, and the federal leader of the spill response said that there was no longer any risk that the well might leak again. "This well does not constitute a threat to the Gulf of Mexico at this point," the leader, Thad W. Allen, a former Coast Guard admiral, said during a conference call with reporters. "The well has been effectively secured regarding any potential ...

NYT: THE scientific rebel J. Craig Venter created headlines – and drew comparisons to Dr. Frankenstein – when he announced in May that his team had created what, with a bit of stretching, could be called the first synthetic living creature. Two months later, only a smattering of reporters and local dignitaries bothered to show up at a news conference to hear Dr. Venter talk about a new greenhouse that his company, Synthetic Genomics, had built outside its headquarters here to conduct ...

Guardian: It has been a summer of record temperatures – Japan had its hottest summer on record, as did South Florida and New York. Meanwhile, Pakistan and Niger are flooded and the eastern US is mopping up after hurricane Earl. None of these individual events can definitively be attributed to global warming. But to see how climate change will play out in the 21st century, you needn't look to the Met Office. Look, instead, to the deaths and burning tyres in Mozambique's "food riots" to see what happens ...

Independent: David Cameron's claim to lead the "greenest government ever" was thrown into the heart of the Labour leadership contest last night, amid concern about plans for a deep-sea drilling operation in the North Sea. David Miliband, one of the candidates to succeed Gordon Brown as Labour leader, said the coalition's refusal to impose a moratorium on deep-sea drilling in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico disaster exposed its commitment to the environment as "nothing but spin". He said: ...

AP: A crane hoisted a key piece of oil spill evidence to the surface of the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday, giving investigators their first chance to personally scrutinize the blowout preventer, the massive piece of equipment that failed to stop the gusher four months ago. It took 29 1/2 hours to lift the 50-foot, 300-ton blowout preventer from a mile beneath the sea to the surface. The five-story high device breached the water's surface at 6:54 p.m. CDT, and looked largely intact with black ...

Reuters: BP Plc's ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well is secure with no threat of spewing crude again, the top U.S. official overseeing the spill response said on Saturday. "We basically have secured this well," retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen said. "We have essentially eliminated the threat of discharge from the well at this point." A cap atop failed blowout preventer equipment on the Macondo well had sealed in all oil flow since July 15. On Friday, BP replaced the failed equipment ...

NPR: Earlier this summer, a group of scientists spent two weeks in Indonesia atop a glacier called Puncak Jaya, one of the few remaining tropical glaciers in the world. They were taking samples of ice cores to study the impacts of climate change on the glacier. Lonnie Thompson, a professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University, led the team and what he witnessed shocked him: The glacier was literally melting under their feet. Thompson tells NPR's Guy Raz he has conducted 57 ...

NYT: With memories still fresh of food riots set off by spiking prices just two years ago, agricultural experts on Friday cast a wary eye on the steep rise in the cost of wheat prompted by a Russian export ban and the questions looming over harvests in other parts of the world because of drought or flooding. Food prices rose 5 percent globally during August, according to the United Nations, spurred mostly by the higher cost of wheat, and the first signs of unrest erupted as 10 people died ...

Guardian: Bryozoans make unlikely prophets of doom. Nevertheless, scientists believe these tiny marine creatures, which live glued to the side of boulders, rocks and other surfaces, reveal a disturbing aspect about Antarctica that has critical implications for understanding the impact of climate change. British Antarctic Survey researchers have found the dispersal of these minute animals suggests a sea passage once divided Antarctica 125,000 years ago. The discovery was made for the ongoing ...

AP: Oil billionaires David and Charles Koch have jumped on board an effort to suspend California's global warming law by making a million-dollar contribution this week. A subsidiary of Wichita, Kan.-based Koch Industries, the nation's second-largest private company with oil refineries and pipelines, made a $1 million contribution Thursday to the campaign for Proposition 23. They join two Texas-based companies, Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Corp. According to the Los Angeles Times, ...

Reuters: BP Plc successfully replaced a failed blowout preventer from atop its ruptured Gulf of Mexico oil well late on Friday, the top U.S. official overseeing the spill response said. Retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen called the equipment switch "an important milestone" toward permanently killing the leak that spewed more than 4 million barrels of oil into the Gulf from April 20 through mid-July. "During the period of time between the removal of the damaged BOP and installation ...

Independent: Taiwan plans to set up a marine national park in the middle of one of its largest fishing grounds despite opposition from fishermen who depend on the area for their livelihood, an official said Monday. The planned national park will cover three island chains and surrounding waters to the north of Taiwan, measuring some 750 square kilometres (300 square miles). "An evaluation of the new marine national park has been under way," Hsu Shao-liang of the Marine National Park ...

AFP: Prosecutors have called for French state energy giant EDF, accused of spying on environmental campaigners Greenpeace, to face criminal trial, EDF lawyer Alexis Gublin said Saturday. The energy company, and former executives Pierre Francois, who was the company's second highest security official, and his immediate superior Pascal Durieux, are also implicated, along with two other employees. It will now be down to the judge Thomas Cassuto to decide on whether or not the case ...

AFP: The French yacht Tara leaves Sunday on the second leg of a three-year voyage across the world's oceans to chart the effects of climate change on micro-organisms which produce half our oxygen. The 36-metre (118-foot) schooner will depart from Cape Town a year after leaving Lorient in western France to head across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans for New Zealand next August as part of a 150,000-kilometre (93,750-mile) journey. "Sunday ... will be the birthday of the Tara Oceans ...

AFP: China has ordered banks to stop new lending to companies that pollute excessively or consume too much energy, as part of a drive to make its economy more energy efficient, state media said Saturday. Shao Fujun, director of the People's Bank of China's credit department, said the central bank had established a database to help banks review companies' environmental records, the Shanghai Securities News reported. More than 30,000 pieces of information regarding companies' ...

Toronto Sun: They're in a fight that could shape wind power in Ontario, billions of dollars of investment and the green reputation of Dalton McGuinty's Liberals. Two UWO academics are clashing over wind farms, each accusing the other's followers of demonizing their cause and bastardizing science. A champion for those who believe wind turbines are making them sick, Dr. Bob McMurtry was dean of the medical school at the University of Western Ontario from 1992 to 1999. His wind ...

NPR: The government's "cash for clunkers" program boosted auto sales by 360,000 during the two months it was in place, according to a new study. But in the seven months that followed, sales were down by 360,000 compared with what they would have been without the program, the study found. The implication: The program didn't bring new buyers into the market. But it encouraged people who would have bought a car anyway to make their purchase a few months sooner. Under the ...

Nature: Rodolfo del Valle and his team are heading to the Southern Ocean to measure a methane leak. For three years, Rodolfo del Valle and his team will be probing the ice and seabed in the Erebus and Terror Gulf. Persistent bubbling is stirring the water's surface in the Erebus and Terror Gulf, a remote spot off the Antarctic Peninsula. When he saw the commotion in 2000, Argentinian geologist Rodolfo del Valle was intrigued -- despite 38 years' experience in the region. There was a ...