Global Warming Issues

A Bush administration rule barring states and local governments from requiring more air pollution monitoring is illegal, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.

In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit threw out a two-year-old rule that may have allowed some refineries, power plants and factories to exceed pollution limits because the Environmental Protection Agency “failed to fix inadequate monitoring requirements … and prohibited states and local authorities from doing so.”

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The Australian Federal Government is giving away $50m to geothermal developers. The money will be used to cover the costs of exploration and drilling. The initiative comes after findings from Geoscience Australia which say that just 1 per cent of Australia’s latent Geothermal energy could produce 26,000 times the amount of energy used by Australians each year.

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Corn stover is made up of the leaves and stalks of corn plants that are left in the field after harvesting the edible corn grain. Corn stover could supply as much as 25% of the biofuel crop needed by 2030.

Scientists with the USDA-ARS Agroecosystem Unit located at the University of Nebraska examined the long-term sustainability of using corn stover as a biofuel crop.

When corn stover is not harvested as a biofuel crop, it can be left on the fields to restore vital nutrients to the soil. Full-scale harvesting of corn stover may deplete the soil.

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