High court will review EPA global warming rules

The Supreme Court, shown Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2013 in Washington, has agreed to consider whether the Environmental Protection Agency overstepped its authority in developing rules aimed at cutting emissions of six heat-trapping gases from factories and power plants. The justices said Tuesday they will review a unanimous federal appeals court ruling that upheld the government's unprecedented regulations aimed at reducing the gases blamed for global warming. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

The Supreme Court, shown Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2013 in Washington, has agreed to consider whether the Environmental Protection Agency overstepped its authority in developing rules aimed at cutting emissions of six heat-trapping gases from factories and power plants. The justices said Tuesday they will review a unanimous federal appeals court ruling that upheld the government's unprecedented regulations aimed at reducing the gases blamed for global warming. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court agreed Tuesday to decide whether to block key aspects of the Obama administration's plan aimed at cutting power plant and factory emissions of gases blamed for global warming.

The justices said they will review a unanimous federal appeals court ruling that upheld the government's unprecedented regulation of carbon dioxide and five other heat-trapping gases.

The question in the case is whether the Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate automobile emissions of greenhouses gases as air pollutants, which stemmed from a 2007 Supreme Court ruling, also applies to power plants and factories.

The court's decision essentially puts on trial a small but critical piece of President Barack Obama's toolbox to tackle global warming — a requirement that companies expanding existing industrial facilities or building new ones that would increase overall pollution must evaluate ways to reduce the carbon they release, as well. For many industrial facilities, this is the only way heat-trapping gases will be regulated, until the EPA sets national standards.

That's because the administration's plans hinge on the high court's 2007 ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA which said the EPA has the authority, under the Clean Air Act, to limit emissions of greenhouse gases from vehicles. Two years later, Obama's EPA concluded that the release of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases endangered human health and welfare, a finding the administration has used to extend its authority beyond automobiles to develop national standards for large stationary sources.

The administration currently is at work setting first-time national standards for new and existing power plants, and will move on to other large stationary sources. But in the meantime, the only way companies are addressing global warming pollution is through a permitting program that requires them to analyze the best available technologies to reduce carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas.

The president gave the EPA until next summer to propose regulations for existing power plants, the largest unregulated source of global warming pollution.

"From an environmental standpoint, it is bad, but not catastrophic," said Michael Gerrard, a law professor at Columbia University and director of its Center for Climate Change Law. Gerrard said it would have been far worse if the court decided to question the EPA's conclusion that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare.

Environmental groups generally breathed a sigh of relief that the court rejected calls to overrule its 2007 decision or review the EPA's conclusion about the health effects of greenhouse gas emissions.

"It's a green light for EPA to go ahead with its carbon pollution standards for power plants because the court has left standing EPA's endangerment finding," said Joanne Spalding, the Sierra Club's senior managing attorney.

But a lawyer for some of the business groups involved in the case said the court issued a more sweeping ruling.

"Read in its broadest sense, it arguably opens the door to whether EPA can regulate greenhouse gases from stationary sources at all," said Roger Martella, a partner with the Sidley, Austin law firm in Washington.

The regulations have been in the works since 2011 and stem from the landmark Clean Air Act that was passed by Congress and signed by President Richard Nixon in 1970 to control air pollution.

The administration has come under fierce criticism from Republicans for pushing ahead with the regulations after Congress failed to pass climate legislation, and after the administration of President George W. Bush resisted such steps.

In 2012, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia concluded that the EPA was "unambiguously correct" in using existing federal law to address global warming.

The judges on that panel were: Then-Chief Judge David Sentelle, who was appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan, and David Tatel and Judith Rogers, both appointed by Democrat Bill Clinton.

The case will be argued in early 2014.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-10-15-Supreme%20Court-Greenhouse%20Gases/id-11e1fd7ce4c34489902d35b8d592faa8
Similar Articles: Mr Cee   Steve Ballmer  

Analysis: U.S. debt ceiling crisis would start quiet, go downhill fast (reuters)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories Stories, RSS and RSS Feed via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/334129728?client_source=feed&format=rss
Similar Articles: Outside Lands   aubrey plaza  

Bewildering Indian policies fuel needless coal imports

By Matthias Williams and Malini Menon

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Tata Power's 1,050 Megawatt power station in the state of Jharkhand is a textbook case of the absurd results that India's 1970s-era coal supply laws can produce, and why power utilities are lobbying the government to change them.

The Maithon power station is located in the heart of India's vast coal belt, but a shortfall in local fuel supplies has forced Tata to import some of the coal for the plant all the way from Indonesia - an expensive and cumbersome alternative.

The company has a coal mine nearly ready in the neighboring state of Odisha, which is meant to feed another power plant whose construction has been held up by government red tape. Tata wants, but has so far not got permission, to use coal from that mine to fire the Maithon plant.

The case underscores how restrictive supply policies helped push up India's coal imports to a record high of nearly 138 million metric tons in the last fiscal year. India sits on top of the world's fourth-largest reserves of the fuel, but it has become the third-biggest coal importer after China and Japan, an estimate by the World Coal Association showed.

That is an anomaly India can ill afford, as the government fights to tame a current account deficit (CAD) that hit a record high last year and helped knock the rupee currency to record lows in August.

"At current import prices, we are talking about around $14 billion of coal imports, which is likely to go up to $25 billion by 2016/17," said Rahool Panandiker, principal at The Boston Consulting Group. "In this context, when there is a focus on reducing the current account deficit to $70 billion, every bit of increased coal production contributes to decreasing the CAD."

Amid lobbying from private companies, the government set up a committee to look into how to free up supplies of domestic coal, and is due to publish its findings this month. However, interviews with government and company officials suggest that no consensus has emerged about how best to proceed.

"There is a very strong need to augment domestic coal supplies and reduce our dependency on imports," said the Association of Power Producers (APP), a powerful lobby group that gave a closed-door presentation last month to the power ministry's top civil servant.

"The need of the hour is a forward-looking policy to maximize domestic coal supply while ensuring adequate incentive for the developer to mine additional coal," it said in a paper seen by Reuters.

COAL SHORTAGES

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's administration has pledged to tackle chronic power shortages that hobble the growth of Asia's third-largest economy. But power companies are saddled with debt. Power stations do not have enough coal or gas to run at full capacity, and state-run distribution companies are too broke to pay for the power that utilities produce.

As a result, despite two decades of rapid economic growth, Indians consume only 900 kilowatt hours (kWh) per capita, compared to 7,000 in Europe and 14,000 in the United States, according to a recent note by consultants Bain & Company.

Most of the coal is dug up and doled out to power companies by state-run Coal India Ltd , the world's largest coal miner, which has struggled to modernize, raise its output and root out corruption within its ranks. Its dominance is a legacy of the socialist policies of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's government in the 1970s that nationalized coal mining.

Such policies have been partly relaxed since that time. For example, instead of buying from Coal India, power producers can be allotted a coal mine of their own, known as a "captive mine", that they must specifically use for a particular power plant.

But the construction of such plants, such as Tata Power's plant in Odisha, can snag for years on red tape. That leaves a coal mine that no-one is able to use, while the same company has to buy coal from abroad to make up for shortfalls elsewhere.

SEEKING CONSENSUS

One policy under discussion in the government committee is to allow companies that have a mine for a power plant that is still under construction to dig out the coal and park it with Coal India, and then take it back later when the plant is ready.

The aim is to help power producers build up a "bank" of coal stocks that would guarantee them a steady supply once the power plant is built. At the same time, Coal India could lend the coal on to another company that is suffering shortages.

Ashok Khurana, director general of the APP, says the policy, known as "Coal Banking", would reduce companies' reliance on imports by 25 million metric tons by the fiscal year 2016/2017. That is equivalent to nearly a fifth of India's total coal imports.

Another proposal under consideration is allowing power producers to mine coal and sell it to Coal India, which would then be able to dole it out to other companies. A further idea, along the lines of Tata's request, is allowing companies to use coal from private mines to fire power stations elsewhere.

Conversations with stakeholders suggest arriving at a consensus for all policies under consideration could be hard. Officials at both Coal India and at the Coal Ministry said the "coal banking" concept was impractical.

Skeptics question how Coal India could efficiently store and keep track of the coal it would "bank" for power companies.

"Operationally it's going to be quite challenging," said a senior official at a large Indian power company that is suffering acute coal and gas shortages.

"At what rate do you bank (the coal)? At what rate do you take it back? What is the time when you get it back? What happens if at that point of time there is an additional shortage? Would Coal India then deprive its existing customers and give it to them?" the official said.

Allowing companies to sell surplus coal to Coal India is simpler to implement and more likely to see the light of day, sources told Reuters.

However, some - such as Amit Sinha, a partner at Bain & Company - would like to see the government take a back seat rather than act as a go-between in supplying coal. He compared the prospect of more state involvement to India's notoriously inefficient system of storing and handing out subsidized food.

"My belief is that government-supported mechanisms tend to have limited impact. They need to be market-facing initiatives where the government provides the framework and then steps away," Sinha said. "If the government starts to play an active role ... my issue is that it will be very slow, and there will be lots of implementation hurdles that we'll face."

(Additional reporting by Jatindra Dash in BHUBANESWAR; Editing by John Chalmers and Ed Davies)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/bewildering-indian-policies-fuel-needless-coal-imports-212126502--business.html
Similar Articles: Kendrick Johnson   alex rodriguez   Iams Recall   leah remini   aubrey plaza  

Contours of a possible deal emerge amid closed-door talks

In a sign that a deal may be in the making, President Barack Obama and top lawmakers postponed a meeting at the White House on Monday to give lawmakers more time to craft an agreement to reopen the government and avoid a potentially catastrophic default.

The Oval Office talks had initially been set for 3 p.m. But at 2:40 p.m. the White House announced that the confab was delayed indefinitely “to allow leaders in the Senate time to continue making important progress towards a solution that raises the debt limit and reopens the government.” It was not clear whether the meeting would take place later Monday.

Earlier, the president made a photo-op visit to a local food bank, and said the talks aimed to capitalize on what he called “progress” in the Senate toward an 11^th-hour breakthrough.

“We'll see this afternoon whether this progress is real,” Obama told reporters, standing in front of a table piled with bologna sandwiches. “And you know, my hope is that a spirit of cooperation will move us forward over the next few hours.”

The postponed meeting was to include Republican House Speaker John Boehner, Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Vice President Joe Biden was also due to attend.

The U.S. Treasury says the government will hit its debt ceiling Thursday, running out of the authority to borrow money to pay for existing programs and risking a debt default that experts warn will send shock waves through the fragile global economy.

“Not only is it untenable for us to continue this shutdown — this week if we don't start making some real progress both in the House and the Senate, and if Republicans aren't willing to set aside some of their partisan concerns in order to do what's right for the country, we stand a good chance of defaulting,” Obama warned. “And defaulting would have a potentially devastating effect on our economy, sending interest rates shooting up, [and] people — whether Social Security recipients or people with disabilities or small-business people who are vendors to government — not getting paid on time.”

“We've already had a damaging effect on our economy because of the shutdown,” the president added. “That damage would be greatly magnified if we don't make sure that the government's paying its bills, and that has to be decided this week.”

Reid and McConnell have been working behind the scenes to cobble together a deal. A bipartisan group of 12 senators has been doing the same. Ultimately, though, the question is: How will the House GOP respond, with time already running short?

"We're getting closer," Reid told reporters after he met privately with McConnell.

The Republican leader agreed: "We’ve had an opportunity to have some constructive exchanges of views on how to move forward. I share his optimism — we will get a result that will be acceptable to both sides."

Several other lawmakers have sounded optimistic notes about getting a deal done quickly. A Democratic Senate aide described the deal as comprising a debt-ceiling hike that would last until February 2014, enough money to keep government open until January, with a commitment for all sides to launch comprehensive negotiations on the nation's finances by Dec. 15. A senior Republican Senate aide said the chamber's GOP members would huddle at 5:45 p.m. to discuss the possible deal, but cautioned that its contents were still being hammered out.

“I think we'll solve this problem over the next few days. I think today may be a very good day,” Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., told MSNBC’s "Morning Joe."

But Obama said he would keep pushing Congress “until the details are done.”

And the president appeared to refer to public opinion polls that have shown Republicans bearing the brunt of the blame for a shutdown that their tea party-affiliated rank and file triggered by demanding that the president accept some rolling back of his signature health care law, Obamacare.

“There's been some progress on the Senate side, with Republicans recognizing it's not tenable, it's not smart, it's not good for the American people to let America default,” he said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/obama-to-host-top-lawmakers-as-default-looms-160042194.html
Category: Common App   national coffee day   south park   dallas cowboys   Liz Cheney  

Full HD coming to Windows Phone devices

October 14, 2013

By Mikael Ricknäs | IDG News Service

Microsoft's next Windows Phone update opens the door for 1080p screens and more powerful processors from Qualcomm.

Microsoft will deliver the new version of Windows Phone 8, called General Distribution Release 3, to existing phones over the coming months, Microsoft said in a blog post on Monday.

[ Learn how to secure and manage workers' smartphones, tablets, and more with InfoWorld's Mobile Device Management (MDM) Deep Dive Report. | Stay abreast of key Microsoft technologies in our Technology: Microsoft newsletter. ]

The first smartphones that can take full advantage of the update are likely to be announced next week at the Nokia World conference. Microsoft is in the process of acquiring Nokia's phone division, a deal which was first announced at the beginning of September.

The addition of 1080p screens and support for Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800 quad-core processor should help close the hardware gap between the latest line of Android phones and high-end products based on Microsoft's OS.

A new generation of Windows Phone-based devices will have 5- and 6-inch touch screens, according to Microsoft. They will compete with products like the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and the HTC One Max. The latter device has a 5.9-inch screen and was also announced on Monday.

The higher resolution on Windows Phone will make room for up to six tiles across the Windows Phone start screen instead of four. Other updates include an improved Internet sharing feature; the ability to use customized ring tones for instant messages, emails, voicemails, and reminders; and a new rotation lock option to keep the screen fixed in one place.

Consumers will also be able to close apps from the App switcher and use Driving Mode while on the road, which lets them send automatic replies to people who call or text when sitting behind the wheel, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft also announced the Windows Phone Preview for Developers, which will go live sometime on Monday. The program gives developers early access to Windows Phone updates so they can verify that apps work as expected on the new code, the company said.

Source: http://akamai.infoworld.com/d/mobile-technology/full-hd-coming-windows-phone-devices-228730?source=rss_mobile_technology
Tags: torrie wilson   emmy winners   Emmys 2013   luke bryan   Rihanna  

Shutdown's Reach Extends To South Pole

Research season was just getting started when the government shutdown put McMurdo Station into "caretaker" mode, halting data collection. Host Scott Simon speaks to Gretchen Hofmann, a professor at University of California, Santa Barbara, about the government shutdown's impact on research in Antarctica.

Copyright © 2013 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

This is WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News, I'm Scott Simon. The U.S. government shutdown is reaching all the way to the poles of the Earth. The research season in Antarctica runs during the warmer months there in the southern hemisphere, roughly from October to February, and that means scientists were just getting started when they had to shut down. Gretchen Hofmann is a professor at University of California, Santa Barbara. She's the lead researcher on a project at the McMurdo Station in the Antarctic. She joins us from her office in Santa Barbara. Thanks very much for being with us.

GRETCHEN HOFMANN: You bet, Scott. Happy to be here, although I wish it was under a little bit of different circumstance.

SIMON: Well, tell us what happened.

HOFMANN: Well, I guess the story starts where, as researchers, we fly down to the Antarctic via help from the United States' Air Force leaving from Christchurch, New Zealand. And we fly on these large planes. We land on this sea ice. And about a week ago, I deployed one of the researchers in our program, Dr. Amanda Kelly. She flew from Christchurch, New Zealand and landed on the sea ice to find out in fact McMurdo Station, our U.S. research station, had gone into caretaker mode. She's currently there in the Antarctic right now. I just learned that she's done bag drag, which is where you take your gear to the airplane, and she's flying out. So, sort of Christmas has been cancelled as far as science is concerned in the Antarctic.

SIMON: And what are the implications of this?

HOFMANN: Well, Scott, I guess I can say that as a senior scientist now - I'm tenured and I run my own lab - we stand to lose data as a community that runs the gamut from drilling through the Western Antarctic ice sheet to understanding penguin biology and long-term data sets. But one of the casualties, one of the things that we stand to lose right now is important productivity for junior scientists, people who are just starting their careers.

SIMON: What about some of the specific projects that might be facing peril at the moment?

HOFMANN: I think one of the examples I can think of is someone at the University of Alabama. Her name is Samantha Hansen. I know this really well 'cause last season I was there. Samantha - Sam - and I were roommates in our science dorm. Sam's a geologist and she deployed these very interesting, complex remote sensing instruments out in the Antarctic mountains. She's interested in studying the processes that, you know, sort of essentially shape our planet and make mountains. And Sam's instruments right now have data that's really important to her, important to the science world. And if we can't go get them, the data will be lost, the instruments could be buried in snow and it'll be a complete loss for this charismatic young scientist.

SIMON: And don't U.S. research teams work in concert with a lot of teams from other places around the world too?

HOFMANN: Absolutely. You're correct. This is also a devastating blow for Antarctic research programs, particularly in New Zealand. Antarctica, New Zealand has their base at Scott Base, which is literally a beautiful walk away from McMurdo Station. We fly logistics for them. We transport their personnel. We also have strong ties with the Italian group. And, if I might add, one of the key roles that the United States plays down there, through our resources and the presence of our military, is a very strong role in search and rescue activities. And presently, we are sort of dropping the ball from our global Antarctic research community because we are less able to respond to emergencies that come up down there. So, it's really an unfortunate situation.

SIMON: Gretchen Hofmann, who's a professor at the University of California in Santa Barbara and lead researcher on a project at McMurdo Station in Antarctica. Thanks very much for being with us.

HOFMANN: Thank you, Scott. It's been my pleasure.

Copyright © 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=232622003&ft=1&f=1007
Similar Articles: world trade center   nbc   usain bolt   Royal Baby Pictures   whitney cummings  

Mystery of Bizarre Icelandic Lava Pillars Solved

The mystery of a series of strange, knobby pillars of rock that formed in Iceland has been solved.

A creeping lava flow and a stream of water mixed to create hollow, rough pillars that dot the Skaelinger Valley in Iceland. The surprise is that these towers could form at all on land. Until now, researchers thought that whenever water and lava met on land, either explosive steam or pillow-shaped lava formed.

"These had never been observed or described before as features seen on land. They've been described at mid-ocean ridges 2 miles [3 km] under water," said study co-author Tracy Gregg, a geologist at the University at Buffalo in New York.

Troll wars?

Gregg was hiking in Iceland in 1998 when she came upon the strange pillars, which almost look like trees without branches. Some of the tallest are 8 feet (2.4 meters) high, and up to 3.3 feet (1 m) wide. 

Local lore had it that trolls had fought a war in the valley, tossing these rocks in the process. [See Images of the Bizarre Lava Pillars]

Gregg was not convinced by the troll war theory. The rough spires looked eerily like features she had been studying deep in the ocean.

"I was so excited. As soon as I saw these things I knew what they were," Gregg told LiveScience.

At mid-ocean ridges, or points in the deep ocean where the continental plates are peeling apart, lava seeps out of the ocean floor. Hot water rises up through this pillow lava and cools the nearby lava into rock, and as lava levels rise, spires grow, and remain even after lava flows have ebbed. [50 Amazing Volcano Facts]

But no one had ever documented such pillars on land.

Unfortunately, Gregg didn't get a chance to study the pillars again until 2010, when her graduate student Kenneth Christie received a grant to study the structures in Iceland.

Pillar formation

Gregg and Christie concluded that Skaelinger's odd formations formed just like underwater lava pillars, during the famed Laki Eruption of 1783, when a volcanic fissure in southern Iceland oozed lava for eight months. That eruption was so big that it killed at least 50 percent of the island's livestock and a quarter of its population. Benjamin Franklin noted Europe's hazy skies from the volcano's ash in his journal at the time, and made some of the first speculations to link volcanoes and climate, Gregg said.

As slow-moving lava inched its way across the Skaelinger Valley, the lava created a temporary dam on the river that flows through the valley, probably forming a small pond, Gregg said. The meeting of slow-moving lava and water formed spires similar to those found deep in the ocean.

Once lava levels in the valley fell, the hardened, hollow pillars remained.  

The findings may force geologists to rethink how lava and water interact on land. Normally, when water and lava meet, water either drowns the lava, forming pillowlike structures, or the lava heats the water in a flash till it turns to steam that explodes, Gregg said.

Iceland and Mars

It's also possible that lava pillars may occur elsewhere on Earth. These spires, born in past eruptions, can also provide insight into the historical climate, Gregg said.

"If we find them somewhere else on Earth, it tells us that when that lava was in place, that the area was wet," she said.

She's also planning to look at high-resolution images from Mars for signs of lava pillars, which would be a telltale sign that the Red Planet once had water.

The lava pillars are described in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research.

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter and Google+. Follow OurAmazingPlanet @OAPlanet, Facebook and Google+. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

Copyright 2013 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/mystery-bizarre-icelandic-lava-pillars-solved-170241907.html
Tags: denver broncos   revenge   Star Trek Into Darkness   nfl scores   DJ Khaled