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Obama: no Keystone XL if significant exacerbation of GHG; Canada: no problem

Green Car Congress

In his talk at Georgetown University outlining his climate action plan, President Barack Obama suggested that the controversial Keystone XL pipeline would only be built if the project “ does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution. ”. It’s relevant. —President Obama.

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NSF announces $55M toward national research priorities; intersection of food, energy and water systems

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Montana State University. The team, which includes researchers from Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota, seeks to identify a framework of carbon mitigation strategies that would minimize conflicts with food security and clean energy production priorities. Research at the nexus of food, energy and water. Lead organization. Description.

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Satellite-data derived study finds meeting renewable fuel targets is theoretically feasible, but would change significantly impact agriculture mix

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Roughly 80% of the current recovered harvest in the US would need to be re-allocated for the production of bioenergy crops to meet current renewable fuel targets with existing technology, according to a new study using satellite data led by researchers from the University of Montana.

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Study of lead isotopes provides insight into aerosols transport from Asia to US

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About a third of the airborne lead particles collected at two sites in the San Francisco Bay Area came from Asia, a finding that underscores the far-flung impacts of air pollution and heralds a new way to learn more about its journey across vast distances. We can use this information to guide the development of particulate transport models.

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Converting Coal Power Plants to Nuclear Gains Steam

Cars That Think

A specific challenge would-be-conversions must face is that the NRC’s standards—both for atmospheric pollution and for the amount of radiological material a reactor can release—are much tighter than federal standards for coal plants. In neighboring Montana, state legislators recently approved a study for converting one coal plant to nuclear.

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Study identifies Bakken Formation alone as responsible for ~2% of global ethane emissions

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The Bakken Formation, a shale oil and gas field in North Dakota and Montana, is emitting roughly 2% (about 250,000 tons per year) of the globe’s ethane, according to new study led by researchers at the University of Michigan. The paper appears in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

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Perspective: Regional Greenhouse Gas Cap-and-Trade Programs May be the Solution

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Cap-and-trade was first tried on a significant scale twenty years ago under the first Bush administration as a way to address the problem of airborne sulfur dioxide pollution–widely known as acid rain–from coal-burning power plants in the eastern United States. Western Climate Initiative (WCI). INTRODUCTION. Representatives Henry A.

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