Iraq's rapid moves towards handing its undeveloped oilfields to multinational oil companies through production sharing agreements are a cause for concern.

It is a question for the people of Iraq as to whether they want foreign investment in their oil at all. If Iraq were to rush into signing oil contracts, and especially if it were to do so without public debate or transparency, unfavourable outcomes could be expected.

There are certainly wide variations in the terms of PSAs worldwide. Some give a more reasonable deal, others not. In some ways, depending on the detail of the terms of a PSA, its impact can be comparable to that of the worst concession agreements, such as those in place in Iraq from the 1920s to the 1970s. PSAs stand for long periods of time They fix revenue distribution at what may be later considered unfair levels and they deny the state much of its ability to regulate.

Iraq would be well advised to maintain flexibility in how it structures its oil industry and to avoid long-term, irreversible irreversible (ir´ēvur´sebl),

Israeli forces have attacked a flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian aid to
the besieged Gaza strip. Dubbed the Freedom Flotilla, the ships were aiming to
break Israel’s 3-year blockade of Gaza. At least 15 people were killed and
dozens injured when Israeli troops attacked the lead ship in the convoy–the
Turkish "Mavi Marmara"–early Monday morning. The attack happened in
international waters, 75 miles off the coast of Israel and Gaza. We reached Adam
Shapiro in New York a few hours after the attack. He’s a board member of the
Free Gaza movement, one of the groups that coordinated the Freedom Flotilla. His
wife Huwaida Arraf is the chairperson of the Free Gaza movement and is on the
flotilla.

Biologist Doug Inkley – BP Oil Ashore ‘just the tip of the iceberg’

How can benzene affect my health?

Breathing very high levels of benzene can result in death, while high
levels can cause drowsiness, dizziness, rapid heart rate, headaches,
tremors, confusion, and unconsciousness. Eating or drinking foods
containing high levels of benzene can cause vomiting, irritation of the
stomach, dizziness, sleepiness, convulsions, rapid heart rate, and
death.

The major effect of benzene from long-term exposure is on the blood.
Benzene causes harmful effects on the bone marrow and can cause a
decrease in red blood cells leading to anemia. It can also cause
excessive bleeding and can affect the immune system, increasing the
chance for infection.

Some women who breathed high levels of benzene for many months had
irregular menstrual periods and a decrease in the size of their ovaries,
but we do not know for certain that benzene caused the effects. It is
not known whether benzene will affect fertility in men

Read more at : http://bpoilleak.org/

On the wake of the Deepwater Horizon, there are calls left, right and
centre to increase the security of oil rigs, improve oil spill response
and whatnot. This is good, but far from sufficient. What we need to
address is the world's dependence on oil, and how we can quit the black
stuff. It might appear a hard task until you consider the lenghths to
which we go to get oil. The animation below, by cartoonist Mark Fiore,
sums it up:

Read more at Greenpeace

"We'll be the first to bring to the market a storage battery for home use, which can store sufficient electricity for about one week of use," said Fumio Otsubo, president of Panasonic, in a recent interview with The Yomiuri Shimbun.

Stressing that Panasonic and Sanyo have already test-manufactured a storage battery for home use, Otsubo said, "We're positioned closest [among firms] to realizing CO2 emission-free daily life."

By making Sanyo its subsidiary, Panasonic plans to accelerate the development of the storage battery, while planning to sell it together with a system that will enable households to check electricity usage on a home-based TV display

Read the whole article at http://www.physorg.com/news180778009.html

Study suggests that wind is ecologically and economically practical and could reduce CO2 emissions Cambridge, Mass. – September 10, 2009 – A team of environmental scientists from Harvard and Tsinghua University demonstrated the enormous potential for wind-generated electricity in China. Using extensive metrological data and incorporating the Chinese government's energy bidding and financial restrictions for delivering wind power, the researchers estimate that wind alone has the potential to meet the country's electricity demands projected for 2030.

The switch from coal and other fossil fuels to greener wind-based energy could also mitigate CO₂ emissions, thereby reducing pollution. The report appeared as a cover story in the September 11th issue of Science.

Twenty minutes per day of guided workplace meditation and yoga combined with six weekly group sessions can lower feelings of stress by more than 10 percent and improve sleep quality in sedentary office employees, a pilot study suggests.

The study offered participants a modified version of what is known as mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), a program established in 1979 to help hospital patients in Massachusetts assist in their own healing that is now in wide use around the world.

In the first study to look at what happens over the years to the billions of pounds of plastic waste floating in the world's oceans, scientists are reporting that plastics — reputed to be virtually indestructible — decompose with surprising speed and release potentially toxic substances into the water.

We have exposed a secret oil industry plan to organise fake rallies against US climate legislation, and to exaggerate concern over the cost of action on climate change. The plan, stated in a leaked internal memo from the API (American Petroleum Institute) shows that they are reverting back to old tricks - spreading misinformation about climate change and pressing politicians towards inaction. While Shell Oil have said they won’t participate in this plan - they still give money to the API which continues to lobby the US Government using deceptive tactics. Climate protection policy is needed urgently. Politicians should listen to climate scientists and the people - not big corporations with vested interests. The API is threatening our future, and our children’s future with their lies. We need you to tell the oil industry to come clean and support real climate action. The following letter will be sent to the CEOs of: BHP Billiton, BP, Chevron, Conoco, Exxon, General Electric, Halliburton, Shell and Petrobras.

Send the letter at Greenpeace

Scientists at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton working in collaboration with researchers from the University of Birmingham, Royal Holloway London and IFM-Geomar in Germany have found that more than 250 plumes of bubbles of methane gas are rising from the seabed of the West Spitsbergen continental margin in the Arctic, in a depth range of 150 to 400 metres.

Methane released from gas hydrate in submarine sediments has been identified in the past as an agent of climate change. The likelihood of methane being released in this way has been widely predicted.

The data were collected from the royal research ship RRS James Clark Ross, as part of the Natural Environment Research Council's International Polar Year Initiative. The bubble plumes were detected using sonar and then sampled with a water-bottle sampling system over a range of depths.

Brazil — Bertin, the world’s largest leather exporter is joining the fight against deforestation and climate change and is finally doing the right thing and backing the call for a moratorium on buying cattle from farms responsible for Amazon deforestation.

Since the release of our expose, ‘Slaughtering the Amazon’ just two months ago, we’ve seen an overwhelming response from companies fighting to distance themselves from Amazon destruction.

Major shoe companies Adidas, Nike, Timberland, Clarks, Geox and Timberland have all committed not to buy leather from Amazon destruction, prompting the recent decision by Bertin to commit to stop sourcing cattle from newly deforested areas and implement a traceability system to ensure the sourcing.

The Plan Over the next six months, Bertin will register and map all farms which directly supply cattle to the company.

Much of the search for life outside of Earth's biological oasis has focused on examining the conditions on the other planets in our solar system and probing the cosmos for other Earth-like planets in distant planetary systems.But one team of astronomers is approaching the question of in the universe by looking for life's potential beginningAparna Venkatesan, of the University of San Francisco, and Lynn Rothschild, of NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., are using models of star formation and destruction to determine when in the roughly 13.7 billion-year history of the universe the biogenic elements – those essential to life as we know it – might have been pervasive enough to allow life to form

Read the full article over here at Space.com