The Center for Biological Diversity is touting their agreement with the US Forest Service over requiring a full EIS for uranium exploration in northern Arizona near the boundaries of the Grand Canyon park, but yesterday they filed suit in U.S. District Court against the Secretary of Interior Dirk Kempthorne, Dept. of Interior, and BLM for reportedly defying a US House resolution calling for halting of exploration activities. [right, geometry of a typical breccia pipe in the Arizona Strip. Credit, Quaterra Resources, Inc.]
Interior argued that the House committee was 3 members short of having a quorum and therefore the resolution was not binding.
Since the resolution passed in June, companies filed four new mining claims and four notices for uranium exploration were accepted by BLM in the lands designated by the House committee.
The Grand Canyon Trust and the Western Mining Action Project joined CBD as plaintiffs.
General
(Palaeo-) Climatology
Geo-Hazards / Geoengineering
Geo-Information (GIS etc.)
Geomorphology
Geophysics
Hydrogeology / Hydrology
Palaeontology
Petrology/Mineralogy/Economic Geology
Quarternary Geology
Regional and Local Geology
Sedimentology
Structural Geology/Tectonics
Vulcanology
Miscellaneous
The Innovator of the Year Awards will be presented Nov. 13 at a gala at the Dodge Theater in Phoenix. The annual awards event, which honors technology and innovation leaders statewide, also includes a technology showcase featuring the finalists' innovations.
One of the late-night movies that impressed me as a kid was the 1936 "Invisible Ray" in which Boris Karloff builds a machine capable of reaching out into space to capture light waves that left Earth millions of years ago. With this amazing device, he watched as if in high orbit, as a meteor of rare composition struck western Africa in the distant geologic past.
The settlement requires the Forest Service and VANE Minerals to withdraw the drilling approval previously issued and to undertake a full Environmental Impact Statement process prior to any renewed effort to drill at the sites.
[right, Pine Nut uranium mine, Arizona Strip. Credit, Vane Minerals]
Video is of Vane geologist Kris Hefton at one of the uranium-bearing breccia pipes in northern Arizona.
The journal Nature published Barack Obama's answers to 18 science-related questions; John McCain's campaign declined to respond. Answers to additional questions (on topics including biosecurity, the nuclear weapons laboratories and US participation in international projects) can be found at http://www.nature.com/uselection. Nature noted what McCain has said at other times on these topics.Nature reported that "McCain said last year, in a Republican primary debate: "I believe in evolution. But I also believe, when I hike the Grand Canyon and see it at sunset, that the hand of God is there also." In 2005, he told the Arizona Daily Star that he thought "all points of view" should be available to students studying the origins of humanity. But the next year a Colorado paper reported him saying that such viewpoints should not be taught in science class."
The candidates answered another set of questions prepared by ScienceDebate2008. Responses from McCain and Obama are presented side by side for comparison. They address water and energy among specifics on health care, space, and general questions on scientific intergrity, innovation, and funding.
This has to be the most intense focused scrutiny the scientific community has ever placed on presidential candidates. And the most attention offered by the candidates?
The World Public Opinion group examined the views of supporters of senators Obama and McCain on energy and climate change and concluded there is a lot of agreement between the two camps. A couple areas where there are bigger differences are in building coal or oil-fired power plants, and in the U.S. committing to a global treaty for reducing greenhouse gases.
The geoscience community is actively engaged in raising issues and recommendations for the next President of the U.S.
Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold is #10 on the Fortune magazine annual list of the 100 fastest growing companies in the U.S. and the only one from Arizona. Fortune said Freeport's revenues increased 92% last year to over $20 billion.
re. But that's tempered with an underlying concern about the current economic crises and a frustration
that the nation does not recognize or appreciate the challenges mining faces in maintaining America's economy and national security.
world natural gas.
Resolution Copper has released the letter they wrote to Rep. Raul Grijalva last month, addressing concerns he raised earlier this year about the proposed copper mine and the complex federal-state-private land exchange needed to make it happen. [right, Resolution president David Salisbury]
The Arizona Geothermal Working Group met in Tucson yesterday and agreed on preparing a strategic plan as a critical step in developing the state's geothermal resources.
and mud
The project, funded by the European Union, invited me to be on their advisory board to help ensure our two networks will be integrated and interoperable. It’s pretty clear that we are in agreement on all the major concepts and directions of the two data networks. We are discussing ways to link the two projects across all the working levels. There is also a companion EU project for GIS data and capabilities, the European Spatial Data Infrastructure Network (EDSIN) run by Eurogeographics, that looks to be a great collaborator.
In a related note, we finished negotiating budget revisions and completing the standard paperwork on the NSF funding for GIN, so we got approval two days ago to launch our 3-year project. We are organizing a workshop on GIN for the GSA annual meeting in
I hoped to be blogging from
