Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Pluto and Solar Compromise

To celebrate the momentous achievement of discovering the 21st century Botany Bay, a number of James Cook type scientists involved in the New Horizons program took to reddit to answer questions about the mission in an “Ask Me Anything” thread
Great photos of Earth from world’s smallest satellites CNN
New Horizons survives encounter with Pluto

While scanning the seabed more than 150 miles off the coast of Sydney, scientists were stunned to find a cluster of volcanoes sitting three miles beneath the ocean's surface. In all there were four extinct volcanoes, the largest nearly a mile wide and rising some 2,000ft above the sea floor.
Antipodean ancient undersea volcanoes

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has made a partial back down from yesterday’s solar investment announcement, saying today that he would be supportive of using the sun’s energy, as long as it involved mining it. “It’s a big untapped resource just sitting there,” Mr Abbott said. “If we mined it sustainably, reserves could last for 80-100 years”.
Solar compromise: Ba(ir)d Abbott to allow mining on the Sun and Pluto

The Shenhua coal mine approval has been looked at extensively by scientists and evidence shows there will be no impact on water quality, New South Wales Premier Mike Baird says.
Farmers on the Liverpool Plains in northern NSW are vowing to launch legal action and resort to civil disobedience to stop the Chinese coal mining company being granted a mining licence.
The open cut mine — approved last week under strict conditions — is forecast to produce up to 10 million tonnes of coal per year over 30 years, but farmers claim the project will leave a 35-square-kilometre hole in some of the most fertile agricultural land in the country.
Ba(ir)d no impacts of Shenhua coal mine on water

The NSW Premier, Mike Baird, has joined with NSW Mining CEO and his own former chief of staffStephen Galilee, in the old game of exaggerating the importance of mining to the NSW economy. Bad plays the coal mining exaggeration game

It can't be fun to be on the receiving end of a blast from Alan Jones. But that's the position Prime Minister Tony Abbott found himself in on Wednesday, when the broadcaster told his listeners on radio station 2GB that the Abbott government's approval of the Shenhua Watermark coal mine was "disgraceful", "beyond belief", and tantamount to selling their soul to mining.
Alan Jones takes aim at Tony Abbott re Shenhua mine

Conspiracists Concur: Climate Change Is a Colossal Cover-Up MIT Technology Review

The Earth erupts! Spectacular pictures show THREE volcanoes ablaze in Mexico, Chile and Indonesia while a fourth rumbles away

Scientists discover new kind of particle: the pentaquark Agence France-Presse