Henry Fountain

An update on climate trends from the past year.

The Shuttle Endeavour is set to blast off one last time Monday morning./ The space shuttle will be carrying a $2 billion particle physics detector called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, which will search for dark matter. It is an emotional day for commander Mark Kelly, who is heading the mission. His wife, Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head is at the launch site. Kelly is carrying a wedding ring into space. Science reporter for The New York Times, Henry Fountain is at the launch.

It’s been two weeks since the earthquake and tsunami hit Northeastern Japan. Ever since that day, Japanese officials have been working tirelessly to avert a nuclear disaster. Friday morning, Japanese nuclear safety officials said that they suspect that the reactor core at one unit of the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant may have breached. That raises the possibility of more severe radioactive contamination to the environment. Henry Fountain, Science Reporter for The New York Times explains the latest.

BP finally has some good news to report: A recently installed 75 ton cap has, for the first time in 85 days, stopped the flood of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico from a broken wellhead. While the damage to Gulf shores may have been relatively light thus far, anywhere between 93.5 and 184 million gallons of crude oil has likely contaminated those waters.

BP is still working to fix the Deepwater Horizon well, which has been leaking since April. The latest effort also hit a glitch when a new cap showed a leak. BP has now said that they have fixed that leak and can move ahead with a test to make sure that they can finally put an end to the gusher. Science reporter for The New York Times, Henry Fountain has been following the story. He explains how the new cap will work and how it will lead to a permanent solution.

 

Over the weekend, BP began working to place a new cap on the gushing Deepwater Horizon well in the Gulf of Mexico. The old cap, estimated to divert 15,000 barrels of oil a day, was removed Saturday, in order to make room for the new one. This has allowed oil from the well to gush unimpeded. If all goes according to plan, the new cap should contain all the oil from the well, an estimated 60,000 to 80,000 barrels of oil a day.

Like the Big Mac or Budweiser beer, concrete is everywhere. But concrete comes with a cost: in creating the ubiquitous building material, tons upon tons of carbon dioxide are emitted ...