January 25, 2012
A global environmental update

US president Barack Obama pledged support for his country’s shale-gas boom, but said the government must focus on safe development of the energy source, Reuters reported. In his annual state-of-the-union address, Obama pressed again for ending tax breaks for the oil and gas industry, while adding that he would direct his administration to open 75% of potential US offshore oil and gas resources to drilling.

Obama also strongly defended his record in investing in renewable energy. “I will not walk away from the promise of clean energy ... I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or Germany because we refuse to make the same commitment here,” Obama told the US Congress. (See text of his address here.)

British scientists have detected a huge dome of freshwater that is developing in the western Arctic Ocean, the BBC reported, citing research published in Nature Geoscience. The scientists think that the bulge – which is some 8,000 cubic kilometres in size and has risen about 15 centimetres since 2002 – may be the result of strong winds whipping up a great clockwise current called the Beaufort Gyre.

A hemisphere-wide phenomenon, not just regional forces, has caused record-breaking amounts of freshwater to accumulate in the Beaufort Sea, according to US researchers. Writing in Nature, they said frigid freshwater flowing into the Arctic Ocean from three Russian rivers was diverted hundreds of kilometres in response to a decades-long shift in atmospheric pressure associated with the phenomenon termed the Arctic Oscillation.

The UN cultural agency UNESCO could eventually strip a key British historic site, the centuries-old Tower of London, of its world heritage status, Simon Jenkins, chairman of the National Trust, wrote in The Guardian. The Shard skyscraper – nearing completion and soon to be western Europe’s tallest building – looms above the Tower, while nearby are other modern edifices that he said “show not the slightest respect for the Tower or Tower Bridge”.

Seville faces a similar situation, the Olive Press said. UNESCO experts denounced the “highly negative visual impact” of the half-built Pelli Tower on 13th-century buildings in the Spanish city’s old town, including the cathedral.

The Portland cement industry acknowledges it is responsible for 5% of manmade carbon dioxide emissions worldwide, but reducing consumption is not a strategy that the industry is willing to consider, according to the Financial Times. Development of “alternative cements” – including a class called geopolymers – is of increasing interest, however, as the low-carbon building industry grows. 

As a June 30 deadline approaches, scientists are competing for a US$1 million prize – offered five years ago by the animal welfare group PETA – for the creation of artificial chicken that can be produced in quantity and be indistinguishable in taste from “real” chicken flesh, according to The Guardian. “Cultured”, or laboratory-produced, meat could help address increasing global food needs, would require less energy and space to grow, and would reduce animal suffering.