With recent data showing an unexpected rise in global emissions and a decline in energy efficiency, a growing chorus of economists, scientists and students of energy policy are saying that whatever benefits a cap on greenhouse gas emissions yields, it will be too little and come too late.
Just hours after a Navy missile interceptor struck a dying spy satellite orbiting 130 miles over the Pacific Ocean, a senior military officer expressed high confidence early Thursday that a tank filled with toxic rocket fuel had been breached.
The order by President Bush for the Navy to launch an antimissile interceptor to destroy a disabled satellite before it falls from orbit carries opportunity, but also potential embarrassment, for the administration and advocates of its missile defense program.
The military will try to shoot down a crippled spy satellite in the next two weeks, senior officials said Thursday. The officials laid out a high-tech plan to intercept the satellite over the Pacific just before it tumbles uncontrollably to Earth carrying toxic fuel.
Scientists who seek to imitate living cells say they can't help but be perpetually dazzled by the genuine articles, their flexibility, their versatility, their childlike grandiosity. No matter what outrageous or fattening things we may ask our synthetic cells to do, scientists say, it's nothing compared with what cells already have done of their own accord, usually in the format of bacteria.
An article on the community of visual satellite spotters, amateur hobbyists who enjoy the challenge of identifying and tracking government satellites and sharing the information on the internet.
Google will spend hundreds of millions of dollars to develop and help stimulate the creation of renewable energy technologies that are cheaper than coal-generated power.
Over the past six years, the Bush administration has spent almost $100 million on a highly classified program to help Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, secure his country's nuclear weapons, according to current and former senior administration officials.
The Arctic ice cap shrank so much this summer that waves briefly lapped along two long-imagined Arctic shipping routes, the Northwest Passage over Canada and the Northern Sea Route over Russia. Over all, the floating ice dwindled to an extent unparalleled in a century or more, by several estimates.
A new plan to allow emergency response, border control and, eventually, law enforcement agencies greater access to sophisticated satellites and other sensors that monitor American territory has drawn sharp criticism from civil liberties advocates who say the government is overstepping the use of military technology for domestic surveillance.