Scientists studying satellite imagery from the Canadian Arctic have just discovered that the Ayles Ice Shelf broke free of Ellesmere Island sixteen months ago.

Great article from the New York Times last week, fyi.
Original here. Or read on for pasted text.

Originally posted at http://www.markfloegel.org
If you’re a long time reader of these commentaries, you may have noticed the recurrence of a limited repertoire of subjects – the Iraq war, global warming, the evisceration of civil liberties in the U.S. and peak oil. As detrimental as I believe the administration of George W. Bush has been to [...]

The death of Saparmurat Niyazov, the idiosyncratic dictator of Turkmenistan, the former Soviet republic, could trigger a new round in the fierce battle between the United States and Russia for control of Central Asia’s huge oil and gas reserves.
Turkmenistan is the second-largest natural-gas producer in the former Soviet Union, after Russia. The country holds 2.9 [...]

Hot on the heels of the Kremlin taking back ownership of Shell’s Sakhalin-2 project, the Kremlin has issued a chilling warning to BP about its future in the country. A key Kremlin official has warned BP that it has no choice but to accede to Russian demands with its latest project, or face crippling sanctions.