"The U.S. Senate late Thursday confirmed John Bryson to be U.S. Commerce Secretary after Republicans opposed to his environmental record lifted a hold on the vote.

On May 31, 2011, President Barack Obama nominated Bryson as Secretary of Commerce to succeed Gary Locke, who has been appointed U.S. Ambassador to China.

Bryson is a former chairman and chief executive of Edison International, a California-based energy company.

"Republican lawmakers from South Carolina and Washington state, which hold tons of nuclear waste, are none too pleased that leading candidates for the GOP presidential nomination are backing President Barack Obama's decision to shutter a central dump designed to store their waste."

"When Obama cut out funding for the long-planned Yucca Mountain waste repository near Las Vegas in 2009, Republicans accused him of playing politics in a bid to help Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in his tough Nevada re-election race.

"A few hundred voters in the remote hills of western Alaska cast ballots this week -- in one of the most closely watched elections in the country -- to halt big mining projects that might poison fishing streams. That initiative was targeted squarely at the giant Pebble Mine.

"This summer, as environmental groups converged on Washington, DC, to protest the Keystone XL oil pipeline, a Canadian 'grassroots' nonprofit by the name of Ethical Oil went on the counteroffensive. The group's YouTube videos and TV ads all carried the same blunt message: You can buy oil from Saudi Arabia and bankroll terrorism, the oppression of women, and fanatical Islam, or you can buy oil from Canada, your friendly, democratic neighbors to the north."

London's Metropolitan Police face a mounting crisis after revelations that their agents spied on environmental groups for years and then lied about it in court under oath. Top police officials ordered the agents to deceive the courts. Undercover agents had sex with activists, ran their organizations, provoked protests, and then helped get protestors arrested. The failure of many such prosecutions demonstrated the incompetence of the police effort in achieving its goals.

"The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Thursday it will develop rules for the booming shale gas industry to dispose of its wastewater, which has been linked to polluted surface water.

The move is one of several that signal the Obama administration plans to push ahead with regulating whatever aspects of shale gas production fall under its authority.

"A team at the University of California Berkeley that set out to test the temperature data underlying the consensus on global warming has concluded that the mainstream estimate of the rise in the earth’s surface temperature since 1950 is indeed accurate. It has warmed about 1 degree Centigrade (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), the researchers say."

The New York Times' Green blog had the story October 20, 2011. [22]

Don't feel too sorry for the farmers losing one federal subsidy -- they may simply be gaining another.

"With a decision expected by the end of the year from the Obama administration on the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, members of Congress have sent two letters to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raising concerns over the State Department’s handling of a critical environmental review of the project."

"The U.S. Senate unanimously passed a pipeline safety bill late Monday after a senator with strong Tea Party ties did an about-face - lifting a hold that had blocked the legislation for weeks and adding a provision that would close a regulatory loophole that drew widespread attention after the San Bruno disaster."

"The bill boosts the federal government's regulatory enforcement powers, calls for automatic shutoff valves for new pipelines and, thanks to last-minute language, ends an exemption from rigorous safety inspections for older natural-gas pipelines.