Singapore has seized more than 14 tons of pangolin scales worth an estimated $38.7 million. Authorities are calling one of

For years, “gluten-free” has been such a hot buzzword, that it’s not hard to imagine people merely doing away with

awkward night at the museum Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, known for his strong anti-environmental policies and intention to open up the Amazon rainforest to increased deforestation, will be one of the guests of honor next month at a gala at, wait for it, the American Natural History Museum.
On May 14th, the New York museum, whose permanent collections include the hall of biodiversity and the hall of North American forests, is scheduled to house the black-tie event, hosted by the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce.
Each year, the organization honors two “persons of the year” — one Brazilian, one American– who have advanced economic ties between the two countries.
While the American honoree has not yet been announced, Bolsonaro is slated to take the Brazilian slot, Gothamist reports.
But the irony of lauding a man who has repeatedly aired racist, homophobic and misogynist views all the while rolling back environmental protections in the Amazon at a venue dedicated to the natural world has not been lost on advocates or fans of the museum.
“The fact that American Museum of Natural History would accept an event for something so counter to their own values, they should be ashamed themselves,” Priscila Neri, a Brazilian activist with the New York City-based human rights organization WITNESS, told Gothamist.
“In a moment when there’s been a rise of authoritarianism around the world, they’re giving a positive nod to a man who is rolling back human rights protections and scientific knowledge.” Bolsonaro, dubbed the “Trump of the Tropics,” has undertaken an aggressive campaign of deforestation and mining that indigenous groups have likened to an “institutionalization of genocide in Brazil.” The Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce has close ties to the Bolsonaro regime.
Earlier this week, Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Ted Helms struck a $9 billion dollar deal with Bolsonaro’s government to sell oil production rights, and the organization’s president and board chairman, Alexandre Bettamio, was reportedly one of Bolsonaro’s choices to run the country’s state-run bank.
To be fair to the American Natural History Museum, the pro-Bolsonaro event is external, meaning the Museum is only acting as a venue; the event was also booked at the before the honoree was announced.
Roberto Lebron, a spokesperson for the museum, told Gothamist that the event “does not in any way reflect the Museum’s position that there is an urgent need to conserve the Amazon Rainforest, which has such profound implications for biological diversity, indigenous communities, climate change, and the future health of our planet.” Museum representatives also tweeted that they are “deeply concerned” and are exploring their options.

The drilling and business activity index for energy firms in western Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Colorado and northern New Mexico increased from -13 to 0 in first quarter.
The year-over-year drilling and business activity index was also flat.
Respondents from the energy firms were also asked a series of special questions including what oil price they believe is currently necessary for drilling to be profitable.
The average response was $52 per barrel for the oil price.
Responses ranged from $30 to $85 per barrel.
The first quarter average of $52 was slightly lower than $55 in third quarter of 2018, but matched the price reported in first quarter of 2018.
The other alternating quarters, respondents are asked what price they need for a substantial increase in drilling.
Generated by readers, the comments included herein do not reflect the views and opinions of Rigzone.
All comments are subject to editorial review.
Off-topic, inappropriate or insulting comments will be removed.

Guest essay by Eric Worrall According to meteorologist and green activist Eric Holthaus, any minute now we’ll have the affordable magic batteries we need to make electric cars useful and renewable power reliable.
Batteries are key to clean energy — and they just got much cheaper Clean energy future might be closer than we previously thought
… In a little less than a year, the cost of lithium-ion batteries has fallen by 35 percent, according to a new Bloomberg New Energy Finance report.
Cheaper batteries mean we can store more solar and wind power even when the sun isn’t shining or wind isn’t blowing.
This is a major boost to renewables, helping them compete with fossil fuel-generated power, even without subsidies in some places, according to the report.
Massive solar-plus-storage projects are already being built in places like Florida and California to replace natural gas, and many more are on the way.
Now, more of that cheap power will be stored and passed on to consumers.
This could be the moment when renewable energy starts to shut down fossil fuel for good.
By Jim Steele Good news continues to accumulate regards corals’ ability to rapidly adjust to changing climates.
The view of coral resilience has been dominated by the narrative of a few scientists.

Climate alarmists tell us that the Earth has never been warmer, and that we can tell by looking at tree rings, treelines, and other proxy indicators of climate.
Yet nature seems to not be paying attention to such pronouncements, as this discovery shows.
This photo shows a tree stump of White Spruce that was radiocarbon dated at 5000 years old.
It was located 100 km north of the current tree line in extreme Northwest Canada.
The area is now frozen tundra, but it was once warm enough to support significant tree growth like this.
If climate was this warm in the past, how did that happen before we started using the fossil fuels that supposedly made our current climate unprecedentedly warm?
By Jim Steele Good news continues to accumulate regards corals’ ability to rapidly adjust to changing climates.
The view of coral resilience has been dominated by the narrative of a few scientists.
In the 1990s they advocated devastating consequences for coral reefs due to global warming, arguing coral cannot adapt quickly enough.
Since the Little…

Scientists from the University of East Anglia have discovered a unique oil eating bacteria in the deepest part of the Earth’s oceans — the Mariana Trench.
By comparison, Mount Everest is 8,848 metres high.
Dr Jonathan Todd, from UEA’s School of Biological Sciences, said: “Our research team went down to collect samples of the microbial population at the deepest part of the Mariana Trench — some 11,000 metres down. “So these types of microorganisms essentially eat compounds similar to those in oil and then use it for fuel. “We also found that this bacteria is really abundant at the bottom of the Mariana Trench.”
In fact, the team found that the proportion of hydrocarbon degrading bacteria in the Trench is the highest on Earth.
The scientists isolated some of these microbes and demonstrated that they consume hydrocarbons in the laboratory under environmental conditions that simulate those in the Mariana Trench. “To our surprise, we also identified biologically produced hydrocarbons in the ocean sediment at the bottom of the trench. “These hydrocarbons, similar to the compounds that constitute diesel fuel, have been found in algae at the ocean surface but never in microbes at these depths.” “Identifying the microbes that produce these hydrocarbons is one of our top priorities, as is understanding the quantity of hydrocarbons released by human activity into this isolated environment,” added Prof Xiao-Hua Zhang.

A study published today in Nature Communications by researchers at San Diego State University (SDSU), the University of Hawai’i at M?noa, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and others revealed that the bacteria present in the water overlying dozens of coral reefs changed dramatically during the night, and then returned to the same daytime community as observed the morning before.
Further, as if these communities were all privy to the same schedule, these changes were synchronized across reefs separated by hundreds of miles. “Investigations of day-night rhythms of reef processes are required to holistically understand the functional roles of microbial players in these ecosystems,” said Linda Wegley Kelly, adjunct assistant research professor at SDSU and co-lead author of the study.
Collecting samples in this way, the researchers measured changes in the water chemistry and the types of microbes present compared to the daytime at numerous sites.
The team also used genomic tools to show how these community changes determine the microbial processes in reefs that differ day and night. “Previous studies of marine microbes have shown that different functional groups change their activity over the day, but microbial populations remain relatively constant over diel cycles,” said Craig Nelson, assistant professor of oceanography at the UH M?noa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology and study co-lead.
Surprisingly, Psychrobacter can make up 40-70% of the marine microbial community during the day, and is a hundred-times more abundant than during the night.
But what is influencing Psychrobacter? “The changes we observed in microbe composition over a day-night cycle imply that coral reef habitats manipulate the surrounding seawater — both the chemistry and microbiology — based on the diurnal and nocturnal activities of the collective local biota,” said Kelly.
The study also uncovered the important role of nighttime microbes in recycling nutrients on reefs.”

Singapore has seized more than 14 tons of pangolin scales worth an estimated $38.7 million. Authorities are calling one of

awkward night at the museum Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, known for his strong anti-environmental policies and intention to open up the Amazon rainforest to increased deforestation, will be one of the guests of honor next month at a gala at, wait for it, the American Natural History Museum.
On May 14th, the New York museum, whose permanent collections include the hall of biodiversity and the hall of North American forests, is scheduled to house the black-tie event, hosted by the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce.
Each year, the organization honors two “persons of the year” — one Brazilian, one American– who have advanced economic ties between the two countries.
While the American honoree has not yet been announced, Bolsonaro is slated to take the Brazilian slot, Gothamist reports.
But the irony of lauding a man who has repeatedly aired racist, homophobic and misogynist views all the while rolling back environmental protections in the Amazon at a venue dedicated to the natural world has not been lost on advocates or fans of the museum.
“The fact that American Museum of Natural History would accept an event for something so counter to their own values, they should be ashamed themselves,” Priscila Neri, a Brazilian activist with the New York City-based human rights organization WITNESS, told Gothamist.
“In a moment when there’s been a rise of authoritarianism around the world, they’re giving a positive nod to a man who is rolling back human rights protections and scientific knowledge.” Bolsonaro, dubbed the “Trump of the Tropics,” has undertaken an aggressive campaign of deforestation and mining that indigenous groups have likened to an “institutionalization of genocide in Brazil.” The Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce has close ties to the Bolsonaro regime.
Earlier this week, Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Ted Helms struck a $9 billion dollar deal with Bolsonaro’s government to sell oil production rights, and the organization’s president and board chairman, Alexandre Bettamio, was reportedly one of Bolsonaro’s choices to run the country’s state-run bank.
To be fair to the American Natural History Museum, the pro-Bolsonaro event is external, meaning the Museum is only acting as a venue; the event was also booked at the before the honoree was announced.
Roberto Lebron, a spokesperson for the museum, told Gothamist that the event “does not in any way reflect the Museum’s position that there is an urgent need to conserve the Amazon Rainforest, which has such profound implications for biological diversity, indigenous communities, climate change, and the future health of our planet.” Museum representatives also tweeted that they are “deeply concerned” and are exploring their options.

Its theme is climate change, marking the second time in eight months that the magazine has dedicated an entire issue to the pressing problem.
The first was Nathaniel Rich’s “Losing Earth,” which took up an entire issue last August and was reportedly the longest article ever published in the magazine.
Lo and behold, the new issue features a second article by Rich that offers a scathing rebuke of corporations for their ruthless pursuit of easy profits.
“It has become commonplace to observe that corporations behave like psychopaths,” he writes, calling out ExxonMobil by name.
“They are self-interested to the point of violence, possess a vibrant disregard for laws and social mores, have an indifference to the rights of others and fail to feel remorse.” He wonders whether capitalism is fundamentally at odds with climate action and ends his piece with the assertion that coercion — economic, political, or moral — “must be the remedy” to whipping corporations into shape.
“The Problem With Putting a Price on the End of the World” Another article from Sunday’s issue evaluates the obstacles to putting a price on climate change.
The central question, he writes, “is whether any policy is both big enough to matter and popular enough to happen.” “Climate Chaos Is Coming — and the Pinkertons Are Ready” Journalist Noah Gallagher Shannon’s piece about a private security contractor prepping for climate fallout paints a bleak and fascinating picture of a future in which huge corporate clients turn to third parties to protect themselves against upheaval.
Turns out, that world is already here.
Pinkerton, an agency originally formed in the mid-1800s “in response to the lawlessness of the frontier,” is rebranding itself as disaster-security-for-hire prepared to mitigate the risks of climate change for its clients: hurricanes, mass migration, violence, food shortages, and more.
Whereas the New York Times Magazine’s previous climate-themed issue focused on a single narrative, its second foray into the world of climate writing puts a lineup of articles in conversation with one another about the economic, political, and moral feasibility of reigning in climate change.

Norway’s $1 trillion oil fund, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, is to plunge billions of dollars into wind and solar power projects.
The decision follows Saudi Arabia’s oil fund selling off its last oil and gas assets.
Analysts say the investments are likely to power faster growth of green energy.
Unlisted projects make up more than two-thirds of the whole renewable infrastructure market, which is worth trillions of dollars.
But now the sum the fund can invest in green projects has been doubled to $14 billion.
“Even a fund built on oil is seeing that the future is green,” said Jan Erik Saugestad, CEO of Storebrand Asset Management.
In March, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund said it would dispose of its investments in 134 companies that explore for oil and gas, worth almost $8 billion.
The fund divested $6.5 billion of coal-related investments in 2015.
“Unlisted renewable energy is a growth industry,” said Tom Sanzillo at IEEFA.
In 2017, $18.8 billion went into fossil fuel investments, compared with just $0.4 billion into renewables.

More than 5 million birds from at least 250 different species fly through the Windy City’s downtown every fall and spring.
Deadly appetite: 10 animals we are eating into extinction Read more The famous skyline of Manhattan is another death trap for birds, especially those migrating.
“They wind up landing somewhere that’s unfamiliar, like a sidewalk somewhere,” said Susan Elbin, director of conservation and science at New York City Audubon, a leading bird advocacy organization.
Any city with glass structures and bright lights at night is a culprit, but some are more dangerous to birds than others.
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology published a study this week that ranks cities based on the danger they pose to migrating birds.
Houston and Dallas, which also lie along some of the most popular migration paths, round out the top three most deadly cities after Chicago.
“We’re trying to raise awareness – trying to provide data and insight that could help,” he said.
The organization estimates about 90,000 to 200,000 birds are killed via building collision in the city each year.
Local Audubon chapters and other bird conservation groups around the country coordinate similar data collection exercises.
Conservationists also advocate that buildings adopt more “bird-friendly” designs, for example using patterned glass and dimmer lighting.

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Content loading… New York lawmakers are close to enacting a sweeping ban on single-use plastic bags in an effort to curb pollution and save denizens from their own worst impulses.
The new proposal could be part of the state’s budget bill, which is expected to pass next week.
The initiative already has the support of Democratic Gov.
Andrew Cuomo, who initially proposed the measure last year but failed to get it passed by the then-Republican-controlled state Senate.
“These bags have blighted our environment and clogged our waterways,” Cuomo said in a statement to The New York Times.
He said the proposal would “protect our natural resources for future generations of New Yorkers.” The ban, if implemented, would outlaw the use of single-use plastic bags at most stores, but would allow certain industries to continue using them.
Restaurants would still be allowed to use bags for takeout and newspapers would still be delivered in them.
The proposal would also allow individual counties to opt-in to a 5-cent-per-bag fee for paper bags in an effort to encourage consumers to bring their own reusable totes.
Lawmakers in Hawaii have proposed a pair of bills that would take a hard-line against most plastic in the restaurant industry and a proposal in Maryland could make the region the first in the nation to completely ban polystyrene food containers.

Guest essay by Eric Worrall According to meteorologist and green activist Eric Holthaus, any minute now we’ll have the affordable magic batteries we need to make electric cars useful and renewable power reliable.
Batteries are key to clean energy — and they just got much cheaper Clean energy future might be closer than we previously thought
… In a little less than a year, the cost of lithium-ion batteries has fallen by 35 percent, according to a new Bloomberg New Energy Finance report.
Cheaper batteries mean we can store more solar and wind power even when the sun isn’t shining or wind isn’t blowing.
This is a major boost to renewables, helping them compete with fossil fuel-generated power, even without subsidies in some places, according to the report.
Massive solar-plus-storage projects are already being built in places like Florida and California to replace natural gas, and many more are on the way.
Now, more of that cheap power will be stored and passed on to consumers.
This could be the moment when renewable energy starts to shut down fossil fuel for good.
By Jim Steele Good news continues to accumulate regards corals’ ability to rapidly adjust to changing climates.
The view of coral resilience has been dominated by the narrative of a few scientists.

Climate alarmists tell us that the Earth has never been warmer, and that we can tell by looking at tree rings, treelines, and other proxy indicators of climate.
Yet nature seems to not be paying attention to such pronouncements, as this discovery shows.
This photo shows a tree stump of White Spruce that was radiocarbon dated at 5000 years old.
It was located 100 km north of the current tree line in extreme Northwest Canada.
The area is now frozen tundra, but it was once warm enough to support significant tree growth like this.
If climate was this warm in the past, how did that happen before we started using the fossil fuels that supposedly made our current climate unprecedentedly warm?
By Jim Steele Good news continues to accumulate regards corals’ ability to rapidly adjust to changing climates.
The view of coral resilience has been dominated by the narrative of a few scientists.
In the 1990s they advocated devastating consequences for coral reefs due to global warming, arguing coral cannot adapt quickly enough.
Since the Little…

Guest essay by Eric Worrall In the face of the utter failure of large investments in renewables to deliver CO2 reductions, greens are increasingly embracing nuclear power as the solution to climate change.
By Joshua S. Goldstein, Staffan A. Qvist and Steven Pinker Drs.
Goldstein and Qvist are the authors of “A Bright Future: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow.” Dr. Pinker is a psychology professor at Harvard.
April 6, 2019 … Where will this gargantuan amount of carbon-free energy come from?
The popular answer is renewables alone, but this is a fantasy.
Wind and solar power are becoming cheaper, but they are not available around the clock, rain or shine, and batteries that could power entire cities for days or weeks show no sign of materializing any time soon.
Today, renewables work only with fossil-fuel backup.
Germany, which went all-in for renewables, has seen little reduction in carbon emissions, and, according to our calculations, at Germany’s rate of adding clean energy relative to gross domestic product, it would take the world more than a century to decarbonize, even if the country wasn’t also retiring nuclear plants early.
… But we actually have proven models for rapid decarbonization with economic and energy growth: France and Sweden.
They decarbonized their grids decades ago and now emit less than a tenth of the world average of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour.

For over 50 years, the World Health Organization has publicly celebrated World Health Day every year on April 7th.
Each year, the celebratory day is aimed to raise awareness of a health theme that highlights a priority area of concern for the World Health Organization.
Drink more water.You need to stay hydrated!
Your body needs water in order to be able to carry out body functions, remove waste, and provide nutrients and oxygen to our organs.
Get enough sleep.
Everyone needs to sleep.
Getting poor quality of sleep affects your moods, as well as increasing your risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity and diabetes.
Eat a balanced diet.Make sure you are feeding your body good nutrients!
You need to be maintaining a diet that will give you nutrients that include essential vitamins.
Celebrate World Health Day today, April 7th, by making these tips part of your daily routine!

The European Commission has released new data detailing carbon dioxide emissions across the EU in 2018, including Norway, Iceland & Switzerland. The data

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is one of those people.
Watch: She released this hilarious stream of quotes: “This is about American lives, and it should not be partisan.
Science should not be partisan…” … “We talk about cost.
We’re going to pay for this whether we pass a Green New Deal or not.
Her rant reminds me of the old Billy Joel song “Piano Man”.
…and the waitress is practicing politics….
But, this is what it really reminds me of: Move over wind farms.
Step aside acres of solar panels.
Carbon sequestration, as the process is called, removes CO2 from the atmosphere and… Guest essay by Eric Worrall According to CNN we should remember global warming also causes global cooling, and that any confusion is the fault of the Republicans.
Is it climate change or global warming?