Daily Briefing: Tues.

SNEAK PEAK: The peak of Earth's oil supplies may be closer than the International Energy Agency is letting on, the Guardian reports, citing an anonymous whistleblower who claims the United States is pressuring the agency into sugarcoating its reports. The IEA releases one of those reports today — the annual World Energy Outlook, an inventory of global energy supplies that's followed closely by governments around the planet — and it repeats last year's assertion that world oil production may increase from 85 million to 105 million barrels per day by 2030. The Guardian's whistleblower takes issue with that claim, arguing that the IEA inflates such estimates at the behest of the U.S. government, which fears panic buying of oil supplies if the real amount were to be released. Additionally, "the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy, because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources," the source adds. (Sources: Guardian, International Energy Agency)

 

COAST NOT CLEAR: Hurricane Ida is now Tropical Storm Ida, crashing into the U.S. Gulf Coast this morning near the Mississippi-Alabama state line. The cyclone sported 80 mph winds on Monday, but has weakened and begun disintegrating overnight, becoming a loosely organized storm with maximum sustained winds around 50 mph. It's moving north at roughly 9 mph, and it's expected to slow down, spread out and take a north-northeast turn as it grinds into the coastline, according to NASA and NOAA forecasts. Ida may have lost significant punch in recent days, but it's still going to spray buckets of rain across the Southeast — accumulations up to 6 inches are expected, with isolated areas receiving up to 8 inches — on top of 5-foot storm surges along the Gulf Coast. Wind advisories and flood warnings stretch as far inland as Alabama's and Georgia's Appalachian foothills, including the Atlanta area, which is still recovering from heavy floods in September. The governors of Alabama and Louisiana have both declared precautionary states of emergency in anticipation of the storm. (Sources: CNN, e! Science News, National Hurricane Center)

 

IN HOT WATER: Natural-gas drilling in upstate New York is producing radioactive wastewater, ProPublica reports, raising questions about plans to expand drilling operations in the area's Marcellus Shale gas deposit. New York's Department of Environmental Conservation discovered the problem when it tested 13 samples of wastewater, finding levels of radium-226 that were thousands of times higher than the limit of what's safe for people to drink. The DEC is still testing more samples and has yet to address human or environmental safety issues from the radiation, but New York's Health Department is concerned — it sent a confidential letter to DEC oil and gas regulators in July that said handling and disposal of the radioactive water "could be a public health concern," adding that the issues "are not trivial, but are also not insurmountable." If the water does prove to be dangerously radioactive, it could mean headaches for companies trying to drill for natural gas, including tougher regulations and requirements for disposing of waste products. For gas workers and ordinary people living nearby, however, the outlook is less clear; radium is known to cause bone, liver and breast cancers, but medical experts still disagree on how exactly low-level exposure affects human health. (Source: ProPublica)

 

TRANSPLANTING: If a plant species dies out in its native habitat due to human interference, should we help it find a new home? The NY Times' Anne Raver tackles that question in today's Science Times, examining the Chicago Botanic Garden's efforts to collect seeds from thousands of prairie plants, preserve them and possibly relocate them somewhere else as climate change shuffles around North America's ecosystems. The botanic garden aims to collect seeds from 1,500 prairie species by 2010, and from 3,000 species by 2020, and it's trying to get permits to test a new concept that could one day be applied to all of them — replanting a species called the pitcher's thistle (right) from the shores of Lake Michigan to the cooler climate along Lake Ontario. One of the garden's scientists calls pitcher's thistle "the best test case for moving an individual species outside its range," but not everyone is sold on "assisted migration," as it's known. "Even given our best science, we're not good at predicting which species will be invasive," a Notre Dame biologist tells Raver. "And it's going to be especially complex as climates change." (Source: New York Times)

 

PEOPLE POWER: Scientists have been swapping human and animal DNA for years, producing bizarre monstrosities — a mouse with a human ear growing on its back, for example — that sound cruel yet provide critical insights for medical research. As technology and techniques improve, however, some scientists are worried that we have no rules on how much is too much. Are dogs with human hands OK? What about monkeys with Down's Syndrome? To address these worries, the U.K.'s Academy of Medical Sciences is launching a study today to set more precise guidelines on how human genetic material can be inserted into animals. "Do these constructs challenge our idea of what it is to be human?" asks one Cambridge University professor and chairman of the 14-member group looking into the issue. "It is important that we consider these questions now so that appropriate boundaries are recognized and research is able to fulfill its potential." (Sources: Associated Press, Reuters)

 

— Russell McLendon