Nuclear plant under threat of wildfires
The U.S. government’s Los Alamos National Laboratory was closed Monday due to the threat from approaching wildfires, officials said, stressing that all nuclear and other materials were safe.
An emergency operations unit remained active at the laboratory in New Mexico, while authorities were watching closely for a change in wind direction for the Las Conchas fire, nearing Los Alamos from the southwest. There 30,000 55-gallon drums of plutonium-contaminated waste are stored in fabric tents above ground.
Carbon dioxide emission in 2010
The International Energy Agency estimates that burning fossil fuels added 30 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in 2010. That makes it tough stay below a global temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees F), which scientists say is the threshold for making everything go seriously cockeyed. It might even mean we see temperature rises of 4 degrees C by 2100, at which point our best bet is probably to evolve into something with inch-thick skin that breathes smog.
Top White House Economic Adviser Resigns amid Soaring Unemployment Rates
President Obama’s top economic adviser, Austan Goolsbee, has decided to resign less than a year after he became chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. The announcement comes just days after the government revealed the nation’s official unemployment rate has jumped back up to 9.1 percent. The nation is facing its worst unemployment slump since the 1930s. CBS News reports about 6.2 million Americans—45 percent of all unemployed workers in the country—have been jobless for more than six months, a higher percentage than during the Great Depression.