Photo by IvoShandor

A U.S. court has ruled that the National Forest in western Pennsylvania can be mined for oil and gas. Why? Because the National Forest Service only has rights to the land’s surface, not what’s below it. Ahh, they got the oil and gas on technicality. So, I wonder, how will the companies mine these resources that are below the national park without putting mining equipment on the national park’s surface? Well, maybe they’ll just rent a campsite for the season and drill in the middle of a campground.

via Adventure Journal

Superstar LeBron James is pushing a new kind of energy form that takes the inconvenience of 5 Hour Energy and puts it into a handy tab you can take by the mouthful. My friend who works as a high school principal tells me that he’s had to take several kids to the hospital when they’ve been experiencing atrial fibrillations because they’ve overdosed on energy drinks. Look for more of that in the news with the advent of Sheets energy tabs. That said, one or two these might be nice on a long bike ride. We’ll see how long they stay legal.

via Deadspin

A California bill to turn 1.65 million more acres of desert into nationally protected lands has made some strange bedfellows. Back in 1994 rookie senator Dianne Feinstein protected 8.5 million acres of California desert against the fierce opposition of many of the people who made their living off all that desert. But once that land in 1994 was turned into National Park land, the people who lived there embraced it. They found increased tourism and the prestige of joining the national park system helped their local economy. And now they’re hoping Feinstein can get the rest of this land protected before developers come in looking for energy - solar energy. They want to setup 8 square miles of solar panels in the Mojave to run power to LA. Now the clean energy lobby, environmentalists, ATV riders, the US Marine Corps landowners and desert people are all in different overlapping camps. It’s an odd story over at SF Gate.

When all the oil wells run dry, perhaps wars will be fought over the sands in Utah. U.S. regulators approved plans for the country’s first project to mine the tar-heavy sands of eastern Utah for oil. Environmentalists and people who enjoy breathing argue that this type of production creates three times the amount of greenhouse gases as other petroleum production. Not to worry though: “Earth Energy insists it won’t pollute anything and will leave Utah’s oil sands as clean as beach sand after processing with a citrus-based solvent.” It’ll be just as clean as a New York City beach - loaded with PCBs and cigarette butts.