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October 29, 2010
In a victory for the free speech and privacy rights
of Amazon.com customers, a federal judge ruled today
that the company would not have to turn over detailed
records on nearly 50 million purchases to North Carolina
tax collectors.
China's increasing reluctance to supply the rest of the world
with rare earths is whipping up a gold rush-like frenzy to find new
producers of the elements needed to manufacture everything from
high-tech weapons to mobile phones.
a call to all tribes to send representatives to
Washington to perform traditional prayers for the Country and to
ask that America honor her commitments, treaties, policies, and
promises to all of its indigenous peoples.
Biofuel capacity could expand to 53 billion gallons in 2015,
representing an annual growth of 7.8%, while bio-based materials boom to
8.1 million tonnes with an annual growth of 17.7%, according to Lux
Research.
Sockeye salmon are making their run up the Fraser River in numbers not
seen since 1913. More than 34 million salmon are reportedly in the
British Columbia river system, befuddling scientists who last year
tallied less than 2 million fish.
China,currently the world’s third largest
importer of oil,boasts an energy sector with huge growth
potential, primarily in the coal, petroleum and natural gas
industries.
If you know nothing else about radiation, know these three
things: It is carcinogenic. It is cumulative. And there is
no known safe dose.
Like the proverbial broken clock, the nuclear industry is
occasionally right, as when it charges that a coal plant releases more
radiation than a nuclear power plant.
An internal Army e-mail obtained by ABC News indicates that the
DNC has filed Freedom of Information Act requests for "any and all
records of communication" between Army departments and agencies and
each of the nine Republicans -- all of whom are widely mentioned as
possible challengers to
President Obama.
The dollar fell within sight of its 1995 record low on Friday as
the yen rose broadly and pushed down the euro and
higher-yielders, with trade made choppy by month-end business
but still in ranges ahead of a Federal Reserve decision on
easing.
New nuclear plants remain Duke Energy's best baseload power
option for the Carolinas despite headwinds, a utility executive told
an industry audience today.
Duke will have to replace its aging fleet of nuclear and
coal-fired plants by 2050...
A battery-powered Audi arrived in Berlin Tuesday after a
600-kilometre overnight drive from Munich with promoters saying it
was the world's longest such ride by a regular car.
The California Energy Commission today approved the Calico Solar
Project in San Bernardino County, the seventh solar power plant
licensed in the past two months.
Since August, the Commission has licensed 3,492.5 megawatts of
renewable solar power in the California desert.
The Obama administration is defending its plans to crack down on
industrial pollution after a report from a utility group found proposed
regulations may result in tighter U.S. power supplies.
The coal industry has so far shown an "utter lack" of harm to
mine operators in its efforts to block the Obama administration's
crackdown on mountaintop removal, lawyers for the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency said this week.
The current buildup of above-ground waste stockpiles could pose
environmental threats and become the target of a terrorist strike,
the commission warned.
Of the 84,000 chemicals on the market today --
many of which are in objects that people come into contact with
every day -- only about 1 percent of them have been studied for
safety, Sen. Frank Lautenberg said Tuesday.
In
a ruling 21 October 2010, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
(FERC) effectively cleared the way for multi-tiered feed-in tariffs for
various renewable energy technologies, like the programs found in
Ontario, Canada and across Europe. FERC's ruling "clarified" an earlier
decision that had roiled proposed feed-in tariff policies at the state
level in the US.
Having food resiliency is as much about learning how to store
and use food properly as it is about growing it. The key is
learning interdependence not independence.
Halliburton Co. used flawed cement in BP Plc's doomed Gulf of
Mexico well, which could have contributed to the blowout that
sparked the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, a White House
panel said on Thursday.
Scores of new hydropower projects are in some stage of
development throughout North America as efforts to limit carbon
emissions push utilities to seek more renewable power.
The number of applications to build new hydropower projects in
North America is on the rise amid pressure to reduce carbon
emissions through the increased use of renewable resources for
power production.
Islands have beautiful sunsets, slumbering volcanoes, soothing
trade winds, outrageous energy prices.
In other words, they have all the ingredients for a daring dip
into renewable energy.
Israel and the Palestinian Authority are among 15 Mediterranean
nations who have just signed a historic agreement to work together to
combat the effects of climate change, one month ahead of the next United
Nations conference on climate change, meeting at Cancun in November.
If you think a food is "all natural" just because the label says
it is, think again. So which foods really aren't as natural as
they claim they are?
The solar storms that cause the stunning aurora
borealis and aurora australis (or northern and southern polar
lights) also have the potential to knock out telecommunications
equipment and navigational systems and cause blackouts of
electrical grids. With the frequency of the sun’s flares
following an 11-year cycle of solar activity and the next solar
maximum expected around 2013, scientists are bracing for an
overdue, once-in-100 year event that could cause widespread
power blackouts and cripple electricity grids around the world.
National Bank of Arizona will throw the switch on a 402-kilowatt,
$2 million solar photovoltaic array at its Southern Arizona
headquarters today.
The 24,000-square-foot solar installation will shade about 150
parking spaces on the roof of the parking garage adjacent to the
bank headquarters...
Although electrical devices have evolved rapidly
over the last few decades, the plants used to generate the
electricity that power these devices are still dominated by the
use of steam turbines that convert thermal energy, usually from
the burning of fossil fuels, into mechanical energy.
There is a new front in the fight over whether Texas should build
more coal-fired power plants -- water.
The various water factions -- farmers, environmentalists and
growing, thirsty cities -- have come together as allies against
proposed coal plants across the state, with battles now raging from
Abilene to Corpus Christi.
As the charred remains of the climate bill still smolder on the floor of
the Senate Chamber, environmentalists are littering the blogosphere with
accounts of the disaster. Some are poking through the wreckage like
forensic political scientists, others have taken to moaning and wailing
with all the dedication of professional mourners, still others are
shaking their fist at the heavens of the Capital dome like Job and
crying "why, why? We're virtuous, our cause is just. We did what you
asked. We made nice with corporations, gave out cushy subsidies and
concessions and still you forsake us?"
The bad news is that the overwhelming bulk of that electricity will
be produced by large centralised power plants. Off-grid solar
photovoltaic electricity, though important in remote areas and
developing countries, will account for little more than one per cent
of global electricity production predicts the IEA.
San Bruno Mayor Jim Ruane told reporters Friday afternoon that
Chris Johns, president of Pacific Gas and Electric Company, had
agreed to relocate a natural gas transmission line that
exploded last month.
Line 132 ruptured beneath San Bruno and caught fire Sept. 9,
killing eight people.
The Federal Reserve will announce a new round of easing next
week because it is “terrified” of deflation, Mohamed El-Erian,
chief executive officer of Pimco, told CNBC.
He doesn't believe a restart of the Fed's quantitative easing,
or QE, at its Nov. 2 and 3 meeting will be very effective in
delivering high economic growth or low unemployment.
Solar activity is expected to be very low to low with a slight chance for an M-class event. The geomagnetic field was quiet.
"Iran began loading fuel into the core of its
Bushehr nuclear reactor Tuesday morning, moving closer to the
start-up of its first atomic plant," reports the Israeli
newspaper Haaretz. "Iranian and Russian engineers started moving
nuclear fuel into the main reactor building in August but a
reported leak in a storage pool delayed injection of the fuel
into the reactor." This is the latest evidence of the
increasingly close strategic alliance between Russia and Iran.
It is particularly concerning in light of the Iranian leaders'
belief in the imminent arrival of the Shia Islamic messiah known
as the Twelfth Imam, and in light of the prophecies of Ezekiel
38 and 39 - what is known as the War of Gog and Magog - which
indicate that Russia and Iran will form an alliance against
Israel in "the last days" of human history
Scientists are struggling to get a full picture of the variety of
wildlife species around the globe as climate change, human
exploitation and pollution threaten "mass extinctions," a series of
studies published on Wednesday showed.
Signs of an unmistakable Republican trend are
brightening the chances of a GOP takeover of the US Senate.
Yesterday, a new Rasmussen Poll showed Republican Dino Rossi one point
ahead of incumbent Senator Patty Murray. The Rossi lead -
obviously within the margin of error - came after he had trailed by
three points in previous polling.
Most significantly, Rossi led by two points among those who had already
voted using Washington State's early voting option. Murray led by
a point among those who had not yet cast their ballots (some of whom
would presumably never do so).
A week ago, Timothy Miller got the call from his union he had
long awaited. The 42- year-old unemployed laborer from Needles
grabbed the chance to work on a giant plant that will turn sunshine
into electricity in the San Bernardino County desert.
When most of us think of
Tesla Motors, we think of the US$100,000 all-electric
Roadster. The fact is, though, the first time that most of
us ever see a Tesla in real life, it will probably be the less
expensive, five door
Model S sedan. While the company has sold over 1,300
Roadsters worldwide, the Model S has yet to start production.
When it does, however, it will be in the new
Tesla Factory, unveiled this Wednesday in Fremont, California.
Wind turbines stand tall and mesmerize with their motion. Solar
cells bask in the sparkling sun. Meanwhile, hidden down in the
dark dirty underworld, a compelling technology sits quietly and
gets no respect. Once installed it largely goes unseen and, it
seems, it's equally invisible in the world of clean technology
press, venture funding and government R&D funding.
The Conference Board’s measure
of U.S. consumer confidence rose 1.6 points in October to 50.2
from an upwardly revised 48.6 level in September (previously
48.5). The rise in consumer confidence in October
reflected an improvement in both the “expectations” and the
“present situation” components.
The U.S. Fuel Cell Council (USFCC) and the National Hydrogen
Association (NHA) announced today they are joining forces to
accelerate the commercialization of fuel cell and hydrogen energy
technologies.
October 26, 2010
The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories,
edited by Daniel Imhoff and published by Watershed Media and the
Foundation for Deep Ecology, is a must-read and must-see book
about the horrors of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.
For nearly three years, a 14.2-megawatt solar
array spanning 140 acres at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., has
held the title of the largest renewable-energy project in the
Air Force.
Federal banking regulators are examining whether mortgage
companies cut corners on their own procedures when they moved to
foreclose on people's homes, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben
Bernanke said Monday.
One Sedalia family is harnessing the power of the sun to trim its
utility bills -- and hopes to help others do the same.
Himfr.com reports that Chinese has huge wind energy market, which
has become the global wind power development leader. Himfr.com is
expected that in 2020, Chinese total installed power can achieve 230
million kilowatt, the equivalent of thirteen gorges hydropower
stations, the total capacity will reach 464.9 billion kilowatt-hours
of power, which is equivalent of about 200 of heat-engine plants.
The U.S. Coast Guard is investigating a large brown slick
floating near the mouth of the Mississippi river and said on
Saturday it could be weathered oil from the BP spill or just [sic]algae
bloom.
A cholera outbreak in Haiti has claimed 138
lives and sickened more than 1,500 other people, the World
Health Organization, WHO, said today. The bacterial disease is
occurring in Artibonite province, which is not an area directly
affected by the devastating earthquake of January 12.
Using pumped hydro to store electricity costs less than $100 per
kilowatt-hour and is highly efficient, Chu told his energy advisory
board during a recent meeting. By contrast, he said, using sodium ion
flow batteries -- another option for storing large amounts of power --
would cost $400 per kWh and have less than 1 percent of pumped hydro's
capacity.
When Iraq recently raised its oil reserve estimates by 25% to
143 billion barrels, the initial assessment by analysts was that
the Iraqis were drawing battle lines with Iran, their former
enemy and the country which had hitherto held second place as
holder of the second largest conventional oil reserves after
Saudi Arabia.
Your book titled "Why We Hate the Oil Companies" was published
this year. Should we hate them?
"The oil companies have not done a good job of presenting their
... compelling case to the American people about what they do, how
they do it. But neither have the utility companies.
Land purchases by foreign investors in poor countries and the
growing use of biofuels are boosting pressures on agricultural
farmland and helping make 500 million small farmers hungry, a U.N.
envoy said on Thursday.
An agricultural fertilizer company is being ordered to inventory
containers and make waste determinations after a previous inspection
found "a number of suspected solid and hazardous wastes at the site,"
according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
A revolution has been launched as utilities build up
an armory of smart grid weaponry. Their businesses
will be totally transformed.
If the concept of Dial-an-Elder seems unusual,
think of Dial-a-Business meets interactive museum display and
it’s a close approximation.
“There might be a number to dial to reach an elder who could talk
about his or her relationship to a particular plant,” said Kim
Manajek, manager of exhibitions and art collections at
Denver
Botanic Gardens, about a planned program.
Damage to rivers, wetlands and lakes threatens to destabilize the
diversity of freshwater fish species, posing risks for food
security, incomes and nutrition, a Rivers and lakes are the source
of 13 million metric tonnes of fish annually, which in turn provide
employment to 60 million people, the study by the United Nations
Environment Program (UNEP) and the World Fish Center showed.
Our country is home to a diverse array of wildlife ranging from the
highest peaks, to the driest deserts, to freshwater and marine
environments and to all the places in between. The abundant and diverse
wildlife resources, which are so important to our culture and
well-being, face a bleak future if we do not address global warming.
The first national standards to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions and improve fuel efficiency in
heavy-duty trucks and buses, were proposed today by the U.S. EPA
and Department of Transportation.
On October 4, Iraqi oil minister Hussein al-Shahristani announced a
25% increase in Baghdad's proven oil reserves to 143.1 billion barrels
from 115 billion barrels. The 28.1 billion barrel increase would have
put Iraq ahead of Iran as holder of the world's second-largest
conventional crude oil reserves after Saudi Arabia.
But exactly a week later, Iran came out with its own announcement...
The Deepwater Horizon spill was a horrible environmental disaster which
caused the release of massive amounts of crude oil into the Gulf of
Mexico. Methane, a natural greenhouse gas, was also released during the
catastrophe. However, researchers have found that the methane is being
consumed by microbes at a rate 10 to 100 times faster than previously
believed. These microbes are essential in bringing the Gulf back to a
healthier state.
Scientists know little about how releasing some
of the more than 2 million tons of nanoparticles produced every
year will affect organisms in the environment. A new study
reports that earthworms (Eisenia fetida) can ingest gold
nanoparticles from their surrounding soil and accumulate them in
their tissues-a finding with significant implications for food
webs
Despite few, if any, attempts to
impose Sharia law in the State of Oklahoma, voters there will be
asked to vote on a ballot measure that would prohibit state
courts from using the Islamic law – or international law – when
making rulings.
Green Energy to Double over 15 Years
O Canada! Or should we say, "Oh Ontario." The
Canadian province is now updating its long-term
energy plan that will attempt to phase out all of
its coal-fired power plants and to replace them with
carbon-friendly fuels.
Plants, especially some trees under stress, are even better than
expected at scrubbing certain chemical pollutants out of the air,
researchers reported on Thursday.
Consumption of recovered paper increased by 8% during September compared
to the previous September, according to the American Forest & Paper
Association.
U.S. banking regulators will issue a report next month on
foreclosure practices at large financial institutions, following
allegations that lenders cut corners to illegally evict
homeowners, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said on
Monday.
Solar activity is expected to be very low to low with a chance of C-class flares The geomagnetic field was quiet for the past 24 hours. Solar wind
speeds observed at the ACE spacecraft remained at or above 600 km/s
for most of the period.
For more and more seniors, retirement doesn’t mean a debt-free life
of leisure. An increasing number of Americans aged 65 and older are
declaring bankruptcy, according to a recent study
by
John Pottow, professor of law at the University of Michigan Law
School.
"For the fact that it's an oil-producing region, they (Gulf
countries) fully acknowledge that they have a very heavy carbon
footprint. The issue is how they address reducing the footprint," he
said.
Consumers and business owners were asked to turn
down their thermostats, switch off unneeded lights, avoid
running washer/dryers and take other steps between 6 and 8 p.m.
Wednesday. The goal was to gauge how much energy could be saved
through simple conservation efforts...
The U.S. economy should continue to grow this year, though
forecasters have lowered their expectations about the pace of
recovery, according to a new survey.
The vast majority of Muslims in the U.S.
and around the world (upwards of 90 to 93 percent) are moderate,
peaceful people. They don't believe in jihad...
At the same time, we need to understand
that there is a subset of Radical Muslims who are even more
dangerous. They don't simply want to terrorize us; they want to
annihilate us..The
world is doing precious little to stop such men.
It has been called the holy grail of energy technology; a perfectly
clean source with an unlimited supply. Nuclear fusion has been
demonstrated to be possible, but converting it to a viable energy source
remains technically elusive. However, research on making fusion energy
reality is in progress, and there are some who are convinced that the
day will come when this free and abundant source will arrive.
Recent statistics show that six out of every 10 people will
rely on Social Security benefits for over half their retirement income.
U.S. existing home sales rose
10.0% in September to 4.53 million annualized units from the
previous month’s revised pace of 4.12 million annualized units
(initially reported as 4.13 million). The reading handily beat
market expectations for an increase to 4.30 million annualized
units.
The U.S. Gulf Coast may face $350 billion in economic damage by 2030
as extreme weather fueled by climate change wreaks havoc on the region,
according to a study released today by
Entergy Corp.
On Oct. 15 U.S. authorities on announced a probe into allegations that
China is handing out hundreds of billions of dollars in illegal
subsidies in a bid to dominate the green-energy sector. "This
administration is committed to ensuring a level playing field for
American workers, businesses and green technology entrepreneurs," U.S.
Trade Representative Ron Kirk said.
Rapidly declining equipment costs
combined with stronger government support have set the stage for
explosive growth in the US solar market over the next decade,
according to Bloomberg New Energy
Gasoline supplies are high but demand is not. So why have at-the-pump
prices risen lately?
It looks like it may again be a case of futures market speculators
driving it up artificially.
Water shortages in Yemen will squeeze
agriculture to such an extent that 750,000 jobs could disappear
and incomes could drop by a quarter within a decade, according
to a report.
October 22, 2010
"Domestic production of renewable energy,
including biofuels, is a national imperative and that's why USDA
is working to assist in developing a biofuels industry in every
corner of the nation," said Vilsack.
Today, George Osborne, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer – the
man responsible for Britain’s budget –announced the results of a
high-profile spending review. He promised cuts, and he delivered. The
question is whether the cuts will be deep enough, and Osborne’s other
policies wise enough, to restore Britain to financial stability.
Argentina enacted a new law that protects the country's glaciers, in
a global context where
climate change threatens the large bodies of ice and there are risks of
different polluting activities.
Bank of America reported a net loss of $7.3
billion in the third quarter on Tuesday, citing the recently
passed financial reform law for a one-time charge in its credit
and debit card unit.
Michigan State University researchers are hoping their project
will reduce increased incidents of fish kills, fouled drinking
water, closed beaches and additional problems triggered by harmful
algal blooms.
(see related article below on Global
Fertilizers)
Monetary Policy Objectives and Tools in a
Low-Inflation Environment
The topic of this conference--the formulation and conduct of monetary
policy in a low-inflation environment--is timely indeed.
Business, labor, community and environmental leaders on Thursday
launched The California Apollo Program--a blueprint for expanding
cleantech jobs and manufacturing in the state.
Physicists probing the origins of the cosmos hope that next year
they will turn up the first proofs of the existence of concepts long
dear to science-fiction writers such as hidden worlds and extra
dimensions.
The
premier source for clean-tech job seekers, employers, and
recruiters. Search current openings among the job categories
listed below.
The financial crisis probably set the clean-tech
industry back a full year. As the make-or-break it piece of the
equation – finance enables a concentrated solar plant in the
desert, wind farm off the coast, or energy-efficiency
improvements in a home.
Nearly six months after an explosion aboard an
oil rig sent crude spewing from a BP-owned well deep below the
Gulf of Mexico, cleanup work along the Gulf Coast is far from
over.
The United States and many other heavily
populated countries face a growing threat of severe and
prolonged drought in coming decades, according to a new study by
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientist Aiguo
Dai.
The U.S. economy is leaving its recovery period and is set to
enter an expansionary phase, and it won’t double-dip back into a
recession, according to global financial giant Deutsche Bank.
Nuclear power provides 19 percent of electricity consumed in the
United States, and 30 percent in the European Union. Coal remains
plentiful and in the United States, is an inexpensive source of
power. However, the search for viable carbon-free energy is
essential as a means of combatting global warming and reducing
emissions.
The California Court of Appeal Fourth District today lifted a
restraining order that would have prevented California's Energy
Commission from distributing $33 million in federal energy funds.
The Court of Appeal order also canceled the November 4 hearing on
the contempt charge.
Europe's major decision makers made their bed and now they're
going to have to lie in it. It is however, us, the investor and tax
payer, who are going to have to foot the bill.
U.S. taxpayers could be stuck with a tab more
than double its current size for subsidized mortgage giants Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac, a government regulator said Thursday.
If housing prices drop through 2013, the
bailed-out lenders will need another $215 billion to stay afloat, for a
total bill of $363 billion. Some $148 billion has been spent so far to
keep them in the black during the worst recession since the Great
Depression.
Federal and tribal officials hope a new law aimed at improving
the judicial landscape in Indian Country will also help them combat
"disturbing" crime statistics involving American Indian women.
Demand for fertilizer had been expanding rapidly over the last
decade, driven by growing demand for crops used to produce biofuels
and to raise livestock, which drove fertilizer prices in April 2008
to at least double the levels of a year earlier. Farmers were unable
or unwilling to pay that much, and consumption is believed to have
dropped 1–5 percent in 2009.
Google is kicking up quite a wind storm. It is doing it along with
some co-investors that would eventually ante up a total of $5 billion to
build a 350 mile under-water transmission off the Atlantic coastline to
harness the wind there.
Reports that the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is
halting review of the license application for the Yucca Mountain
nuclear repository have drawn the concern of Rep. Doc Hastings,
R-Wash., and three other GOP representatives.
"This is a level of arrogance and disregard for the law that I've
rarely encountered, but when it comes to Yucca Mountain, the Obama
administration seems content to simply make up its own rules,"
Hastings said in a statement.
The first snowflake hasn't even flown, and already there's bad
news about winter: The U.S. Energy Information Administration is
predicting Americans will spend more to heat their homes this year.
Iran for the first time joined a US and
NATO-dominated coordinating group on Afghanistan yesterday,
sending a delegation to participate in discussions here on
coalition military strategy that included a closed-door report
by General David Petraeus, the top commander in Afghanistan.
American influence has so dwindled in Iraq
over the last several months that Iraqi
lawmakers and political leaders say they no
longer follow Washington's advice for forming a
government.
Instead, Iraqis are turning to neighboring
nations, and especially Iran, for guidance -
casting doubt on the future of the American role
in this strategic country after a grinding war
that killed more than 4,400 U.S. soldiers.
And that means more "recommended" and even "mandated" vaccines!
Oregon, for example, has gone quite
mad.
A strengthening La Nina weather phenomenon will grip the United
States this winter, bringing warmer, drier weather across the South
and cooler, moist conditions in the far northern and western parts
of the country, government forecasters said on Thursday.
The
Afghan government is conducting
secret meetings with Taliban leaders who are so significant that
if the U.S. was not helping them enter Afghanistan, they would
likely be killed by U.S. Special Forces.
"Any insurgent seeking to enter into talks could be subject to that
kind of targeting," Mark Sedwill, NATO's senior civilian
representative in Afghanistan, told ABC News in an interview.
The oil and gas industry produces billions of
barrels of toxic water each year
Along with the crude oil and natural gas that
fuels modern civilization, the energy industry brings nearly 233
billion barrels of wastewater from beneath the earth's surface
every year. This so-called "produced water" can contain a
variety of contaminants – from oil and grease to chemicals,
microorganisms, and radioactive elements, and oil and gas
producers need to treat this water before disposal or reuse.
Call it the case of Texas v. California. Or call it the case of Big
Oil v Big Green. One or the other is going to win come election day, in
California.
At this point, it looks like the greenies are going to stand their
ground against the backers of a movement to toss out the state's
trend-setting global warming law...
The Twelfth Imam was
a real, flesh-and-blood person who lived during the ninth
century AD. Like the eleven Shia religious leaders who went
before him, he was an Arab male who, as a direct descendent of
the founder of Islam, was thought to have been divinely chosen
to be the spiritual guide and ultimate human authority of the
Muslim people
Today's activity consisted of occasional, low-level B-class flares. there is a slight chance for an isolated C-class event during the next three days (22-24 October). The geomagnetic field is expected to be generally quiet for the first day (22 October) and about halfway through the second day (23 October). Sometime around mid-day on 23 October and continuing through the third day (24 October), an increase to unsettled levels with a chance for active periods is expected.
Getting high can be bad. Putting
people in prison for it is worse. And doing the latter doesn’t stop the
former.
I was once among the majority who believe that drug use must be
illegal. But then I noticed that when vice laws conflict with the law of
supply and demand, the conflict is ugly, and the law of supply and
demand generally wins.
The Ogallala Aquifer is a vast underground system that spans from
South Dakota to Texas with smaller portions in Colorado, New Mexico
and Wyoming. It is one of the world's largest aquifer systems,
storing nearly as much water as Lake Erie and Lake Huron combined.
Yet this seemingly limitless water supply, a key component
supporting the Great Plains' bountiful agriculture production, is
shrinking.
Spending an hour with Scott Brusaw, of Sagle, just might convince
you that eliminating the nation's reliance on fossil fuels is not
only possible, but likely.
Southern California Edison (SCE), a subsidiary of Edison
International, today announced that it has finalized an agreement
with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for a $25 million stimulus
grant to develop and conduct a comprehensive demonstration of
lithium-ion battery storage for energy generated by wind projects.
President Barack Obama’s stimulus plans will keep broken
cities and municipalities afloat but only temporarily, so
bondholders financing those towns might have to brace for
defaults, says publisher and former presidential candidate Steve
Forbes.
Extreme weather this year provided a hefty profit for Lakeland
Electric.
A fundamental change is gripping the Republican grass roots as they
animate the GOP surge to a major victory in the 2010 elections. No
longer do evangelical or social issues dominate the Republican ground
troops. Now economic and fiscal issues prevail. The Tea Party has made
the Republican Party safe for libertarians.
It’s probably no accident that Congress has
decided to take up what is for lawmakers the esoteric issue of
rare earth elements. It’s election season, after all, and the
fact that China controls an estimated 96.8 percent of rare earth
materials production makes Beijing an easy target for nervous
politicians looking for a foreign bogeyman. It’s also far easier
to blame China for our economic woes than it is for politicians
to take responsibility for the mess.
Post-2010, the European market – particularly Germany, Italy
and the Czech Republic – will cool down (or in the case of the
Czech Republic, collapse entirely), leaving a multi-GW gap. The
key question is: Who's going to fill it? And will the reduction
in European demand cause a “shake-out” in the global solar
market?
Turkey showed readiness to provide Lebanon with electricity
immediately and supply it with natural gas to operate some of the
power stations in 15 months, Turkey's Energy Minister Taner Yildiz
said Wednesday.
The sale is meant to further align the Saudi military
relationship with the United States and enhance the ability of
the kingdom to defer and defend threats to it and its oil
structure, which "is critical to our economic interests," said
Andrew Shapiro, assistant secretary for political and military
affairs, at a State Department news conference.
The deal, worth up to $60 billion over 20 years...
The Fed’s Beige Book report, compiled using data
collected on or before October 8, 2010 in preparation for the
November 2-3 FOMC meeting, characterized U.S. economic activity
as continuing to grow, “albeit at a modest pace.” Eight
Districts reported some form of growth, while the other four
reported that their economies experienced mixed results or were
decelerating.
The U.S. wind industry -- launched in California in the '80s under the
leadership of former governor Jerry Brown -- has become a major player
in global markets with traditional onshore power generation
applications, leading the world in terms of accumulative wind capacity
for the last two years. Yet efforts to move offshore, where wind
resources are far superior but logistics are more challenging, have been
hampered by a lack of regulatory support, particularly at the federal
level of governance.
The signs of climate change were all over the Arctic this year --
warmer air, less sea ice, melting glaciers -- which probably means
this weather-making region will not return to its former, colder
state, scientists reported on Thursday.
Waste and recycling issues, like most things in life, aren't as clear
cut as they might seem. Which makes it harder to decide what to
do, but there it is.
Take for example printing e-mails.
Water scarcity has always been a problem in the southwestern desert,
with practically everyone relying on one river, the Colorado, to quench
their thirst and the thirst of their crops. Increased water demands
coupled with a long protracted drought in the Upper Colorado River Basin
has created a potentially dire situation. The effects can be seen in
Lake Mead, the giant lake along the border of Arizona and
Nevada. Lake Mead has reached its lowest levels since
1937, the year the Hoover Dam was completed.
The Federal Reserve’s plans to stimulate the economy via
fresh injections of cash into the money supply will jack up
inflation rates, says Robert Wiedemer, co-author of the
best-selling book “Aftershock,” which predicts
two more economic bubbles directly ahead for the U.S.
To resolve political stalemate and lessen sectarian violence, Iraq
must engage its religious leaders. When religion is at the heart of the
problem, it must be at the heart of the solution.
October 19, 2010
A new study by researchers at Yale University suggests that
Americans' knowledge of climate science is limited and
scattershot, with some understanding of basic issues like the
contribution of fossil fuels to global warming and some singular
misconceptions as well.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said during a visit to Lebanon
that Israelis are “the enemies of humanity” and are on their way to
“annihilation.”
Ahmadinejad on Thursday visited the town of Bint Jbeil near the
Israeli border, where Iranian-backed Hezbollah fought battles with
Israeli soldiers in 2006...
The U.S. solar energy industry is having its best year ever, yet
financing remains scarce for the billion-dollar projects needed for
America's solar sector to gain ground on global leaders such as
Germany.
“We are the aboriginal people of North America, no others can
compare.” So said Apache Tribal Chairman Ronnie Lupe Wednesday
morning to a crowd gathered for the ground-breaking in Canyon
Day near Whiteriver. The White Mountain Apache hosted officials
from the Forest Service and a group of their tribal members as
they started construction of a native plant nursery
On Tuesday, Oct. 12 the Affiliated Tribes of
Northwest Indians and the
United South and
Eastern Tribes signed a Covenant of Friendship, Cooperation,
Solidarity and Trust.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said additional
monetary stimulus may be warranted because inflation is too low
and unemployment is too high.
China's central bank surprised on Tuesday with its first
increase of interest rates in nearly three years, a move that
reflects concern about resurgent asset prices and could mark the
start of a more aggressive phase of monetary tightening in the
world's fastest-growing major economy.
The firm asserts that revenue will continue to rise in the
coming years, increasing by 6.7 percent in 2011 and by 7
percent in 2012. Expansion will slow to 1.2 percent in 2013,
after which the market is projected to contract by 0.6
percent in 2014.
The coalition Ronald Reagan assembled of fiscal and economic
conservatives, evangelicals, and national-security advocates has always
been dominated by the social issues at the grassroots level. While
free-market economic conservatives lived in New York and dutifully
attended their Club for Growth meetings and national-security types
inhabited Washington, the Republican social conservatives dominated the
grassroots of the party. They alone could turn out the numbers to
rallies and to the polls on primary or Election Day.
Now, all that has changed.
Yi Cui, an Assistant Professor of Material Science and Engineering at
Stanford University, has invented quite the water filter. It’s
inexpensive, is very resistant to clogging, and uses much less
electricity than systems that require the water to be pumped through
them. It also kills bacteria, as opposed to just trapping them,
which is all that many existing systems do.
With just two months to go before GM and Nissan (NSANY.PK) begin
selling their plug-in electric vehicles to the public, the federal
government still hasn't decided how to measure the official
miles-per-gallon figures for the cars.
This past weekend, the G-7 finance ministers and IMF
(International Monetary Fund) both met in Washington.
As usual, taxpayers wasted a great deal of money getting all of
these guys together because they ended the meetings with no more
direction than when they started.
The most some of them could agree upon was that the IMF needed
to act as a “currency cop”...
Within the next year, Charlottesville residents could notice
construction of what appears to be a gas station -- except it will
be equipped with outlets rather than fuel pumps.
U.S. economic growth is too weak at the moment to bring down
unemployment, and inflation is running at levels that raise
concern about deflation, Atlanta Federal Reserve President
Dennis Lockhart said on Friday.
Karl Case, the co-creator of a widely
watched housing market index, was upbeat three weeks ago.
Mulling the economy while at a meeting at a resort near the
Berkshires, Case thought the makings of a recovery were finally
falling into place.
"I'm a 60-40 optimist," he said at the
time.
On the eve of Solar Power International, a new
national poll shows that the vast majority of Americans
overwhelmingly support development and funding of solar energy,
and their support has remained consistent over the last three
years.
Nearly half of Americans believe the federal government poses “an
immediate threat” to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens, a new
Gallup poll reveals.
A bare majority — 51 percent — of poll respondents said they do not
believe the government poses a threat, while 46 percent said it does.
A study by Gallup, the polling organization, shows that
unemployment actually registered 10.1 percent in September, well
above the government’s estimate of 9.6 percent.
And ominously, much of the increase came during the second half
of the month, as the rate registered 9.4 percent in
mid-September.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Monday
the U.S. would not "engage" in devaluing its currency, but
described China's currency as "significantly undervalued," as
tensions between China and other countries remain high in
advance of meetings of finance ministers and central bankers in
South Korea this weekend.
According to the Department of Justice, three of
four women will experience at least one violent crime. Various
studies have proven just displaying a firearm will scare off a
high percentage of offenders.
The nuclear renaissance in America,
long-heralded, has hit a major speed bump. Constellation Energy
last weekend announced that it cannot see eye-to-eye with the
federal government on structuring vitally needed federal loan
guarantees for a new Maryland reactor. The ripple effects have
gone global,..
The Making of Our Chemically Altered Environment
With nearly 5 million barrels of BP's crude having gushed into
the Gulf of Mexico for months on end, the summer of 2010 will
long be remembered for environmental catastrophe. News of the
oil spill came close on the heels of the Upper Big Branch coal
mine explosion that killed 29 miners in West Virginia -- the
nation's worst mining disaster in some four decades. In both
cases, most of us couldn't help but wonder how things have gone
so terribly wrong.
Coming ahead of an OPEC meeting on Thursday,
one analyst said the two countries were in a "bidding war" over
reserves, which is usually a consideration including other
criteria such as production capacity when it comes to allocating
quotas.
With climate legislation stalled in Congress and U.S. EPA just
months away from regulating greenhouse gases for the first time, 37
states have taken sides in a court battle that could end up steering
U.S. climate policy for years.
FUKAI’s
process involves adding aluminum or magnesium to boiling “functional
water,” a proprietary substance that can be produced simply by running
regular tap water through a natural mineral-containing "functional water
generation unit.” The bonds that join hydrogen and oxygen molecules in
regular water, which ordinarily require some energy to break, are
weakened in functional water.
Analysis Suggests Q1 of 2011 Could See
Above Average Winds.
THIS IS HOW YOU FIX CONGRESS!!!!!
**********************************
Congressional Reform Act of 2010
The value of the U.S. dollar compared to a basket of other
major world currencies fell sharply during the past four weeks
in response to traders’ expectations that the Federal Reserve
will soon enter a new wave of so-called quantitative easing by
purchasing massive amounts of U.S. government and/or
government-agency securities.
Nearly a year after the Copenhagen summit to reduce the global carbon
footprint, advocates for change feel they have the momentum. Round two
of the conference is to begin in Cancun, Mexico in November.
Seeking to overcome the notion that it's not easy being green, a
handful of cities have joined a state initiative to help germinate
sustainable practices in what's envisioned as a recycled version of
the Minnesota Star Cities designation.
Nobel laureate economist Robert Mundell says the latest moves
to prop up weak Western economies by creating inflation is a
“big mistake.”
Instead, the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank should
intervene in currency markets to limit movement in the world's
single most important exchange rate, the euro-dollar pair, he
said in an interview in The Wall Street Journal.
The federal government reached an unhappy milestone with the
announcement of the national debt figure for fiscal 2010 — it marked the
53rd straight year the debt had increased over the previous year.
As of Sept. 30, the last day of fiscal 2010, the national debt stood
at $13,561,623,030,891 — over $13.5 trillion — an increase of $1.65
trillion over fiscal 2009, according to data from the Bureau of the
Public Debt, a division of the U.S. Treasury Department.
The health care reform law enacted in spring will have a
devastating impact on elderly and disabled Medicare enrollees if its
provisions are not substantially changed.
The law creates a new mechanism to reduce the rate of increase in
Medicare payments to doctors and hospitals.
It might sound like fighting fire with fire, but geologist Chen Zhu
proposes the application of another industrial waste to the Hungarian
bauxite residue spill, with the aim of reducing toxicity via a technique
called carbon sequestration. While he says it wouldn't render the
residue completely harmless, it would at least minimize the
environmental damage.
As Obama's spending orgy sinks America
deeper into financial turmoil, he is about
to turn Uncle Sam's acute funding crisis
into YOUR problem.
In fact, Obama's
Treasury and Labor Departments just held
outrageous, executive branch hearings on
nationalization of retirement accounts...
Region 1112 (S19W58) was responsible for all the period's activity which included a long duration C2.5 x-ray event. The geomagnetic field is expected to be at quiet to active levels all three days of the forecast period (19 - 21 October), with isolated minor storm periods possible on 19 October. A coronal hole high speed stream (CH HSS) is expected to rotate into a geoeffective position late on 18 October or early on 19 October, followed by a second geoeffective CH HSS expected to arrive early on 20 October. These features, coupled with possible effects from the CME observed on 14 October, are the reasons for the forecasted increase in geomagnetic activity.
Envoys from around the world meet in Japan from Monday to try to
combat the destruction of nature and to value properly the services
of forests, coral reefs and oceans that underpin livelihoods and
economic growth.
The United Nations says natural resources, or natural capital,
are being lost at an alarming rate and urgent steps need to be taken
to combat the destruction of plant and animal species that ensure
mankind's survival.
Billionaire financier George Soros says he’s
sitting out the 2010 midterms because he’s convinced the GOP
tide cannot be slowed with more of the money he used to help
Democrats like Barack Obama get elected in 2008...
Before the economic collapse, before President Obama's election,
before cries for action to help ailing businesses, construction workers
started building Barton Chapel wind farm in Texas.
Turbines started turning at the farm in January 2009 as Congress
debated the stimulus bill.
The world is paying attention to a new type of
energy technology that will start its experimental phase at the
St. Johns Dome, a natural carbon dioxide dome between St. Johns
and Springerville. GreenFire Energy is the company
developing the technology that has the potential to create
carbon dioxide based geothermal renewable energy.
The Philippines declared a state of calamity in a northern
province after super typhoon Megi hit on Monday, cutting off power
and communications, forcing flight cancellations and putting the
region's rice crop at risk.
The 2008 world food price crisis, and more recent price hikes
this year, have focused attention on the ability of the world
food system to "feed the world." In La Vía Campesina, the global
alliance of peasant and family farm organizations, we believe
that agroecological food production by small farmers is the
agricultural model best suited to meeting future food needs.
These “doom and gloom” pundits have a much larger audience than
the person who tells you to invest conservatively and that with
diligence, dedication, hard work and consistent investing, you
can build a sizable nest egg during your lifetime.
Imagine a child sitting in his classroom, gazing through the
window at the rain. He picks up his pencil and chews distractedly on
the eraser at its top. Chemicals, classed in Europe as "toxic to
reproduction," dissolve in his saliva and enter his body.
Built on a central concrete pedestal, the
Domespace home benefits from little or no damp penetration, and
its aerodynamic shape has been found to be resistant to cyclonic
winds of up to 174mph (280kph). It also makes the most of
passive solar energy, has a central chimney with a designer open
fire and is surprisingly spacious.
It takes a brave person to be a reporter in Mexico
these days if the intent is to cover the drug cartels. More than 30
journalists have been killed since 2006, making Mexico perhaps the most
dangerous place in the world for members of that profession. The country
is at least on a par with such countries as Iraq, Sudan, and
Afghanistan. It has become so bad that several Mexican journalists have
sought asylum in the United States, and at least one has been granted
that status.
Complicated Castoffs: The Washington Post posted an
interesting
article this morning about
hospital waste. The central message seems to be that no one has a good
handle on how much total trash U.S. hospitals produce. The most commonly
cited figures are from decades-old surveys. But everyone seems to agree
it's a large amount.
Quite simply, human-centered governance systems are not
working and we need new economic, development and
environmental policies.
Last week's successful rescue of 33 trapped miners from a
collapsed mine in Chile was one of the more uplifting
stories in recent memory.
People from all over the world watched the rescues taking
place on live television, which broadcast unforgettable
images of the miners emerging from a half-mile beneath the
Earth's surface and their emotional reunions with their
families.
Ironically, Bernanke argues in favor of deliberately creating a 2
percent inflation rate in order to be able to respond in
conventional ways should a recession threaten. There seems to be no
recognition that a Fed-engineered inflation and the resulting market
distortions, especially the interest-rate distortions, are precisely
what cause a recession to threaten.
When an economy is in the tank, it’s a lot tougher to sell what may
be expensive environmental solutions whose benefits aren't seen for
decades to people worried about their job today.
October 15, 2010
Just under a year ago we reported on a method to clean polluted
water and soil by infusing them with pressurized ozone gas
microbubbles. The process was developed by Andy Hong at the
University of Utah and has now moved out of the lab and is being
put the test in a demonstration project in eastern China. If all
goes to plan the process has the potential to boost a wide range
of environmental cleanup efforts around the world.
Solar energy is serious business. The push towards renewable
energy over the last decade is translating into rapid growth in
the solar power sector, with signs that the industry is really
starting to make a serious move from fringe to mainstream.
Statistics indicate that complete removal, or resection, of a
tumor is the single most important predictor of patient survival
for those with solid tumors. So, unsurprisingly, the first thing
most patients want to know after surgery is whether the surgeon
got everything. A new hand-held device called the SpectroPen
could help surgeons provide a more definite and desirable answer
by allowing them to see the edges of tumors in human patients in
real time during surgery.
TVA planners finishing up the analysis of a long-term energy
resource plan favor a strategy that would expand nuclear
capacity after 2018, increase emphasis on renewable energy
sources and idle about 3,000 megawatts of coal-generated power
capacity.
In a blow to the Obama administration, a federal judge in
Florida today issued a ruling allowing parts of a lawsuit by 20
states challenging the recently passed health care legislation
to proceed.
The Obama administration on Thursday
endorsed fragile Afghan efforts to negotiate peace with the
Taliban, backing off its prior stance that talks with the
Taliban were premature until the war is all but won.
The Department of Defense will probably recommend another round
of spending cuts or terminations in major weapons systems that
are missing cost and schedule goals, the nation’s top military
official said.
The cutbacks would be slated for fiscal year 2012...
40 percent to 70 percent of Americans have a thyroid
hormone deficiency called "hypothyroidism," and both they and their
doctors don't know it because the standard thyroid test is wildly
inaccurate.
Farmers would lose more than a third of irrigation water in
Australia's major food bowl, the Murray-Darling, under a plan
released on Friday to restore ailing rivers, posing a new headache
for the Labor minority government.
Green jobs may be growing more quickly than the overall state
work force, but not nearly at the pace and in the numbers needed to
turn around what's been a devastating labor market collapse, say
economists and experts in the sector.
Post-Copenhagen gloom seems to be morphing in to
pre-Cancún despondency. In the battle over how to combat
climate change, world leaders have descended to the
level of petty bickering. Progress at the latest
round of talks in Tianjin last week was timid, and some
pundits are already declaring
December's COP16 summit in Mexico to be dead in the
water.
You'll soon be hearing a lot of buzz -- and a dose of sales hype
-- about a new wave of electric cars that will begin humming down
our roads.
The first cars to come from major automakers will be the
much-publicized Chevrolet Volt and the Nissan Leaf, each expected to
go on sale in selected areas by the end of this year. Models from
Ford, Honda, Mitsubishi, Toyota and other companies will follow.
A federal court has dismissed the Onondaga
Nation’s land rights lawsuit in a ruling that follows recent
precedent-setting cases depriving other Haudenosaunee (Iroquois)
Confederacy nations of their lands.
The number one issue with substance abuse on
Native-American reservation lands has been and continues to be
alcohol, but there seems there may be a shift in the illegal
drug of choice among young people on The Mountain, including
"anglo" communities and The White Mountain Apache Reservation.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
President Thomas Donohue vowed Tuesday to "ramp up" political
advertising in the final weeks before the Nov. 2 election and
accused the Obama administration of conducting a smear campaign
against the chamber.
The U.S. Department of Energy needs to streamline its process for
considering and either approving or rejecting applications under loan
guarantee programs designed to stimulate renewable energy and nuclear
power plant projects.
With both the Chevrolet Volt and the Nissan Leaf set to go on
sale later this year, there is a clear consensus among all
manufacturers: Nobody wants any automaker with an electric car to
disappoint their customers.
Well, electric vehicles are clearly more energy
efficient than conventional cars. An electric car can travel
more than three times further than today’s conventional gasoline
car per unit of energy (i.e. electricity or gasoline) consumed.
Electric vehicles also reduce global warming emissions.
Officials at ISO-New England said Monday that peak demand hit
record levels in May and September, and that the region also set a
record for electricity consumption during a single month, in July.
The current economic
downturn is not sidetracking state-level efforts to make the most of
energy efficiency as the cheapest, cleanest and quickest of all energy
resources, according to a 50-state scorecard on energy efficiency
policies, programs, and practices from the American Council for an
Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE).
At home, EPA’s AirNow program provides air quality forecasts and
real-time data for nearly 400 U.S. cities.
A federal law banning ordinary incandescent light bulbs has already
had a negative effect on the American economy — GE has closed its last
major bulb producing factory in the United States, creating job
opportunities in China.
In less than half a century, the United Arab Emirates transformed
itself from almost empty desert to an oasis of air conditioned
skyscrapers. For its next trick, it aims to be environmentally
sustainable too.
First Nations chiefs, elders, students and
thousands of their supporters called on the Canadian government
to increase funding and support for indigenous students’
education.
First Nations leaders from across the country made education
their top priority during the Assembly of First Nations annual
meeting in Winnipeg during the summer
The archaeologists recorded 20 separate panels of petroglyphs
with hundreds of individual images representing a variety of
distinct design styles. T
Gold rallied to fresh record highs in Europe on
Thursday as the dollar slid to its lowest this year versus a
basket of major currencies, boosting interest in the metal as a
haven from currency market volatility
Organizations are investing in algae biofuel programs including
NASA, which is experimenting with jet fuel from algae , and Solazyme
which has raised $52 million for biofuel from algae development,
according to the
Biofuel from
Algae Market Potential report.
Calling energy a "critically important issue," McDonnell said he
favors an "all-of-the-above strategy" that involves increased
development of Virginia's fossil fuels such as coal; possible
alternative sources such as wind; and also nuclear power.
The alumina plant that flooded parts of Hungary with toxic sludge
will restart production by Friday and will stay under state control
for up to two years, the disaster commissioner said on Wednesday.
Salt River Project and Iberdrola Renewables have signed a 25-year
power purchase agreement for 20 megawatts of solar photovoltaic
energy from a Pinal County facility. SRP will purchase all of the
solar energy produced at the Copper Crossing Solar Ranch, which is
expected to be online by June 2011.
The Fed’s preferred price gauge, which is tied to consumer
spending and excludes food and fuel costs, will climb 1.2
percent next year and 1.5 percent in 2012 on average, according
to the median forecast of economists polled from Oct. 4 to Oct.
12. Most policy makers project those prices will increase 1.7
percent to 2 percent in the long run.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
arrived in Beirut Wednesday morning for a highly provocative
trip to Lebanon. He was greeted by tens of thousands of Radical
Muslims as a hero of the Islamic Revolution and on Thursday
visited the border with Israel. His mission: to rally the
terrorist forces of Hezbollah for an apocalyptic war with the
Jewish state that will set the stage for the coming of the Shia
Islamic messiah known as the "Mahdi" or the "Twelfth Imam."
“Residents need to be assured that the
pipelines in their communities are safe and that utilities are properly
regulated,” Hill said. “But PG&E keeps changing its story.”
The United States has piled on so much debt that world is
going to abandon the dollar, says Jim Grant, founder and editor
of "Grant’s Interest Rate Observer."
“By the numbers, we are more encumbered now than we have ever
collectively been,” Grant tells the Business Insider.
Doe Run Resources Corp. of St. Louis, North
America's largest lead producer, will spend $65 million to
correct violations of several environmental laws at 10 of its
lead mining, milling and smelting facilities in southeast
Missouri, federal and state agencies announced Friday.
Although the resolution passed, Jack Colorado
of Cameron Chapter and Kee Yazzie Mann of Kaibito Chapter
objected and attempted to prevent the resolution approval.
Delegate Harriett Becenti of Rock Springs Chapter and George
Arthur, Resources Committee Chairman, also oppose the idea.
So what is going on here? There's something
fishy about their resistance.
More than 5,300 home and workplace charging stations are planned
to be installed in Michigan as the state prepares for the
introduction of new electric vehicle technology. General Motors and
its partners are teaming up to help give Chevrolet Volt buyers more
options for charging their vehicles.
The discovery of a whole new type of enzymes may lead to
optimized production of biofuels, enabling a switch from the use of
food plants to use of less valuable biomaterials, the scientists
believe.
Nuclear watchdog groups say that an internal report by the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission on fire safety at nuclear plants shows
that regulators don't have enough information to know whether its
new fire rules will ensure safety.
The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
left its official oil production target unchanged on
Thursday, claiming the market was well supplied amid
risks to the economic recovery.
OPEC, which pumps 40 percent of the world's oil,
agreed to keep its target at 24.84 million barrels a day
at a ministerial meeting here against an unclear price
outlook and data pointing to surprisingly strong energy
demand.
Regions 1112 (S18W00) and 1113 (N17E63) each produced isolated low-level B-class flares. New Region 1114 (S22W41), a single-spot A-type, was numbered today.Geomagnetic field activity is expected to be at quiet to unsettled levels through the period (15 - 17 October) due to weak CME effects from a filament eruption on 11 October.
Seattle became the first city in the nation to create a registry that
allows its residents and business to stop delivery of unwanted yellow
pages phone books.
For decades, fans of airships have been hoping for a large-scale
revival of the majestic floating aircraft. Every few years, lighter than
air flying concepts come along to raise those hopes, such as Northrop
Grumman’s
Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle, Skyhook’s
JHL-40, and DARPA’s
Walrus,
which led to the current
Aeroscraft
ML866 project. Now there's another unique contender to the throw
into the mix – Australia’s Skylifter. If it ever makes it to the skies,
however, it’s sure to be the source of some bogus UFO sightings.
A federal judge in Athens, GA is about to rule on a lawsuit
filed by a former EPA research scientist and two dairy farmers
over fake data EPA and the University of Georgia published to
support a controversial EPA regulation. The case, which has
national implications, involves treated sewage sludge, called
"biosolids," regulated under EPA's 503 Sludge Rule. Biosolids
typically contain unknown levels of pharmaceuticals, pesticides,
organic solvents and other industrial pollutants and is widely
used to fertilize farms, lawns, and home gardens.
The US and Canada are waking up to the prospects of solar power
generation. Prices for solar PV have fallen and utilities are
increasingly developing projects that use the sun to generate
electricity.
...just after Resch highlighted all of the great
achievements in the solar industry, he issued a stern warning.
The industry has enemies and the enemies have deep pockets.
Resch said that Big Oil spent $500 million to defeat legislation
that would have created a national RPS and cap and trade.
Opening the Solar Power International 2010
Conference and Exhibition today in Los Angeles, Secretary of the
Interior Ken Salazar signed off on the first large-scale solar
project ever to be approved for construction on public lands in
Nevada.
Tea party activists are working to defeat Democrats in the November
elections, but they are already setting their sights on unseating
several Republican senators in 2012.
For the first time a state government has
submitted a petition to the federal government to set aside
state-owned mountain ridgelines as unsuitable for coal surface
mining.
In this issue of The Institutional
Risk Analyst, we turn the camera eye on two different perspectives
on the continuing crisis affecting the U.S. economy, the Fed's
deflationary monetary policy and the surging price of gold. We look at
how the rapid changes now underway in how consumers and investors alike
view the dollar will affect the risk picture facing banks, companies and
individuals.
Isn’t it amazing, given the great and momentous nature of the
office, that those who seek it seldom pause to consider what
they are seeking?
The risk of breast cancer, the second leading
cause of death from cancer in women, has been linked to
traffic-related air pollution among older women in a new study
by researchers in Montreal.
The U.S. is back in the deep water oil-drilling
business. The question now is when work will resume.
The long-term fixed-rate mortgage
has emerged as an economic shock absorber for millions of households and
thousands of neighborhoods during the current downturn. Specifically,
30-, 20- and 15-year fixed-rate mortgages are delivering three vital
benefits to borrowers, investors, and communities.
Wal-mart today launched its new global commitment to sustainable
agriculture that will help small- and medium-sized farmers expand their
businesses, get more income for their products and reduce the
environmental impact of farming, while strengthening local economies and
providing customers around the world access to affordable, high-quality,
fresh food.
We´ve generally gotten smarter in recent years about waste
generation. But there are many areas where we are still pretty stupid. I
put phone books in that latter category.
Power companies that need federal loan guarantees to build
nuclear power plants are stymied by government regulations that are
"too cumbersome and too time-consuming," with financing fees that
are "too difficult to arrive at," the CEO of Westinghouse Electric
Co. said yesterday.
In solar, it's hard to go a month without hearing news about
conversion efficiencies. In September, for example, Oerlikon
Solar and its partner, Corning, said they broke the world
efficiency record for a lab-created tandem-junction
amorphous-silicon cell. The cell, which was tested by the U.S.
National Renewable Energy Laboratory, delivered 11.9 percent
stabilized efficiency.
At the beginning of the week,
Ernst & Young published The Global Gas Challenge, which
discusses important uncertainties in the gas market. Their
summary reads as follows: “If the uncertain outlook for gas
supply and demand dissuades companies from investing in natural
gas projects, future supplies may be inadequate to meet
projected growth. Discover why we believe a global gas market
will not emerge until there is greater flexibility in gas
supplies, increased transportation between regions and more
gas-on-gas competition."
Wind turbines are an increasingly popular way to generate clean
energy with
large-scale wind farms springing up all over the world. However,
many residents near proposed wind farm sites have raised concerns over
the aesthetics and the low frequency vibrations they claim are generated
by wind turbines. An interesting Windstalk concept devised by New York
design firm Atelier DNA could overcome both these problems while still
allowing a comparable amount of electricity to be generated by the wind.
Water shortages will be the world's most pressing problem in the
next decade, compounded by a growing global population, Britain's
chief scientist John Beddington said on Tuesday.
Climate change is forecast to disrupt rainfall patterns, leading
to more severe droughts and floods, posing problems for the supply
of fresh water.
The world's population of about 6.6 billion is forecast to rise
by 2.5 billion by 2050, while growing wealth and urbanization is
fuelling demand for water.
"The unprecedented drive for wealth and
well-being of the past 40 years is putting unsustainable
pressures on our planet," writes WWF Director General James
Leape in the newly released 2010 edition of WWF's Living Planet
Report, a biennial survey on the state of the planet's health.
October 12, 2010
Congress is Urged to Nurture Renewables - Now
Scott Sklar, president of the Stella Group,
addressed the forum and cited a study that boldly
claims that by 2030 we can cut our energy demand by
one-third with existing technology and meet all our
electricity needs without using coal, oil or natural
gas.
The path to prosperity begins with
electrification. To that end, the United Nations has
established a goal of bringing power generation to
the under-developed regions so that they can improve
their quality of life.
IEA calculations based on preliminary data show that China has now
overtaken the United States to become the world's largest energy user.
China's rise to the top ranking was faster than expected as it was much
less affected by the global financial crisis than the United States.
Coal remains the world’s fastest growing energy source, fueling
40% of electricity worldwide. But while fueling industry and
powering homes in the U.S. and abroad, coal also releases serious
pollutants and greenhouse gases.
This landmark court decision reaches far
beyond Ohio. It means that milk—and maybe other food too—can be
clearer about its origins.
The organic milk industry has won a
significant battle with the state of Ohio over consumers’ right
to know what has been added to the milk their children drink.
Or, more precisely, what hasn’t been added.
The residents of Pavillion, a rural community
on the Wind River Indian Reservation in central Wyoming have
been told by federal agencies not to drink their water and to
use fans and ventilation while bathing or washing clothes to
avoid the risk of explosion.
Members of the U.S. House
and Senate who over the past two years have followed President
Obama's lead on major economic policy issues like raising taxes,
spending and the national debt already know they are facing the
wrath of angry voters on Election Day this November. But
according to an intriguing new poll released Monday, candidates
who have supported President Obama's antagonistic policies
towards Israel and appeasing policies towards Iran in the past
several years will find still further opposition at the ballot
box.
The fast-track review of large renewable energy
projects is starting to break the approval logjam.
The California Energy Commission just approved the
largest concentrated solar power project in the
world, though a final sign-off by federal officials
is pending.
Mushroom-shaped solar evaporators have taken out
first place in a competition asking architects, landscape
architects, designers, engineers, urban planners, students and
environmental professionals to create an innovative urban vision
for a several-mile-long development zone on the eastern edge of
downtown LA.
The soils in large areas of the Southern
Hemisphere, including major portions of Australia, Africa and
South America, have been drying up in the past decade, a group
of researchers conclude in the first major study to ever examine
"evapotranspiration" on a global basis.
Hungarian authorities raced to finish building an emergency dam by
Tuesday to hold back a threatened second spill of toxic sludge, and
hunted for clues to the causes of last week's deadly industrial spill.
Iranian oil minister Masoud Mirkazemi Monday
announced a 9% increase in the OPEC's state's crude oil reserves
to 150.31 billion barrels, putting Iran's reserves above
recently revised Iraqi reserve estimates and setting the stage
for what could potentially become a tussle over quotas
Japan added $55.3 billion of Treasuries this year, swelling its
holdings 7.2 percent to $821 billion, Treasury data show. China, which
overtook Japan in September 2008, cut its stake by $48.1 billion, or 5.4
percent, to $846.7 billion. Japan made its biggest purchase in 10 months
in July, just after China cut its position by the most on record
...the
implication was fairly clear: If Iran's nuclear weapons program
is not severely hampered enough by the first of the new year --
by a combination of diplomacy, international sanctions, and/or
covert actions inside Iran -- Netanyahu and his government feel
they have no choice but to launch preemptive military strikes
against Iran's nuclear facilities.
With the weak economy driving voter discontent three weeks
out from congressional and state elections, President Barack
Obama on Monday renewed his call to spend $50 billion on
improving the nation’s transportation infrastructure.
The Organization for the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC)
is looking to stabilize global crude oil prices at $70 to $90 a
barrel, which is why the cartel has called an emergency meeting
in Vienna on Friday.
...imagery observed a filament eruption,
aCME was detected at 11/0012Z by SOHO LASCO c2 imagery
and did not appear to be Earth-directed.geomagnetic activity increased at all latitudes to predominately
unsettled to active levels with an isolated minor storm period The
increase in activity is most likely a result of a
glancing blow from the 06 October full-halo CME.
US utilities at this time are "more hesitant than ever to burn
coal,..
There's a big push going on in Flagstaff, stretching from NAU and
City Hall into local churches and schools -- and even into other
countries.
Worldwide, various communities are taking Sunday to show what
they're doing to fight global warming.
Few ecological disasters have been as
confounding as the massive and devastating die-off of the
world's honeybees. The phenomenon of Colony Collapse Disorder
(CCD) -- in which disoriented honeybees die far from their hives
-- has kept scientists, beekeepers, and regulators desperately
seeking the cause.
Cities spend millions to keep farm chemicals out of drinking water
It's part of a warning system to measure how
much atrazine and other farm pollutants are washed off fields
and into Columbus' main sources for drinking water.
October 8, 2010
The world is getting familiar with the carbon cycle and how pumping
carbon that's been buried for millions of years into the atmosphere
causes some global problems. Well, get ready to learn about nitrogen.
Like carbon, the nitrogen cycle is all out of
whack.
The U.S. Department of Energy, the Washington State Department of
Ecology and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have drafted a new
agreement to govern cleanup of nuclear waste at the U.S. government´s
Hanford, Wash., site.
In support of the Energy Office of the Arizona Commerce
Authority's Distributed Energy Leadership (Utilities) Program,
Arizona Public Service Co. has issued a request for proposal for the
installation of multiple solar electric systems on several
low-income, multifamily housing complexes. These systems will help
low-income Arizona residents take advantage of the state's most
abundant resource, the sun.
Despite billions of dollars in financing, countless government
incentives, and a graveyard of failed start-ups, global biofuel
capacity represents only 3% of petroleum fuels, while bio-based
materials have only captured 1% of the market from plastics. The
future for bio-based alternatives is not all bleak, however.
The solar panels take up just a fourth of the warehouse roof
here, yet this midsize solar farm generates more electricity than
its owner, OFM, needs to run its furniture import business.
California's global warming law will have minimal impact on the
state's small businesses, adding mere pennies to their monthly
energy bills, according to a study released today by the Brattle
Group, an economic analysis firm in Los Angeles.
With forest resources--"the lungs of the Earth"-- under attack in many
regions, some have raised concerns about the planet's oxygen supply.
The production of coal continues to be essential to energy
generation throughout the world. According to the
World Coal
Outlook Report, over 41% of global electricity generation is
coal-powered, according to a new report released by Energy Business
Reports.
he lower pie represents the trace gases which
together compose 0.038% of the atmosphere.
Values normalized for illustration.
The federal government's pointman for the Gulf
oil spill said Monday that a separate entity was needed to
coordinate government and company responses to such disasters to
avoid public confusion over who was in charge.
Converted Organics Inc. (Nasdaq:COIN) announced
today that the company has entered into an agreement with
Republic Services of Salinas to divert food waste from local
landfills and receive the food waste at the company's Gonzales,
CA facility
O2 is there principally because of carbon
storage time, its rate of drop currently is ~10 ppm, but it
could well swing further downwards. Second if increase in CO2 is
so good for plant growth it could have compensated for O2
falling, but it hasn't. There is also evidence that increase in
CO2 does not translate into increase in carbon fixation; instead
it could merely speed up the carbon cycle, making forests and
other ecosystems less effective in sequestering carbon...
Natural gas holds the keys until
green energy glimmers. With the potential to now
access deposits once thought unattainable, producers
are getting increasingly pumped.
The company will spend more than $150M to close the impoundments
and dispose of the hazardous waste at the site. As part of the
settlement Exxon will be responsible for post-closure care,
including groundwater monitoring, from the impoundments for the next
50 years.
"This crucial milestone opens a new chapter of clean electricity
production and a new source of jobs for our nation," said Jim
Gordon, President of Cape Wind.
The Zuni Indians think a red moon brings water.
Seventeenth-century English farmers believed in a "dripping
moon," which supplied rain depending on whether its crescent was
tilted up or down. Now scientists have found evidence for
another adage: Rain follows the full and new phases of the moon.
Nuclear energy may be jumping through a lot of
hoops but finding the uranium to fuel those reactors
is not one of them. That's a key finding coming from
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which
says that today's generation technologies will have
a critical role in displacing carbon-intensive
generation.
When a gas pipeline in Northern California
exploded last month and killed 7 people, it
triggered an outcry for reform.
"We can now compare and contrast all three
mosquito genomes, and identify not only their common genes but
also what is unique to each mosquito,"
- Unemployment remains major economic, social
challenge
- Need to revive private sector growth in advanced
economies, while rolling back large fiscal deficits
- Emerging markets should shift toward more
domestic-led growth
It’s highly unlikely that ex-Federal Reserve Chairman Alan
Greenspan would call himself a Keynesian. But he obviously
agrees with the legendary economist John Maynard Keynes that
“animal spirits” represent a crucial ingredient of a healthy
economy.
A crisis of confidence grips the economy, Greenspan says. That
helps to explain why GDP growth slipped to 1.7 percent in the
second quarter from 3.6 percent in the first quarter.
Call2Recycle collections reflect that more
Americans are learning the importance and ease of battery
recycling, and will continue to recycle long after the campaign
ends.
The project is now converting the treated sewage
of 14 million Thames Water customers into clean, green gas and
is pumping that gas into people's homes.
A toxic red sludge spill from an alumina plant in western Hungary had
reached the Danube by midday on Thursday, a spokesman for Hungarian
disaster crews was cited by national news agency MTI as saying.
Bill Munro sent us the following excellent article on Hydrogen
Peroxide.
As solar expands its footprint in Tennessee, a new industry group
is organizing to make sure the renewable technology continues on a
growth curve in the state.
Final challenges to the Shinnecock Indians’
federal acknowledgment have been tossed aside, clearing the way
for the Long Island-based tribe to take its place as the 565th
American Indian tribe in a nation-to-nation relationship with
the United States government.
“We’ve been on the road to socialization of credit for many
decades, and now we’re there,” he told Bloomberg.
“The next time there’s a crisis, taxpayers will ride to the
rescue, subsidizing these big dumb banks,” he said.
As a result, these same taxpayers will see their interest income
dwindle, as the Federal Reserve again drives interest rates to
zero, Grant says.
Just over half of
the models, as well as the dynamical and statistical averages,
predict La Niña to become a strong episode (defined by a 3-month
average Niño-3.4 index of –1.5oC or colder) by the
November-January season before beginning to weaken.
Mention climate change and everyone thinks of CO2
increasing in the atmosphere, the greenhouse effect heating the earth,
glaciers melting, rising sea levels, floods, hurricanes, droughts, and a
host of other environmental catastrophes. Climate mitigating policies
are almost all aimed at reducing CO2, by whatever means.
Within the past several years, however, scientists have found that
oxygen (O2) in the atmosphere has been dropping, and at
higher rates than just the amount that goes into the increase of CO2
from burning fossil fuels, some 2 to 4-times as much, and accelerating
since 2002-2003 [1-3]. Simultaneously, oxygen levels in the world’s
oceans have also been falling
- "I do not think most people realize the dilemma which seems to
boil down to the choice between breathable air or continued and
increased burning of fuels."
Adrian Akau, NEC
- "Dead zones (hypoxic i.e. oxygen deficient water) in the coastal
zones are increasing, typically surrounding major industrial and
agricultural centers. This is commonly occurring due to nutrient
pollution, in the form of nitrogen and phosphorous leading to algal
blooms and eutrophication."
You might expect atmospheric oxygen to decline, as a
proportion of the atmosphere, as carbon dioxide levels increase,
but that the decline would be less than the increase in carbon
dioxide and as carbon dioxide as a proportion of atmospheric gas
is very tiny, the reduction in the proportion of atmospheric
oxygen would be smaller.
In fact atmospheric share of oxygen has been declining in the
past few years by two to four times the increase rate of
atmospheric carbon dioxide, and oceans have also experienced a
greater than expect fall in oxygen levels. Dr Mae’s calculations
and methodology can be examined
Karen Keefer wasn't sure what to expect from the two Acterra
volunteers who showed up on her doorstep in September wearing
matching T-shirts, one with a toolbox and the other with a briefcase
full of folders.
The Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station did its part in keeping
millions of homes and businesses in the Southwest cool this summer.
All three units at the nation's largest power producer operated
simultaneously since the start of summer, producing 4,000 megawatts
of power at any given time.
PGE spokesman Steve Corson said the company does not believe it
is violating the Clean Air Act. The issue was first raised in a
lawsuit against PGE by the Sierra Club and other environmental
groups that the utility is contesting in court.
Pollution levels from a red sludge spill in Hungary have declined and
the Danube, one of Europe's longest rivers, has suffered no palpable
damage so far, a spokesman for Hungarian disaster crews said on Friday.
Davari said one of the biggest problems with renewable energy
sources is figuring out how to store the energy once it's created.
Lumps of coal will lay around until someone burns them. But solar
rays and wind power come and go, so engineers have to find a way to
store such energy for an uninterrupted power source.
A recent study from researchers at the University of California (UC)
Irvine has found that since 1994, the overall amount of fresh water
flowing into the world's oceans has increased significantly. They found
that 18 percent more fresh water has reached the oceans between 1994 and
2006, an average annual rise of 1.5 percent.
It is not hard to see some of today’s troubles
as a repeat of the errors of the 1930s. There is arrogance up top. The
federal government is dilettantish with money and exhibits disregard and
even hostility to all other players. It is only as a result of this that
economic recovery seems out of reach.
According to the latest Gallup poll, Republicans only enjoy a 3 point
lead in the generic party ballot among all registered voters. But among
those most likely to vote, the edge expands to 18 points (56-38). Twice
as many Republicans as Democrats report themselves to be "very
enthusiastic" about voting in the survey.
"Nature without wolves is not nature," he says. "I have a
deep-seated, fierce love of nature, and I'm very afraid that slowly,
piece by piece, we're losing it all. The most important thing to me
in life, outside of family, is preserving wild nature. And wolves
are in the center of that."
The Mohawk Council of Akwesasne is one of nearly 80 groups and
organizations involved in trying to halt a shipment of nuclear waste
through the St. Lawrence Seaway.
TVA President and CEO Tom Kilgore, in a meeting with the Daily
Journal editorial board, also said Tuesday that the goal of the
energy company is to have its electricity produced one-third by
nuclear power, one-third by coal and one-third by natural gas.
The Aluminum Association, Can Manufacturers
Institute (CMI) and the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries
(ISRI) recently announced the 2009 Used Beverage Container (UBC)
recycling rate at 57.4 percent. This is the highest recycling
rate of any beverage container in the United States. In 2009,
Americans and the aluminum industry recycled nearly 55.5 billion
aluminum cans, nearly 2.3 billion more than in 2008. "The
aluminum can is infinitely recyclable
30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 4.27 percent with an
average 0.8 point for the week ending October 7, 2010, down from
last week when it averaged 4.32 percent. Last year at this time, the
30-year FRM averaged 4.87 percent.
The former Federal Reserve chairman said it is difficult to find
any sector of the U.S. economy that has any "spark," and
authorities should be examining what fiscal and monetary tools
they have available.
"The challenge now is we have intervened, it becomes more and
more difficult in the future, the monetary policy ... the fiscal
policy. We sure have to maintain some confidence in the dollar
or none of this would work," ...
When President Lyndon Johnson declared an “unconditional war on
poverty in America” in January 1964, the country’s poverty rate was
around 19 percent and falling.
Since then, the federal government has spent more than $13 trillion
fighting poverty. But a recent report showed that the poverty rate this
year is about 15 percent and climbing, and in all the years since “war”
was declared, the rate has never fallen below 10.5 percent.
We´ve generally gotten smarter in recent years about waste
generation. But there are many areas where we are still pretty stupid. I
put phone books in that latter category.
If all the residents of Maine were to weatherize
their homes, and thereby save about 30 percent on their energy
bills, about $550 million would be saved every year.
80% of all our metabolic energy production is
created by oxygen! The human body is largely composed of oxygen,
so it is no wonder that scientists are now discovering how low
levels of oxygen can disrupt the body’s ability to function
correctly. The oxygen concentration in a healthy human body is
approximately three times that of air.
The benefits of wind farms in terms of global
climate change are well recognized but according to researchers
at the University of Illinois they can also affect local
climates as well. The researchers observed that the area
immediately surrounding a wind farm is slightly warmer at night
and slightly cooler during the day compared to the rest of the
region.
Greenhouse gas emissions worldwide risk overshooting by a third
the threshold beyond which dangerous global warming looms, the
environment group WWF said on Wednesday, urging climate talks in
China to tackle the gap.
October 5, 2010
A total of 12 Bloom Energy Servers -- also known
as Bloom boxes -- have been installed on the 5th floor of
Adobe's West Tower at the company's headquarters campus, which
is composed of three high-rise towers and a parking structure.
Each server is the size of an average parking space and contains
thousands of Bloom fuel cells -- flat, solid ceramic squares
made from a sand-like powder -- which will convert air and
biogas into electricity via a clean electrochemical process,
producing zero net carbon emissions.
"America is practically owned by China," he told CNBC. China is
the largest foreign holder of Treasuries, with $847 billion as
of July.
The U.S. government isn’t addressing the trade deficit and the
exploding debt burden...
The amount of energy that the average American requires at home
has changed little since the early 1970s -- despite advances in
technology that have made many home appliances far more energy
efficient.
oxygen + carbon + hydrogen + nitrogen = protein
oxygen + hydrogen + carbon = carbohydrates
oxygen + hydrogen = water
oxygen + carbohydrates = energy
80% of all our metabolic energy production is created by oxygen! The
human body is largely composed of oxygen, so it is no wonder that
scientists are now discovering how low levels of oxygen can disrupt the
body’s ability to function correctly.
According to a study conducted by scientists from the
Scripps Institute there is less oxygen in the atmosphere today than
there used to be...It is roughly true that the oxygen depletion
is equivalent to a displacement by carbon dioxide. But it is not
exactly true.
A researcher who has found strong evidence that autism is caused
by mercury poisoning has been refused access to data that could
point to emissions from coal-fired power stations.
A planned study of possible new wilderness protections for the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has sparked a furor in Alaska, where
energy companies have long dreamed of tapping oil reserves beneath
its vast coastal plain home to herds of migrating animals.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service effort announced this week is
part of a sweeping review of a land-management plan for what is the
second-largest national wildlife refuge in the United States.
The world is in an "international currency war" as governments
manipulate their currencies' value to improve their export
competitiveness, Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega said.
Montana and other states in the West could wind
up being the unintended beneficiaries of an aggressive push to
decrease fossil fuel use in California, industry representatives
and others say.
...drawing a corollary between the banking
crisis and power companies, noting that big business simply
can't be trusted until it is tightly controlled. Utilities
should not take their distrust personally. The same applies to
Big Oil, with a strong emphasis being put on how the BP oil
spill could have prevented if the government had just done its
job.
According to the University of Copenhagen’s
Prof. Matthew Johnson, approximately one-sixth of the energy
consumed in the world is used for heating, cooling and
dehumidifying air in buildings. Because that air accumulates
toxins and pathogens, he explains, it must constantly be
expelled and replaced with new air that’s drawn in from outside.
That new air must then be heated, cooled and/or dehumidified all
over again.
Outdoors the typical carbon dioxide CO2 level in
air is 300 ppm to 400 ppm. 400 ppm is a 0.04% concentration of a
gas in air.
A comparison with even a relatively low level of indoor CO2
(600 ppm and higher) may indicate a lack of adequate fresh air
entering a building
Water contaminated with coal dust has spilled for the fourth time
since 2000 into a Belmont County creek that is home to an endangered
salamander, state agencies reported this morning.
The writing on the wall became ever clearer the
week of Sept. 27 when the Senate failed to include the $3.4
billion proposal in a variety of stopgap measures under
consideration to keep the government operating until after the
November elections.
Amid growing concerns about the legal practices of mortgage
lenders, Old Republic National Title Insurance told agents
Friday it would stop insuring homes foreclosed by JPMorgan Chase
& Co.
Work-hungry contractors and the unemployed who crowded into the
2010 Green Job Summit in San Bernardino this week hoped that a new
rebate program aimed at making existing homes more energy efficient
will jump start the region's moribund construction industry.
The report, published by the Foundation for International
Environmental Law and Development (FIELD), based in the United
Kingdom, says small island nations and other threatened
countries have the right and likely the procedural means to
pursue an inter-state case before the United Nations'
International Court of Justice.
FBI today announced that an international group
of hackers that was busted this week stole $70 million from the
bank accounts of small companies, municipalities, churches and
other victims in the U.S. The FBI statement added that
ninety-two people have been charged and 39 arrested in the U.S.
for their involvement in the high-tech crime.
While many workers in the private sector have been suffering the
effects of the recession, federal employees have been enjoying a boom in
employment and compensation — at taxpayers’ expense.
...this week Fujitsu
announced that it will begin shipping its next-generation supercomputer
which has a lofty performance goal of 10 petaflops – that's ten thousand
trillion operations per second!
Natural gas continues to loom large over
America's energy sector, with abundant supplies affecting every
aspect of the industry. Natural gas-fired generation will
represent 82 percent of generation capacity additions in the
power sector in 2013, the government has just reported.
A recent change in the methodology of how data is gathered
had me full of praise but also unleashed pent-up anger in me.
While there are many examples of this, I want to discuss how our
government fudges the numbers and spins a story they want us to
believe.
What is the one big hurdle to a true recovery in America? Jobs.
Most House Republicans envision killing Nancy
Pelosi’s special global warming committee if they claw
their way back into the majority this November.
But one senior GOP lawmaker has another idea in mind:
sweet revenge.
Arizona is poised to become a major player in
the multi-billion dollar algae-biofuel industry, and Governor
Jan Brewer dedicated two million dollars to support important
research and development that promises to develop alternative
fuels and propel the state's economy into the future.
It's no secret that folks at Ohio Northern University are
committed to embracing green technology. On Friday, U.S. Sen.
Sherrod Brown visited the campus to see some of the efforts for
himself.
Comparisons of Barack Obama's presidency to Jimmy Carter's miss the
point. Carter's presidency did little to change the basic party
construct of the nation or to influence its ideology. Reagan's
presidency accomplished both.
Concentrations of
carbon dioxide are increasing rapidly in the Earth's atmosphere,
primarily because of human activities. About one third of the carbon
dioxide that humans produce by burning
fossil fuels is being absorbed by the world's oceans, gradually
causing seawater to become more acidic.
However, such "ocean acidification" is not the only way that carbon
dioxide can harm
marine animals.
India's environment minister said on Monday the country could not
have high economic growth and a rapid rise in carbon emissions now
that the nation was the number three emitter after China and the
United States.
Iraq has run annual budget surpluses each year since the United
States invaded and ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003 — while the U.S. pumped
more than half a trillion dollars into Iraq and ran deficits in every
one of those years.
During his campaign for prime minister in Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu
called for putting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on trial in The
Hague on charges of incitement to genocide for calling for the
destruction of Israel.
The "Military
Biofuel Applications" report examines how the military is using
biofuel to reduce costs, curb emissions, and practice energy
independence.
The coal industry is the target of a lot of
debris. While most of it is being tossed by
environmental organizations, the rubble is now
coming from the investment banking industry - those
that finance the operations of coal mining
companies.
At a time when the British Medical Association
is calling for an end to national funding for homeopathy and
detractors are describing it as "nonsense on stilts", a Nobel
prize-winning scientist has made a discovery that suggests that
homeopathy does have a scientific basis after all.
The vast majority of Americans are worried for the future and the
safety of their families now that Obamacare has officially begun to be
instituted.
And for good reason. Now even the folks behind Obamacare are starting
to voice their concerns
US President Barack Obama's science advisor,
John Holdren, took on climate change deniers in a comprehensive,
data-heavy speech last month at the Kavli Science Forum in Oslo,
Norway.
President Barack Obama is pledging to throw his full
weight next year behind efforts to overhaul the nation's
energy and climate change policies, though he concedes
such moves might need to happen "in chunks."
The Green Energy Act Alliance (GEAA), a coalition of farmers,
First Nations, trade unionists, environmentalists and builders of
clean energy, applauded today's announcement by the Ontario
government that it is shutting down four coal-fired units today.
This is a huge contribution to the Premier's commitment to replace
coal entirely with clean energy sources.
The thin layer of topsoil that
covers the planet’s land surface is the foundation of
civilization. This soil, typically 6 inches or so deep, was
formed over long stretches of geological time as new soil
formation exceeded the natural rate of erosion. But sometime
within the last century, as human and livestock populations
expanded, soil erosion began to exceed new soil formation over
large areas.
Scientists were stunned to discover that atmospheric oxygen level in
ancient times measured twice as high as that of today: We are being more
and more deprived of precious oxygen in the modern environment, and it
is causing serious health problems as numerous studies and research on
Oxygen Deficiency have proved.
There’s been a lot of discussion since the Federal Reserve
released its latest monetary policy statement on Sept. 21
regarding the Fed’s purported plans to soon begin a new round of
quantitative easing.
According to the most recent issue of the "Monthly Energy
Review" by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA),
renewable energy sources (i.e., biofuels, biomass, geothermal,
hydroelectric, solar, wind) provided 11.14% of domestic U.S.
energy production during the first six months of 2010 – the
latest time-frame for which data has been published.
The
U.S. military is a fossil fuel burning machine. Over 77% of
its energy is derived from petroleum, while natural gas and "other
electric" sources account for the rest.
An independent science advisory team has issued a draft report
that supports the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's conclusion
that mountaintop removal is causing serious damage to Appalachian
streams.
Across the northern Rocky Mountains, bighorn sheep are dying by
the hundreds from pneumonia and alarmed wildlife officials are
hunting and killing the majestic animals to halt the spread of the
disease.
The National Bureau of Economic Research, the official
arbiter of recession dates, marked June 2009 as the end of the
Great Recession.
With economic growth sliding to 1.6 percent in the second
quarter and the jobless rate remaining at 9.6 percent, many say
the recession continues.
Just last year experts at the International Energy Agency
proposed a target for China's carbon emissions to peak in 2020
before declining if the world were to be saved from devastating
climate change. Too late now.
The new Supreme Court term, which begins
tomorrow, includes cases on some of the most contested issues of
the day, including protests at military funerals, support for
religious schools, violent video games, DNA evidence, and
prosecutorial misconduct.
Over confidence is not a danger. Everybody
is working as hard as they can to elect Republicans all over
America. Nobody is apathetic on the right. The only
indifference and passivity in the nation is on the left.
“They” is Ben Bernanke and his Federal Reserve Board.
Of course, the headline is a statement that many people would
agree with — it’s the nature of the Fed. ..quantitative easing
is the Fed’s feel good term for printing money by buying bonds.
Advocacy groups and appliance manufacturers
hailed a 25 percent increase in energy efficiency for most new
refrigerators, starting in 2014, thanks to new efficiency
standards that the U.S.
Department of Energy (DOE)
announced today...
Leave it to politicians to make a bad situation worse.
The House passed a bill that enables the United States to seek
penalties against China and other nations that manipulate their
currencies lower to create a trade advantage.
Someone should tell these politicians that in the past 40 years,
the United States has been biggest culprits of this.
Mr Wen said: "I believe I and all the Chinese
people have such conviction that China will make continuous
progress and the people's wishes and need for democracy and
freedom are irresistible. I hope you will be able to gradually
see the continuous progress of
China."
Researchers have uncovered the largest
geothermal hot spot in the eastern United States. According to a
unique collaboration between Google and academic geologists,
West Virginia sits atop several hot patches of Earth, some as
warm as 200˚C and as shallow as 5 kilometers.
As president of the Harwich Neighborhood Alliance, Sheila Bowen
helped block the installation of two 400-foot-high municipal wind
turbines on water department property near her home.
That experience convinced her that the Cape needed a stronger
voice to counter what she believes is spin from wind industry
lobbyists, consultants and developers.
October 1, 2010
10. Obama's FDA is
regulating genetically engineered salmon, a genetically modified
organism (GMO) that is the first of its kind, not as an animal,
but as an animal drug.
Arizona Public Service Company's
drive to develop more solar energy took another step forward
today with the announcement of an 18-megawatt solar photovoltaic
plant to be located 70 miles southwest of Phoenix in Gila Bend.
It’s just a matter of time before we are eating clones—if we are
not eating them now.
As the world haltingly recovers
from the recession, regulators are struggling to modify the
financial system to prevent another crisis. The latest effort:
stricter capital requirements to help prevent large banks from
collapsing under the weight of unexpected losses.
If you live in Connecticut,
California, Maryland, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York,
Texas, North Carolina, New Jersey or Ohio your state is doing
something right – a lot right – when it comes to energy
efficiency...
BP announced
today that it has pledged certain Gulf of Mexico assets as
collateral for the $20 billion Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Trust
which was set up to pay legitimate claims arising from the April
20 incident.
An abundance of natural gas being
extracted from the Marcellus Shale and other geological
formations is giving coal more competition as a source for the
nation's power plants, but the dark rock will remain our primary
fuel for electricity for the foreseeable future.
These dried coca leaves are ready
to be used. The coca leaf can be processed into cocaine, but the
unprocessed leaf is deeply woven into Bolivian society.
The Genesis Solar Energy Project
and the Imperial Valley Solar Project, totaling 959 MW, are now
the fifth and sixth solar power plants that the Energy
Commission has licensed in the past five weeks. Since late
August, the Commission has licensed 2,829 MW of renewable solar
power in the California desert.
The Holy Grail, the final piece in the renewable energy jigsaw,
an unnecessary luxury - energy storage has been described as all
of these in relation to large-scale renewables' penetration.
Storage that can be deployed at multi-MW scale is
knocking on the door of the power industry and
announcing its ability to, among other virtues, help
deal with wind's intermittency, integrate renewables
more smoothly into the grid, store renewable energy for
sale at peak times and compensate for creaking power
networks.
"Dentists are the largest polluter of mercury to wastewater,"
... "We welcome EPA's proposal to end the Bush-era midnight deal
allowing dentists to pollute until they enacted voluntary
pollution prevention initiatives - which never substantially
materialized."
Clear evidence of the failure of voluntary programs had been
well documented...
The European Union on Thursday
warned Poland, Estonia, Belgium, Latvia, Hungary and Slovakia of
legal action after they failed to draw up plans to boost their
use of renewable energy.
A speedy approval for any kind of energy project is rare and
unusual.
The U.S. government’s arduous approval process, which can
take as long as 15 years for some new projects, has long been a
chief deterrent in the development of critical energy
infrastructure in the U.S.
But a new, encouraging trend is emerging in the hydropower
industry.
The country's
energy infrastructure is becoming a bit archaic. Bringing it up
to speed, however, is problematic as the nation is struggling to
overcome partisan politics and a fledgling economy.
The center’s building near
downtown Sioux City is already bustling with activity. As people
arrive – for parenting classes; AA gatherings; Lakota language
instruction; domestic violence education; meetings of the policy
group...
he world's rivers are in a crisis
of "ominous" proportions, according to a new global analysis,
published today in the journal "Nature." Rivers in the developed
world, including those in much of the United States and Western
Europe, are under severe threat despite decades of attention to
pollution control and investments in environmental protection,
the study shows.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed AB2514 into
official law this week, and it may change the face of the entire
power industry if the details of that law spread to other
regions in the U.S.
What makes this law so unique? It gets very close to
mandating that utilities invest in energy storage systems to
make connecting renewable power easier.
Nearly nine months after the
earthquake, more than a million Haitians still live on the
streets between piles of rubble. One reason: Not a cent of the
$1.15 billion the U.S. promised for rebuilding has arrived.
The promise of a Fuel Cell Revolution has come and gone. But
don't discount the technology yet: While companies have
struggled with cost and reliability issues over the years, there
are still plenty of niche opportunities for fuel cells in
today's market.
A shortage of berries and other
foods that hungry bears normally rely on to bulk up before
hibernation has sent conflicts with humans spiraling to
unprecedented levels in the Rocky Mountain West.
The insecticidal protein Cry1Ab
has been shown to leach from corn debris into adjacent streams
Unveiled today at the 2010 Paris
Motor Show, the C-X75 boasts some impressive performance stats
that prove this is no mere show pony. Powered by four 145kW
electric motors – one on each wheel – producing 780bhp and a
total torque output of 1600Nm (1180lb ft), the C-X75 can
accelerate from 0-100km/h (62mph) in just 3.4 seconds, and from
80-145km/h (50-90mph) in 2.3 seconds, on its way to a top speed
of 330km/h (205mph).
For a good chunk of this year,
tribal energy prospects seemed dim in D.C., as politicians
turned their minds to other issues, including re-election. But a
couple new developments show promise.
By penetrating those nerves with
brief, high-intensity bursts of blue light, they were able to
produce muscle contractions similar to those that would occur
naturally. The technology is called “optogenetics.”
Home improvement retailer Lowe´s
Companies Inc. said today it has installed recycling centers in
nearly 1,700 U.S. stores to provide a one-stop recycling
destination for customers.
California is on track to approve a wave of solar farms this
year that will more than double the state's ability to generate
electricity from solar power.
Since August, four major solar projects -- including one on
7,000-plus acres billed as the world's largest -- have won state
approval.
A decadelong hunt by an astronomer at UC
Santa Cruz has yielded the discovery of a planet that could be
the most Earth-like planet ever discovered -- and the best case
yet for a habitable one, ending our cosmic loneliness.
The planet, called Gliese 581g, is located in prime real
estate within the constellation Libra, where it's sweater
weather, not too windy, with scenic views of a white sky.
In many developing countries, the
absence of surface-based air pollution sensors makes it
difficult, and in some cases impossible, to get even a rough
estimate of the abundance of a subcategory of airborne particles
that epidemiologists suspect contributes to millions of
premature deaths each year. The problematic particles, called
fine particulate matter (PM2.5), are 2.5 micrometers or less in
diameter, about a tenth the fraction of human hair. These small
particles can get past the body's normal defenses and penetrate
deep into the lungs.
One in every five of the world's
plant species is threatened with extinction, biodiversity
experts said today in the first global analysis of extinction
risk for the world's estimated 380,000 plant species.
The public hearing was in
Louisville, but the ramifications of a decision by the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency regarding the classification of
coal ash certainly impacts Indiana residents.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Ryan-Murphy
currency devaluation bill on Wednesday evening, which allows the
government to impose tariffs and duties on exports from
countries — China the likely target — that have held down their
currency for artificial trade gains, but market reaction so far
has been subdued.
The bipartisan bill, introduced by two Republicans, passed by
a wide 348-79 margin.
Whipping across the Caribbean at
40 miles per hour (65 kph), Tropical Storm Nicole caused a lot
of damage in six hours Wednesday before it weakened into a
remnant low pressure area off the Florida coast.
London, UK
By 2010, renewable energy had reached a clear tipping point in
the context of global energy supply, concludes the 'Renewables
2010 Global Status Report'. With renewables comprising fully one
quarter of global power capacity from all sources and delivering
18% of global electricity supply in 2009, the latest release of
the definitive assessment of the state of the global renewable
energy industry...
The world's rivers, the single
largest renewable water resource for humans and a crucible of
aquatic biodiversity, are in a crisis of ominous proportions,
according to a new global analysis.
Manufacturing growth slowed last month and inflation remained
subdued in August, data showed Friday, leaving the door open for
the Federal Reserve to launch a fresh round of monetary policy
easing.
Data also showed both consumer and construction spending rose
more than expected in August, but investment in private projects
fell to its lowest level in more than 12 years,
As DOE tests on E15 come to a
close, Big Oil is throwing everything but the kitchen sink at
the EPA in an attempt to stall them from approving the use of
higher blends of ethanol in our fuel. For the second time this
week, oil-backed groups have called on Washington to reject the
use of E15 with the blatantly misleading claim that ethanol
could harm engines and that it is untested – despite ethanol’s
long history as a fuel in this country, and mountains of data
that E15 is perfectly safe.
BP's leaking oil well in the Gulf
of Mexico was conclusively sealed this week, but even now,
questions remain about the amount of oil that actually came out
of it. Initially after the April 20 explosion, officials claimed
that the flow could not be measured. Then, as public pressure
for information mounted, they looked for ways to measure it, and
started producing estimates: at first, 1,000 barrels a day; then
5,000; then 12,000 to 19,000; then upward from there. Now, in
the first independent, peer-reviewed paper on the leak's volume,
scientists have affirmed heightened estimates of what is now
acknowledged as the largest marine oil accident ever. Using a
new technique to analyze underwater video of the well riser,
they say it leaked some 56,000 to 68,000 barrels daily--maybe
more--until the first effective cap was installed, on July 15.
The Supreme Court is getting
involved in an unusual freedom of information dispute over
whether corporations may assert personal privacy interests to
prevent the government from releasing documents about them.
There is little
argument about the economic and environmental superiority of
natural gas as a transportation fuel, just as there is little
debate about the disastrous consequences of importing USD 1
billion per day of foreign oil, and therefore likely funding
both sides of the war on terror. But sadly, we still wait on the
federal government to pass an energy plan to address our
nation's serious energy, economic, national security and
environmental challenges
September is proving to be a month of political intrigue,
international intrigue, and some downright fantasy regarding our
energy future.
30-year
fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 4.32 percent with an average
0.8 point for the week ending September 30, 2010, down from last
week when it averaged 4.37 percent. Last year at this time, the
30-year FRM averaged 4.94 percent.
Both BP and the Obama administration aim to
strengthen the safety of deepwater oil drilling operations with
sweeping operational and regulatory changes announced over the
past 24 hours.
Homebuilders in the central San Joaquin Valley are trying
something counterintuitive in this tough real estate market:
adding expensive features to their homes.
The idea is to lure buyers with energy-efficient features
that can save hundreds of dollars each month on utility bills.
The strong winds off the Atlantic Ocean could
become a cost-effective way to power much of the East Coast -
especially North and South Carolina, Delaware, Massachusetts,
New Jersey and Virginia, a new study released Tuesday says.
The Danish island of Samso is entirely self
sufficient, thanks in part to offshore wind turbines. Now the
Danish climate commission predicts wind could see a fossil
fuel-free Denmark by 2050.
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