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"If a nation expects to be ignorant and
free in a state of civilization, it expects
what never was and never will be..."
Thomas
Jefferson
Can
this not be taken to an even greater level,
to that of preparation and being
independent? We cannot realistically be free
from the control of others if we don't have
the knowledge or the tools to manage our own
destinies. If we can't grow a simple garden
for our food, if we can't utilize food
storage methods to put up food for the
future, if we can't make do without the
trappings of "civilization" such as
electricity or gas, then we aren't really
free at all. [ed]
August 31, 2012
That’s about how much money the United States of America is
in debt to creditors today – a sum which won’t be paid off
anytime soon, if ever.
And that debt is growing by
leaps and bounds. Millions of dollars are added to the total
every few minutes. Interest alone just to service this
mountain of debt is now accumulating at the rate of about
$200 billion every year.
It’s going to get worse.
I have no idea what is coming to Europe and North America
this winter and next summer, in the wake of the record ice melt,
but it's unlikely to be pleasant. Please note that this record
represents a loss of about 30% of Arctic sea ice, against the
long-term average. When that climbs to 50% or 70% or 90%, the
impacts are likely to be worse.
Our governments do nothing.
U.S. commercial crude oil stocks
increased by 3.778 million barrels to 364.524 million barrels
during the reporting week ended August 24, according to data
released Wednesday by the U.S. Energy Information Administration
(EIA).
The carbon stored under Antarctic
ice is on par with the amount held in the northern hemisphere’s
frozen permafrost soils and the lower end of estimates for
methane trapped under the Arctic Ocean, according to Jemma
Wadham, professor of Glaciology at the U.K.’s University of
Bristol and lead author of a study in the journal Nature
yesterday.
Large volumes of the greenhouse gas
methane could have been produced under the Antarctic Ice Sheet
over millions of years, which could add to global warming if
released into the atmosphere by a thaw, a study said on
Wednesday.
It's official: The initiative
attempting to prohibit coal shipments through Bellingham will
not be on the ballot in November.
An injunction banning No. 2 U.S.
oil company Chevron Corp and its drilling contractor Transocean
Ltd from operating in Brazil was upheld by a panel of three
Brazilian federal judges on Tuesday while charges over a
November oil spill are being considered.
Despite the difficult market
environment for the solar industry as a whole, the opportunity
for building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) looks extremely
promising.
There were two big developments
Monday in the case of a motorist who was shot and killed along
Greenwell Springs Road Friday after a fight with a police
officer. Investigators say an autopsy shows the deadly bullet
was fired by a bystander, not the officer.
Some clever cross-referencing has
helped an international team of researchers establish a link
between low periods of solar activity and frosty European
winters. The Sun's level of magnetic activity follows an 11-year
cycle. Peaks in this cycle pose a threat to telecommunications
and electricity networks and it's long been suspected that
there's a correlation between the opposite end of the cycle and
extreme winters in Europe. A lack of historical average
temperature data makes it difficult to confirm this link, but
scientists have filled the gap by studying the comings and
goings of 19th Century riverboats on the Rhine.
The U.S. Clean Heat & Power
Association (U.S. CHP Association) today praised the Obama
Administration for today's Executive Order, "Accelerating
Investment in Industrial Energy Efficiency," which calls for a
national combined heat and power deployment goal of an
additional 40GW by 2020.
India is a fast-developing nation with a population of 1.2
billion people, and by 2030 will likely be the most-populous in
the world. India's disparities and inequalities are staggering,
with 32.7 percent of the population living on $1.25 per day. As
the country continues to grow, the impacts on its citizens and
the environment become more severe.
A CNNMoney poll shows that 93
percent of strategists think the Fed should refrain from easing
at its Sept. 12-13 meeting, and 77 percent of economists feel
the same way.
Over the last five years, Maryland
has added 530 times more solar to its grid. The magnitude of a
recently completed solar PV system should come as no surprise.
The new 16.1 MW grid-connected system will add approximately 20
million kWh to Maryland's grid.
Consumer spending got off to a
fairly firm start in the third quarter, rising by the most in
five months and offering hope economic growth would pick up this
quarter.
Although tropical storm Isaac is causing evacuations and is
expected to lead to power outages when it comes ashore, there
may be a silver lining for drought-pressed farmers farther
inland.
After the storm leaves the coast, it is expected to move
north, dumping heavy rain up the Mississippi Delta.
Cooling the emissions from
coal-fired power plants would significantly reduce the levels of
dangerous chemicals entering the atmosphere
When the older, greatest generation
looks around at the financial mess we're in, I have to wonder
what they think. My mother-in-law is from that era, and I know
that she has a few choice words. This is a woman who grew up in
the Depression, in a family of 11 siblings on a farm in
Louisiana. I tease her somewhat about her thriftiness (she won't
let one spoonful of food go down the drain) and about her "pack
rat" tendencies (which allow her to reuse items over and over
again for various reasons without shelling out any money), but I
have to give her kudos.
Here is another reason QE3 will do
little to change bank behavior or encourage lending. US
commercial banks are awash with liquidity these days as deposits
hit a new high (approaching $9 trillion).
Hurricane Isaac has caused up to $1
billion in economic losses for offshore energy properties and up
to $1.5 billion in insured losses onshore in Louisiana and
neighboring states, disaster modeler Eqecat said on Wednesday.
Economic uncertainty in Europe is
rising "massively" as growth prospects worsen, especially for
debt-strapped southern eurozone members, European Central Bank
Governing Council member Ewald Nowotny said.
Residents of Highlander Avenue in
Hidden Hills live nearest to the substation site. They told the
zoning commission that Empire moved into the rural neighborhood
with heavy equipment and cleared trees from about three acres
without any notification or explanation to any of them.
Oklahoma's energy policy is focused on free-market realities
whereas the federal government picks winners and losers, state
Secretary of Energy Michael Ming, an engineer and educator, told
business recruiters and University of Tulsa students Monday.
"We're going to talk pragmatism vs. ideology instead of
trying to grab the unknown silver bullet," he said during the TU
Energy Update and Recruiters Workshop. "We'll take what we have
and make it better."
E.ON, Germany's largest utility, is planning to expand its
solar business to the United States, aiming to install an annual
120 megawatts (MW) of solar power there from 2015, the head of
its renewable unit said.
"There is more sun in the United States, projects are bigger
and competition greater than in Europe," Mike Winkel, chief
executive of E.ON Climate & Renewables told Reuters at the
annual Handelsblatt conference on renewable energy.
The second headwind threatening the banking industry is the
ongoing European financial crises. While the most
immediate danger currently engulfs Greece, Spain and Italy, the
debt crisis could potentially bring down the entire European
Union and, along with it, the global economy.
While the current U.S. economy seems to be stabilizing and
the stock market robust, don’t be fooled. Evidence of this
already exists by looking at the GDP Annual Growth rates of the
world’s 15 largest economies...
Stock markets will roil more than
normal this September, a typically volatile month anyway, as
home-grown and overseas uncertainty will send stocks swinging up
and down all month, experts say.
The European debt crisis
continues to threaten global recovery, while China continues to
steer its economy back to faster growth rates and avoid a hard
landing in the process.
In the first half of 2012, 229
renewable energy projects accounted for more than 38 percent of
new electrical generation capacity, including 50 wind projects
(2,367 MW), 111 solar projects (588 MW), 59 biomass projects
(271 MW), five geothermal projects (87 MW) and four water power
projects (11 MW).
Australia has a bit of a history
when it comes to pioneering cyborg technology. The country was
home to the first functioning bionic ear implant in 1978 and
now, in 2012, comes a new version of a bionic eye, with Bionic
Vision Australia (BVA) researchers announcing the success of
their first retinal implant trial.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's
cabinet approved a draft law on Wednesday to accelerate the
expansion of offshore windparks, a crucial part of a planned
shift to green energy from nuclear.
Expected growth in Europe's generation of renewable energy
offers hope for copper demand, helping to offset a lack of
appetite from builders and other traditional industrial users as
economies slow.
Green energy projects such as wind farms, which use large
amounts of copper, are set to grow as countries aim to meet a
European Union target to obtain 20 percent of power from
renewable sources by 2020.
Can we have enough to eat and a healthy environment, too? Yes
-- if we're smart about it, suggests a study published in Nature
this week by a team of researchers from the University of
Minnesota and McGill University in Montreal.
Global demand for food is expected to double by 2050 due to
population growth and increased standards of living. To meet
this demand, it is often assumed we will need to expand the
environmental burden of agriculture.
Increase Charged Particles
à Deceased
Magnetic Field à
Increase Outer Core Convection
à Increase of Mantle
Plumes Increase in Earthquake & Volcanoes
à Cools Mantle and
Outer Core à Return
of Outer Core Convection
Torrential rain and flooding from
Tropical Storm Isaac will bring relief to a large chunk of
drought-stricken cropland but will stall early harvest of corn,
soybeans and rice, an agricultural meteorologist said on
Tuesday.
Concisely stated, “Domination is
wrong!” It is wrong for many reasons, chief among which is the
fact that domination results in its correlative, dehumanization.
Based on that standard of judgment it is wrong for one people to
dominate another people by stripping them of their ability to
live free, and by holding them under a system of domination.
Based on that judgment, in my view we ought to be working to end
both domination and dehumanization wherever they exist on the
planet.
Japan did not import any crude from
Iran in July, preliminary figures released Friday by the
Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry showed.
It is the
first time since February 1981 that Japan has had no crude
imports from Iran, the METI data shows. Japan imported 302,000
b/d of crude from Iran in July last year.
You wouldn’t think a game of fetch
could be deadly. But last month an Indiana couple’s dogs died
after fetching balls in an algae-infested lake. There were no
warnings posted, and only after the dogs got sick and died did
their owners learn the lake was toxic.
A federal judge found the Tennessee
Valley Authority (TVA) was negligent in not preventing a
December 2008 coal ash dam failure at its Kingston power plant
that allowed millions of gallons of ash-laden sludge to foul a
local river.
The notion is intoxicating: Capture the wind that has
buffeted boaters on the Great Lakes for centuries and convert it
into clean, renewable energy. But one important piece of data
has been missing: We don't know exactly how windy it is out
there.
Soon, we will.
Here are some of this morning's key
economic news coming out of China. Given that China has been the
largest component of the global GDP growth, the situation is
worth monitoring closely.
The impact of wind energy in this region of West Texas can be
seen simply by driving down the road.
South of Sweetwater, hundreds of towering wind turbines from
some of the nation's largest wind farms dot ridge lines as far
as the eye can see.
The long-term prospects for natural gas fired power are
"sound," especially in North America and Europe, according to
research from Frost & Sullivan.
Because of its relatively clean burning characteristics and
flexible operating capabilities, gas-fired power generation
should grow across the globe.
By 2030, the U.S. is project to
save nearly 23 billion gallons of gasoline in and reduce carbon
dioxide emissions by 270 million metric tons. Consumers could
see $54 billion in net savings. The new fuel efficiency
standards will also relieve some of the United States'
dependence on foreign oil.
Scientists have developed new
nanocrystals that allow solar panels to generate both
electricity and hydrogen gas
Even with more than a dozen gas
pipeline projects going into service in the Northeast by year's
end, volatility could still abound this winter, as these
projects spread out the supply glut caused by rampant Marcellus
Shale production without fully breaching the gas-hungry
city-gates markets, traders and analyst sources said.
New York is looking to invest in solar and it has sweetened
the pot with $107 million in incentives to increase the amount
of electricity generated by PV systems throughout New York.
In 2012, $36.4 million of the $107 million will be available.
The
agency insists that even organic almonds be cooked, but doesn’t
want consumers to know they aren’t raw or how they are cooked.
Activists planning to march before
the Democratic National Convention went over their plans one
last time Wednesday, and said they expect thousands to turn out
Sunday and protest Charlotte-based Bank of America and Duke
Energy.
“More than one-fourth of all the water we use worldwide is
taken to grow over one billion tons of food that nobody eats,”
Torgny Holmgren, executive director of the Stockholm
International Water Institute, said Monday at the opening of
World Water Week.
“Reducing the waste of food is the smartest and most direct
route to relieve pressure on water and land resources,” he said.
Two recently-issued federal studies
underscore the dramatic growth in electrical generation from
geothermal, solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources
during the first three and one-half years of the Obama
Administration.
Solar activity was moderate. A
region around the east limb produced an M1 flare. No
Earth-directed CMEs were observed Geomagnetic activity is
expected to be quiet to unsettled on 31 August and 1 September
with a chance for minor to major storm levels at high latitudes.
Cities that agreed to buy power
from the Prairie State coal plant in southwestern Illinois are
paying higher prices than promised by the plant's developer and
will continue to pay above-market rates for electricity for the
next decade, according to a report issued Wednesday by the
Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
additions to proven oil and gas
reserves equal about 10 percent of the overall U.S. oil and gas
endowment, according to a recent U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
estimate of reserve growth in conventional reservoirs. The USGS
estimates that the mean potential undiscovered, conventional
reserve additions for the United States total 32 billion barrels
(bb) of oil, 291 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of natural gas, and
10 bb of natural gas liquids (NGL).
Growing global interest in harvesting the sea's vast generation
potential is now focused on the UK, where a series of
initiatives such as the new Marine Energy Parks are aimed at
maintaining the country's technological lead.
With his pledge to achieve U.S. energy independence by 2020.
It's just too bad his plan relies almost entirely on fossil
fuels and largely ignores the solid promise of clean energy.
"The completion of the photovoltaic
training yard is an exciting addition to sustainable green
energy practice and workforce development in Utah. It has been
great to be a part of this project--it demonstrates the
College's commitment to help prepare Utah's workforce for
renewable energy technologies and conservation,"
When completed, the facility will
consist of approximately 300 acres of algae cultivation ponds
and processing facilities, producing 1.5 million gallons of
crude oil per year. The cultivation area consists of some of
the largest algae ponds ever built with groupings of 1.1 acre
and 2.2 acre ponds which are an eighth of a mile long.
Inexpensive brain-computer
interfaces could be used maliciously to obtain private
information such as PINs stored in one's memory, according to
researchers. Are you ready for brain spyware?
Renewable energy is emerging as the
“clinch deal” in Japan`s painful power crisis that pits the
government and business against public demand for zero nuclear
power. But experts say the going is easier said than done.
What if you could track the source
of contaminants in your stormwater quickly and easily, without
relying solely on the painstaking and expensive process of lab
analysis? A small but highly specialized outfit from Michigan
provides this service for municipalities with its unique and
groundbreaking methodology.
So much for the hopes and dreams of
German decoupling from the Eurozone's economic troubles. How
things have changed in just six months! Germany's growth
trajectory is now converging with the rest of the euro
area's weakened economic conditions.
Xcel Energy's popular program to subsidize solar-electric
arrays may not be extinguished after all.
The Minnesota Commerce Department's energy resources
division, which reviews utilities' energy conservation spending,
said it supports continuing Xcel's Solar Rewards program, which
costs the utility's customers $5 million a year.
Wisconsin should end monopoly
regulation of electric utilities and open its power market up to
competition, a national electricity choice coalition said
Thursday.
There are ongoing moral and ethical
battles concerning the farming and application of human
embryonic stem cells in medical research and applications.
Without judging any of the viewpoints represented in the fracas,
it is clear that the stem cell world would be a friendlier place
if the harvesting of embryonic stem cells were not necessary.
Toward this goal, Johns Hopkins scientists have developed a
reliable method to turn the clock back on blood cells, restoring
them to a primitive stem cell state from which they can then
develop into any other type of cell in the body.
Wall Street did not cause the U.S.
housing bubble and its collapse. China did, according to a new
study from the Erasmus Research Institute of Management.
...according to researchers at UCLA, sacrificing sleep to
cram for an exam is actually counterproductive.
According to new research, regardless of how much a student
studies each day, if sleep time is forfeited, he or she is
likely to have more academic problems the following day which
can include misunderstanding of certain concepts or performing
poorly on tests or quizzes.
The technology, a thermosyphon
cooler developed by Johnson Controls, transfers heat to the
environment without evaporative water loss by using an
air-cooled refrigerant that pre-cools water before it enters the
cooling tower. This reduces the amount of water that must be
cooled by evaporation in the cooling tower and, ultimately,
water consumption.
Over the past year we have heard
intermittent calls for the restoration of confidence, usually by
those who would relax all manner of regulation and oversight of
commercial and financial ventures. The past, it would seem,
adds credibility to their argument. Regulation in the financial
markets and the internal financial operations of publicly held
companies has done absolutely nothing to prevent the ongoing
crisis we find ourselves in.
In the eyes of the government, I'm
probably considered a criminal. All because I had the audacity
to seek out wholesome, nutrient-dense, naturally prepared food.
It all started six years ago, when one of my children got sick,
and conventional medicine had nothing to offer him. Nothing.
Despite taking him to some of the best hospitals and doctors in
the region, nobody had any answers. And meanwhile, I watched my
9-year old suffer in pain day after day after day. It went on
for over a year. Some days he could barely get out of bed.
I decided I wanted folks who had
hands-on experience with their subject matter. I wanted writers
with a passion for what they were writing about. I didn't want
someone who would go to Gun Digest to research a weapon
for an article... I wanted someone with experience in weaponry
to actually write our articles.
One million tons of water flow through this channel every
second.
Further round the coast of the Orkneys, the sea dashes waves
against cliffs.
This is one of the roughest patches of water on the planet.
Some in the industry believe harnessing the power of the sea
here could produce enough electricity to power one fifth of all
the UK's energy needs and perhaps more.
University of Alberta ecologist
David Schindler has reviewed data from studies of controlling
human-caused algae blooms in lakes and says controlling the
input of the nutrient phosphorus is the key to fighting the
problem.
Federal Open Market Committee
(FOMC) meeting, indicated that overall economic activity
“continued to expand gradually” in the period since the last
report in mid-July. Eight of the Federal Reserve Districts saw
modest or moderate growth during the reporting period while
three noted a slowing growth and one cited mixed reports from
business contacts (this distribution of assessments was
unchanged from the previous report).
Fuel efficiency of U.S. cars and light trucks will nearly
double by 2025 under a standard finalized by the Obama
administration on Tuesday.
American vehicles will get 54.5 miles to the gallon in the
new standard that aims to save consumers at the fuel pump, while
cutting dependency on foreign oil imports and greenhouse gas
emissions.
Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC) yesterday
released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market
Survey (PMMS), showing fixed mortgage rates pulling back and
following bond yields lower after gradually moving higher over
the past month.
The US Interior Department said
Thursday that Shell can drill "top holes" into non-oil-bearing
zones and make other preparations for an exploratory well in
Alaska's Chukchi Sea.
U.S. prime money market funds
(MMFs) continued to increase their exposure to Japanese banks
while exposure to eurozone banks also grew moderately, according
to Fitch Ratings' latest research on MMF holdings as of end-July
2012.
More jobs in American wind power were lost this week, this time
in manufacturing facilities in Colorado and Iowa, in the absence
of a policy signal only Congress can provide: extension of the
Production Tax Credit, the policy driver behind the rapid growth
in U.S. jobs and manufacturing since 2005.
Layoffs announced so far this week include:...
US natural gas storage stocks rose
by 66 Bcf to 3.374 Tcf for the week that ended Friday, the US
Energy Information Administration said Thursday in its weekly
report.
Four major electricity providers
defended the safety of "smart meters" Tuesday at a hearing
called by the Maryland Public Service Commission after
commissioners read reports of similar meters overheating and
catching fire in Southeastern Pennsylvania.
Tucked deep into the woods in rural South Kitsap stands a
shed.
Next to the shed stands a pole. And on the pole is a PSE
electricity meter box.
Occasional shed resident Chris Sherrod doesn't like the box.
He thinks PSE is clocking more juice than he's using.
He found numbers he believed proved it. But he got no
relief...
Nearly all players in the US energy
sector -- from utilities and independent power producers to
regulators and government agencies -- agree that demand for
electricity is intrinsically tied to economic growth. Evidence
of such a link has certainly been seen during the post-2008
recession period; consumption has grown about one percent per
year over the past three years. Assuming this modest one percent
growth in electricity demand continues, US utilities will need
to produce approximately 7.5 additional gigawatts (GW) per year
to keep up with demand. Planned capacity additions between 2012
and 2015 currently add up to 52 GW, a number that far exceeds
the country's needs.
Forty years ago, the United States locked up fewer than 200
of every 100,000 Americans. Then President Nixon declared war on
drugs. Now we lock up more of our people than any other country
-- more even than the authoritarian regimes in Russia and China.
A war on drugs -- on people, that is -- is unworthy of a
country that claims to be free.
As Russia's traditional oil
provinces such as West Siberia are depleting, the country is
increasingly looking to more expensive new frontier resources.
When Volkswagen turns on its solar
park late this year, the site will generate enough electricity
to power about 1,200 Chattanooga homes, according to the
automaker.
World food prices jumped 10 percent
in July as drought parched crop lands in the United States and
Eastern Europe, the World Bank said in a statement urging
governments to shore up programs that protect their most
vulnerable populations.
The operator of the New England electric grid is expressing
concern about the region's increasing reliance on relatively
inexpensive natural gas as a source for electricity.
In a July report, the Independent System Operator of New
England issued a warning call for the region's stakeholders to
plan a strategy to ensure the region does not run out of power
on a cold winter day sometime in the future. New Hampshire power
providers and generators said this week they have seen the
report and know the answer is diversification.
August 28, 2012
If you started using reusable bags
exclusively starting at age 25, you could save more than 21,000
plastic bags in your lifetime. Point being: sustainable eating
doesn’t have to be hard, and it also doesn’t have to be
all-or-nothing. A single change can make a difference
The terrorist organization al-Qaida is running a “job ad” on
an Internet forum seeking applicants for short-term employment —
as suicide bombers.
The ad on the Shumukh al-Islam forum, which is accessible
only to al-Qaida members, appears under the heading “Area of
activity: The planet Earth.”
The Arctic ice cap is melting at a
startlingly rapid rate and may shrink to its smallest-ever level
within weeks -- and then keep on melting.
Hundreds of soldiers, police and
firefighters kept back wildfires threatening villages in
southwestern Serbia on Sunday and a forecast of rain promised
some respite for the scorching, drought-hit western Balkans.
Mexican cartels are increasingly
engaged in the “systematic corruption” of Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) workers to expand their smuggling operations —
including the trafficking of aliens from terrorism-linked
countries.
Increased rainfall and temperature
due to climate change could bring benefits to South-East Asian
agriculture, a study suggests, contradicting more common
expectations that a warmer planet will reduce agricultural
productivity in the region.
Coal-fired power plants will face pressure and in some cases
closure despite a Republican energy plan favorable to the
industry and a court victory against new environmental rules.
As many as one-sixth of U.S. coal-fired power plants would
close within eight years and be replaced by natural gas,
according to an Energy Department estimate.
Scientists gathering data to underpin a claim by Denmark to a
vast Arctic Ocean tract including the North Pole have harvested
crucial new information about the seabed and toasted their
arrival at the pole with sparkling wine.
Denmark is pressing ahead with its claim to the area - which
is thought to hold untapped oil and gas and is likely to offer
new shipping lanes as ice recedes - in the teeth of rival claims
from Russia and Canada.
Look. Some people are sitting back,
enjoying life, and choosing to think their fairy tale life will
just happen. It won't. Folks, we have to quit ignoring the signs
around us. This world we are living in is taking a step in the
wrong direction. We know that something is about to sweep across
this land, and those who choose to close their eyes will be
knocked completely off their feet. Will it be an EMP, solar
flares, worsening economic conditions...what? I don't know. The
fact is that none of us know what it is, but we are smart enough
to know it is coming.
Thankfully, the dog days of summer
are almost over now, as the temperatures in most places are
finally starting to moderate into the range of the tolerable.
The summer of 2012 has been the hottest we have seen in quite
some time, and unless you have been spending the last three
months holed up inside your home with the air conditioner
blasting away, the chances are that you and your family have
been suffering a good bit.
The charge added to concerns that
the government is backtracking on the democratic aims of the
uprising that toppled the autocratic regime last year.
PESN has obtained
confirmation that a report about a third-party test of an E-Cat
module, reaching 1,200 degrees Celsius, does indeed exist. We're
not a liberty to say more than that, so don't ask.
FedEx Corp. recycled 47.9 million pounds of the material
generated at its facilities last year, according to the
company's 2011 Global Citizenship Report.
In 2010, the parcel delivery company recycled 41.5 million
pounds.
Oil and natural gas companies that
operate in US shale plays use enormous amounts of water,
sometimes requiring upwards of 5 million gallons to frack a
single well. And there are significant costs and operational
requirements that come with using so much water, such as
trucking it to remote job sites, mixing it with various
chemicals, and later removing those chemicals from the oil and
gas that fracked wells produce.
Let's be frank. Turning a place
called—of all things—Fresh Kills, a site once infamous as the
world's largest garbage dump, into a park three times the size
of Central Park was always going to be tough. In fact, it will
take an estimated 30 years and $140 million to pull off.
For the past five years, the U.S. government has paid fuel
companies billions of dollars in subsidies to buy home-grown,
corn-based ethanol, making it a viable part of the nation's
gasoline supply.
Now you'd have to pay them not to buy it.
Florida State University
oceanographer Kevin Speer has a "new paradigm" for describing
how the world's oceans circulate -- and with it he may help
reshape science's understanding of the processes by which wind,
water, sunlight and other factors interact and influence the
planet's climate.
The problem we face in the United
States is that many members of Congress have never started their
own business and don’t understand how to create jobs.
President Barack Obama himself has never had a job outside of
politics, and many of his friends have experience in academia,
not real-life experience.
Immigration may be among the most
divisive topics in U.S. politics today. So when a reporter in
Indiana uncovered a billion-dollar tax loophole that allowed
illegal immigrants, who may not even be paying taxes, to get a
5-figure dollar amount in tax returns, more questions were
raised than answered.
Iran opened a world gathering of
self-described nonaligned nations Sunday with a slap at the U.N.
Security Council and an appeal to rid the world of nuclear
weapons, even as Tehran faces Western suspicions that it is
seeking its own atomic bombs.
The drying of Lake Chilwa is a
national food security concern. The basin is a rice growing
area, and fish from the lake provide a source of nutritious
protein to many rural Malawians.
Officers then spoke with the
homeowner who told them that he was asleep when he awoke to find
someone standing by his bed holding a machete.
A stretch of the Mississippi River
near Greenville, Mississippi, is still closed for dredging
Monday after barges were grounded and refloated Sunday
afternoon, the US Coast Guard said Monday morning, leaving a
queue of vessels in both directions totaling 54.
In the 1950s, the Pentagon conducted a study to find out what
people would do at different stages of starvation.
What they discovered was shocking.
Ironically, the reason the shingles
vaccine was developed was because of the widespread use of the
chickenpox vaccine. This latter vaccine dramatically increased
the incidence of shingles in adults.
The anti-Obama documentary based on
Dinesh D’Souza’s book “The Roots of Obama’s Rage” expanded
nationwide on Friday — with early first-place showings in the
domestic box office rankings, Deadline Hollywood reports.
While the presidential candidates
are playing politics, the utility world is demanding certainty.
The paradox is that those political positions come in
two-to-four increments but power companies are developing
30-year business strategies.
There are very few situations in
life that have ever caused me to lose my cool. I am quite proud
of the fact that I can keep a level head when everyone else is
stumbling around in a blind panic. However, there is one
scenario that for some reason completely fills me with dread –
discovering there is no toilet paper left while sitting on the
toilet.
The Organic Consumers Association
(OCA) today launched a national petition on SignOn.org asking
Michelle Obama to pressure President Obama to honor his 2007
campaign promise to support the labeling of genetically modified
foods. The petition also asks President Obama to endorse
California's Proposition 37, a Nov. 6 citizens' ballot
initiative that would require mandatory labeling of genetically
engineered food ingredients.
Mutation is simply defined as
"random changes in genetic material". Without mutations and
there would be very little change in species or evolution.
Humans inherit more than three times as many mutations from
their fathers as from their mothers, and mutation rates increase
with the father’s age but not the mother’s, researchers have
recently found in the largest study of human genetic mutations
to date.
Launched in 2007, the Center for
Global Development's online Carbon Monitoring for Action (CARMA)
database has been expanded and upgraded to incorporate data from
more than 60,000 power plants across 200 countries. Electricity
production is responsible for about one-fourth of all greenhouse
gas pollution.
Solar activity was very low.
Several CMEs were observed however none appear to be
Earth-directed. Solar activity is expected to be very
low to low with a slight chance for moderate activity for the
next three days (28-30 August). The geomagnetic field is
expected to be quiet to unsettled with a slight chance for
active conditions on days 1-2 (28-29 August) due to continued
effects from a coronal hole high speed stream.
Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney today released an
energy plan for the nation that supports development of oil, gas
and nuclear power but undercuts wind and solar energy.
Speaking in Hobbs, New Mexico, an oil and gas industry
center, Romney promised to create three million jobs and more
than $1 trillion in new revenue and predicted complete “North
American energy independence by 2020, a never-realized goal
claimed by presidential candidates for decades.”
Some are blaming this on the
Tropical Storm Isaac, others on the Amuay plant explosion in
Venezuela. The reality however is that these price increases are
for the most part in anticipation of QE3:
Migrating Whimbrels — a type of
shorebird — may struggle for hours against winds when trying to
cross the Caribbean during hurricane season but get a huge boost
as they fly out of storms, report researchers from the Center
for Conservation Biology in Williamsburg, Virginia.
With the melt happening at an
unprecedented rate of more than 100,000 sq km a day, and at
least a week of further melt expected before ice begins to
reform ahead of the northern winter, scientists are expected to
confirm the record — currently set in 2007 — within days.
The Internet has fundamentally changed our world. Now, the
creation of another kind of internet--a chemical internet--also
has revolutionary potential, not only for the field of
chemistry, but for the environmental impact of the
chemically-laden world we now live in. Bartosz Grzybowski is a
professor of chemistry at Northwestern University in Evanston,
Illinois.
Professor Grzybowski and his team have developed software
that can track the almost infinite number of possible chemical
reactions to find the quickest, cheapest and most environmental
safe ways to make things. They nicknamed this software the
"chemical internet."
Thousands of dead fish that washed ashore on Galveston Island
over the weekend were killed by a toxic algal bloom, state
officials confirmed Monday.
The Texas Department of State Health Services said a bloom of
Karenia brevis, also known as red tide, was found in Galveston
Bay in concentrations high enough to kill the fish.
The 38-acre site became
contaminated with hazardous wastes from decades of industrial
activity, the EPA said. A company that later became Vertellus
Specialties Inc. operated the site from 1932 to 1973 for tar
processing. A predecessor to ExxonMobil operated a plant located
adjacent to the tar processing site. A predecessor to CBS Corp.
sent mercury-containing fluorescent light bulbs, lead dust and
mercury-tainted waste oil to the site.
“The growing trade deficit with China has been a prime
contributor to the crisis in U.S. manufacturing employment,”
states the report from the Economic Policy Institute.
U.S. imports from China have soared from $102 billion in 2001
to $398.5 billion last year. Meanwhile American exports to China
have grown from $18 billion in 2001 to $96.9 billion in 2011,
producing a trade deficit last year of more than $300 billion.
The Gulf accounts for 23 percent of daily oil and 7 percent
of daily natural gas output in the U.S.
That path would bring the storm across one of the most energy
infrastructure-heavy areas of the Gulf.
Crossing the road is particularly risky
for older adults who can't judge speed and distance very well,
said Rolison. They're safer if they are accompanied by a younger
person.
Because older adults are often frail,
they are also more likely to die of their injuries if they're
involved in an accident, he explained.
The problem isn’t the public’s
reasoning capacity; it’s the polluted science-communication
environment that drives people apart, says
Dan Kahan.
Understandably anxious to explain
persistent controversy over climate change, the media have
discovered a new culprit: the public. By piecing together bits
of psychological research, many news reporters, opinion writers
and bloggers have concluded that people are simply too
irrational to recognize the implications of climate-change
science.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle might heed a new
survey showing that nine in 10 young adults say the poor economy
negatively impacts their life, and just 38 percent believe
today’s leaders represent their interests.
Why pay attention? Because the poll by Generation Opportunity
also disclosed that 76 percent of Americans ages 18 to 29 plan
to vote in the presidential election.
August 24, 2012
With nearly 100 percent certainty I
can assure you we won’t be hearing President Barack Obama and
GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, or their respective
surrogates, talking about America’s food waste dilemma (or what
I and others would describe as a crisis) in the months ahead.
That’s too bad since food waste is creating significant social,
economic and environmental consequences for the US (and the
world).
The amount of unconsumed perishables in
the U.S. is worth $165 billion per year and is estimated to
equal more than 20 pounds of food per person every month,
according to a National Resources Defense Council report.
It's no secret that Americans have a love affair with food,
but a recent report shows that 40% of U.S. edibles goes uneaten.
It was once President Barack
Obama's "war of necessity." Now, it's America's forgotten war.
The Afghan conflict generates barely a whisper on the U.S.
presidential campaign trail. It's not a hot topic at the office
water cooler or in the halls of Congress — even though more than
80,000 American troops are still fighting here and dying at a
rate of one a day.
"America's solar industry shares Governor Romney's desire to
achieve energy independence by 2020 as well as his support for
using all domestic resources, including solar, to achieve this
goal.
Temperatures in the Antarctic Peninsula started rising
naturally 600 years ago, long before man-made climate changes
further increased them, scientists said in a study on Wednesday
that helps explain the recent collapses of vast ice shelves.
The study, reconstructing ancient temperatures to understand
a region that is warming faster than anywhere else in the
southern hemisphere, said a current warming rate of 2.6 degrees
Celsius (4.7 Fahrenheit) per century was "unusual" but not
unprecedented.
Through the advanced separation of
vapor streams, hydrocarbons are removed from the vapor stream
and the remaining gases are separated into two air streams; one
oxygen enriched and the other consisting of nitrogen and trace
gasses. The oxygen enriched stream is re-injected into the
subsurface to enhance aerobic degradation and the nitrogen
stream is re-injected into the subsurface to foster anaerobic
degradation where desirable. This process eliminates atmospheric
emissions and associated air permitting monitoring requirements.
... has determined that the
overwhelming prevalence of diabetes among Pueblo descendants may
stem from their radical departure from the healthy diets of
their progenitors. According to his research, high diabetes
rates might be caused by what Native Americans eat—not by how
much they eat.
Sea ice extent in the Arctic is
very near to beating the previous record low set in 2007,
according to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center.
Researchers told Reuters that they expect the record to be
beaten by the end of month, well over a week before the melt
season ends in the frozen north. In 2007 the sea ice extent fell
to a record nadir of 4.28 million square kilometers (1.66
million square miles), astonishing experts and prompting a
second look on how quickly sea ice might disappear from the
Arctic altogether during the summer. But researchers say sea ice
extent could fall below 4 million square kilometers (1.5 million
square miles) this year if current melt trends continue.
Equity markets and other risk
assets continued the rally that began at the end of May of 2012.
For the month of July, the S&P 500 index returned 1.38%,
European equities returned 2.91% and the excess return of U.S.
credit markets versus U.S. Treasuries was 1.23%. There were some
interesting divergences: Spanish and Italian bonds dropped in
price by about two points in July and U.S. Treasuries had
positive returns for the period.
A halt to construction of the controversial Belo Monte
Hydroelectric Dam on the Amazon’s Xingu River was ordered late
Monday by a federal court in the Brazilian capital. If built,
Belo Monte would be the world’s third-largest dam, diverting up
to 80 percent of the Xingu River from its natural course.
Indigenous people of the Xingu River region and
conservationists from Brazil and other countries have been
demonstrating against the proposed dam for years.
Conflicts and questions remain
three years after California launched an ambitious plan to
streamline development of renewable energy on millions of acres
of desert land.
China released a new round of rare
earths export quotas on Wednesday, taking its 2012 export quota
to 30,996 tons, the Ministry of Commerce said, up slightly on
last year despite a crack-down on small producers.
China's Commerce Ministry said on Monday the United States
must cut support for six government-backed renewable energy
programs or face unspecified penalties, in the latest trade
dispute between the world's two largest economies.
The U.S. measures supporting wind, solar and hydroelectric
energy programs in several U.S. states, including Massachusetts,
Ohio and New Jersey, present a barrier to Chinese exports, the
ministry said in a statement on its website.
But refinery runs, crude imports
show lingering weakness
China's apparent oil demand* rose
2.4% year on year in July to 38.92 million metric tons (mt), or
an average 9.2 million barrels per day (b/d), a just-released
Platts analysis of recent Chinese government data showed. This
is a rebound from June’s first monthly contraction in more than
three years.
Surveying market participants
between August 6 and 13, TABB learned that only 2% of the
respondents drawn from broker/dealers, asset managers, hedge
funds, execution venues and vendors rate their confidence level
as very high, down markedly from 12% in a May 2010 TABB survey
following the Flash Crash.
Fed's James Bullard popped the
market's latest "exuberance" by pointing out that the Fed
minutes discussing QE3 were actually "stale".
“It is the County’s position that
the AMMA is in direct violation of the federal Controlled
Substances Act and therefore cannot be implemented without
exposing County employees to the risk of federal prosecution,”
Montgomery said. “The AMMA also runs afoul of the Supremacy
Clause enshrined in the U.S. Constitution by our Founding
Fathers, which preempts state law that conflicts with federal
law,” he added.
A century later, the salmon still know where to go.
In what the National Parks Service (NPS) is hailing as the
Return of the Kings, adult Chinook salmon have been spotted in
Olympic National Park in Washington, less than five months after
the removal of the Elwha Dam, which became operational in 1913.
“The return of the salmon marks an important milestone in the
restoration of the Elwha River ecosystem and a historic moment
in the history of the park,” the NPS said in a statement on
August 20.
CONTAMINANTS
ARE UBIQUITOUS. According to Battaglin and Kolpin (2009), “the
environmental occurrence of trace organic compounds such as
pharmaceuticals, personal care products, pesticides, and
hormones, and their potential adverse effects on aquatic and
terrestrial life and on human health is an issue that concerns
not only scientists and engineers, but also the general public.”
Investigations are detecting such trace organic compounds with
increasing frequency in the environment on a global scale
he U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) latest annual report for
wind power depicts an energy source being threatened by policy
uncertainty — yet one that is now conventional, driven by the
continuing trends of downward prices and more of the
technology's components being made in America.
Some people believe that there’s no problem that peanut butter,
chocolate and whipped cream can’t solve. These people could be
onto something with news that a team of researchers has
developed a new, safer oil dispersant that uses edible
ingredients found in the aforementioned trio of treats. The new
dispersant could save the lives of thousands of birds and
animals caught in environmental catastrophes.
I do not believe that breaking the oil slick up helps clean it
up
Although environmental regulations have an effect, it is low
natural gas prices relative to historic coal prices and drops in
electricity demand that are driving the retirements, an Energy
Information Administration official said in late June at a
Bipartisan Policy Center event in Washington that focused on the
EIA's Annual Energy Outlook 2012.
A report to be released today says a 2008 state law that was
supposed to result in lower electricity rates has instead led to
double-digit increases for Michigan consumers.
The report, commissioned by the Energy Choice Now coalition
that includes the Michigan Retailers Association, the Michigan
Agri-Business Association and companies that want to compete
with DTE Energy and Consumers Energy, says high electric rates
are harming the Michigan economy.
Crude oil is headed for a major
tumble — to the tune of 66 percent, says Jeff Kennedy, chief
commodity strategist at Elliott Wave International, which
predicts markets based on chart patterns.
The technicals
show that oil is now stuck in a range of $75 to $115 a barrel,
he tells Yahoo. Crude recently traded at $96.40.
An emerging El Nino weather pattern
is likely to have only a modest impact on crops and mining in
Australia and could benefit sugar cane growers in Queensland, a
senior forecaster said.
"We're not broke -- we're crazy,"
Gary Palmer said Tuesday as he told a story related to the
national debt and the nation's abundant natural resources.
During the first half of 2012, the
outlook for sustainable industries looked challenging.
Clean-tech equity financings, project financings, and average
deal sizes were down compared to Q4 of 2011. Macro issues,
including the European debt crisis and the upcoming U.S.
elections, also weighed on the overall economy. Despite these
conditions, however, Cascadia believes that financing and M&A
will begin to recover through the second half of the year and
will normalize by the end of this year. We expect this recovery
to be led in part by early stage financings, along with M&A
activity in the energy efficiency and solar sectors.
Computing guzzles a great deal of
electricity and striving for greater energy efficiency both
saves money and decreases greenhouse gas emissions. Although
computers already come with energy-saving mechanisms, such as
sleep mode and other power saving features set by users, there's
always room for improvement. This is the idea behind
Ecobeneficios’s Greencam. The Brazilian company has launched a
PC app that automatically turns off the user’s monitor when he
or she walks away from it.
Faced with a planned federal mandate to cut water pollution
from power plants, American Electric Power and other utility
companies might simply pay farmers to do the job for them.
In a "water quality trading" test program recently announced
by environmental regulators in Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky,
farmers could cut polluted stormwater runoff from their fields
and sell the reductions as credits to power companies.
All summer, citizens have been crying out, 'Why doesn't
somebody take this to court!' over Janet Napolitano's Dream
amnesty directive. THIS MORNING, ICE AGENTS DID . . .
The federal government will
expedite two wind and five solar projects in Arizona,
California, Nevada and Wyoming, which together will be worth
nearly 5,000 MW of generating capacity, according to an Aug. 7
announcement by the White House.
Private forecaster Weather Services International raised its
prediction on Tuesday for the number of named storms during the
2012 Atlantic hurricane season to 13 from 12.
WSI also tweaked its forecast for the number of hurricanes
expected to form during the June-November Atlantic hurricane
season, increasing it to seven from six.
Energy-efficient building
techniques that were once considered faddish or experimental
have become standard as builders and owners in Arkansas and
beyond have realized the long-term savings to be had.
According to Worldwatch, expanding fossil fuels is not the
answer to the world's energy challenges.
"We need solutions that are economically, socially and
environmentally sustainable -- many of which are now at hand,"
said Alexander Ochs, Director of Worldwatch's Climate and Energy
Program and author of Worldwatch's Sustainable Energy Roadmap
reports.
Google has been speaking out about
a proposed law in Germany, which would require search engines
and aggregators to pay to license content from publishers via
ancillary copyright, in order to display headlines (with links)
and snippets of text. You know, the typical display of search
results you see in Google News. It does seem to be specific to
the Google News format, which takes the beginning of the article
(usually not much more than a sentence or two), as opposed to
the web search format, which provides more random snippets of
text, based on the user’s query. Of course, the law is still
being drafted, so who knows? [Ed: Obvously we're not
happy either]
Imagine a house where you're
careful to turn off the lights in rooms you're not using - but
you're not obsessive about it.
Wastewater from large dairy farms
contains significant concentrations of estrogenic hormones that
can persist for months or even years, researchers report in a
new study. In the absence of oxygen, the estrogens rapidly
convert from one form to another; this stalls their
biodegradation and complicates efforts to detect them, the
researchers found.
The face of energy and
environmental regulations in the U.S. is changing. The pace and
complexity of U.S. federal regulations is rapidly increasing and
becoming more difficult to comply with. Just look at the
increased scrutiny and difficulty of completing a merger in the
energy industry, as well as recent developments in EPA
regulations concerning carbon emissions, which can be an
expensive proposition for utilities.
Iran is in the final stages of
sanitizing a military site it is suspected of using for secret
nuclear weapons-related experiments, two senior diplomats said
Tuesday, as the U.N. atomic agency intensified efforts to gain
access to the area before the alleged clean-up succeeds in
erasing any traces of such work.
Most people probably know that
plaque buildup in the arteries surrounding the heart is one of
the major causes of heart disease. The reason that the plaque
does accumulate, however, is often due to an
inflammation of the artery walls. Recently, scientists from
California’s La Jolla Institute for Allergy & Immunology were
able to identify the type of immune cells responsible for that
inflammation. With this knowledge in hand, they now hope to be
able to develop a vaccine for heart disease.
The two coal-fired plants are Rio Bravo Jasmin
and Rio Bravo Poso stations, each with a capacity of 33
megawatts, according to the statement.
The rest of the plants, all biomass, are the
25-megawatt Chinese Station, Rio Bravo Rocklin and Rio Bravo
Fresno, both with 28 megawatts of capacity, the statement said.
If fossil fuel subsidies were
phased out by 2020, global energy consumption would be reduced
by 3.9 percent that year compared with having subsidy rates
unchanged, according to projections by the International Energy
Agency (IEA). Further, total subsidies for renewable energy
totaled $66 billion in 2010, but are still dwarfed by the total
value of global fossil fuel subsidies, according to research
from Worldwatch Institute.
News headlines over the past few
years have linked cat ownership to everything from cancer to
craziness, but new studies suggest that cats are actually
beneficial to human health, and may even reduce our risk for
cancer and other diseases.
The U.S. Coast Guard said on Monday
that 97 vessels were stranded by low water on the Mississippi
River near Greenville, Mississippi, after it closed an 11-mile
stretch of the drought-parched waterway for dredging and to
replace missing navigation buoys.
GMO foods could make it worse.
Testosterone deficiency is a serious health issue. It can
lead to loss of stamina and lean muscle mass, reduced libido in
both men and women, anxiety, depression, and cognitive decline.
Growing research also suggests low testosterone levels might be
linked to insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, and type 2
diabetes.
Many of the herbicides and pesticides used in conventional
farming are “environmental estrogens.” This means that their
molecules mimic the activity of the human hormone estrogen, too
much of which is not good for men or women; it also affects
testosterone levels.
Interest rates in China have been
on the rise. The 7-day repo swap rates have been increasing
across all tenors. These swaps exchange the 7-day repo rate
(reset weekly) for a fixed rate over a longer period (such as 2
years) - thus providing a window into the market's long-term
expectations of repo rates. The increase is an indication of
tightening liquidity conditions in the interbank market.
The Federal Reserve is likely to
deliver another round of monetary stimulus "fairly soon" unless
the economy improves considerably, minutes from the U.S. central
bank's latest meeting suggested.
Researchers at the U.S. Department
of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) have created a
device called the Endurance Bioenergy Reactor (EBR) that can
produce bioenergy on location, using waste from kitchens and
latrines. The fuel can go directly into engines and generators
without any need for refining, avoiding the complications of
distribution and supply chains associated with fuel production.
The researchers say the EBR can produce 25 to 50 gallons (94.6
to 189.2 liters) of biofuel a day from waste streams or
processed cellulosic materials.
A Monroe County resident reportedly
took matters into his own hands Monday night when he got home
and found someone had broken in.
According to Monroe
County Sheriff Cecil Cantrell, a residence on Parham Store Road
a few miles north of Hatley was broken into, and when the
homeowner arrived home, the alleged thieves ran out the back
door.
Cantrell said the homeowner grabbed a gun and shot
at them as they ran into the woods.
Only one coal-fired generator was brought online in the first
half of 2012, according to a report by the U.S. Energy
Information Administration (EIA).
This is more bad news for the struggling coal industry.
The only coal-fired generator brought online this year was an
800-megawatts (MW) unit at the Prairie State Energy Campus in
Illinois.
No other category of heavy duty
vehicles has seen more adoption of electric drivetrains than
buses. In North America, hybrid models have captured as much as
40 percent of new transit bus purchases in recent years.
Electric drivetrains – whether for hybrid systems, battery
electric, or fuel cell – hold appeal for the bus market for many
of the same reasons they do for light duty vehicles: the promise
of moving away from oil, efficiency gains, limiting greenhouse
gas emissions, and, in many cases, lower operating costs.
Recently, scientists unlocked the
code used by neurons in the retina for sending visual data to
the brain. This allowed them to create a device that restored
almost-normal vision to blind mice. Now, another group of
scientists has announced that they have determined the brain’s
code for pronouncing vowels, and they believe that their
discovery could lead to machines that speak for people who are
physically unable to do so.
The resolution charges the New
England States Committee on Electricity (NESCOE) with the
responsibility of developing a work plan and executing the
procurement, though all six states will contribute input and
experts to the process. The procurement process will likely
involve a request for proposal (RFP) issued by the body for a
certain amount of renewable energy, with projects competing for
contracts based on their bid-in price.
Under the current system, sewage
discharges need only be reported to the New York State
Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and the local
department of health if they will affect recreational areas,
shellfish harvesting, or public water supply intakes.
Gov. Martin O'Malley's
administration launched an effort Tuesday to limit the extended
power outages that have troubled Marylanders in recent months,
but industry experts warned that any solution could require
significant costs and trade-offs.
NYMEX crude and products futures
settled higher Wednesday after receiving a late boost from the
release of US Federal Reserve's Federal Open Market Committee
meeting minutes from earlier in August.
NYMEX October
crude settled 42 cents higher at $97.26/barrel
As fish die in record numbers across Illinois this summer
because of the intense heat and drought, state officials are
granting power plants special exemptions to flush massive
amounts of hot water into already stressed lakes and rivers.
The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency is allowing
power plants to dump hundreds of millions of gallons of water
per day at temperatures approaching 100 degrees into the state's
waterways, the Tribune has learned.
the largest event of the period,
CME was observed, not expected to be geoeffective. A CME was
subsequently observed. Analysis is underway to determine
the potential geoeffectiveness of this event.
The geomagnetic field was quiet to
unsettled.
Using an off-the-shelf Emotiv BCI,
researchers have shown that it's possible to 'hack' a human
brain
At age 75, Sen. Jay Rockefeller,
D-WV, says that he’s not done yet. After dedicating his
professional life to public service, he says that he has at
least one more goal -- to get his coal constituents to recognize
that their future depends on commercializing new technologies,
not rolling back the regulatory clock.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney renewed support
for auditing the Federal Reserve, wading into an issue that
threatens to spark a fight at his party’s national convention
next week.
“The Federal Reserve should be accountable,” Romney told
thousands of voters at a campaign rally Monday in Goffstown, New
Hampshire. “We should see what they’re doing.”
Diamonds may be forever, but they
aren’t what they were. True, they shine just as brightly and
they’re as hard as ever, but scientists from the Carnegie
Institution of Washington are giving them some competition. An
international team led by Carnegie’s Lin Wang has discovered a
new substance that is not quite crystalline and not quite
non-crystalline, yet is hard enough to dent diamonds.
Have
you ever wondered why the CPI, GDP and employment
numbers run counter to your personal and business experiences?
The problem lies in biased and often-manipulated government
reporting.
Even as tens of thousands of Arizona workers are struggling
to find a job, Congress has continued to issue 125,000 new work
visas a month to immigrants and other foreign workers. This
equals 1.5 million new foreign workers each year, who compete
directly with Arizona residents for a very limited number of
Arizona's jobs.
"We're in the midst of one of the largest West Nile
outbreaks ever seen in the United States," said Dr. Lyle
Petersen, the director of the CDC's Vector-Borne Infectious
Disease Division official. (photo: eyeweed / Flickr) And with
climate change, we can expect an increasing number of this and
other mosquito-borne diseases like yellow fever, malaria and
dengue fever.
Think about this during these dog
days of summer: Researchers are working to capture the sun's
rays more efficiently and turn them into electricity, using a
see-through solar panel no thicker than a plastic grocery bag.
Spain's misery index (combination
of unemployment and inflation) hit a new record this month.
Tropical Storm Isaac swirled over
the Caribbean on Wednesday and was forecast to become a
hurricane as it moved on a track that would put it off the coast
of Florida on Monday, the opening day of the Republican National
Convention in Tampa.
APACHE
COUNTY — The Board of Supervisors approved a resolution that is
making the rounds of local governments, to extend the public
comment period on the EPA’s plan to require additional pollution
controls for nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide on three power
plants in eastern Arizona, including SRP’s Coronado Generating
Station outside St. Johns and Cholla in Joseph City.
The Sikh temple massacre prompted calls for stricter gun
control, but some members of the India-based faith -- who carry
ceremonial knives -- are considering taking up firearms in light
of the tragedy.
Sikhs are rattled after the horrific Aug. 5 shooting in Oak
Creek, Wis., in which Wade Michael Page opened fire for no
apparent reason before a police officer gunned him down.
Although the religion teaches tolerance and good deeds, some
believe arming themselves could be the best protection against
hate crimes that have too frequently been perpetrated by
assailants who mistake them for Muslims. Page's own motive is
unclear, though he was a known white supremacist.
Common household chemicals and medicines have been found to
reduce male fertility, cause female reproductive disorders,
obesity, cancer and immune failure.
A new report by the European Environment Agency has linked
the chemical industry with declining rates of fertility in
humans, stating that reproductive and developmental problems in
humans have increased in line with the increasing use of
chemicals. Simply put, our love affair with chemicals and
industry is killing us.
Pollution of the environment and
food supply by estrogenic chemicals is getting increased
attention. Early in the study of estrogens, it was noticed that
soot, containing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, was both
estrogenic and carcinogenic. Since then, it has been found that
phenolics and chlorinated hydrocarbons are significantly
estrogenic, and that many estrogenic herbicides, pesticides, and
industrial by-products persist in the environment, causing
infertility, deformed reproductive organs, tumors, and other
biological defects, including immunodeficiency.
Many natural and organic brands are
actually owned by huge conglomerates that don’t support
sustainable, organic, non-GMO, non-toxic agriculture. In fact,
their product labels are often designed to mislead consumers
just so they can grab a share of the lucrative health-conscious
consumer market.
China relocated 1.3 million people
during the 17 years it took to complete the Three Gorges dam.
Even after finishing the $59 billion project last month, the
threat of landslides along the dam's banks will force tens of
thousands to move again.
The Tennessee Valley Authority is
liable for the massive 2008 coal ash spill at the Kingston
coal-fired plant and claims by 800 plaintiffs may move forward,
a federal judge said Thursday.
Judge Thomas Varian in US
District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee in
Knoxville ruled that TVA's conduct caused the failure of a coal
ash containment dike and that it is liable for damages, provided
that each plaintiff individually can prove entitlement to the
relief.
A University of Arizona professor
has invented a theoretically infinite pipe that promises to
bring down the costs of laying pipelines while reducing
environmental damage. Developed by Mo Ehsani, Professor Emeritus
of Civil Engineering at the University of Arizona, the new pipe,
called InfinitiPipe, is of a lightweight plastic aerospace
honeycomb under layers of resin-saturated carbon fiber fabric
put together by a new fabricating process that allows pipes to
be built in indefinite lengths on site.
U.S. scientists say they're making progress towards a
40-year-old dream of extracting uranium for nuclear power from
seawater.
"Estimates indicate that the oceans are a mother lode of
uranium, with far more uranium dissolved in seawater than in all
the known terrestrial deposits that can be mined," researcher
Robin D. Rogers of the University of Alabama told a meeting of
the American Chemical Society in Philadelphia.
India’s national solar mission
specifically states that crystalline photovoltaic projects must
use India-manufactured products, while thin-film projects can
use parts from other regions. The Ex-Im bank is taking advantage
of this rule by offering low-interest loans to Indian solar
project developers that use U.S.-manufactured solar cells and
panels, according to CSE.
“The major beneficiaries in
this case have been American producers such as First Solar and
the now bankrupt Abound Solar,” according to the CSE report.
India’s domestic solar industry is now in a dangerous state,
says the report, with 30 percent facing closure due to low
demand.
A U.S.
appeals court on Tuesday overturned a key Obama administration
rule to reduce harmful emissions from coal-burning power plants,
sparking a rally in coal company shares and relief among utility
firms.
The minutes highlight the diverging
degrees of concern among policymakers about the run of
disappointing economic reports during the spring and early
summer. While the weakening resulted in several members
indicating that they had lowered their near-term expectations
for growth, most did not change their forecasts for the
economy's performance in the medium term.
Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC) yesterday
released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey
(PMMS), showing fixed mortgage rates following long-term
Treasury yields higher amid continued positive data on the
housing market. This marks the fourth straight week of fixed
mortgage rates gradually moving higher.
As discussed earlier the US housing
recovery is progressing, albeit quite gradually, as the unsold
inventory of homes continues to decline.
Videos released by California-based
tech research company Aerofex appear to show successful
test flights of a prototype hover bike that gains lift from two
large ducted rotors, similar in principle to Chris Malloy's
Hoverbike prototype we've previously covered. Aeroflex claims
its hover bike allows the pilot intuitive control over pitch,
roll and yaw without need of artificial intelligence, flight
software or electronics of any kind.
"The reasons for doing it is
because No. 1 it's good for the environment, and No. 2, it's in
our financial interest," Morgan said. "I'm favorably inclined to
move forward."
A mosquito bite can kill, and this year 41 Americans have found
that out the hard way as they lost their lives to the
mosquito-borne disease West Nile virus.
Forty-seven of the 50 states have reported West Nile virus
infections in people, birds or mosquitoes, according to the
federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, in
Atlanta.
North Dakota, like other
oil-producing states, allows exploration and production
companies to request so-called "tight hole" status for their
wells. Once granted by regulators, that status limits the amount
of information -- such as production levels, geographical data
and engineering specifications -- that a state can publicly
disseminate about those wells for a certain period of time.
In a few years, coal could be the No. 1 commodity traveling
by river barge on the Columbia, supplanting wheat.
Ambre Energy wants to be first to export coal through the
Northwest to Asia, starting as early as next year. Its Morrow
Pacific project would use covered barges for 218 miles of the
trip, running from Boardman, through the Columbia River Gorge
and on to Port Westward, an industrial park between St. Helens
and Astoria.
The National Park Service and officials on the tribal council
have tried to make the Wounded Knee memorial site a national
park. “And a couple of times they got pretty close to it, but a
lot of people here disagree with that. It would be a slap in the
face,” Dakota says.
Among the obstacles is the fact that 20 of the soldiers who
participated in the slaughter were awarded Medals of Honor by
the U.S. Army. Native American activists call them “Medals of
Dishonor” and demand their revocation. According to Lakota
tribesman William Thunder Hawk, “The Medal of Honor is meant to
reward soldiers who act heroically. But at Wounded Knee, they
didn’t show heroism; they showed cruelty.” In 2001, the National
Congress of American Indians passed two resolutions condemning
the awards and called on the U.S. government to rescind them.
August 21, 2012
At a time of instability in the coal industry due to layoffs,
a weak market and permit delays, the news of a 25-year export
market for Appalachian coal is being hailed as the first inroad
to a "monumental" export market.
"We have been beat to death," Kentucky Representative W.
Keith Hall said. "We have had so sue our own government, this
couldn't come at a better time."
The United States is on a “dangerous road to fiscal decline
and growing dependence on government,” and this is the “real
legacy of Obamanomics.”
That warning comes in an editorial from Investor’s Business
Daily (IBD), which cites reports pointing to the widening
discrepancy among Americans in what they pay in to government —
and what they take out.
The Arizona Daily Star's Centennial salute to science in
Arizona runs all summer. Each day, for 100 days, we'll record a
milestone in the state's scientific history.
If Arizona scientists don't come up with the breakthroughs
needed to put solar energy on par with burning fossil fuels, it
won't be for lack of trying.
Iran is assuming the presidency of the 120-member NAM for the
next three years.
The ADL said in a letter to the Secretary General: “Your
presence in the Iranian capital at this time will be
counterproductive to the efforts of the international community
to bring Iran into compliance with its obligations under the
Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and abandon
its nuclear weapons ambitions.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced that 106
projects in 29 states, Guam and Puerto Rico have been selected
for funding to produce renewable energy and make energy
efficiency improvements. Funding is made available through USDA
Rural Development's Rural Energy for America Program, which is
authorized by the 2008 Farm Bill. REAP provides grants and loan
guarantees for agricultural producers and rural small businesses
to reduce energy consumption and costs, use renewable energy
technologies in their operations and conduct feasibility studies
for renewable energy projects.
The centralized model of power
generation, transmission, and distribution is growing more and
more costly to maintain at current levels, let alone expand to
meet the rising electricity needs of growing populations.
Despite being smaller in scale, renewable distributed energy
generation (RDEG) sources such as distributed solar
photovoltaics (PV), small wind power, and stationary fuel cells,
with less need for transmission and little to no emissions, are
uniquely positioned to disrupt this traditional paradigm.
Distributed renewable installations today represent far less
than one percent of total worldwide electricity generating
capacity...
All interviewees concurred that
while angling opportunities may be the icing on the cake, the
overwhelming natural beauty of the area is the main visitor
magnet. “The Umpqua River sells itself. It’s a marvel of
nature and an unbelievable stretch of beauty mile after mile,”
says tribal staff member Susan Ferris.
On the day that President Obama's
deferred-action amnesty took effect, Ariz. Gov. Jan Brewer
issued an executive order re-affirming that amnesty recipients
are not eligible for drivers licenses and other public benefits
under state law. The governor said the deferred-action program
does not grant recipients a legal status that would make them
eligible for public benefits banned under a 2004 voter-passed
ballot initiative.
Three typhoons that blasted across
Chinese coastal areas in the past two weeks have caused 51
deaths and left 21 people missing as of Monday, according to the
Ministry of Civil Affairs. In Bangladesh, flash floods have
killed 130, in India more than 100 people have died, while in
the Philippines heavy rains and floods have claimed 92 lives.
“Why do you carry a gun? Why
are you so paranoid? How can a dangerous weapon
make your family safer?”
The core issues are not guns, gun
control, or rights. The core issues are perspective and
reality. Many people who are vehemently anti-gun simply
don’t live in reality.
"Dueling studies" is the phrase one
former US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission member used to
describe anticipated cost/benefit reports on contentious power
market designs. But, the image of consultants riffing with
research reports like dueling bangos in American folk
music applies to just about every US energy debate, and even
more so in a presidential election year.
In the latest salvo of a brewing
trade war between China and the US over clean-energy
manufacturing, China's Ministry of Commerce on Monday said six
renewable-energy projects in the US are illegally subsidized and
violate World Trade Organization rules.
Clean energy projects were
announced in 30 states in the second quarter with the potential
of creating more than 37,000 jobs, according to a new report.
Eventually those local moratoriums
against fracking will expire in Boulder, Longmont and Erie. And
residents will worry anew about toxic fracking operations
inching up on schools and neighborhoods in pursuit of a product
that goes "poof" the instant it's used. Nice value ~ not.
The oil complex settled mostly
higher Thursday on a mix of geopolitical considerations and
hopes that both US and European central bank officials will move
forward with monetary stimulus measures.
A Delaware County woman who
voluntarily distributes free food to children from her driveway
has run afoul of officials in Chester Township who say her
efforts violate zoning ordinances.
“The latest Debit Issuer Study
provides more evidence that growth in debit remains robust even
in the face of significant regulatory headwinds”
Duck River Electric Membership
Cooperative (DREMC) has become the first electric cooperative in
the seven state TVA territory to offer its nearly 71,000
customers access to green power with a 25.92 kW solar farm.
The U.S. Department of Energy has announced seven new projects
to accelerate the development and deployment of stronger and
lighter materials for the next generation of American-made cars
and trucks. These projects include the development and
validation of modeling tools to deliver higher performing carbon
fiber composites and advanced steels, as well as research into
new lightweight, high-strength alloys for energy-efficient
vehicle and truck engines
ExxonMobil's Nigerian oil producing
unit said Monday it is assisting in the clean-up of an oil spill
on Niger Delta shoreline, although it denies the crude leaked
from its production facilities.
In the two minutes it takes to read this story, an area the
size of 60 football pitches will have been clear-cut by illegal
loggers globally, according to Chatham House, an independent
policy institute in London.
Catching the loggers and their bosses has long been a problem
because of corruption, lax law enforcement and limited ability
to detect the crime quickly.
Two Minnesota nuclear power reactors that were abruptly shut
down Tuesday by Xcel Energy pose no safety hazards, federal
regulators said Wednesday.
The reactors, one at Prairie Island just north of Red Wing
and the other in Monticello, were shut down for unrelated
reasons.
The U.S. Federal Housing
Administration (FHA), who continues to provide (via
insurance) 30x leverage on mortgages by requiring only a 3.5%
down-payment, is having a rough time. The loans the agency has
been insuring are seeing worsening delinquency trends.
An icebreaker has become the first
ship from China to cross the Arctic Ocean, underscoring
Beijing's growing interest in a remote region where a record
thaw caused by climate change may open new trade routes.
"As of right now, we don't have a
final firm load plan we can base those decisions off of," Jones
said, referring to future orders. "We're ready either way, to go
with full production or make minor reductions."
The eight-foot-diameter pipeline
would carry water 300 miles from eastern Nevada to Las Vegas,
pumping about 84,000 acre-feet of water annually from Goshute
and other tribal lands.
The U.S. government's debt held by
foreign entities hit a record $5.2923 trillion in June,
CNSNews.com reported, citing Treasury Department data.
The government’s indebtedness to foreign entities has shot up
72.3 percent since President Barack Obama took office.
For the first time, a leak of
highly radioactive waste has been detected from a double-shelled
tank at the Hanford Nuclear Site in central Washington state.
Typhoon Kai Tak veered closer to
the financial hub of Hong Kong late on Thursday, prompting the
local observatory to raise the No. 8 tropical cyclone warning
signal as some port operations were disrupted along with local
transport services.
Preventing illness is the best way
to get health-care costs down. So why aren’t governments doing
more to protect the environment? We’ve long known that
environmental factors contribute to disease, especially
contamination of air, water, and soil. Scientists are now
learning the connection is stronger than we realized.
Hydropower dams would get a boost,
while their skeptics would get punished, under a controversial
new bill backed by Western conservatives in Congress.
It shouldn't be surprising, but it
IS reassuring that a union has stepped forward to try to slow
down the Obama Administration's increasingly brazen unilateral
decisions to ignore -- and even violate -- immigration laws.
An idea studied years ago by an oil
company for producing vast stores of North Slope natural gas
without building a giant pipeline has emerged again, this time
before state legislators trying to find relief for residents
crushed by heating and electricity costs.
Mainly because power plants have
switched from coal to natural gas, climate-changing carbon
dioxide emissions hit an unexpected 20-year low earlier this
year...
Light oil production in North
America could increase by 800,000 to 900,000 barrels per day per
year through 2016, including an annual increase of 380,000 b/d
in Canadian oil sands output that will continue through 2020, if
the industry can resolve the lack of pipeline capacity, CIBC
World Markets said Friday.
Water levels in India's main
reservoirs were at 51 percent of capacity in the week to August
16, down 12 percentage points from a year ago, reflecting this
year's weak monsoon, government data showed on Thursday.
Indian Country Today Media Network
has learned details of what Kimberly Craven’s appeal to the U.S.
Supreme Court of the $3.4 billion Cobell settlement will
include.
A newly opened wind farm on the
roof of the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation is claimed by
turbine suppliers Venger to be the largest building-integrated
wind farm in the US
Judicial Watch has filed a lawsuit
against the Department of Homeland Security requesting
documents, under the Freedom of Information Act, regarding the
Executive Amnesty that went into effect on August 15. The
policy, announced in June, allows illegal aliens who came to the
United States before the age of 16, have maintained continuous
residence, are 30 years of age or younger, and attend school or
hold a high school diploma to receive deferred action and a work
permit. An estimated 1.8 million illegal aliens are likely to
qualify.
Residents of Kentucky, Ohio and
Pennsylvania are exposed to more toxic air pollution from
coal-fired power plants than in any other state, according to an
analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
For generations, we,, the original
nations and peoples of North America, have been conditioned to
think and behave in a dominated manner. This has been part of
the process of becoming “civilized,” which is a polite word for
“dominated.”
Rocky Mountain natural gas
producers need to start finding additional markets on the Gulf
Coast or West Coast because gas flowing east on the Rockies
Express pipeline is being displaced by new volumes from the
Marcellus Shale, a veteran gas analyst said Thursday in Denver.
In Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada, rats are big news.
In a province that says it is rat-free, the discovery of a
rat colony at the city landfill is making headlines.
Solar power would appear to be an
obvious choice for the developing world, but as impoverished
regions need systems that are simple, self-operating and cheap
to build and maintain, this is generally not the case. The
ability to provide heating in addition to electricity would also
be beneficial because many communities need hot water has much
as they need lights. An MIT team has developed a solution that
meets these needs with a solar power system that is an air
conditioner built backwards.
Recent polls show Dutch voters
moving much farther left, and much more likely to vote for
leftists in the parliamentary elections next month. This is
likely to not only change the political situation in the
Netherlands, but to also affect the debate over austerity in the
Eurozone and slow progress toward reform. The swift
implementation of reforms advocated by German Chancellor Angela
Merkel may be key to preventing a total collapse of the European
Union and a deepening of the debt crisis on the continent. The
Netherlands may not stand in her way, but it is likely to make
her job harder.
In addition to regulation
violations, police found stolen property at one of the recycling
businesses, including 32 pounds of telephone wire, 12 oxygen
bottles belonging to a local health care company, a city of
Albuquerque traffic sign and 12 PNM high-wire tools, the
newspaper said.
Newsweek magazine is targeting its
latest controversial cover at the Obama administration. It’s
part of a devastating story written by esteemed British
historian Niall Ferguson telling President Obama that it’s time
to go and that the only team that can possibly turn the country
around is the Romney-Ryan ticket.
The last time federal officials assessed cancer rates in the
communities surrounding nuclear power plants, they concluded
that radiation releases were insignificant and health risks, if
any, were too small to measure.
TheU.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commissionhas been relying on the
results of that 1990 National Cancer Institute study ever since
to inform the public about cancer risks posed by the 104
licensed reactors it governs nationwide.
Solar energy should continue to grow rapidly in New York
State since the approval of solar legislation by Governor Andrew
Cuomo.
The package of three bills related to tax exemptions should
have a positive impact on the total amount of electricity
derived from renewables in the state.
Nebraska has joined Arizona in
opposing legal status for immigrants who are newly-documented
under Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program,
setting up a constitutional battle while raising tough questions
about the program.
Congress is on pace to make history with the least productive
legislative year in the post-World War II era.
Just 61 bills have become law to date in 2012 out of 3,914
bills that have been introduced by lawmakers, or less than 2
percent of all proposed laws, according to a USA Today analysis
of records since 1947 kept by the U.S. House Clerk's office.
Old Dominion Electric Cooperative
has suspended efforts to obtain the environmental permits needed
to build what would be the state's largest coal-fueled power
plant in Surry County.
Does this one work actually
"debunk" Global Warming?..
The Pennsylvania Public Utilites
Commission (PUC) has extended Act 129, which regulates energy
efficiency and reduction benchmarks, through May 2016.
Peco Energy Co. on Wednesday suspended its ambitious
smart-meter installation program after 15 of the electrical
devices overheated, including one that set fire to a home in
Bucks County.
The utility, which has installed 186,000 devices since March,
said it has temporarily halted the project to investigate the
cause of the malfunctions.
President Obama was personally
briefed on Cape Wind's request to secure a nearly $2 billion
federal loan, with one official urging the Department of Energy
to "get it done" because it was "important" to Obama, newly
released e-mails show.
Wildfires sparked by lightning near
Canada's Hudson Bay are threatening the habitat of polar bears,
encroaching on the old tree roots and frozen soil where females
make their dens, a conservation expert on the big, white bears
said on Thursday.
The mystery of more than 1,450
55-gallon barrels dumped into Lake Superior between 1959 and
1962 by the U.S. Army should be less of a mystery after an
effort headed by the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa to
raise 70 of those barrels to review their contents and
condition.
Graph of average gasoline for one
month.
The state created as many as 600 "green" jobs last quarter.
The power-generation sector posted the most project
announcements, with 35. Solar power was leading the category,
with 19 projects. Wind power followed, with 12 projects.
Solar activity was moderate.
Region 1548 (N19E62) produced two M-class flares. Solar
activity is expected to be low with a chance for an M-class
event for the next three days (20-22 August). The
geomagnetic field ranged from quiet to unsettled levels.
A coronal hole high speed stream became geoeffective
during the past 24 hours. The geomagnetic field
is expected to be at mostly unsettled levels with a chance for
active conditions on day 1 (20 August), decreasing to a slight
chance on days 2-3 (21-22 August). The disturbed conditions are
expected in response to the continued presence of the coronal
hole high speed
There is little that’s clear about
the President’s jobs agenda but it’s crystal clear that he has
placed opportunities for illegal immigrants to work in the U.S.
at the top of his list. With unemployment at 8.3%, it’s
unconscionable that the Obama administration’s amnesty program
actually requires illegal immigrants to apply for work
authorization in the U.S. This undercuts the 23 million
unemployed or underemployed Americans.
It's no secret that cyber security
is an integral part of the smart grid, but utilities and
regulators are continuing to grapple with the best way to
fortify themselves against the expanding host of cyber threats.
As the grid continues to expand – the Edison Foundation
projects 65 million smart meters will have been deployed in the
U.S. by 2015 – so does the need to secure not only the influx of
data but also the increased number of intelligent electronic
devices...
Maser is an acronym that stands for
Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.
Essentially, it’s the same as a laser, but where a laser
generates an intense, coherent beam of light, a maser generates
an intense, coherent beam of microwaves. Masers were invented in
the 1950s and laid the groundwork for invention of the laser in
the early 1960s, but the two technologies soon took very
different paths.
Diesel engines are a classic
example of good news and bad news. The good news is that diesel
engines are much more fuel efficient than petrol engines. The
bad news is that they belch out some pretty nasty emissions like
nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide. The good news is that
catalytic converters can scrub those out. The bad news is that
last Friday the platinum needed by the converters is selling for
US$1,473.10 an ounce. Now the good news is that a team at
Nanostellar in Redwood, California, has developed a mineral
catalyst that outperforms platinum at a fraction of the cost.
Solar activity was high over the last 30 hours, with the most
active region being sunspot region 1548. The largest events from
this region were an M5.5 at 18/0102, followed by M1.9 at 0323 UT
- M2.1 at 1607 UT - M1.1 at 2254 UT - M1.4 at 2322 UT. The same
region also produced several C-class events. Included in this
series of 7 M-flares were two events on August 17th - an M2.4 at
13.19 UT and M1.0 at 17:20 UT.
The shale gas revolution that has
swept across North America in recent years can dramatically
reduce US energy imports and be expanded globally, but only if
gas producers can convince governments and the public that
extraction can be done safely and in an environmentally friendly
way, the executive director of the International Energy Agency
said Friday in Houston.
"Companies need to realize they
need to be transparent about what they're doing and they need to
take people's concerns seriously," said Maria van der Hoeven,
speaking at the Baker Institute Energy Forum at Rice University.
- M 6.3, 56km SSE of Palu, Indonesia
Saturday, August 18, 2012 09:41:54 UTC
- M 7.7, 158km ENE of Poronaysk, Russia
Tuesday, August 14, 2012 02:59:42 UTC
Favorable incentives and financing
models continue to fuel interest in small solar projects, with
installations at schools, municipal buildings, hospitals and
retail stores now accounting for 40% of the US pipeline, reports
NPD Solarbuzz.
A company that markets solar panels
and has a very bullish outlook about the future demand for its
products is relocating its operations to a historic but
long-abandoned Riverside building and hopes to employ as many as
1,000 people there, a spokesman said Wednesday, Aug. 15.
What has America gotten so far from President Barack Obama's
spending on clean energy, and has it been worth the cost?
The multibillion-dollar outlays of the past four years had
equally big goals: putting people to work right away, but also
future jobs in a growing global endeavor to cut pollution and
the risks from climate disruption.
Suffolk, Va., residents have taken to their recycling
program.
In the first 11 months of service, more than 10.1 million
pounds of recyclables were collected by TFC Recycling with an
average participation rate of 63%, the Suffolk News-Herald
reported.
The Beveridge curve, developed in
the UK back in 1958, compares job vacancies as a fraction of
total labor force with the unemployment rate. It allows one to
study, among other things, labor inefficiency and labor
mobility. If there are job openings in one part of the country
or one industry, but the unemployed are unable to fill those
openings due to geographical or skill mobility constraints, the
Beveridge curve would show it.
A new study has revealed the
under-appreciation that exists for the role dams play in climate
change; how the reservoirs behind them can cause surges of
greenhouse gases as the water levels go up and down. In a study
of the water column at such a reservoir, marine scientists found
an astonishing 20-fold increase in methane emissions as water
levels were drawn down. Bubbles coming out of the mud and
sediment at the bottom were chock full of this potent greenhouse
gas.
Frederic Bastiat called government
(the state) the “great fiction through which everybody endeavors
to live at the expense of everybody else.” Politicians on the
left and right live by that fiction. Because of the libertarian
difference, an increasing number of Americans are beginning to
see through that falsehood and uncover the left or right
camouflage and subterfuge so painstakingly erected by
politicians.
The pieces come together. Within the last week I have read:
1) New software, associated with Google, will recognize
customers in stores so as to offer them discounts; having your
photos uploaded to allow this service will (for now) be
voluntary.
2) A new surveillance system in New York will store footage
from cameras in, for example, the subway, so that when an
unattended package is discovered, the police can look back in
time to see who left it.
3) TSA is perfecting a laser that will allow detection on
travelers of trace amounts of drugs, explosives, and doubtless a
wide variety of other things.
According to research from
Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2), up to 37,409 jobs could be
created from the more than 70 major clean energy projects
launched across the U.S. in the second quarter of 2012 alone.
Public transportation, electric vehicle manufacturing and power
generation led the growth.
nited Nations Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon Sunday introduced the Oceans Compact, a new initiative
to support and strengthen implementation of the UN Convention on
the Law of the Sea.
Rampant financial crime and poor
regulation can only mean another blowup, and guess who will be
holding the bag?
Surprise, surprise! Last week, the
Justice Department announced it wasn’t going to prosecute
Goldman Sachs or its employees for its shady activities during
the mortgage crisis. The same day, Goldman disclosed in a
regulatory filing that the Securities and Exchange Commission
(SEC) had dropped an investigation into a troubled $1.3 billion
residential mortgage-backed securities deal launched in 2006.
Mystery surrounds Syrian vice
president
The mandate of the U.N. observer
mission in Syria ended Sunday, with the country no closer to a
lasting peace than when monitors arrived four months ago.
When the U.S. decided to jump-start its battery industry
essentially from the ground up in 2009, it was taking on Asia's
technology titans: Samsung, Sanyo and Panasonic, among others.
President Barack Obama saw a future filled with electric cars
and in total pumped about $5 billion in federal funding into the
emerging technology. It was all part of a new economy that
promised "green" jobs.
After an increase in 2010 of 3.3 percent, energy-related carbon
dioxide emissions declined in 2011 by 2.4 percent and were 526
million metric tons (9 percent) below the 2005 level.
Energy-related carbon dioxide emissions have declined in the
United States in four out of the last six years.
Is a gene more like a tree trunk or
more like a baseball bat? A federal court Thursday took a stand
on the question, ruling that isolated DNA molecules are “not
found in nature”, and are therefore more like inventions, such
as baseball bats, than natural phenomenon, such as tree trunks.
The U.S. EPA will spend up to $57 million in projects along
the Sheboygan River in Wisconsin to help remove the river as an
area of concern, the agency announced.
The river was named an area of concern as a toxic hot spot in
1987. Of the 40 areas of concerns listed on the Great Lakes,
only one has been delisted.
Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC) yesterday
released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market
Survey (PMMS), showing fixed mortgage rates following long-term
Treasury yields higher. This marks the third straight week of
fixed mortgage rates moving higher.
The Energy Department released a
new report today highlighting strong growth in the U.S. wind
energy market in 2011, increasing the U.S. share of clean energy
and supporting tens of thousands of jobs, and underscoring the
importance of continued policy support and clean energy tax
credits to ensure that the manufacturing and jobs associated
with this booming global industry remain in America
Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela is training
a “guerrilla army” it aims to grow to one million strong by 2013
to fight off possible “imperialist aggression” from the United
States, an opposition lawmaker claims.
Could PV really be a champion for
the next decade?
Today, Solar Photovoltaics (PV) is rubbing shoulders with
wind power as the renewable energy technology of choice for
many, despite its higher cost in many scenarios.
While generous subsidies have played a major role in helping
to drive demand and push costs down, the technology is starting
to stand on its own feet, achieving grid parity with
conventional generation in some select locations. Within the
next decade that could be the norm, according to recent
findings, as Gail Rajgor reports.
A nationwide USA Today/Suffolk
University Poll of people who are eligible to vote but aren't
likely to do so finds that these stay-at-home Americans back
Obama's re-election over Republican Mitt Romney by more than
2-to-1. Two-thirds of them say they are registered to vote.
Eight in 10 say the government plays an important role in their
lives.
From Reagan to Twitter, the
industry needs to use a variety of campaign tools if it wants to
win over the broad swath of Americans caught in the middle of
the hydraulic fracturing debate, communication experts
said. Many Americans are still on the fence in the shale debate,
between industry fans and detractors who say it wrecks the
environment or just don't want it in their backyard.
August 16, 2012
[ED: This edition replaces
regularly scheduled for tomorrow. (Personal reasons.)]
Earlier this summer USDA posted 12
new GE crops for public comment with a September 11 deadline,
and 9 are under the new fast-tracked process. That's 12 new GMOs
to review and issue comments on in two months!
In 2005, according to one survey, nearly half of all public
elementary schools and about 80 percent of public high schools
operated under pouring rights contracts. It's clear what the
schools get for their trouble. It's no wonder that schools turn
to selling junky snack food and cutting deals with sugary soda
makers to augment stingy school-lunch budgets.
Scientists may have hit upon a new
means of predicting solar flares more than a day in advance,
which hinges on a hypothesis dating back to 2006 that solar
activity affects the rate of decay of radioactive materials on
Earth. Study of the phenomenon could lead to a new system which
monitors changes in gamma radiation emitted from radioactive
materials, and if the underlying hypothesis proves correct, this
could lead to solar flare advance warning systems that would
assist in the protection of satellites, power systems and
astronauts.
The worst U.S. drought in five decades has parched the land
and decimated crops. It now threatens to deal a second blow to
farmers, who may have to throw out metric tons of toxic feed.
Growers are rushing to check the nitrate levels of that
silage, the stalks and leaves that corn farmers often harvest to
feed to locally raised cattle or hogs.
The poison can drift up to 100
miles, and may be in your water!
Remember our article from February
about the strain of corn that has been genetically engineered to
withstand the herbicide 2,4-D, one of the active ingredients in
Agent Orange? Here’s the sequel:
Its deserts are hot and dry, and
underground aquifers in the south are brackish or saline. By
most standards the deserts in Israel don’t make prime real
estate for farmers, but as far as algae are concerned —— minute
plants that grow in water and on ponds as scum —— Israel's
conditions are perfect. And a new company from Tel Aviv called
Univerve is working to turn this natural substance into
third-generation renewable fuel for today and the future.
U.S. crude oil stocks fell by 3.699
million barrels to 366.158 million barrels the week that ended
August 10, led by declines in U.S. Gulf Coast and West Coast
stocks, according to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Energy
Information Administration (EIA).
A solar disaster isn't a question
of if, but when--and it looks like soon.
One of the biggest disasters
we face would begin about 18 hours after the sun spit out a
10-billion-ton ball of plasma--something it has done before and
is sure to do again. When the ball, a charged cloud of particles
called a coronal mass ejection (CME), struck the Earth,
electrical currents would spike through the power grid.
Transformers would be destroyed. Lights would go out. Food would
spoil and--since the entire transportation system would also be
shut down--go unrestocked.
Three typhoons that blasted across
Chinese coastal areas in the past two weeks have caused 51
deaths and left 21 people missing as of Monday, according to the
Ministry of Civil Affairs. In Bangladesh, flash floods have
killed 130, in India more than 100 people have died, while in
the Philippines heavy rains and floods have claimed 92 lives.
When it comes to re-generating the
economy, who has the better plan? Is it President Obama, who is
using government’s levers to increase consumer demand and
consumer confidence? Or, is it GOP-hopeful Mitt Romney, who
would reduce taxes across the board?
As the wind breathes out of Wind
Cave in my face, I am reminded of the creation of humans and my
own small place in this magnificent world. Wind Cave National
Park is named for the cave itself, called Washun Niya, or the
Breathing Hole of Mother Earth by the Lakota People. In this
creation story, it is from here that they emerged to this world.
Before you go running up your credit cards, let's remember,
this is a process that takes a few thousand years. However,
questions are seriously being viewed as to how far along we are
on this 10,000 year cycle. Some scientists ruminate the Earth
has already journeyed somewhere between 9,985 - 9,997 of this
10,000 year sequence.
Working on behalf of the Department
of Homeland Security, scientists with JASON, a government
advisory group, recently published a report on the vulnerability
of the nation’s electrical grid to solar flares. “Impacts of
Severe Space Weather on the Electric Grid” concludes that while
energy blasts from the sun, called coronal mass ejections, can
damage transmission lines, it’s unlikely the entire grid could
be brought down.
A century ago, Antarctica was one
of Earth's last frontiers, but now the continent is under threat
from human activity. An international team of experts,
including scientists from British Antarctic Survey (BAS), has
set out the current and future conservation challenges facing
the Antarctic in a Policy Forum article published this week in
the journal Science.
Charles Koch, head of Koch
Industries, Inc., calls for more economic freedom and more
prosperity for all Americans and says big governments “are
inherently inefficient and harmful.”
Introduced in the 1970s, the
compound triclosan has become an increasingly popular ingredient
in many antibacterial soaps and other personal-care items, such
as deodorants and mouthwashes. However, as the chemical’s
popularity continues to grow, a recent report has raised
concerns about some frightening risks that triclosan could pose
to public health.
From small laundromats and gas
stations to residential complexes, Milwaukee Energy Efficiency
is signing on city businesses looking to save on the bottom
line.
To keep things in perspective,
that's around 20 people a year who die from the actions of
psychopaths who exhibited behaviors that should have caused
notice and intervention, but didn't. And while 20 people a year
are 20 people too many, the cold fact is you have 4 times more
chance of being killed by a lightning strike than you do by a
mass-murdering psychopath bent on mayhem and death.
Companies participating in the
Environment Ministry's technology verification project for the
decontamination of radioactive substances in Fukushima
Prefecture are testing their cleanup solutions to determine
whether they can be used widely.
Water shortages due to ongoing drought affect the U.S. power
supply as power plants become overheated and shut down or run at
lower capacity, analysts say.
Because they are completely dependent on water for cooling
and make up about half the water usage in the United States,
power plants can become casualties of droughts, says Barbara
Carney of the National Energy Technology Laboratory in
Morgantown, W. Va.
AMERICA is still a
young country. Only 405 years separate us from our ultimate
origins at Jamestown, Virginia, while France and Britain are
1,000 years old, China 3,000, and Egypt 5,000. But what a 400
years it has been in the economic history of humankind!
Prozac. Cialis. Cymbalta. If you
have a television or read magazines, you've heard of their
drugs. Eli Lilly, out of Indiana, makes billions of dollars
every year off the sale of their patented chemicals, which are
used to suppress the symptoms of disease in the human body.
Founded by a chemist in the late 19th century; today the
pharmaceutical giant has offices in 18 countries, and its
products are sold in 125 countries, with revenues exceeding $20
billion annually.
*Weed resistance to Roundup, high seed costs, and doubts
about GMO safety spur switch to non-GMO
Wendel Lutz
hardly qualifies as an anti-GMO activist. As a conventional corn
and soybean farmer is nearly a polar opposite of an
environmentalist. Yet, he shares some views with opponents of
genetically modified foods based on his experience growing GM
crops.
Early last year, we reported that
the federal government was quietly stockpiling millions of
emergency meals, tying up so much capacity that consumers were
reporting shortages in the stores.
Now the feds are
doing it again.
A whopping 78 money-market mutual
funds needed assistance from their management firms between 2007
and 2011, and 21 of those funds would have seen their net asset
value per share drop below $1 without that aid, according to a
new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
An experimental desert oasis in Israel is testing a new
solar-powered nanofiltration system to desalinate water for
African crops.
Israel is an undisputed leader in providing desalination
plants, equipment, novel technology and know-how for removing
salt from water. Israeli company IDE Technologies has installed
hundreds of desalination plants around the world to help parched
regions make sea and brackish water drinkable.
GDS represents a new understanding
of the diseases and disorders raining down on us from dangerous,
unsustainable and irresponsible (but highly profitable)
technologies to which all of us are repeatedly exposed without
informed consent.
GE Energy Management and Urban
Green Energy (UGE) will pioneer the world's first integrated
wind-powered electric vehicle (EV) charging station.
The changes will result from the South Pacific rain band
responding to greenhouse warming. The South Pacific rain band is
largest and most persistent of the Southern Hemisphere spanning
the Pacific from south of the Equator, south-eastward to French
Polynesia.
Occasionally, the rain band moves northwards towards the
Equator by 1000 kilometres, inducing extreme climate events.
Many experts are worried about the
“fiscal cliff” that may derail the economy next year. And
already concern about that cliff is curbing growth, says Hugh
Johnson, chairman of money management firm Hugh Johnson
Advisors.
“It is clearly fear, or at least uncertainty,
before the reality,” he tells Yahoo. “Nobody knows if their
taxes are going to go up, or if it's going to be postponed and
they're taxes won’t go up."
A Japanese nuclear power company
hesitated before using corrosive seawater to cool the No. 2
reactor at the stricken Fukushima plant because it hoped it
could be used again, video released by the company shows,
contradicting official findings.
Landslides killed more than 32,000
people across the world from 2004 to 2010 - up to 10 times more
than previously thought, the first detailed study of the
disasters showed on Thursday.
Changes in liquidity levels could
also reflect external factors, such as weakening in the supply
of credit. For this reason, it is important that the market
infrastructure is sufficiently flexible to accommodate any
change in liquidity.
Engineers at Oregon State
University have made a breakthrough in the performance of
microbial fuel cells that can produce electricity directly from
wastewater, opening the door to a future in which waste
treatment plants not only will power themselves, but will sell
excess electricity.
Although utility approaches to
integrating distributed energy resources using microgrids have
been inconsistent, Pike Research predicts that microgrid
adoption will steadily increase over the next several years.
Neither plant released any
radiation or posed any danger to citizens, the company said. The
Monticello nuclear plant's single generating unit, which had
been operating at 10 percent capacity since last weekend, was
shut down because of a leaking pipe inside the plant's concrete
containment structure, the company said.
U.S. carbon dioxide emissions are
falling. Why? New data by a governmental branch is saying that
the switch from coal to unconventional forms of natural gas is
the main reason, followed by an unusually warm 2012 winter.
The United States Geological Survey
(USGS) is charged with the cataloging and assessment of land
formations and mineral reserves in the United States. They have
recently assessed the potential additions to domestic oil and
gas reserves from reserve growth in discovered, conventional
accumulations. All the assessed reserves are believed to be
technically recoverable and do not include Federal offshore
areas. The numbers show significant growth in the known
(discovered) fields throughout the country.
The image, acquired by the Moderate
Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra
satellite, shows that more than two-thirds of the Parry Channel
was ice-free on July 30. The median coverage for that date was
79 percent from 1980-2010. The Parry Channel separates Victoria
Island from Melville Island in Canada's far north.
Treaty fishing rights are
meaningless if there are no healthy fish populations left to
harvest, say Pacific Northwest tribes, fishers and tribal
environmental organizations.
President Obama visited an Iowa
farm Tuesday where a family grows corn and soybeans while also
generating wind energy with several turbines on their 1,000
acres. Republican Mitt Romney spent time at an Ohio coal mine,
speaking in front of hard-hat-wearing workers whose livelihood
depends on continued demand for their often-maligned product.
The Ontario government is investing
C$80 million to jump-start the widespread availability of
electric car charging stations to make EVs more attractive to
potential buyers.
A U.S. farm group, seed producers
and biotech critics filed suit on Wednesday against Oregon
officials in an effort to curtail planting of genetically
modified canola, warning of a potential "disaster" for the
state's seed and organic industries.
Nutrient pollution, one of the
greatest threats to our freshwater resources, is responsible for
the algal blooms that blanket our lakes and waterways in summer
months. Large blooms of cyanobacteria (‘blue green algae’) can
cause fish kills, increase the cost of drinking water treatment,
devalue shoreline properties, and pose health risks to people,
pets, and wildlife. A new paper just published in the
Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences shows
that microcystin, a toxin produced by cyanobacteria, is present
in Canadian lakes in every province.
Not only that, but a federal court
has now ruled that FDA can regulate your cells as drugs.
Public Service Company of New
Mexico customers can expect to see between $1.38 and $1.47
tacked onto their monthly electric bills soon to cover the costs
of adding renewable energy to the company's portfolio.
Over the years, when discussing Indigenous history and many
of the injustices perpetrated upon the Native peoples who
populate what is now Hawai’i, Alaska and the continental U.S.,
I’ve often heard people say, “That’s history and things are
better now” or “What’s [in the] past has passed; its time to
move forward.”
I believe Native peoples have moved forward and are thriving
in many instances. Cultures and languages are being
strengthened, Native businesses and organizations are numerous,
and a path has been laid for a whole new generation of tech
savvy Indigenous leaders. There are Native lawyers, doctors,
Ph.D.s, teachers, athletes, entertainers and artists.
Wind energy is powering new investments in domestic
manufacturing, but the impending expiration of a federal tax
incentive is threatening the trend, the U.S. Department of
Energy says in a report out Tuesday.
Amid election year debate over the wind industry's
20-year-old federal tax credit, the Energy Department touts the
economic benefits of the incentive in a commissioned analysis
authored by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
About two-thirds of the equipment installed on new U.S. wind
farms in 2011 came from domestic manufacturers, according to the
report. That compares with an estimated 35 percent in 2006.
Clarity in Lake Tahoe has
stabilized after the years of cloudiness that threatened the
lake’s attractiveness to millions of visitors from around the
world, politicians and business people heard Monday at the
annual Lake Tahoe Summit, but new threats abound.
Instead of undergoing a heart
transplant or another type of risky surgery, heart patients may
soon have a much better option. Researchers say the day is
coming soon when they’ll be able to regenerate ailing heart
muscle with a simple injection or catheter to deliver healing
“nanomaterials” to the organ.
Solar activity was low. No
Earth-directed CMEs were observed. Solar activity is
expected to be very low to low for the next 3 days (16 - 18
August). The geomagnetic field was quiet.
Researchers have found a way to
block addiction to various opioid drugs, including heroin and
morphine, without negatively affecting the pain-relieving
properties of these drugs.
Green building in New York City
will take a huge leap forward in September when Voltaic Solaire
officially unveils The Delta, the first private completely
self-powered building in the city. The $700,000 private use
building, which will triple as a bed and breakfast, restaurant
and residence, will combine solar and wind energy to generate
its own heat, electricity and hot water - meeting 100% of its
energy needs.
Kostas Kalevras posted his update
for Bank of Spain's (BdE) balance sheet this morning. Once
again, both lending to banks and TARGET2 liability rose sharply.
Solar observers say the Earth could
be destined for a massive solar flare event in 2013 disrupting
global infrastructure and costing trillions.
A state initiative to promote solar
energy has expanded to upstate New York, offering more than $100
million in incentives to regional businesses and municipalities.
A media release from Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office Thursday
announced that $107 million is available to upstate New York and
beyond through the NY-Sun initiative, which aims to increase the
amount of electricity generated by photovoltaic systems
statewide.
A growing trade dispute may be leaving most Chinese companies
reticent to set up shop in the lucrative American market, but
two South Korean corporations are launching large-scale
U.S.-based operations.
A ban on single-use plastic bags
can hurt sales for grocers and retailers within the bag ban area
and drive shoppers to stores just outside the ban region,
according to a new study from the National Center for Policy
Analysis
Last year, the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck
Japan resulted in the shutdown of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear
plant and a forced reduction in the nation’s overall energy use.
Now, one year later, extreme energy efficiency is still the
modus operandi, and many of Japan’s businesses and commercial
interests are chafing under the strict use regulations.
With only two nuclear power plants in operation—out of the
country’s 50 total plants—Japan’s energy sector is struggling to
meet demand.
The plan for a European Supergrid
is slowly progressing with each interconnector – but is it worth
the investment?
Imagine if we lived in a world where constant sunshine, flowing
rivers, steady wind, abundant forests, and hot rock beneath our
feet were equally accessible resources able to instantly power
our around-the-clock energy demands. Alas, we do not live in a
perfect world, and sometimes the sun doesn't shine and the wind
doesn't blow.
Why do small helpless things –
babies, kittens, puppies, pandas in baby form – turn even the
most cynical human into a helpless wreck? (
If states are going to add a heating requirement to their RPS or
even allow heat energy to be applicable, monitoring and metering
will be key and that can be problematic.
- Current levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are
probably sufficient to trigger large-scale permafrost carbon
feedbacks and global warming that human effort would be
unable to contain.
- The time to slash emissions was a long time ago but now
is still much, much better than later, which may, as new
studies suggests, simply become too late.
A new study has found that men who
eat a healthy serving of walnuts every day will improve their
sperm quality and boost fertility. The chemical in the walnut,
omega-3, is also common in many other tree nuts. The researchers
from the UCLA School of Nursing believe it is the omega-3 that
provides the fertility boost. A previous study found that one in
six couples is infertile, and that 40 percent of these cases
were due to a male factor. Fortunately, walnuts can be found at
many local supermarkets and convenient stores, as well as on the
branches of the many walnut trees throughout the world, and most
likely cost less than going to a fertility clinic or fertility
medication.
The US Environmental Protection
Agency expects to propose a regulatory fix by the end of the
year aimed at restoring the market for renewable fuel credits
after three fraud cases shut out all but the largest biodiesel
producers.
As U.S. farmers struggle to control
the rise of "superweeds" choking key crop land, a leading
herbicide known as 2,4-D that has shown good weed control for
decades appears to be losing its effectiveness, a report from a
science journal said on Wednesday.
Vestas on Monday confirmed an
undisclosed number of workers at its Pueblo tower plant received
layoff notices as the wind turbine maker began a pullback due to
slumping U.S. orders.
It remains to
be seen whether the Department of Energy will again draw
corridors where the federal government can expedite the building
of new power lines where congestion is a problem. But the DOE
is now doing studies to assess the state of congestion in the
US, and it has fingered a
problem: getting the data it needs.
The White House is hopeful Congress
will renew a $12 billion tax credit for wind power production, a
senior Obama administration official said, as a government
report warned that thousands of U.S. jobs would be lost if the
incentive runs out.
Animals living in patches of rainforest cut off from bigger
expanses of jungle by farms, roads or towns are dying off faster
than previously thought, according to an academic study
published on Tuesday.
"We uncovered a staggering rate of local extinctions," the
British and Brazilian researchers wrote in the online science
journal PLOS ONE.
A divided U.S. Court of Appeals for
the District of Columbia Circuit has decided to wait a few
months before deciding whether to order the U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC) to restart license review of the
Department of Energy (DOE) application to develop a nuclear
waste repository at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain.
August 14, 2012
Research at Oregon State University by engineer Hong Liu has
discovered improved ways to produce electricity from sewage
using microbial fuel cells
“The end of the world as we know
it” has been a popular and often oddly described event that many
living off the grid have actually placed some importance on or
at minimum have factored the idea into planning. And for many
of these off-gridders, the “end of days” requires a firearm
capable of meeting a variety of needs.
2012 sets red-hot pace, but layoffs
hit supply chain amid policy uncertainty for 2013.
Layoffs have begun up and down our
American manufacturing supply chain
Army officer Tammy S. Smith, 49,
became the first openly lesbian military general in U.S. history
on Sunday after the Army promoted her to the rank of Brigadier
General.
Asian gasoline cracks surged to
their highest in three-and-a-half years Friday, driven largely
by unplanned refinery outages amid seasonal peak demand.
Research recently completed by the
Water Environment Research Foundation (WERF) answers enduring
questions on why more US wastewater treatment facilities do not
harvest the biogas generated during wastewater treatment to
power the plant operations or return power to the grid. Most
often the answers are related to simple risk aversion or
incomplete economic consideration rather than technical
feasibility.
Although nearly 40 years have
passed since Brazil banned slash-and-burn practices in its
Atlantic Forest, the destruction lingers. New research reveals
that charred plant material is leaching out of the soil and into
rivers, eventually making its way to the ocean. So much of this
"black carbon" is entering the marine ecosystem that it could be
hurting ocean life, although further tests will be needed to
confirm this possibility.
A new technology that could enable low cost, high efficiency
solar cells to be made from virtually any semiconductor material
has been developed by researchers at the US Department of
Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the
University of California Berkeley.
Solar and wind energy can be as
fickle as the weather they depend upon. Therefore, anyone hoping
to escape from the grid by turning to these renewable forms of
energy must have good storage systems set up to supply all of
their power needs when the sun has set and the winds have become
still.
Building a battery bank will allow
you to harness the maximum technical advantage from your
alternative power generation techniques. However, electricity
and stored power are a couple of intimidating technologies and
offer some daunting challenges.
The kind of top-down bureaucracy
that can discourage communication and hobble some Western
corporations is fueling widespread problems with China's water
supply, with lessons for the rest of the world, researchers
reported on Thursday.
A man I know quite well was put
into a dangerous situation due to his neighbor’s house being
burglarized. This person, we can call him “Jim,” lives in a very
quiet section of a very small town. The little town does not
even have a traffic light, so it is smaller than those one
traffic light towns we often hear about. Another house, just two
doors up from the victim’s house, has always been an issue
because of the occupants. No real trouble, just suspicions. It
is a familiar house to neighborhoods across the country. The
place where things just do not seem quite right.
California could lose up to 20 percent of its hydropower
generation as climate change causes high-elevation reservoirs to
shrink, finds a new report from the California Natural Resources
Agency and the California Energy Commission.
China
has hiked its 2015 target for solar power capacity by 40 percent
to 21 gigawatts (GW), a government agency said on Wednesday,
with falling costs and new regulations boosting growth in the
sector.
China's crude oil imports in July
rose 12.4% year on year to 21.83 million mt or an average 5.16
million b/d, according to preliminary customs data released
Friday.
The potentially massive spending
cuts associated with the so-called fiscal cliff are still months
away, but according to CNNMoney, small businesses that rely on
government contracts are already feeling the pinch.
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission reported this morning that radioactive contamination
was unexpectedly found last week on a trailer used to transport
fuel at PPL's nuclear power plant in Salem Township.
U.S. corn production may be 24
percent smaller than the government’s estimate as drought in the
Midwest slashes yields and spurs farmers to abandon acres, Farm
Futures magazine said, citing a survey of 1,800 growers.
Dennis and Carole Mick are self-described "enthusiasts" about
saving energy.
They live in the Mueller Community, have solar panels on
their roof, participate in Pecan Street Inc.'s energy research
project and drive a hybrid Prius.
Scientists in Norway have released
results from experimental feeding studies carried out over a
10-year period, and the verdict is in: If you want to avoid
obesity, then avoid eating genetically engineered (GE) corn,
corn-based products, and animals that are fed a diet of GE
grain.
Scientists in Norway have released
results from experimental feeding studies carried out over a
10-year period, and the verdict is in: If you want to avoid
obesity, then avoid eating genetically engineered (GE) corn,
corn-based products, and animals that are fed a diet of GE
grain.
Three-quarters of the world’s poorest people live in rural
areas and half of them are farmers, Horsch noted. A typical
farmer is a woman living on less than a dollar a day and growing
several crops on one-half to one whole hectare (1.2-2.4 acres)
with no mechanization.
By using better land-management practices, he said, typical
small farmers in a developing country could see their land’s
output triple or more.
I was outraged today when I saw a
Washington Post article headlined "Three Polls Show
Obama Widening Lead Over Romney." One was a poll from FOX News
that showed Obama 9 points ahead. The others were surveys by CNN
and Reuters showing a 7 point Obama lead. NOT TRUE!
The rationale for enacting any
government regulation is to fix a problem the market has failed
to rectify on its own. If there is no market failure, there is
no reason for a regulation, at least in theory.
The worst drought in more than 50
years has caused more damage than expected to corn and soybean
crops, the government said on Friday, heightening calls for a
suspension of ethanol quotas to head off another global food
crisis.
Global alarm over a potential
repeat of the 2008 food crisis escalated on Thursday after data
showed food prices had jumped 6 percent last month and importers
were snapping up a shriveled US grain crop, helping drive corn
prices to a new record.
In the past week, extreme drought
doubled its grip on the top corn and soybean producing state of
Iowa, according to a report by a consortium of climate experts
issued Thursday.
A coalition calling for an end to
the war on drugs began its monthlong campaign Sunday in San
Diego that will take it to more than 20 U.S. cities.
The ECB has made some decisions
regarding Greece that clearly indicate it does not want to push
Greece out of monetary union. It has gone so far as to
essentially allow the Bank of Greece to fund the Greek
government.
Egypt's
military signaled its acquiescence Monday to the president's
surprise decision to retire the defense minister and chief of
staff and retake powers that the nation's top generals grabbed
from his office.
An El Nino weather pattern is
underway and will last until winter, Japan said on Friday,
foreshadowing disruptive conditions that could harm crops from
Australia to India at a time of rising fears about global food
supplies.
Germany remains top of the list with and accounts for more
than 63% of the PV installations worldwide. Having said that, PV
production volume is now dominated by manufacturing in Asia
where China and Taiwan now account for about 74% of the world
supply
Mark Calabria at the Cato Institute
usually isn’t shy about criticizing Timothy Geithner. Yet he
says it was ultimately up to the British to deal with the
manipulation of Libor, as only three of the 18 banks that set
the London interbank offered rate are based in the U.S.
Well,
nobody
died from the swine flu last time, so let's have another
massive vaccination campaign to protecct us from
another
disease. Maybe West Nile Virus? Maybe not.
Nobody is dying from tetanus,
so we just have to have a massive campaign to
protect
us from it - and this particular vax is one that is used to
induce infertility - proven. They've been touting a
"shortage" of the toxin. Such "warnings" are always a "Red
Flag" for future scare campaigns.2
Americans don't pay enough in taxes
and need to pay more for the good of the country's fiscal
health, said Jared Bernstein, former chief economic adviser to
Vice President Joe Biden and a senior fellow at the Center for
Budget and Policy Priorities.
Oil and gas
companies are racing to find a new substitute for India's guar
bean, a key ingredient used in hydraulic fracturing, the
drilling technology that has revolutionized the energy industry
by opening up vast new fields for production.
Hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," first created a boom in
natural gas drilling over the past decade that brought huge new
supplies of the fuel to market, and that technology is now being
used to unlock giant oil fields that were long considered too
difficult to tap.
The National Aeronautic Association
has confirmed a new national record of 49.9 seconds for
human-powered helicopter flight for the Gamera II flight on June
21
Growing prosperity and urbanization
could double the volume of municipal solid waste annually by
2025, challenging environmental and public health management in
the world’s cities, according to new research conducted by the
Worldwatch Institute (www.worldwatch.org) for its Vital Signs
Online service. Although some of this waste is eventually
recycled, the doubling of waste that current projections
indicate would bring the volume of municipal solid waste—or
MSW—from today’s 1.3 billion tons per year to 2.6 billion tons,
writes report author and Worldwatch Senior Fellow Gary Gardner.
The future of Wyoming's renewable energy sector hangs in the
balance as Congress considers whether to extend a tax credit for
wind energy production.
The Renewable Electricity Production Tax Credit for wind
energy, first passed in 1992, is set to run out at the end of
this year unless Congress acts to renew it.
Farmers are unsustainably exploiting groundwater in a number
of important agricultural regions, according to a team of
researchers...
They call it the groundwater footprint. And like the
ecological footprint, which has become the common measure for
calculating human demands on the biosphere relative to its
ability to regenerate, the groundwater footprint is designed as
a location-based measure of the sustainability, or lack thereof,
of human groundwater use around the planet.
Historically, there have been four
main sources of lead poisoning: paint, gasoline, tin cans, and
water pipes. Lead paint was banned years ago, though old paint
still remains a hazard in old housing, particularly in window
sills. Leaded gasoline is no longer sold, and its only remaining
threat is via old lead deposited in soil, especially in urban
areas. Tin cans haven't used lead sealant for decades.
The drought worsened this week in
the Midwest and the Plains, but the region's hydroelectric power
has not diminished because abundant 2011 rain and snow filled
reservoirs.
Thin, in-shape people are paraded
around us constantly in our daily lives through billboards and
other media. The concept of beauty has become centered around
being thin. Yet in our modern age, there are greater percentages
of people throughout the world who are overweight or obese.
Trends during our teenage years has a great effect on our body
sizes throughout life. A new study from researchers in Norway
has found that excess weight is not only caused by over-eating
and lack of exercise, but it is a product of our own perception.
Teens, even normal-size teens, who feel fat are more likely to
grow up to be fat.
In a Harris Poll, 23 percent said
they had more interest in purchasing an alternative energy car,
but at 2.7 percent of total new-vehicle sales over the past
three months, hybrids still constitute a sliver of the sales
picture, MediaPost News reported.
Ethanol plants are voluntarily slowing production as
corn prices climb and supplies tighten amid a widespread drought
that has generated discussion about whether more of the crop
should be devoted to food production.
Ethanol production nationally has dropped by 20 percent since
the beginning of the year and is at a two-year low, said Bob
Dinneen, CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association, a national
trade group.
Many in the oil industry will
remember well the mantra of Iran's delegation to OPEC in the
1980s: that Iran's OPEC quota should always be double that of
Iraq. They will also remember the late 1988 OPEC meeting at
which Tehran accepted quota parity for Iraq.
Iraq has given French energy giant,
Total, an ultimatum to either end its dealings with the
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) or sell its stake in a giant
oilfield in southern Iraq.
Iraqi deputy prime minister Hussein
al-Shahristani said late Sunday that Baghdad was determined to
cut ties with ExxonMobil and any other foreign oil company if
they violate Iraqi law and proceed with upstream work in the
semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.
Researchers at the University of
Southern Calif.'s Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute say they
have come up with iron electrodes that could make iron-air
batteries practical for storing energy as generated by
intermittent renewable sources such as wind and solar.
Stan Cox is a senior researcher at
the Land Institute. His book, Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable
Truths About Our Air Conditioned World, describes the threat
that our ever-increasing need for air conditioning poses to
efforts to maintain our planetary climate within its natural
limits, the limits that all living things on the planet have
evolved to thrive in.
Yes, it is possible that Israeli
leaders could be bluffing. Yes, it is also possible that they
are simply trying to pressure the U.S. and international
community to take more decisive action to neutralize the Iranian
nuclear threat. But reading the latest tea leaves, I
believe evidence is rapidly mounting that this could really be
it — Israel could be just days or weeks away from a massive
preemptive strike against Iran.
"In the wake of a massive taxpayer
funded bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, the Obama
administration took aggressive action to force a rule-making
process that reflects ideology over science and politics over
process and law," Issa said in a statement.
It really doesn't take a rocket
scientist to see the signs of the times. No, I'm not talking
about some Nostradamus-like power to see into the future. I'm
speaking in reference to just being observant of all that is
going on around the world, using some common sense, and relying
on old math (where 2+2 actually did equal 4, and not whatever
answer makes me feel good about myself) to come to reasonable
conclusions about the direction of our future.
For
instance, if I were to tell you that there is only a 3-day
supply of food available to your grocery store at any given time
and that any disruption in that food supply chain could be a
calamity, what would you think? Having suffered through
hurricanes and tornadoes alike, as well as economic setbacks and
infrastructure failure, I can tell you what my reaction is...
Prepare, and to encourage others to prepare.
Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio – known
for his controversial jail tactics and tough stand on
immigration – faces a class-action lawsuit and US Justice
Department probe of alleged racial profiling targeting Latinos.
He's also up for reelection.
Louisville Gas & Electric (LG&E)
and Kentucky Utilities (KU) have awarded PCL Industrial
Construction (PCL) and Black & Veatch a $583 million contract to
design and build a new natural gas-fueled power plant.
The Keystone XL Pipeline is curving around some politically
sensitive areas. But President Obama is figuring that the $7
billion investment will bring him huge political headaches just
before the November election.
So, the deal will have to wait until the coast is clear.
Conservative media watchdog Brent Bozell slammed the choice
of only mainstream-media correspondents to moderate this year’s
presidential debates, which could determine the outcome of the
election. And he blames the Republican establishment for letting
it happen.
Gasoline prices in the United States rose during the past two
weeks, driven partly by supply disruptions and a drought-induced
rise in ethanol prices, a widely followed survey showed on
Sunday.
The Lundberg Survey said the national average price of
self-serve, regular gas was $3.69 on Aug. 10, up from $3.51 on
July 27.
Electric vehicles are becoming a
more common sight on military bases as the Department of Defense
adds "road-capable" electric cars such as the Chevy Volt to a
fleet of thousands of smaller battery-powered vehicles.
Today, nearly three-quarters of the
trash discarded worldwide ends up in landfills or open pits.
With many countries facing dramatic population growth, rapid
urbanization, rising levels of affluence, and resource scarcity,
systems that convert waste to energy (WTE) are becoming an
attractive technology option to divert this waste to useful
purposes and to promote low carbon growth.
Radioactive materials released into the environment by the
Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan have caused mutations in
butterflies, a study indicates.
Scientists say they've detected an increase in mutations in
leg, antennae and wing shape among butterflies collected
following the 2011 Fukushima accident, and that laboratory
experiments have confirmed the link with the radioactive
release.
We need to stop thinking about being “Indian” as being a matter
of race or culture (both of which are just part of our reality)
and think about being Indian in terms of citizenship in a
“Native Nation.” Race should not define us although it is part
of our reality. Culture is dynamic and changes (sometimes slowly
and sometimes quickly) and should not define being Indian
although it too is part of our reality.
The EFF's concerns are the
vagueness of what Google considers to be a high number of
removal notices, how Google plans to make its determinations,
and how "there will be no process of recourse for sites who have
been demoted."
In Scottsdale, Arizona, any new
home must come equipped with fire sprinklers, a decades-old rule
lauded by fire safety advocates nationwide. But 12 miles away in
Phoenix, city officials are not even allowed to discuss adopting
a requirement like Scottsdale's, because of a state law passed
last year.
[editor's note: Note that this conflict is between two
levels of governments over issuing mandates, not the banning
individual common sense! - SAT] (08/10/12)
A bill passed this past week by the Massachusetts Legislature
will help develop hydroelectric power within the state.
The legislation, Senate Bill 2395 -- or officially,
An Act Relative to Competitively Priced Electricity in
the Commonwealth -- will increase the amount of new
renewable energy that would qualify for economically
favorable treatment by Massachusetts utilities.
Food waste generated in North
Carolina tops 1.1 million tons each year, and the state isn't
doing enough to divert that waste from landfills, a new study
shows.
In order to predict how Earth's
climate develops scientists have to know which gases and trace
elements are naturally bound and released by the ocean and in
which quantities. For nitrogen, an essential element for the
production of biomass, there are many unanswered questions.
Scientists from Kiel, Bremen and Halifax have now published a
research study in the international journal Nature showing that
widely applied methods are part of the problem.
Old Dominion Electric Cooperative
has suspended efforts to obtain the environmental permits needed
to build what would be the state's largest coal-fueled power
plant in Surry County.
Landmark European Union and
American sanctions directly targeting Iran's oil export revenues
have now been in place for more than a month and appear to be
having a big impact on the country's ability to sell its oil,
even to big customers in Asia that are not directly subject to
the EU embargo on imports of Iranian oil.
Former vice presidential candidate
Sarah Palin will not speak at the U.S. Republican nominating
convention in Tampa later this month, she said in statement on
Sunday.
Parasites look set to become more virulent because of climate
change, according to a study showing that frogs suffer more
infections from a fungus when exposed to unexpected swings in
temperatures.
Parasites, which include tapeworms, the tiny organisms that
cause malaria and funguses, may be more nimble at adapting to
climatic shifts than the animals they live on since they are
smaller and grow more quickly, scientists said.
Word on the street: If you see no
other meteor shower this year, make it this one. Tonight, August
11, through the 13th, the Perseids will light up the sky,
joining our old friends Venus, Jupiter and the moon as the three
align.
President Obama was personally briefed on Cape Wind's request
to secure a nearly $2 billion federal loan, with one official
urging the Department of Energy to "get it done" because it was
"important" to Obama, newly released e-mails show.
The emails, released as part of a congressional investigation
into Cape Wind and other green energy companies like Solyndra,
appear to show the administration trying to use political
influence to approve the massive wind project on Nantucket
Sound, according to investigators.
...led him to the alarming
realization that exponential economic growth cannot continue
into the decades and centuries ahead because of constraints on
energy supplies, said Murphy, whose website is named Do the
Math: Using physics and estimation to assess energy, growth,
options.
It’s no secret that rare earth
metals have become indispensable for the emerging clean-energy
economy. For example, the magnets in many state-of-the-art wind
turbines and electric vehicles use rare earth praseodymium,
neodymium, and dysprosium. Problem is, many of these materials
come from parts of the world that have political tensions with
the U.S. So the topic of avoiding rare-earth supply shortages is
now top-of-mind for many manufacturers.
This rate of loss is 50% higher
than most scenarios outlined by polar scientists and suggests
that global warming, triggered by rising greenhouse gas
emissions, is beginning to have a major impact on the region. In
a few years the Arctic ocean could be free of ice in summer,
triggering a rush to exploit its fish stocks, oil, minerals and
sea routes.
a C2 flare. Analysis is
underway to determine the potential geoeffectiveness of a
possible CME. Solar activity is expected to be low with a
slight chance for an isolated M-class flare. The
geomagnetic field is expected to be quiet to unsettled with a
slight chance for an active period on day 1 (14 August) due to a
high speed stream from a coronal hole. Days 2 and 3 (15 - 16
August) are expected to be at predominately quiet levels.
Although TVA has excavated more
than 1.6 million cubic yards of coal ash from the Emory and
Clinch river area, the utility and EPA are looking at ways to
handle another 500,000 cubic yards of ash that remain underwater
in the Emory, Clinch and Tennessee rivers.
The Phoenix-based company's Newby
Island Resource Recovery Park in Milpitas, Calif., will be able
to process up to 110 tons of multiple waste streams per hour and
divert at least 80% of material collected, according to
Republic.
President Barack Obama “robbed”
Medicare to pay for the healthcare legislation he pushed through
Congress in 2010, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney
said in an interview broadcast Sunday night...
“There’s only one president that I
know of in history that robbed Medicare, $716 billion to pay for
a new risky program of his own that we call Obamacare,” Romney
responded.
Police say an armed robber got more
than he bargained for Friday night when he targeted the wrong
victim.
Just after 10 p.m. a 36-year-old man
was confronted by a robber with a shotgun in the parking lot of
the Walgreens located in the 3600 block of College. The
man said the robber held the shotgun to his head and demanded
money.
Over at the Volokh Conspiracy,
Stewart Baker has this interesting piece on whom to blame for
the collapse of the cybersecurity bill, which failed on a
cloture vote in the Senate the other day. Baker suggests four
culprits—two on the lobbying side and two on the governance
side:
The argument goes that it's the
equivalent of measuring money supply for one of the states in
the US. But evidence is accumulating that this way of thinking
about the Eurozone periphery is utter nonsense. Periphery
nations are becoming increasingly financially isolated, not just
from the Eurozone core but from each other. In particular
cross-border financial transactions among banks are dwindling.
The findings suggest this species
of geese, at least, has identified wind farms as a threat and
alter their flight to avoid the spinning turbine blades, the
researchers said.
For months now, Andrea Rossi has
been telling us about a new version of the E-Cat (Energy
Catalyzer) technology that he calls the "hot cat." This new
variation of the technology is claimed to allow for extremely
high temperatures, with total stability, of up to 1,200 degrees
Celsius. Such temperatures hold the potential to allow for
direct conversion of heat to electricity utilizing solid state
devices. For example, thermophotovoltaic panels and
thermoelectric generators could utilize the E-Cat as a source of
very high temperature heat.
Syrian jets fired on areas
in and around Aleppo again on Sunday, continuing an escalation
of force that has led activists and rebels to demand that
foreign forces establish a no-fly zone to counter the
government’s air superiority.
New capital rules and other changes
to the basic structure of global fixed-income markets might
succeed in achieving a transformation that has been discussed —
but never realized — since at least the 1990s: the
“equitization” of fixed income.
Expectations of a new asset
purchase program by the Fed continue to persist as various
pundits anticipate its unveiled at the Jackson Hole gathering.
"Bugging" is a slang term for one
form of covert surveillance, but the word may take on a new
meaning with the development of drones not much larger than
insects. Researchers at several facilities, with the GRASP Lab
at the University of Pennsylvania in the lead, are developing
truly miniature drone vehicles displaying amazing agility and
the ability to fly in formation, or swarm. Scientists envision
squadrons of tiny drones soon scouting battlefields or searching
for natural disaster victims. Before that can happen, however,
they must develop sensors small and light enough to be carried
by the bug-like craft.
More than 4,000 people have been
evacuated from their homes in Spain's Canary Islands because of
forest fires that are difficult to control due to a heatwave and
strong winds, authorities said on Sunday.
In their book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make
Things, American architect William McDonough and German chemist
Michael Braungart conclude that waste and pollution are to be
avoided entirely. “Pollution,” says McDonough, “is a symbol of
design failure.”
The challenge is to re-evaluate the materials we consume and
the way we manufacture products so as to cut down on waste.
Restructuring the transportation system has a huge potential for
reducing materials use as light rail and buses replace cars.
Treasury 10-year notes erased gains even as growth ebbed in
Japan and before a report that analysts said will show Europe’s
economy shrank in the second quarter.
Treasuries fell, pushing the
10-year note yield to the highest since May, as economic data
showed strength, dimming prospects for added monetary stimulus
and limiting demand for $72 billion of U.S. debt sold at
auctions.
Of the fifty U.S. states, four territories and one District of
Colombia, almost forty of them have some kind of renewable
energy requirement on the books and of those forty, only about
fourteen allow some type of thermal renewable energy to meet at
least a portion of its renewable portfolio standard. But that
might be changing.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, through its Engineering and
Support Center, Huntsville, has issued a Multiple-Award Task
Order (MATOC) Request for Proposal (RFP) for $7 billion in total
contract capacity to procure reliable, locally generated,
renewable and alternative energy through power purchase
agreements. The $7 billion capacity would be expended for the
purchase of energy over a period of 30 years or less from
renewable energy plants that are constructed and operated by
contractors using private sector financing
U.S. regulators directed five of
the country's biggest banks, including Bank of America Corp. and
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., to develop plans for staving off
collapse if they faced serious problems, emphasizing that the
banks could not count on government help.
Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC) yesterday
released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey
(PMMS), showing fixed mortgage rates moving higher following
stronger-than-expected employment reports. The 30-year fixed
averaged 3.59 percent, and the 15-year fixed averaged, 2.84
percent, still near the historic low.
Federal nuclear regulators today
froze at least 19 final reactor licensing decisions in response
to a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit that
spent nuclear fuel stored on-site at nuclear power plants “poses
a dangerous, long-term health and environmental risk.”
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today proposed to allow
additional oil and gas development in the National Petroleum
Reserve in Alaska, NPR-A. After two days of meetings with North
Slope leaders, Salazar said the plan would protect the region’s
caribou herds, migratory bird habitat, uplands, and sensitive
coastal resources central to the culture and subsistence
lifestyle of Alaska Natives.
In June, the National Renewable
Energy Laboratory (NREL) released a groundbreaking new study
showing that the United States could generate 80 percent of its
electricity from renewable energy by 2050 with commercially
available technologies, while meeting electricity demand in
every hour of the year and every region of the country.
The nation's largest coal ash pond is set to close after
actions by a state regulatory agency, National Geographic News
reported.
The 1700-acre Little Blue Run impoundment, which opened in
1974, straddles the Pennsylvania-West Virginia border. Owned and
operated by FirstEnergy Generation Corp., a subsidiary of Akron,
Ohio-based electricity company FirstEnergy Corp...
It can seem all but impossible to understand why anyone would
commit a mass murder as Jared Loughner did near Tucson last
year, as James Holmes is accused of doing in Aurora, Colo., last
month, as Wade Michael Page did at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin
last Sunday, and as happens, on a smaller scale, about 20 times
a year in the United States.
Waste Pro USA Inc. opened its first compressed natural gas
(CNG) fueling station earlier this week, a $15 million facility
in Fort Pierce, Fla.
The new CNG fueling station is part of Longwood, Fla.-based
Waste Pro's $100 million investment to transition its fleet of
heavy trucks from diesel fuel to CNG.
The dolphins do seem to be talking
in this video, though their little squeaky sounds can barely be
heard above the Pearl Jam soundtrack as the mammals undulate
just behind the boat, some of them staring intently into the
camera. Thus we’ll never know what they are trying to tell us.
FBI research shows that 81.4% of
gun fights happen at a distance of under 20 feet. This means
that the average attack on a victim unfolds very quickly and at
a close distance.
The consensus was that zero waste
claimed by companies is hype or rhetoric used to make the
companies look greener, and some responses said that there is no
such thing as zero waste.
August 10, 2012
This year’s Atlantic hurricane
season got off to a busy start, with 6 named storms to date, and
may have a busy second half, according to the updated hurricane
season outlook issued today by NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center,
a division of the National Weather Service. The updated outlook
still indicates a 50 percent chance of a near-normal season, but
increases the chance of an above-normal season to 35 percent and
decreases the chance of a below-normal season to only 15 percent
from the initial outlook
Authorities in Greece are rounding up
thousands of suspected illegal immigrants in a large-scale
deportation drive to combat what a government official compared
to a prehistoric invasion.
Greece has long been Europe's main
entry point for illegal immigrants from Asia and Africa
seeking a better life in the West. But Greece's severe
economic problems and high unemployment are making the
problem worse than ever.
Here, you see the logic of the
modern industrial food system in its rawest form—a logic of
prioritizing profit over human and environmental welfare. A lot
has changed in the 400 years since the Elmina Fort was built,
but this principle has not gone away. The logic of the
plantation is the logic of today’s industrial food system.
Most of the world's population will
be subject to degraded air quality in 2050 if human-made
emissions continue as usual. In this 'business-as-usual'
scenario, the average world citizen 40 years from now will
experience similar air pollution to that of today's average East
Asian citizen. These conclusions are those of a study published
August 1 in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, an Open
Access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).
Arizona Public Service Co.
announces a Request for Proposal (RFP) from solar developers and
installers to construct a 32-megawatt (MW) solar photovoltaic
facility in Gila Bend, Ariz. This project will be financed by
APS through the company's AZ Sun Program.
In the long run, there’s no avoiding energy storage for a
100% renewable energy society. The two major sources of
renewable power are wind and sun, and they are either fickle or
reliably not available at night.
The problem is that the simplest energy storage option for
electricity is batteries, and this image from Wikipedia (hat tip
to Robert Rapier) illustrates a significant technical barrier:
our simplest option is also among the least energy dense
material we have.
Suddenly, the world is intrigued by India's unstable grid and
the role solar can play in providing solutions for a country
desperately in need of a new energy strategy.
The US Congress is gone. Some in
the country, even within the ranks of lawmakers themselves, wish
the five-week vacation--they prefer "state work period"--would
last forever. It will not, but at least for a while it will be
hard to tell.
First, some of the stories we've
recently uncovered at Off The Grid News reveal a frightening
trend regarding just how vulnerable the power grid is... and
this information even has me a more than a little concerned for
my readers who don't have a back-up power plan yet.
China is facing its third
typhoon in a single week, as Haikui strengthened from a tropical
storm on Sunday into a typhoon on Monday afternoon.
“Within seven days our nation
may be hit successively by three typhoons, the first time such
circumstances have arisen since records have been taken,”
Minister of Water Resources Chen Lei said in a statement.
New billboard advertising in six
battleground states across the country is asking voters if they
know where candidates stand on coal use and affordable
electricity.
Northern India's electricity has
been restored after 600 million people were left in the dark for
two days last week. While an outage of this magnitude is
unlikely to occur in the U.S., grid stability and capacity are
still a global concern.
After a successful landing on
Sunday, the NASA rover Curiosity has begun sending back images
of the planet including the first color pictures and 3D
stereographs. In addition to images from the surface of the red
planet, the lander has also sent back images captured by onboard
cameras during the craft’s dramatic descent through the Martian
atmosphere and landing. Meanwhile, an orbiter from an earlier
NASA mission sent back images of Curiosity’s descent.
With the Arab Spring now in a new
phase as authoritarian regimes are replaced with new
governments, Indonesia has been portrayed as a model for nascent
Muslim democracies to follow. Once an authoritarian state
itself, Indonesia adheres to democratic norms and Islamist
political parties have little influence. While there have been
some recent concerns about religious liberty and extremism in
Indonesia, the trend in the country appears to be moving away
from radical Islamism, as LIGNET explains.
In the throes of a historic drought
in the United States, a government agency said on Wednesday that
it broke a heat record in July that had stood since the
devastating Dust Bowl summer of 1936.
The worst drought in more than half
a century has analysts expecting the smallest U.S. corn crop in
five years, which will translate to smallest ending stocks next
summer in 17 years, a Reuters poll of 21 analysts showed on
Monday.
"When patients are admitted to
hospital with carbon monoxide poisoning, the main problem
doctors face is preventing damage to the body whilst the body
slowly removes the chemical," said University of Leeds'
Professor Chris Peers, who led the research. "We've shown that
ranolazine can rapidly protect the heart and prevent the kind of
cardiac events which threaten patients long after their exposure
to the gas."
Nearly all of the dynamical models favor the onset of El Niño
beginning in July - September 2012
A recent rise in deadly,
debilitating, and expensive heatwaves was caused by climate
change, argues a new statistical analysis published in the
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
Climatologists found that extreme heatwaves have increased by at
least 50 times during the last 30 years. The researchers,
including James Hansen of NASA, conclude that climate change is
the only explanation for such a statistical jump.
Strong scientific evidence links
climate change with increasing heat waves, coastal flooding, and
other extreme weather events
Questions about whether smartphones
and the radio-frequency energy they emit can cause health
problems in users were the impetus for an investigation by the
Government Accountability Office. What it found was that the
Federal Communications Commission's current RF guidance doesn't
reflect the latest research and that testing requirements may
not identify the possible maximum exposure in some use cases.
Ben Bernanke (Reuters):
"Interest rates are low because our economy is still in a
fragile recovery," Bernanke told a town hall meeting in
Washington with educators.
"Lower rates are intended to restore more normal levels
of employment and growth."
That may be true, but on average a prolonged low
interest rate environment has been hurting US
households.
Five companies, including Gillette
Co. and Energizer Battery Manufacturing Inc. have agreed to
conduct $9.3 million worth of cleanup at a superfund site in New
York, the U.S. EPA announced.
Looking not unlike a plastic
Popsicle stick, the Flamestick from Germany's AceCamp is a
firestarter made from recycled thermoplastic that measures 3.5
inches (8.9 cm) long by 1/4 inch (6.4 mm) wide. While plastic
may sound like a strange way to start a fire, the Flamestick
offers several advantages over more traditional materials.
Lakota Medicine Man Steve
Stonearrow traveled to northwestern Connecticut along with a
group of Lakota elders to perform a naming ceremony for a white
buffalo born June 16. This interview took place the night of
July 29, the day after Stonearrow named the white buffalo Yellow
Medicine Dancing Boy in ceremony.
"It is not a temporary back-up
until renewables take over," he told delegates at the Global
Business Summit on Energy in London.
"Renewables grow
very fast but we need more fossil fuels to meet demand," he
said.
Nacelles -- each the size of a
small bus -- sit on the floor of General Electric Co.'s training
facility here, holding the gears, generator and other equipment
that create electric current out of wind.
Sen. Charles Grassley left little
room for doubt about where he stands on extending wind energy
tax credits, which await action in Congress.
The burglar first pounded on the
door in Plano, and presumably the thief figured that nobody was
home, so he climbed onto the balcony and broke the window in
order to gain access. The homeowner heard the glass shattering
and went for his weapon and called 911. What would have happened
if the homeowner was unable to defend himself against the thief?
There will be no charges filed against the homeowner,
thankfully.
The U.S. Interior and Defense
departments on Monday announced a joint effort to promote
reneweable energy on Federal lands, an initiative designed to
support the Obama administration's "all-of-the-above" energy
policy.
Bloomberg
The graphic, created by economist Michael McDonough, shows
how waste/scrap rail shipments correlate with gross domestic
product. Recent numbers don't look good.
Economist Michael McDonough created this chart a
week-and-a-half ago. It compares rail shipments of waste and
scrap (reported by the Association of American Railroads) to the
United States' gross domestic product. (The year-to-year percent
change of waste/scrap shipments is on the left; the year-to-year
change in GDP is on the right.)
July was the hottest month in the continental United States
on record, beating the hottest month in the devastating Dust
Bowl summer of 1936, the US government reported on Wednesday.
It was also the warmest January-to-July period since modern
record-keeping began in 1895, and the warmest 12-month period,
eclipsing the last record set just a month ago, the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said.
The hearings for a proposed Lee
County wind farm could last months, much longer than ever
before.
Libya's National Transitional
Council handed over power Wednesday to the General National
Congress, the national assembly formed by last month's
elections.
According to police, Robinson
entered the home on 21 Street uninvited, and began to wave a gun
at three occupants of the home and telling them to get out of
the house.
One of the occupants of the home, 22-year-old
Frank Lee Green, says he pulled a handgun from his pocket and
shot Robinson.
Today, however, will be the
beginning of the end for many as the state Department of Health
Services grants permission for 99 medical-marijuana dispensaries
to open around the state.
Air pollution from Port-related
sources continues to drop as cargo rebounds at the Port of Los
Angeles. New data shows that from 2005 to 2011, cumulative
harmful emissions at America’s No. 1 trade gateway plunged as
much as 76 percent while container volumes increased 6 percent.
On a year-to-year basis, there has been a decrease up to 7
percent of harmful emissions.
Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a former
ambassador to the United States, was recently named the new
chief of Saudi intelligence, thrusting him into a position of
broad authority where he can strongly influence his country’s
ties to the United States and its approach to regional problems.
Bandar has spent a career working at the highest levels of the
Saudi government developing myriad contacts while often
operating behind the scenes, attributes that will enhance the
effectiveness of Saudi Arabian intelligence.
Japan held a solemn ceremony Monday
to mark the 67th anniversary of the world’s first atomic bomb
attack. About 50,000 people gathered in Hiroshima’s peace park
near the center of the American bomb blast that destroyed much
of the city and killed about 140,000 people.
The Obama Administration is moving quickly to harness solar,
wind, geothermal and biomass energy resources on or near
military bases across the United States and on public lands.
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Secretary of the
Interior Ken Salazar signed a Renewable Energy Partnership Plan
on Monday ahead of the National Clean Energy Summit 5.0 held
Tuesday at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Shale gas may be making headlines,
but Ohio still has significant coal operations.The state
yesterday announced an effort to find clean uses for coal and is
pledging $30 million over the next two years to support that
effort.
The petroleum complex settled
higher across the board Tuesday as equities surged and
expectations for further monetary stimulus were raised by
comments made by the head of the Boston Federal Reserve.
NYMEX September crude settled $1.47 higher at $93.67/barrel. ICE
September Brent crude settled $2.45 higher at $112.00/b, but not
before rallying $3 to $112.55/b around 1:45 p.m. EDT (1745 GMT).
OPEC said Thursday it was leaving
its estimate of world oil demand for 2012 unchanged at 88.72
million b/d as consumption follows its usual seasonal pattern
across the globe.
In its latest monthly oil market
report, OPEC said world oil demand has overcome an "earlier
notion" of declining momentum and moved to a more stable trend.
Heavy rains pounded the Philippines
capital on Wednesday, prompting a new danger alert as emergency
workers rushed food, water and clothes to almost one million
people through streets turned into rivers after 11 straight days
of monsoon downpour.
“The best the Fed can do is to
postpone the storm a little,” he told CNN Money. "It doesn’t
have the tools to promote growth and to deal with our structural
issues.”
The central bank is hesitant to move quickly –
it refrained from additional easing at its meeting last week –
partly because it’s worried about what’s happening overseas,
particularly in Europe, El-Erian said. And, “every time the
Fed does something it creates problems somewhere else,” he said.
A U.S. Senate bill, which would have prohibited the sale of
genetically engineered salmon unless the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration could find the fish would cause no
significant environmental harm, was withdrawn from the Senate
Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee late last week.
It's just one of many such bills proposed in the last two
years that haven't gotten any traction.
Proposed capital rule changes
implementing the Basel III accord will increase the volatility
of regulatory capital ratios for U.S. banks, especially during
periods of market stress, according to Fitch Ratings. Fitch
believes U.S. banks will have to hold additional capital to
manage volatility associated with unrealized gains and losses
from their available for sale (AFS) portfolio.
Solar activity was low. produced
the largest flare of the period, a C8 x-ray flare, at 09/1147Z.
Further analysis will be conducted to determine the
geoeffectiveness of any CMEs associated with this flare as more
data becomes available. The geomagnetic field is expected
to remain quiet on day one (10 Aug). Days two and three (Aug
11-12) are expected to be quiet to unsettled due to the effects
of the interaction between the two filaments that lifted off the
solar disk on 07 and 08 Aug and the corotating interaction
region ahead of a coronal hole high speed stream.
The device is a light-sensitive,
externally powered microchip. This is surgically implanted
beneath the transparent top membrane of the retina and into the
macular region. This is the area of the eye where clear images
are formed in normal-sighted individuals and where the implant
is best protected against working loose.
With more Americans unemployed at any time since the Great
Depression, President Obama is making it easier for illegal
aliens to take American jobs. That's right: With 20 million
Americans having trouble finding work, President Obama's
bypassed Congress to unilaterally give amnesty and work permits
to 2-3 million illegal aliens currently in the United States. It
means more job competition and wage depression for working class
and fewer jobs for returning veterans and recent graduates.
"This is clearly an economic
decision," Jerry Williams, president of the city-owned utility's
board, said of the vote to decommission the plant in 2015.
"Basically, we can go out on the open market and purchase
electricity ... at a lot less cost."
A new technique for building low-cost houses in
earthquake-prone areas has been successfully tested in Peru, and
could be rolled out in any developing country with a seismic
risk, according to researchers.
The system consists of prefabricated steel bars in the form
of trusses, triangular support structures, which are welded to
each other to form grids that, in turn, form the walls and
ceiling of a house — essentially forming a lightweight steel
structural skeleton.
Already stung by the Romney
campaign’s reaction to the Chick-fil-A battle, social
conservatives are openly voicing doubts that their concerns will
receive much more than lip service at the GOP convention.
From tea party leaders to battle-scarred veterans of the
culture wars, conservatives are warning that the morale of the
GOP base will suffer if social issues are shoved to the side of
the stage in Tampa.
According the UK’s National Health
Service, one person in 50 over the age of 80 will develop venous
leg ulcers. The ulcers occur when high blood pressure in the
veins of the legs causes damage to the adjacent skin, ultimately
resulting in the breakdown of that tissue. While the ulcers can
be quite resistant to treatment, a team of scientists is now
reporting success in using a sort of “spray-on skin” to heal
them.
The percentage of the earth's land surface covered by extreme
heat in summer has soared in recent decades, from less than 1
percent in the years before 1980 to as much as 13 percent in
recent years, according to a new scientific paper.
The change is so drastic, the paper says, that scientists can
claim with near certainty that events such as the Texas heat
wave last year, the Russian heat wave of 2010 and the European
heat wave of 2003 would not have happened without the planetary
warming caused by human release of greenhouse gases.
Not even a month since researchers
at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National
Ignition Facility (NIF) announced a 500 trillion watt laser
shot, researchers at the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA)
have managed to deliver a record-breaking petawatt, that is, a
quadrillion watts, in a pulse just 40 femtoseconds long at a
rate of one pulse every second. To put that in perspective, a
petawatt is more than the combined output of all electric power
plants in the world at any given time and one femtosecond is a
quadrillionth of a second.
Employees for a manufacturer of
towers for wind turbines in Tulsa face an uncertain future after
its parent company announced plans to sell the factory and
another in North Dakota.
The United States reaffirmed support for a UN goal of
limiting global warming after criticism from the European Union
and small island states that Washington seemed to be backing
away.
"The US continues to support this goal. We have not changed
our policy," US climate envoy Todd Stern said in a statement on
Wednesday.
“It’s better late than never that
the U.S. government is cleaning up the environment for our
children,” Duoc said in Danang, surrounded by family members
sitting on plastic stools. “They have to do as much as possible
and as quickly as possible.”
US utilities generated 94,049 GWh
in the week ended August 4, down 3% from 96,929 GWh generated in
the corresponding week of 2011, the Edison Electric Institute
said Wednesday.
The weekly total was 214 GWh below the
94,263 GWh total posted in the week ended July 28, EEI said.
A Hudson Valley utility company is
being asked not to turn out the lights on a growing program that
allows customers who own rooftop solar or wind renewable energy
systems to get paid by selling back their excess power.
For years the high cost of
photovoltaic (PV) panels, which convert sunlight into
electricity, meant that only wealthy Americans could afford
them. But that cost has been falling steadily, and panel
installations in the U.S. jumped 31 percent in 2011, many of
them on middle-income households.
Once considered too expensive to
use on a large scale, the costs of desalinated water have
declined. This is due to technological advances, improvements in
energy efficiency and an increase in the lifetime of
desalination plants. NRG Expert, the energy market research
company shares their findings from their latest Global
Desalination Report which has just been released.
Chinese companies continue to scour
the globe for natural resources, even with the slowdown in
economic growth. In Greenland, they may have found everything
they need: iron, copper, uranium, and plenty of so-called rare
earth elements, essential for manufacturing certain high-tech
products. A strong economic partnership with China that included
large-scale mineral extraction projects could be a game-changer
for Greenland, allowing it to become completely independent from
Denmark. But for Europe and North America, it would raise a
number of serious concerns.
Following many protests and support
from grassroots activists to protect the privacy of their Coming
of Age ceremony, the Winnemem Wintu Tribe was allowed to hold
its ceremony along the McCloud River in northern California with
minimal interference from outsiders.
The researchers, from McGill University in Montreal and
Utrecht University in the Netherlands, combined groundwater
usage data from around the globe with computer models of
underground water resources to come up with a measure of water
usage relative to supply.
That measure shows the groundwater footprint - the area above
ground that relies on water from underground sources - is about
3.5 times bigger than the aquifers themselves.
August 7, 2012
From the known and treatable (Lyme
disease) to the unpronounceable and potentially deadly
(Cryptococcus gattii), climate change is giving
gross diseases a leg up, clearing their way onward to the United
States.
After six years of decline, the
U.S. housing market is finding its footing as home prices
stabilize and begin to recover across the country. Single-family
home prices increased in 151 out of 384 metropolitan areas in
the first quarter of 2012 compared to a year ago. While average
U.S. homes prices declined by 1.9 percent on a year-over-year
basis, and are forecast to decline another 1 percent in the next
twelve months, Fiserv Case-Shiller projects a 5 percent increase
between the first quarters of 2013 and 2014.
Unfortunately, much of our food
supply has refined sugar added to it, so it’s easy to exceed the
USDA’s recommendations. You could do it simply by eating a
quarter cup of pancake syrup or having a 12-ounce soft drink.
Even a fruit-filled yogurt contains nearly the entire daily
allotment.
The Bureau of Land Management today
released its long-anticipated final environmental impact
statement for the pipeline right-of-way for the Southern Nevada
Water Authority's "groundwater development project." The project
envisions unsustainably siphoning more than 37.1 billion gallons
of groundwater per year from at least four valleys in central
Nevada and pumping it 300 miles to the Las Vegas Valley.
Would Provide Desperately Needed
Investment in America’s Clean Water Infrastructure
Rooftop solar power is growing like
crazy in California. But there's a big problem: About 44 percent
of California residents are renters, not homeowners. That means
that nearly half the residents of the state can't purchase
solar-generated electricity even if they want to.
Cancer-busting chemotherapy can cause
damage to healthy cells which triggers them to secrete a protein
that sustains tumor growth and resistance to further treatment,
a study said Sunday.
Researchers in the United States made
the "completely unexpected" finding while seeking to explain why
cancer cells are so resilient inside the human body when they
are easy to kill in the lab.
U.S. oil giant Chevron has until midnight tonight to pay a
US$19.04 billion Ecuador court judgment for polluting Amazon
waterways or officially default and face another lawsuit to
seize its assets, this time in Ecuador. Such collection lawsuits
are pending against Chevron in Canada and Brazil.
The global cleantech market has had
a rough couple of years with bankruptcies, profit warnings,
staff layoffs, financing challenges and a downward trend in
cleantech indices. Despite this, Frost & Sullivan believes the
long-term outlook for cleantech is positive.
James E. Hansen directs the NASA Goddard
Institute for Space Studies.
When I testified before
the Senate in the hot summer of 1988 , I warned of
the kind of future that climate change would bring to us and our
planet. I painted a grim picture of the consequences of steadily
increasing temperatures, driven by mankind’s use of fossil
fuels.
But I have a confession to make: I was too optimistic.
The Coast Guard is ready for
expanded activity in Arctic waters, including petroleum
exploration, Commandant Robert Papp told a U.S. Senate
subcommittee Monday, even though the nearest agency base is more
than 750 miles southwest of the Bering Strait on Kodiak Island.
When the New York Power Authority deflated plans last fall
for the Great Lakes' first offshore wind farm, it justified
pulling the plug by highballing the price tag.
But confidential NYPA documents obtained by the Times Union
reveal that figure -- $100 million annually for 20 years -- to
be double what the authority privately expected it would cost.
But if it wasn't about the money, why did the project,
initially touted as a pioneering bid to harvest steady lake
winds for electrical power, get shut down?
Enbridge Inc, whose pipelines ship the bulk of Canada's oil
exports to the United States, defended the record of its system
on Friday after a U.S. regulator said it had concerns about the
safety of the operation following a series of spills.
The U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety
Administration (PHMSA) has refused to allow Enbridge to reopen
its 318,000 barrel per day Line 14 after a rupture spilled 1,200
barrels of oil into a Wisconsin field a week ago.
As one of the world's most well-known and respected voices,
Microsoft founder Bill Gates has a unique opportunity to call
attention to important social issues and make a huge impact
worldwide.
Unfortunately Gates, through his foundation, has been
partnering with not only biotech giant Monsanto to hoist
genetically modified seeds on third-world countries, but also
with Big Pharma, to whom he pledged $10 billion to provide
vaccinations to children around the world.
For the fuel cell industry, 2011
was a decidedly mixed year. On the positive side, total
shipments broke the 20,000 barrier for the first time, thanks to
a 2009-2011 compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 83 percent.
This aggregate figure, however, hides the fact that the fuel
cell industry has continued to exhibit a growth/contraction
pattern.
Improvements in reactor technology
affecting both efficiency and safety, which are said to be
making nuclear power generation safer than ever, are doing
nothing to assuage public fears over nuclear energy. Research
from GlobalData shows that nuclear is still a highly
controversial source of power and public suspicions show no
signs of stopping.
The discovery of fluctuations casts
doubt on projections that Greenland could be headed for an
unstoppable meltdown, triggered by manmade global warming.
Greenland contains enough ice to raise sea levels by 7 meters
(23 ft) if it all thawed.
In a decision that may become a model for the nation, a
federal judge here ruled that gun restrictions imposed by the
Wilmington Housing Authority on its residents are
constitutional.
The housing authority's policy of prohibiting residents from
openly carrying firearms in "common areas" of public housing
buildings is reasonable and does not unduly restrict residents'
Second Amendment right to own and possess a gun, U.S. District
Judge Leonard P. Stark wrote in a 42-page opinion.
Japan marked
the 67th anniversary of the world's first atomic bomb attack
with a ceremony Monday that was attended by a grandson of Harry
Truman, the U.S. president who ordered the bomb dropped on
Hiroshima.
A bright yellow sign above the well
in this sleepy Nigerian village says 'caution: not fit for use',
and the sulphurous stink off the water that children still pump
into buckets sharply reinforces that warning.
CLIMATE change is hardly a
seasonal issue, but summer is the only time of year when
Americans and the news media regularly fix their attention on
the everyday heat emergency that’s already altering life on our
planet. Indeed, this summer’s record-shattering weather across
the United States has created a heightened level of interest in
and concern about the consequences of climate change.
Energy trader JPMorgan Chase & Co.
denies charges that it manipulated California's electricity
market for extra profit. The Wall Street giant calls itself the
victim of strong-arm tactics by state officials -- and is
demanding that they return millions taken from the firm while
the electricity investigation is still pending.
Kamakura Corporation reported
Monday that the Kamakura index of troubled public companies
increased 0.13% to 8.26% in July. The index reflects the
percentage of the Kamakura coverage universe that has a default
probability over 1%. While the index was higher on July 31 than
it was on June 30, the overall story for July points towards a
more nuanced interpretation of the credit conditions during the
month.
Long ago life began on Earth. One
of the most intriguing questions is what caused it to start just
then. A little less than 2 billion years ago, metals including
copper, molybdenum and zinc became available to primitive cells,
at the same time that the cells began to become much more
complex. Some scientists indicate that they have identified the
event that introduced these metals, which made it possible for
those primitive cells to develop, evolve, and spread.
"The results suggest that increased
acidity is affecting the size and weight of shells and
skeletons, and the trend is widespread across marine species,"
the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) said in a statement of the
findings.
All these activities are part of
the U.S. military’s major push into clean energy, a trend
presented in this space earlier this year by Environmental
Entrepreneurs co-founder Nicole Lederer. In a very bumpy year
for the clean-tech industry, the Pentagon’s development of clean
energy continues to be one of the brightest lights. It is
creating markets and jobs, and seeding next-gen technology
developments. At the same time, organizations like Veterans
Green Jobs and Airstreams Renewables are promoting training and
hiring of military veterans in the clean-tech sector.
Solar activity was low to moderate.
several C-class flares. CMEs do not appear to be
Earth-directed. slight chance for an isolated
M-class flare. The geomagnetic field is expected to be at
mostly quiet levels on day one (07 Aug), then increase to quiet
to unsettled levels on day two (08 Aug) due to a glancing blow
from the 04 Aug CME. Day three (09 Aug) should see a return to
mostly quiet levels with isolated unsettled periods as the
effects of the CME begin to wane.
Home gray water purification systems are efficient, safe,
environmentally friendly, and money-saving, according to Israeli
researchers studying the matter.
‘‘Gray water can be treated relatively simply and maintain
‘very high’ to ‘excellent’ water quality as defined by the
Ministry of Health,’’ researchers from Ben-Gurion University of
the Negev and the Technion Institute of Technology said in an
as-yet-unpublished report on the first 18 months of an ongoing
study.
Aerospace engineers are working to make ocean wave energy the
nation's newest source of green power by applying the physics of
wind turbines to the sea.
Former U.S. Air Force Academy scientists took over Texas A&M
University's wave tank recently to test the idea that if air can
produce affordable electricity, so can ocean water.
People
retiring today are part of the first generation of workers who
have paid more in Social Security taxes during their careers
than they will receive in benefits after they retire. It's a
historic shift that will only get worse for future retirees,
according to an analysis by The Associated Press.
US weather has been lousy this year, with droughts, heat and
killer storms. But a solar superstorm could be far worse.
A monster blast of geomagnetic particles from the sun could
destroy 300 or more of the 2,100 high-voltage transformers that
are the backbone of the U.S. electric grid, according to the
National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Even a few hundred destroyed
transformers could disable the entire interconnected system.
Across the bay of Naples from
Pompeii, where thousands were incinerated by Mount Vesuvius in
79 AD, lies a hidden "super volcano" that could kill millions in
a catastrophe many times worse, scientists say.
the painful truth is that Syria is
imploding. The bloodthirsty regime of Bashar al-Assad is
slaughtering its own people, and steadily losing control of the
country. The latest reports indicate that more than 20,000
Syrians have been murdered. Top Syrian officials are defecting.
The rebels are steadily winning control of more and more of the
country. Iran is sending forces to fight on behalf of the Assad
regime against the rebels. Now Russian President Vladimir Putin
is reportedly sending naval warships and Russian marines to
Syria as a show of support for Assad,...
The US employment numbers generated
a sharp rally in risk assets, with crude oil rising 3.5%, S&P500
up 1.8%, copper up 1.6%, and Brazilian Real up 90bp. It's worth
taking a quick look at what in this employment report is causing
such euphoria and whether it is justified.
The media is trying to create a
sense of momentum and of inevitability about the Obama
candidacy. One benighted Newsweek reporter even speculated about
a possible Democratic landslide.
NASA's Mars lander Curiosity has
landed safely on Mars. After a 253-day voyage punctuated by a
dramatic plunge through the Martian atmosphere, the
nuclear-powered rover has reported to mission control that it is
on the ground and systems are nominal.
Since the Navajos voted down the
Navajo-Hopi Little Colorado River Water Rights Settlement last
month, presumably stopping its progress, leaders from both
tribes have been lamenting the loss of a clear path to clean
drinking water that the settlement had promised.
Energy-related carbon emissions
fell 8 percent from the same period a year ago to 1.134 billion
metric tons (1.25 billion tons), according to the latest monthly
energy review by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) -
the energy department's statistics arm.
The US State Department Friday said
it is "concerned" about increasing tensions in the South China
Sea, including "disagreements over resource exploitation."
A week after a crowd of more than
1,000 people from all over the country flocked to a ranch in
northwestern Connecticut to witness a naming ceremony for a
sacred white buffalo, the baby calf named Yellow Medicine
Dancing Boy and his mom were peacefully grazing in the back
pasture.
A bipartisan majority of the
important Senate Finance Committee gave Vestas and other U.S.
wind-power manufacturers a long-awaited boost Thursday by
approving legislation to extend a federal wind power tax credit
through 2013.
As the Arctic sea ice continues to
melt, an initiative led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution is trying to predict out future changes to the
Arctic and how this will affect the environment.
A divided U.S. Court of Appeals for
the District of Columbia Circuit has decided to wait a few
months before deciding whether to order the U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission (NRC) to restart license review of the
Department of Energy (DOE) application to develop a nuclear
waste repository at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain.
August 3, 2012
Soaring temperatures and low
precipitation could not occur at a worse time for many farmers
in the United States. Intensifying drought conditions are
affecting corn and soybean crops throughout the Midwest, raising
grain prices as well as concerns about future food prices. The
U.S. Drought Monitor reports that 88 percent of this year's corn
crop and 77 percent of the soybean crop are now affected by the
most severe drought since 1988. The U.S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) is providing drought assistance to 1,584
counties across 32 states and warns of increased food prices in
2013 as a result of corn and soybean yield losses.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu told U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta yesterday
that time is running out for the international community to
neutralize the Iranian nuclear threat. Yes, economic sanctions
are seriously harming Iran's economy, but Netanyahu is making
clear that he doesn't see the sanctions actually having any
effect on changing Tehran's feverish bid to build nuclear
weapons.
Onondaga Lake in Syracuse, N.Y.,
has often been called the most polluted lake in America. It was
hammered by a one-two punch: raw and partially treated sewage
from the city and its suburbs, and a century's worth of
industrial dumping. But now the final stage in a $1 billion
cleanup is about to begin.
Antarctica was once home to a diverse range of tropical
plants including ferns, palms and rainforest trees, say
scientists.
They have uncovered the first direct evidence of a much
warmer, greener continent in the Southern Ocean. They publish
their findings today in Nature.
As part of the APS Solar for
Schools Program, students at more than 30 K-12 Arizona schools
will come back from summer break to find their classrooms
powered by solar energy. In addition - and perhaps more
importantly - the students will have the opportunity to learn
about solar power thanks to educational kiosk displays provided
by APS and project partner AlsoEnergy, an industry-leading
provider of energy monitoring systems.
Catalyst Paper Corp. is permanently
closing the Snowflake recycled paper mill in northeastern
Arizona at the end of September.
Despite their ability to generate
clean, green electricity, solar panels aren't as commonplace as
the could be. The main sticking point, of course, is price. Due
to their need for relatively expensive semiconductor materials,
conventional solar cells don't yet have a price-efficiency
combination that can compete with other sources of electricity.
Now Profs. Alex Zettl and Feng Wang of Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley
have developed seriously unconventional solar cell technology
that allows virtually any semiconductor material to be used to
create photovoltaic cells.
The Chinese news agency Xinhua
announced on July 31, 2012, that China will be sending its first
unmanned lander to the Moon in the second half of 2013.
China has announced its opposition
to US sanctions imposed on the Bank of Kunlun, owned by China
National Petroleum Corp, for doing business with Iranian banks.
A couple of months ago some
analysts from Credit Suisse took a trip across Asia to conduct a
survey of China's steel industry. They later wrote in their
report that the sector is in worse shape than it was in 2008. We
got a number of e-mails suggesting that this report surely must
be erroneous. It turns out that it wasn't.
California's electricity sector is
more vulnerable to climate change than previously thought, as
higher temperatures will impede the state's ability to generate
and transmit power while demand for air conditioning rises, a
report said Tuesday.
West Virginia scored no small
victory Tuesday in the "war against coal" with the Environmental
Protection Agency, but industry leaders were cautious that a
ruling that the Obama administration exceeded its powers in
water quality criteria might be ignored.
Oftentimes, larger institutions do not finance small renewable
energy and energy efficiency projects due to their lack of scale
and higher risk profile. But, this is exactly the niche
community development financial institutions (CDFIs) are filling
by making it possible for small developers, businesses, and
underserved homeowners to finance clean energy projects.
Congress voted Wednesday to slap sanctions on Iran's energy,
shipping and financial industries, convinced that increasing the
economic pressure on Tehran will derail its suspected nuclear
weapons program.
Despite warnings from intelligence
officials that the U.S. is ill-prepared to stop a growing wave
of cyber attacks against its critical national infrastructure,
the Senate on Thursday failed to pass a watered-down bill that
would have set voluntary standards to harden the network
defenses of electric utilities, chemical plants and other
privately-owned facilities.
This year, the "dead-zone," a patch
of oxygen-starved water at the mouth of the Mississippi River,
is the fourth smallest ever recorded by the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The dead-zone is still larger
than Delaware at 2,889 square miles (7482 square km).
Livestock producers hit by the
worst drought in half a century could get up to $100,000 each to
offset high feed costs and death of animals under a bill
expected to pass the House of Representatives as early as
Thursday.
Deciding upon the future of an idle
nuclear unit in Florida, completing a $3bn-plus coal
gasification power plant in Indiana and building new natural gas
plants in North and South Carolina lead the generation
priorities for Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK) now that it has completed
its merger with Progress Energy.
ganda's Ministry of Health is
advising residents to avoid eating dead animals especially
monkeys, after declaring an outbreak of the highly infectious
Ebola virus that has killed 14 people.
Pacific Investment Management Co.’s
Mohamed El-Erian called recent declines in purchasing manager
indexes in Europe and Asia “frightening” and said the world
economy is suffering its severest slowdown since the global
recession ended in 2009.
A congressional report concluded
Friday that "political pressure" by a White House eager to tout
stimulus spending was largely to blame for fast-tracking the
ill-fated $535 million Solyndra loan guarantee -- findings
compounded by the release of an email that showed the former CEO
once referred to the aid as "The Bank of Washington."
The report to Congress was blunt:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency had failed to regulate
pollution from the nation's livestock farms , many capable of
generating more waste than some cities , because it lacked
information as basic as how many farms even existed.
The newest version of an emergency plan for Cape motorists to
escape a hurricane does little to reassure activists concerned
about the lack of a local plan if there were an accident at the
Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station in Plymouth.
"We're a population at risk but we've been basically
ignored," Diane Turco, a Harwich resident and Pilgrim opponent,
said Monday.
Energy experts say it's unlikely
the nation's power grid could experience an outage such as one
in India on Monday that disrupted life for 370 million people,
largely because American operators in a competitive marketplace
keep aging infrastructure in better shape.
Windkits CEO Eric Schwartz has been
watching the political maneuvering over extending a 20-year-old
tax credit for wind energy producers, and he doesn't like what
he's seeing.
The Federal Reserve is likely to
show on Wednesday that it is ready to act against a weakening
U.S. economy but stop short of aggressive measures for now.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy
Geithner said on Tuesday that Europe needs be more forceful and
creative in fighting its debt crisis to keep it from blighting
the region's economy.
The benefits of the recently
approved merger between Green Mountain Power (GMP) and Central
Vermont Public Service (CVPS) are already apparent. As a result
of the merger, Green Mountain Power has filed for its first rate
decrease in decades.
Solar has crossed a major threshold
in Hawaii. The state’s homes and businesses can cut their
electric bills with unsubsidized solar power, but are also
discovering that cheap solar is not a panacea. As the tide of
solar costs has receded, a number of unexpected barriers have
emerged.
Study will show the possible consequences when some drug
compounds seep into the soil
The reuse of treated wastewater can be a valuable resource in
arid regions around the world, with water being reclaimed for
irrigation, surface release, and groundwater recharge. But
some contaminants in the water are being identified as health
problems -- especially pharmaceutically active compounds
(PhACs). New research reveals better understanding of the
conditions in which PhACs accumulate and degrade over time,
could negate the risk of these potentially harmful compounds.
“For the first time in history the
Traditional Hopi Elders from the Village to Shungopavi (the
Mother Village) are stepping forward to speak to the public,”
says the text accompanying the video. “They have a warning for
the world. They say they have been told this time would come
when the water would be taken from them. If this happens it will
have an effect on the whole world as they are the microcosm of
the world, of the universe.”
The U.S. House of Representatives voted to extend tax cuts
through 2013 for all income levels, defying a veto threat from
President Barack Obama.
The 256-171 vote, mostly along party lines, continues a
stalemate on tax policy that lawmakers say will last beyond the
Nov. 6 election. Nineteen Democrats voted for the Republican
bill, and one Republican was opposed. The measure won’t advance
in the Democratic-led Senate.
Actually, Americans are worse
than "poor" – Americans are staggeringly indebted, in debt
beyond anything that can ever be repaid (other than with
worthless, hyperinflated dollars) and thus with a negative
per-capita real net worth. Yet we are still borrowing trillions
of dollars every year; by itself, the projected federal
deficit for next year is over $1 trillion,
for the fifth year in a row (Bush's last year and all four of
Obama's). And the federal government's off-the-books debt
(mostly, unfunded liabilities for Medicare and other programs)
is $60 trillion to $202 trillion,
depending on how you count and whose numbers you believe.
An innovative hydrogen production
and vehicle fueling station jointly developed by the military
and the state of Hawaii over the past six years is ready for
prime time.
The country's largest prison
companies are generating huge profits as the U.S. locks up more
undocumented immigrants than ever, and an Associated Press
review shows the businesses are spending tens of millions on
lobbying and political campaigns.
For the fourth year in a
row, Brazil, China and India have prevented formal talks at the
Montreal Protocol on proposals to end global production and use
of the most powerful known greenhouse gases (GHGs).
When India went black, the lights
may have actually come on. No, nearly 640 million people were
still without power for several hours. But the powers-that-be
there defined for their own people and the rest of the world
what the central problems are that led to such a massive power
outage.
The first power plant based on
solar chimney technology is going to be launched in the
northwest Iranian province of Zanjan, IRNA news agency reported
on 31 July.
The resignation Thursday of veteran
diplomat Kofi Annan and the collapse of diplomatic efforts on
Syria by the United Nations and the Arab League all but assure a
bloody finish to the uprising against President Bashar Assad.
It’s doubtful that the euro can be
saved, no matter what European Central Bank President Mario
Draghi says, writes Paul Krugman in his column in The New York
Times.
California's landmark global-warming bill was a white-hot
topic in the 2010 governor's race and remains former Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger's signature environmental achievement.
But as the state prepares to unroll the law's cap-and-trade
program in November with the first state auctions of emissions
permits, a new poll finds that 57 percent of Californians say
they have never heard anything about the program.
This "Blue Angel" project, as it's called, suddenly puts the
Pentagon in the forefront of the vaccine business. The big
question is: why is the Army involved in vaccines at all? And
the answer is no surprise. According to DARPA, it's all about
readiness in containing bio-threats. Translated, that means
terrorist attacks that could use flu viruses.
A team of scientists from the Alfred Wegener Institute for
Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association (AWI) and
the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences has just
completed an airborne measurement campaign that allowed for the
first time to measure large-scale methane emissions from the
extensive Arctic permafrost landscapes. The study area extended
from Barrow, the northernmost settlement on the American
mainland, across the entire North Slope of Alaska, to the
Mackenzie Delta in the Northwest Territories of Canada.
I consider myself an environmentalist.
I don't have a family or a job or hobby requiring a big
vehicle, so I drive a Honda Civic, and the back is always filled
with assorted re-usable bags to tote around groceries. I recycle
and try to remind my husband, also an energy journalist, to put
the beer bottles in the recycling bin and not the trash.
uring the daily press briefing, Mr.
Earnest was asked whether Mr. Obama supports the measure, which
aims to end sales of unlimited amounts of ammunition on the
Internet and other mail orders. The bill also would force
ammunition dealers to report large sales of bullets and other
munitions to law enforcement authorities
Life in the remote Indian village
of Meerwada used to grind to a standstill as darkness descended.
Workers downed tools, kids strained to see their schoolbooks
under the faint glow of aged kerosene lamps and adults struggled
to carry out the most basic of household chores.
Short-term forecasts for the oil market over the next 18
months portray a starkly different picture to the long-term
outlook.
While some aspects of this variance may be temporary
aberrations from trend, others can be put in the context of
longer-term developments based on policy direction and
technological innovation.
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says she strongly supports
Mitt Romney as the Republican presidential nominee, but
suggested the GOP establishment is out of step with what
voters are looking for in their elected officials these
days.
Referring to Ted Cruz’s surprising upset win in the Texas
GOP Senate primary this week over favored Lt. Gov. David
Dewhurst, Palin said it proves that voters are tired of the
“establishment embracement of the status quo.”
In the developed world, we forget
that there was once a time when washday meant “day” rather than
“toss it in the machine and come back in 20 minutes.” In many
parts of the world without access to electricity and clean
water, that time is still now.
An overwhelming majority of Latino
voters who responded to a new public opinion poll support clean
energy, are very concerned about the public health effects of
fossil fuel production and use, believe that global climate
change is happening, and want to protect the nation's public
lands.
While the extended periods of
sunshine this summer have been a bane for northwest Ohio corn
farmers mired in drought, they've been a boon for Public Service
Enterprise Group's Wyandot Solar Farm near Upper Sandusky in
Wyandot County, which has been able to produce more energy than
expected.
Solar activity was low. Regions
produced C-class flares. A coronal mass ejection
was associated with the behind-limb event, but is not expected
to be geoeffective. Solar wind showed a slight increase
to 496 km/s at 02/1938Z and has since subsided.
Geomagnetic activity is expected to be quiet to unsettled on day
1 (03 August) followed by mostly quiet levels on days 2 and 3
(04-05 August).
One of the consequences of the
conquest and settlement of North and South America by Europeans
was the displacement and destruction of native biological and
cultural diversity. The environmental historian Alfred Crosby
has called the European invasion of the Americas [sic] a
biological conquest and a form of “ecological imperialism.”
U.S. researchers say they've developed an inexpensive
rechargeable battery that works by the oxidation of iron plates
-- more familiarly known as rusting.
The air-breathing battery uses the chemical energy generated
by the oxidation of iron plates exposed to the oxygen in the
air, scientists at the University of Southern California
reported Wednesday.
"Iron is cheap and air is free," ...
A leading British scientist claims
that the secret to a longer life isn't exercise and fad dieting,
but eating a diet that is as low as 600 calories a day.
Researchers at the UK's Newcastle
University have discovered an enzyme from a microbe on the
surface of seaweed is effective at fighting plaque-forming
bacteria
A bill introduced in the U.S.
Senate would set up a state permitting program for coal ash and
ensure coal ash storage sites have requirements for groundwater
monitoring and protective lining.
The Senate Finance Committee has
given the go-ahead for a one-year reprieve for the
soon-to-expire Production Tax Credit (PTC). The one-year
extension (through 2013) must now go to the full Senate. If
passed, the bill will go to the House.
Solar energy projects will be
blazing through the regulatory process now that the Obama
administration has put the finishing touches on a plan to fast
track those deals on public lands. As such, 17 sites in six
southwestern states may become home to new green energy plants.
Approximately 1.3 billion people live without regular access to
energy. People are forced to use fuels that pollute and cause
respiratory illnesses, like kerosene and biomass, and spend long
hours time collecting fuel. It is a global crisis that is
harming the health and well-being of people in the developing
world, in addition to harming the planet.
The way to stop a
murderous attacker is with strategic and accurate lethal force.
In the time it takes for police and SWAT to arrive to the scene
of a mass shooting, “duck and cover” will only have made the
murderer’s mission easier.
As the great drought of 2012
continues its turf-cracking domination of the summer, fears of
the impact on the US power sector are proving empty through the
first week of August.
And in another energy-related area
where water is a huge issue -- the use of hydraulic fracturing
in exploring for natural gas -- the impact has also been minimal
so far. But fears are being expressed about what the future
might bring should the drought drag on.
There are two particularly egregious arguments against solar
power: it does not work in certain areas because of weather and
it costs too much. But as we saw at Intersolar in San Francisco
earlier this month, the industry's continuous innovation is
helping to blow these false perceptions out of the water.
The most probable outcome of the
FOMC meeting currently under way is the continuation of
"Operation Twist" and possibly the extension of the current
“exceptionally low… through late 2014” rate guidance to "mid
2015."
Prenatal exposure to high magnetic
field levels—widely present in today’s high tech world—could
raise the risk of a unborn baby becoming overweight or obese in
childhood, according to a recent study by Kaiser Permanente in
Oakland, California.
Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC) yesterday
released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market
Survey (PMMS), showing fixed mortgages rates breaking their
streak of record-breaking lows and moving higher on mixed
Eurozone and domestic economic data. Before this week, the
average rate on the 30-year fixed had fallen to or matched
record-low levels in 13 of the past 14 weeks.
While Iran's military trumpets
every new project or purported advance in hopes of rattling the
U.S. and its Gulf Arab allies, the U.S. is quietly answering
with an array of proposed arms sales across the region as part
of a wider effort to counter Tehran.
The Fed, as expected, maintained
the fed funds target rate in the 0.00% to 0.25% range. There
were no changes made to policy with the extended Operation Twist
program maintained and the policy of reinvesting the proceeds of
maturing debt intact. The main differences in the statement were
the acknowledgement that the pace of economic growth
"decelerated somewhat over the first half of the year" and a
heightened tone to the degree of risk to the outlook being
generated by global events.
US House of Representatives
Republicans on Thursday used new federal data showing a spike in
US proved oil and natural gas reserves to highlight the
difference between production on federal and non-federal lands.
"There is a tale of two energy policies to be told in this
country," Representative Fred Upton, Republican-Michigan, said
at an Energy and Commerce Committee subcommittee hearing.
New orders for factory
goods unexpectedly fell in the United States in June, a fresh
sign that the slowdown in the country’s manufacturing sector
will probably stretch into the second half of the year.
The U.S. Treasury Department said
today it is developing a floating-rate note program that could
be operational in a year or more, while it is preparing for
possible negative-rate bidding.
The short intervals between charging your electric car alert
the insurance company that you might be a speeder. That 2 a.m.
batch of microwave popcorn outs you to pharmaceutical companies
looking to peddle their insomnia medications.
Some people fear utilities or anyone with access to their
data are using new smart electricity meters to peer into your
home and create a usage profile that can be sold.
Vertical axis wind turbines have
the potential to solve some of the problems of generating energy
from offshore breezes, U.S. researchers say.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, has
installed more than 150 U.S. solar projects and expects to have
as much as 90 megawatts of capacity by year-end, more than Ikea
Group and Apple Inc.
Wal-Mart’s San Diego store is the 100th to get
solar panels in California, the company said Monday
in a statement. The company currently has 62
megawatts of panels installed at U.S. locations, and
also operates fuel cells and wind turbines at some
sites.
How much is enough when it comes to
eating? Should you use a big plate or a small plate to measure?
One scoop or two? Think you know what one serving of food looks
like? You may want to think again, according to a new study from
York University. Many people overestimate the size of one
serving of food as defined in Canada’s Food Guide, so they may
be overeating even if they believe they are being careful,..
This November, Californians will
vote for or against Prop 37 , the California Right to Know
Genetically Engineered Food Act. The outcome of that vote will
likely determine whether the U.S. will one day join the nearly
50 other countries that allow their citizens to choose between
genetically engineered and non-genetically engineered food
through the enactment of laws requiring mandatory labeling of
genetically modified organisms (GMOs).
What is the world wide trend in air
pollution? On the surface North America and Europe have been
gradually improving. However, that is due to often moving
industry to other countries such as China or India where air
pollution is a bit more of a problem. Most of the world's
population will be subject to degraded air quality by 2050 if
human-made emissions continue as usual. In this
business-as-usual scenario, the average world citizen 40 years
from now will experience similar air pollution to that of
today's average East Asian citizen. These conclusions are those
of a study published August 1 in Atmospheric Chemistry and
Physics, an Open Access journal of the European Geosciences
Union (EGU). Air pollution is a major health risk that may
worsen with increasing industrial activity. At present, urban
outdoor air pollution causes 1.3 million estimated deaths per
year worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.
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