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“ We did not
think of the great open plains, the
beautiful rolling hills, and the winding
streams with tangled growth, as "wild." Only
to the white man was nature a 'wilderness'
and only to him was the land 'infested' with
'wild' animals and 'savage' people. To us it
was tame. Earth was bountiful and we were
surrounded with blessings of the Great
Mystery. ”
—Luther Standing Bear
July 31, 2012
British computer programmer Will
Powell has created a prototype real-time translation system that
displays subtitles for the interlocutor's speech in a language
of choice
California residents threw out 4.4
pounds of garbage per day in 2011, a record low, the Department
of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle) announced.
A study published last month in the
journal Science came up with new estimates of tropical forest
loss between 2000 and 2005. The research — led by Nancy Harris
of Winrock International and also involving scientists from
Applied GeoSolutions, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the
University of Maryland — was based on analysis of remote sensing
data calibrated with field studies.
The historic ride to commemorate
the Northern Cheyenne Exodus of 1878 will end today, July 28,
when the riders arrive at the 11th Gathering of the
International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers in Lame
Deer, Montana. The riders left Fort Reno, Oklahoma on June 1 to
embark on the 1,391-mile journey.
“Fracking” may sound like something
out of Battlestar Galactica, but it’s actually short for
“hydraulic fracturing.” It is one of the most remarkable success
stories in the history of the energy industry and its ability to
open up previously unprofitable oil and gas resources in North
America, Europe and China holds the promise of centuries of
cheap, clean and abundant energy free of Middle Eastern control.
However, it has raised the concerns of some environmentalists.
Chimera Energy Corporation of Houston, Texas, has announced that
they are licensing a new method for extracting oil and gas from
shale fields that doesn't contaminate ground water resources
because it uses exothermic reactions instead of water to
fracture shale.
That’s partially a reflection of
the growing efficiency of wealthy nations, and partially a
reflection of poor countries’ growing prosperity. But it’s also
a specific challenge for the United States of America, which,
unlike our smaller rich peers, has grown accustomed to thinking
of itself as master of its own destiny. A world in which a
majority of oil consumption is happening in China, India, and
Latin America is a world in which America’s energy fate is
driven by forces beyond our control. And we’re pretty far behind
in preparing for it.
In the latest volley in a trade row
between the world's top two economies, China on Friday started a
probe into alleged U.S. dumping of solar products and government
subsidies for the sector.
In 2011, companies and public
agencies that provide services critical to the modern American
economy -- things like water, energy, banking and communications
-- reported nearly five times as many attacks on their
infrastructure as the year before.
A Colorado business owned by a
Catholic family does not have to comply with President Barack
Obama's new healthcare mandate that private employers provide
employees with insurance coverage of birth control, a Colorado
federal judge ruled on Friday.
Cutting soot and other air
pollutants could help "buy time" in the fight against climate
change, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday as seven nations
joined a Washington-led plan.
Advocates of cyber security
legislation have advanced the ball to the point where they might
score. A new bill intended to win bipartisan support would offer
“incentives” to companies that operate vital infrastructure if
they participate with government authorities, which would
include getting absolved of any liability.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
has selected ThermoEnergy Corporation's Unity Power Alliance
(UPA) joint venture for a grant that will fund further research
and development for the production of clean electric power from
coal.
A comparatively low-priced disaster
bill for livestock producers hit by the worst drought since 1956
may be the ticket to passage for a $500 billion farm bill now in
limbo in Congress.
The severe drought in the U.S.
Midwest wreaked more havoc across the country on Thursday,
forcing barges on the Mississippi River to lighten loads for
fear of getting stuck and raising concerns about higher prices
for food and gasoline.
Some environmentalists are upset
over a new series of meetings scheduled to discuss uranium
mining in Virginia. They say the public was not adequately
notified.
Environmentalists Mum on
Poisoned Streams
When EPA-funded scientists at the
University of Colorado studied fish in a pristine mountain
stream known as Boulder Creek two years ago, they were shocked.
Randomly netting 123 trout and other fish downstream from the
city’s sewer plant, they found that 101 were female, 12 were
male, and 10 were strange “intersex” fish with male and female
features. It’s “the first thing that I’ve seen as a
scientist that really scared me,” said then 59-year-old
University of Colorado biologist John Woodling, speaking to the
Denver Post in 2005.
The share of small businesses and
mid-sized companies that report borrowing from banks has
declined from recent highs reached last summer — despite the
fact that these firms say improving credit conditions are
actually making it easier to obtain loans.
Former CIA Director General Michael
Hayden delivered a disturbing message during a LIGNET
intelligence panel discussion on the serious threat a nuclear
Iran poses to the United States.
The Federal Open Market Committee
will be meeting Tuesday and Wednesday to decide on the future
course of monetary policy. Here is a matrix that looks at the
pros and cons of the most likely outcomes, along the subject
lines that the Committee will likely discuss.
Apache
County’s forest-stewardship agreement with the U.S. Forest
Service was held up at a congressional hearing Friday as a model
for other governments trying to tame the growing problem of
wildfires.
Geothermal energy, which helps cool
homes in the summer and heat in the winter, has been around for
many years but people are becoming more aware of the technology
thanks to federal and state tax credits designed to make the
renewable energy more affordable, said Aaron, president of Total
Comfort Heating and Air Conditioning in Smithsburg. Some power
companies also offer grants.
Honda has been working on walking
robot technology since the 1980s and the 130 patents that
resulted in its ASIMO robot have allowed the automotive giant to
expand into creating a new range of assisted mobility devices,
including the Stride Management Assist. This lightweight,
surprisingly simple-looking device is designed to help those
with weakened leg muscles due to age or other causes, yet who
are still able to walk. It does this by giving a robotically
controlled boost to the upper legs that allows the wearer to
walk faster for longer.
Farmers would get another round of
the $5 billion a year "direct payment" subsidy, targeted by
reformers as wasteful spending, in a Republican-drawn offer of
disaster aid for farmers hurt by the worst drought in half a
century.
The plan, approved in a party-line
vote, would curtain the Energy Department's embattled
loan-guarantee program.
Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad inspects centrifuges during a visit to the Natanz
uranium enrichment facility in 2008. Iran has significantly
stepped up the pace at which it is enriching uranium, shortening
the time it would take for it to reach a nuclear threshold,
according to two Israeli newspapers.
Adopting renewable energy sources
such as solar and wind power is a great way to reduce emissions
and produce energy locally. In places like remote Pacific
islands, however, those benefits are potentially a key to
independence. For that reason Tokelau, a 10 sq. km. (3.86 sq.
mi) island nation that lies around 500 km (311 mi) north of
Samoa and which is a territory of New Zealand, is about to ditch
diesel as a source of electricity and switch to solar power.
Highlights this week include: Rossi
achieves 1000 degrees C; Italian licensee announced; official
logo chosen; Defkalion looking to move to Vancouver; Athanor
Update; LERN and transmutation.
The LIBOR rate-rigging scandal
threatens to engulf some of the major banks in the world
including JPMorgan Chase (JPM) and Citigroup (C) in the U.S.
and, of course Barclays, PLC (BARC.LN) in the United Kingdom.
Temperatures heading north of 100
degrees Fahrenheit and scarce rain portended another blistering
weekend for much of the U.S. Midwest, where the most extensive
drought since 1956 is devastating crops, evaporating rivers, and
threatening to push world food prices higher.
MILLIONS of dollars in US funds have been lost due to poor
planning and workmanship in projects to help rebuild Afghanistan
and billions more could be at risk, a US watchdog says.
In 2010, the largest outbreak of
whooping cough in over 50 years occurred in California. Around
that same time, a scare campaign was launched in the California
by Pharma-funded medical trade associations, state health
officials and national media, targeting people opting out of
receiving pertussis vaccine, falsely accusing them of causing
the outbreak.
Harnessing the power of hydrogen
gas presents one of the most promising options available for
obtaining a large-scale sustainable energy solution. However,
there are numerous and significant challenges present in the
production of pure hydrogen, one of the most prominent of which
is the high costs associated with the use of rare and expensive
chemical elements such as platinum. Accordingly, the team at the
Brookhaven National Laboratory set out to create a catalyst with
high activity and low costs, that could facilitate the
production of hydrogen as a high-density, clean energy source.
Twenty-somethings who postponed
having babies because of the poor economy are still hesitant to
jump in to parenthood -- an unexpected consequence that has
dropped the USA's birthrate to its lowest point in 25 years.
The new head of the Energy
Information Administration (EIA) believes that cheap natural gas
prices are hurting coal more in the electric power generation
market than tough anti-pollution standards from the
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
It's a tantalizing concept: the
idea that the US could become a net exporter of petroleum, or at
the very least, see its net imports drop toward zero.
The Coral Triangle, a roughly
triangular marine zone in the Indo-Pacific region that is
considered to have the world's richest concentration of marine
biodiversity, is facing potential ecological collapse due to
heavy pressure inflicted by human activities, according to a new
report.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta
acknowledged today that increasingly stiff international
sanctions have yet to compel Iran to give up its nuclear
ambitions. But he argued that more pressure eventually would
lead Iran to "do what's right."
The U.S. Postal Service is bracing
for a first-ever default on billions in payments due to the
Treasury, adding to widening uncertainty about the mail agency's
solvency as first-class letters plummet and Congress deadlocks
on ways to stem the red ink.
A record heat wave, drought and
catastrophic wildfires are accomplishing what climate scientists
could not: convincing a wide swath of Americans that global
temperatures are rising.
Solar activity was moderateAnother new spot group of
Earth-directed coronal mass ejections were observed during the
reporting period.The geomagnetic field is expected to be quiet
to unsettled on day 1 (31 July).
An Israeli newspaper reported Sunday that the Obama
administration's top security official has briefed Israel on
U.S. plans for a possible attack on Iran, seeking to reassure it
that Washington is prepared to act militarily should diplomacy
and sanctions fail to pressure Tehran to abandon its nuclear
enrichment program.
Today, House Energy and Commerce
Committee Ranking Member Henry A. Waxman and Senate Committee on
Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Jeff Bingaman sent a
letter to Secretary of Energy Steven Chu to urge DOE to issue a
supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking on the implementation
of section 433 on energy efficiency performance standards for
new federal buildings.
Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the
Supreme Court's most vocal and conservative justices, said on
Sunday that the Second Amendment leaves room for U.S.
legislatures to regulate guns, including menacing hand-held
weapons.
Oceans curb the pace of climate change by absorbing carbon
dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels. The Southern Ocean
is the largest of these ocean carbon sinks, soaking up about 40
percent of mankind's CO2 absorbed by the seas.
But until now, researchers were unsure what mechanisms were
involved because of the remoteness and sheer size of the
Southern Ocean.
Most people spend more time
researching their next car purchase than deciding on a doctor.
Crashing prices for solar energy products are pushing most
world manufacturers to the brink of destruction, and stiff
tariffs the United States recently imposed on China are not
reversing the trend.
Low prices for solar cells -- used to assemble the panels --
are a windfall for installers and consumers, but global
manufacturers are calling foul as the price for the cells has
fallen 66 percent since third quarter 2010. And Boston-based
analyst firm GTM Research said it does not expect to see solar
product prices increase anytime soon because of a worldwide
glut.
A new report from Pike Research
predicts the conversion of at least 261 million tons of
municipal solid waste to energy within 10 years, according to a
BusinessWire
Rogers stated flatly: "I believe
there were certainly elements of Hezbollah [involved] and I
believe it was under the direction of their masters in Iran."
Unless we move quickly to adopt new
population, energy, and water policies, the goal of eradicating
hunger will remain just that
While much of the nation has been struggling through stormy
economic times, one locale has been weathering that storm just
fine — Washington, D.C.
The reason, of course: the huge population of government
workers and contractors in the nation’s capital living on the
taxpayers’ dime.
Over the past decade, a new
contaminant has found its way into water supplies around the
world: pharmaceutical products that contain estrogen. Estrogen
comes from multiple sources, both natural and synthetic-made. It
has been found to have negative effects on males and females
alike when it is consumed daily in public drinking water. Not
much has been done to stop this problem. Most water treatment
plants have not implemented any processes to remove estrogen,
and little research has been done to find the best way to solve
the problem.
[ed:
And now we start adding testosterone...to "balance"?]
In this video commentary, I discuss
how we won a battle, but not the war. We stopped the Gun
Control Treaty from being signed on Friday. Congratulations!
Now, let's prepare for the war!
Spain and the U.S. currently dominate the global solar
thermal market, according to GBI Research, due to an increase in
the cost of fossil fuels and supporting government policies.
In 2011, Spain held a massive 65 percent of the global
concentrated solar power (CSP) market with the U.S. in second at
33 percent of total installed capacity, according to GBI.
The U.S. was the first country to produce commercially viable
solar thermal electricity.
Life on the Pine Ridge Indian
Reservation is difficult and complex. South Dakota’s Shannon
County is the second poorest county in the United States, and
conditions are very harsh. The people struggle with
unemployment, poor housing, disease, alcohol and drug abuse,
violence, depression, and more. Yet Lakota people are amazingly
resilient and spiritually powerful. Among the Lakota, there is a
tremendous love for the land, a system of profound cultural
ways, a sense of community that often supersedes the struggles,
and a capacity for humor as medicine.
If approved by state utility
regulators, the agreement would benefit PSE customers by
providing them another source of low-cost power, while providing
momentum to a separate TransAlta agreement to phase out
coal-fired power generation in Washington by 2025.
New research makes it painfully
clear that a valuable source of energy is being wasted. Nearly
three-quarters of waste (trash) worldwide ends up in landfills,
according to Pike Research.
Members of Pakistani parliament,
scientists, and students alike watched in awe as Waqar Ahmad, a
Pakistani engineer, successfully demonstrated a working water
powered car in Islamabad. With just one liter of water, Ahmad
claims a 1000 cc car could cover a distance of 40 km, or a
motorbike could travel 150 km.
Around the world, honey bees have
been vanishing at an alarming rate. Since bees not only provide
honey, but are also vital for pollinating crops, this is not
only distressing, it also puts agriculture at risk. The reasons
for this decline are still unknown, but a Florida-based company
claims to have found a solution in the form of a concentrated
organic feed supplement. BeesVita is purported to not only
protect bee colonies in danger of collapsing, but actually
causes them to grow and thrive.
The climate's "new normal" for most
of the coming century will parallel the long-term drought that
hit western North America from 2000 to 2004 - the most severe
drought in 800 years - scientists report in a study published
Sunday.
With Europe teetering on the brink,
the press and the politicians have focused on fiscal discipline,
and even questioned whether 17 sovereign nations should be
sharing a common currency. Some, mostly southerners, argue that
an integrated Europe is worth the cost and adjustments. Others,
mostly northerners, are concerned with the potential costs to
themselves or the project's long-term viability and
desirability.
You would think that medical
schools would provide future doctors with the knowledge they
need to properly guide their patients in making good food
choices. But the truth is very different.
There are good times to be had in
the Badlands. To fully enjoy them, get off the beaten path (i.e.
the paved roads and crowds of tourists in the national park’s
famed North Unit) and explore the pristine South Unit, which
lies within the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
Here you’ll find rare views of wildly varied rock formations and
innovative adventures organized by the Oglala Sioux Parks and
Recreation Authority.
July 27, 2012
The Swiss government bond curve is
now negative for maturities of five years and under. Investors
are willing to lock up a negative yield for 5 years just to get
out of euro denominated assets without taking much FX risk.
Fears of Eurozone breakup are escalating.
The current high costs of gasoline
and diesel fuel, along with the substantial and growing supplies
of low-cost natural gas in many countries, are leading to
renewed interest from both consumers and fleets in natural gas
vehicles (NGVs). What’s more, NGVs produce lower greenhouse gas
(GHG) emissions, particulate matter, and nitrogen oxide than
gasoline or diesel-powered vehicles, giving governments looking
to reduce GHGs a tool to meet those objectives.
There is something distinctly
pathos-inducing about a corn plant dying of thirst. Maybe that’s
why coverage of the 2012 drought has focused on commodity crops,
especially corn. Reading the reports, you almost expect Tom Joad
to step out from between the brown-baked stalks, as if Steinbeck
were writing the copy.
Worldwatch Institute says trash
will double by 2025
In the wake of last week's Senate
subcommittee hearings on alleged lapses in anti-money laundering
(AML) compliance at HSBC, Fitch Ratings expects many U.S. banks
to face significant new regulatory scrutiny over efforts to
prevent money laundering.
Arab nations announced plans
Wednesday to go to the U.N. General Assembly and seek approval
of a resolution calling for a political transition and
establishment of a democratic government in Syria following the
Security Council's failure to address the escalating crisis.
Saudi Arabia's Ambassador Abdallah al-Mouallimi and Qatari
diplomat Abdulrahman Al-Hamadi announced plans to seek action by
the 193-member world body, where there are no vetoes, during a
Security Council debate on the Middle East.
With the Libor bank investigations
expanding internationally, there is increasing criticism from
U.S. regulators over the handling of the scandal by British
banking regulators, with the latter accused of not responding
strongly enough to early allegations of rate rigging.
Differences in regulatory practices between the United States
and the UK could undermine a strong international response to
banks’ collusion to rig rates, which could create more
uncertainty and put downward pressure on the markets.
Although some Australian cities,
local councils and three states and territories have banned
single-use plastic bags, Sydney-based Planet Ark Environmental
Foundation Ltd. says other states are waiting for Australia's
federal government to act.
Two weeks ago the Economist
front page headline was ‘Banksters’. When a respected magazine,
read throughout the world, suggests that banking is riddled with
malpractice, its ‘credibility shot’, trust evaporated, we have a
major problem.
A problem, because the banking system – and the wider
financial system – plays a crucial role in a market economy.
New letter addresses nation’s
declining morality and the need for spiritual revival
There's a 90 percent chance Greece
will abandon the euro by the end of 2013, said Willem Buiter,
chief economist at Citi.
Fungi are found throughout the soil
with giant braiding of fine threads. However, these networks
have surprising functions. Only a few years ago researchers from
the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) discovered
that bacteria travel over the fungal threads through the
labyrinth of soil pores, much the same as on a highway
California regulators may move to
investigate how the closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generation
Station (SONGS) could affect state ratepayers, as well as
whether the cost of repairing the plant's four generators is
worthwhile.
Cutting soot and other air pollutants could help "buy time"
in the fight against climate change, a senior U.S. official said
on Tuesday as seven nations joined a Washington-led plan.
Air pollution, from sources ranging from wood-fired cooking
stoves in Africa to cars in Europe, may be responsible for up to
six million deaths a year worldwide and is also contributing to
global warming, the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) said.
If you’ve
been exposed to dangerous fracking chemicals, your doctor can
find out what these chemicals are—but can’t tell you!
The answer is yes, and now we know
why.
While the Federal Reserve is close
to announcing additional measures to stimulate the economy,
there is little left that the central bank can do to constrain
the threat of another recession, according to Peter Morici,
professor at the Smith School of Business at the University of
Maryland and former chief economist at the U.S. International
Trade Commission.
Arizona Public Service (APS) changed how it selects new
generation supply with a March 2012 filing; it will no longer
use "least cost" as the dominant factor. Instead, it will
diversify and distribute its generation eggs in many baskets.
Not only that, APS will reduce carbon emissions and total water
use, and has protected itself from potential future price spikes
and volatility in the natural gas market.
US gasoline stocks jumped 4.134
million barrels last week, as production and imports rose, while
demand remained lackluster, EIA data released Wednesday showed.
The gasoline data was not entirely bearish, however, as US West
Coast stocks fell for the second week in a row. You can read
Platts analysis of itbelow.
The U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency announced today that it has completed its sampling of
private drinking water wells in Dimock, Pa. Data
previously supplied to the agency by residents, the
Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and Cabot
Oil and Gas Exploration had indicated the potential for
elevated levels of water contaminants in wells, and following
requests by residents EPA took steps to sample water in the area
to ensure there were not elevated levels of contaminants. Based
on the outcome of that sampling, EPA has determined that there
are not levels of contaminants present that would require
additional action by the Agency.
Back in December we discussed how lack of access to dollar
funding will push Eurozone banks out of the US. That's not
because these banks don't like US lending. It's simply due to
the fact that European banks generally rely on domestic euro
deposits for funding (exacerbated by increased capital
requirements). To obtain dollar funding however they used to
issue commercial paper and sell it to US money market funds. But
US money market funds walked away from this CP last year to
avoid exposure to the Eurozone. This left Eurozone banks with no
access to dollars except via the Fed Liquidity Swap (or
converting euros into dollars and hedging the position via
currency basis swap
A slightly elevated level of
tritium was found in one monitoring well on the site near
Exelon's Three Mile Island nuclear generating station in
Pennsylvania, but the amount found posed no health or safety
risks, the company said on Wednesday.
Regular physical activity adds
about four years to life expectancy, and endurance exercise
during leisure time seems to be better at extending life than
physical activity done as work, according to a new research
review published in the Journal of Aging Research.
Natural gas prices have jumped to
their highs of the year, as the nation’s scorching heat has sent
people running to turn up their air conditioners. And experts
say the natural gas party is not over.
Federal Reserve officials are
growing increasingly in favor of stimulating the stalling U.S.
economy, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Methods could
include purchasing bonds held by banks, a stimulus tool known as
quantitative easing that floods the economy with liquidity to
spur recovery, or extending the outlook as to how long Fed
officials foresee interest rates staying near rock-bottom
levels.
Hundreds of people in North Kivu
fled toward the city of Goma by road trying to escape the
fighting. The sound of heavy artillery echoed through the hills.
The Congolese army continued a second day offensive to recover
the cities of Rugari and Rumangavo, and to takeover these
positions held by the insurgency.
The ocean is a tremendous bank of energy. Covering more than
two-thirds of our planet, the amount of energy embodied in the
ocean's tides, currents, and waves, not to mention temperature
and salinity gradients, could power the world — if we were able
to commercialize the technology to harness its renewable power.
A crippling drought that has
decimated the U.S. corn crop will send food prices climbing as
high as 5 percent next year, said Bill Lapp, president of
commodity consulting firm Advanced Economic Solutions.
Corn prices have risen almost 37 percent since early June thanks
to the drought.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner voiced confidence the
Obama administration and Congress will avert a fiscal crisis.
Geithner told "CBS This Morning" it would be "untenable" to
defer critical spending and tax decisions when the economy is
still struggling.
Three simple numbers that add up to
global catastrophe - and that make clear who the real enemy is
During the past few years the New
Jersey solar industry has boomed. Installed solar generation
capacity exceeded the amount required under the New Jersey
Renewable Portfolio Standard, creating a potential crash of this
thriving industry. A total of over 800 MW of solar generation is
now operating in New Jersey
For a few days this month, NASA's
images of the Greenland ice sheet turned red, indicating that
for a while, almost the entire surface of the vast frozen island
was melting.
Virtually the entire ice sheet covering Greenland - from its
coastal edges to its two-mile-thick center - experienced some
degree of melting for several days this month, according to an
analysis by NASA and university scientists based on measurements
from three satellites.
An estimated 97 percent of the top layer of the Greenland ice
sheet thawed at some point in July, the satellite data shows.
This is the largest extent of surface melting observed in three
decades of satellite observations.
Scientists with the British
Antarctic Survey have discovered a rift valley that is one mile
deep. The valley is hidden deep below the Ferrigno Ice Stream in
West Antarctica, an extremely remote region seen only once
previously by human eyes in 1961. They found that this rift
basin is connected to the ocean, allowing the ocean to penetrate
into the continent. The Southern Sea impacting the ice has a
warming effect, despite its cold temperatures. This has
tremendous implications, as the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is
melting at a faster rate than any other part of the continent.
Sadiqi used HOMER to model power
systems in the province of Bamiyan in the northern part of
Afghanistan. He found the most ideal solution for his site was a
hybrid system powered by renewable resources, including
micro-hydro and solar, with a battery backup.
Republicans are getting scorched for sitting on a farm bill
as the worst drought in decades shrivels crops and is forecast
to drive up food prices for the next two years.
The $491 billion farm bill is stalled in the House of
Representatives on concerns there are not enough votes in the
Republican-controlled chamber to pass a bill many see as too
costly.
A year after one of the world's
most-costly flood disasters devastated Bangkok, industrial parks
from Shenzhen to Jakarta have failed to prepare for what could
be even worse flood disasters. Picture taken July 19, 2012.
Although some progress is being
made to stop Iranian ships from transporting WMDs, a new U.S.
report details the cat-and-mouse game that Tehran is playing to
evade sanctions. Iran is doing this not just through deception,
but by exploiting the weakness of UN resolutions, as LIGNET
explains.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the
final say on all state matters in Iran, voiced confidence that
the Islamic Republic can beat the latest punitive measures aimed
at blocking the country's vital oil and banking industries over
the disputed program.
A deal with Chevron (NYSE: CVX) is the latest in a series of
developments that have increased the economic and political
power of the Kurds of northern Iraq. If this trend continues,
tensions between the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and
Iraq’s central government in Baghdad may ultimately reach a
breaking point. Syria’s civil war and Turkey’s desire to solve
its own Kurdish problem could ultimately help the KRG, as LIGNET
explains.
A government-appointed inquiry into
Japan's Fukushima nuclear crisis raised doubts on Monday about
whether other atomic plants were prepared for massive disasters,
and delivered a damning assessment of regulators and the
station's operator.
Today marks the 40th anniversary of
NASA's Landsat program, the world's longest-running
Earth-observing satellite program. The first satellite in the
Landsat series was launched on July 23, 1972 from Vandenberg Air
Force Base in California.
As competition for clean water
grows, some of the world's biggest companies have joined forces
to create unprecedented maps of the precious resource that flows
beneath our feet.
Scattered rain brought some relief
to parts of the baking US Midwest on Wednesday, but most of the
region remained in the grips of the worst drought in half a
century as the outlook for world food supplies and prices
worsened.
Elevating his tendency for gaffes
to the international stage, Mr Romney said that
because of concerns about security, it was “hard to know just
how well it will turn out”.
Three years since the recession ended, 43 states have yet to
regain the jobs they lost in the downturn. The figure is a
reminder of how weak the nation's job market remains.
The states that are the furthest behind in job growth are
those that were hit hardest by the housing bust: Arizona,
Florida and Nevada.
The “Arctic Apple,” engineered by
the British Columbia–based Okanagan Specialty Fruits, thinks the
non-browning apples could improve industry sales the way “baby
carrots” did for carrot sales. Of course, as most people now
realize, “baby carrots” are not young, tender carrots at all,
but are simply specially shaped slices of peeled carrots,
invented as a use for carrots that are too twisted or knobbly
for sale as full-size carrots.
Nearly all of Greenland's massive ice sheet suddenly started
melting a bit this month, a freak event that surprised
scientists.
Even Greenland's coldest and highest
place, Summit station, showed melting. Ice core records show
that last happened in 1889 and occurs about once every 150
years.
Mercury emissions from coal-fired
electricity plants in North Carolina have decreased by more than
70 percent in the last decade, a shift state officials
attributed largely to greater numbers of industrial facilities
coming into compliance with more stringent limits on pollutants.
In 2010–11, major earthquakes hit
Chile, Japan, and New Zealand, causing significant damage to
water system infrastructure. In response to these events, the
Water Research Foundation funded project #4408 under the
Emerging Opportunities Program to investigate the potential
implications of the earthquakes on U.S. water utilities.
Southeast U.S. communities should think twice before building
new water supply reservoirs, according to a report released
recently by American Rivers.
The report, Money Pit: The High Cost and High Risk of Water
Supply Reservoirs in the Southeast, documents the financial
risks and water resource risks tied to the development of new
reservoirs in the region. The report comes at a time when many
local governments throughout Georgia, the Carolinas and
neighboring states are considering significant spending of
public taxpayer and ratepayer dollars to build new water supply
reservoirs. Collectively, current reservoir proposals in Georgia
could cost at least $10B in taxpayer and ratepayer dollars.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie
has signed legislation into law that addresses the current
imbalance of Solar Renewable Energy Credits (SREC).
Lasr month four northeastern states, including New Jersey,
won an important federal appeals court decision on storage of
waste from nuclear power plants.
The decision struck down a rule issued last year by the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The rule would allow plants to
store radioactive waste onsite for up to 60 years after the
plants shut down permanently. The waste is mostly spent fuel
rods, stacked in pools of water or in dry casks.
A federal investigation has found that two security officials
stationed at Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station falsified
security post inspection documents.
In response, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has
issued a Severity Level IV violation to Exelon Nuclear regarding
the security post checks and falsified records, said Neil
Sheehan, a commission spokesman.
The political wonks that crafted Illinois Senate Bill 3442
did something rather remarkable: They wrote a bill about plastic
bags that appealed to the plastic industry and promoted
recycling at the same time. The measure passed both chambers of
the legislature in Illinois in a bipartisan manner and is
awaiting Gov. Pat Quinn's signature.
So how did they do it? With a bag ban ban, of course.
With power costs more than twice
the U.S. national average, Puerto Rico needed an energy
revolution if it were to ever rise out of its long economic
funk. A year after taking office in 2009 - in the midst of the
U.S. commonwealths five-year recession and a worldwide credit
crunch - Gov. Luis Fortuno enacted a sweeping energy reform
package aimed at reducing the islands nearly 70 percent reliance
on imported oil for power production.
The last of roughly 45.5 million
stockpiled scrap tires in Quebec have been removed and recycled
with the cleanup of the province's last remaining stockpile,
according to provincial and municipal officials.
New flux emergence was observed,
chance for a C-class flare. y mid to late on day 2 (28
July), a recurrent coronal hole high speed stream (CH HSS) is
expected to become geoeffective causing unsettled to active
periods. Unsettled to active periods are expected on day 3 (29
July) due to the combined effects of the CH HSS and the 25 July
coronal mass ejection.
A new report from energy market analyst GlobalData indicates
that governments around the world are beginning to see
advantages of small hydropower development, HydroWorld.com has
learned.
China's plan to gain a bigger
foothold in North American oil production shows the U.S.
government needs a more aggressive energy policy, a group of
influential Senate Republicans said on Thursday, while a
Democratic leader called for review of a Chinese bid to buy a
major Canadian oil firm.
Republic Services Inc. and Maricopa
County (Ariz.) Solid Waste Department will share in a $1.5
million fine over various violations at the now-closed Queen
Creek Landfill, East Valley Independent Newspapers reported.
At some point, almost everyone will
be hospitalized, whether for an illness, operation or from an
accident. And patients who check in also expect to check out,
alive and in better shape than when they entered. Unfortunately,
however, many patients go straight from the hospital to the
funeral home.
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.
The euro has completely decoupled from other financial
instruments that would be classified as "risk-on" assets.
Risk-on/off sentiment changes have dominated
global market dynamics for several years (see this
write-up from Attain Capital for an overview). The following
scatter plots show EUR levels vs. other risk asset prices over
the past couple of years (red asterisk indicates current
levels).
Solar power, which makes up a tiny
part of California's overall energy mix, will account for the
biggest piece of the state's renewable energy pie by the end of
the decade, according to the state's largest utilities.
As anticipated, the Solar Impulse
HB-SIA experimental solar-powered aircraft completed the first
ever solar-powered intercontinental roundtrip journey between
Europe and Africa today. The roughly 6,000 km (3,728 mile) trip
commenced on May 24 and consisted of a total of eight legs
averaging 800 km (497 miles) before reaching its conclusion with
a landing back where it all began in Payerne, Switzerland at
8:30 pm on July 24, local time.
America, do not worry: Congressional leaders say they
don’t want to shut the government down come Sept. 30, when
the fiscal year expires. The question is, however, how
exactly they’re going to keep the doors open with only six
working days in September, the month after Congress’s
month-long August recess.
“We have a very short time to do it,” said House minority
whip Steny Hoyer (D) of Maryland at a breakfast sponsored by The
Christian Science Monitor on Wednesday. Hoyer said, referring to
government funding, “I think the political judgment is going to
be, ‘Let’s not fight about this.’ "
Ocean waves could supply as much as
11 percent of Australia's electricity by 2050, a government
research study released Wednesday found.
The Syrian government's statement
yesterday that it has stockpiles of chemical and biological
weapons but will only use them in the face of “external
aggression” was most likely made in response to the sudden surge
in rebel attacks that appear to be loosening President Bashar
al-Assad's hold on power. The announcement could lead the
international community to reconsider its approach to the crisis
in Syria given the possibility that the Assad regime could use
these weapons on its own people if sufficiently threatened.
When Barack Obama ran for
president, he promised the American people he wouldn't raise
taxes. Last month, when the Supreme Court ruled that the
provision at the heart of Obamacare was a big tax, it confirmed
what we suspected all along: he wasn't telling the truth.
Well, the results are officially
in. The United States's War on Poverty has officially been
declared a failure. A dud.
There have been trillions of
our tax dollars spent and now we face unprecedented levels of
poverty not seen since L. B. Johnson introduced his great
societal experiment on the American public in 1965. And the
government behemoth that we've allowed to grow is asking for
more money from its citizens to continue feeding this failing
social program.
Saudi Arabia is once again the
biggest producer of oil in the world, surpassing Russia to
regain its title. Saudi Arabia happens to be one of the most
repressive and undemocratic regimes in the world. The Economist
magazine ranked Saudi Arabia 161st out of 167
countries in their most recent Democracy Index.
As the silver waters of the
Kishanganga rush through this north Kashmir valley, Indian
laborers are hard at work on a hydropower project that will dam
the river just before it flows across one of the world's most
heavily militarized borders into Pakistan.
In the future, solar panels will no
longer be restricted to the roof. You'll be able to put them on
your windows too....The transparent solar cell is made out of a
plastic that absorbs invisible infared light while letting most
visible light pass through.
A UCLA team has developed a new
type of solar cell that is nearly 70 percent transparent to the
naked eye. The plastic cells, which use infrared instead of
visible light, are also more economical than other types of
cells because they are made by an inexpensive polymer solution
process and nanowire technology, potentially paving the way for
cheaper solar windows.
Britain is suffering a far deeper
recession than thought, official figures showed Wednesday in a
development that is likely to increase the pressure on the
government to ease up on its tough austerity approach.
Uranium resources and production
are on the rise with security of uranium supply ensured for the
long term, the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency and the International
Atomic Energy Agency said in a joint statement Thursday to
announce publication of a new report.
Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC) yesterday
released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey®
(PMMS), showing fixed mortgages rates continuing their streak of
record-breaking lows. The 30-year fixed rate mortgage averaged
3.49 percent, more than a full percentage point lower than a
year ago when it averaged 4.55 percent. Meanwhile, the 15-year
fixed-rate mortgage, a popular choice for those looking to
refinance, also set another record low at 2.80 percent.
The Obama administration announced a plan on Tuesday to open
public land in six southwestern states to speed up the
development of solar energy, while blocking projects in areas
deemed environmentally sensitive.
The plan allows for 17 zones covering about 285,000 acres of
federal land in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New
Mexico and Utah.
The worsening drought has prompted
the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to designate 76
counties in six states as natural disaster areas, bringing to
1,234 the number of drought-affected counties eligible for
emergency assistance.
Winnemucca Lake in the El Dorado
National Forest of California is a sacred site to the Northern
Paiute people. Even a 2002 study by the Bureau of Land
Management lists the lake as a “culturally significant area.”
If you're like me, you're
absolutely positive about one thing--you need to have some sort
of emergency food backup plan for you and your family. You never
know when you're going to be dropped right in the middle of an
emergency situation.
The libertarian blood that flows inside every American – even
if it’s just a few drops – should start simmering whenever any
lawmaker proposes a “ban.”
Prohibitions are, by definition, limits on behavior, cuts in
freedom. They are government decrees that forbid adults from
certain things and certain activities.
Look hard to the west from mainland
Anchorage. The horizon is changing fast. Tall towers are rising
up on Fire Island as Cook Inlet Region Inc. builds its
long-talked-about wind farm. By the end of September, it is
expected to be producing electricity -- the first megawatt-scale
wind project in Southcentral Alaska.
Now that the celebratory speeches are over, there's no
shortage of work to be done to bring to reality Ocean Renewable
Power Co.'s vision of harnessing ocean tides to generate
electricity.
On Tuesday, more than 200 advocates of the concept gathered
in Eastport for the formal dedication of Ocean Renewable's first
TidGen turbine, which is scheduled to be submerged at a Cobscook
Bay test site in August.
July 24, 2012
In 2010, the value of packaging landfilled in the U.S. was
worth $11.4 billion, according to a report released today.
The study, titled "Unfinished Business: The Case for Extended
Producer Responsibility for Post-Consumer Packaging," was
published by As You Sow, a nonprofit organization that promotes
environmental and social corporate responsibility through
shareholder advocacy, coalition building and legal strategies.
A claim like "the largest power
house in the world" wouldn't be associated with Iowa today, but
100 years ago, Keokuk made the claim.
Everyone knows that pesticides kill
bugs. However, these poisons are bad for people, too, and are
linked to health problems ranging from irritation of skin, eyes,
and lungs to nervous system toxicity, ADHD, cancer, hormone
system effects, and miscarriages.
Chinese manufacturers and the
Chinese government argue that they did not receive unlawful or
excessive incentives and did not sell solar cells and modules at
below cost. Also, they allege that not enough attention is given
the other factors that allow a cost advantage over U.S. makers,
namely “know how” and scale. They claim the solar manufacturers
coalition’s trade case was brought forward because SolarWorld
had lost its competitive edge and couldn’t compete successfully
in a highly competitive marketplace.
Manmade climate change is the main driver behind the
unexpected emergence of a group of bacteria in northern Europe
which can cause gastroenteritis, new research by a group of
international experts shows.
The paper, published in the journal Nature Climate Change on
Sunday, provided some of the first firm evidence that the
warming patterns of the Baltic Sea have coincided with the
emergence of Vibrio infections in northern Europe.
The five closed firms make a total of 38 bank failures for
the year, The Street reported.
The FDIC said the five closures would cost its deposit
insurance fund a total of $151.3 million.
For years Pima County officials have struggled with what to
do about smelly sewer gas.
Their newest potential solution -- put it in their cars and
drive it to work.
That's right. County planners are looking at the possibility
of turning gas from a wastewater treatment plant into fuel that
can power county vehicles.
At least 25-30 million people
worldwide have age-related macular degeneration (AMD), one of
the leading causes of blindness in middle-aged and older adults.
Israeli start-up Nano Retina has announced its new Bio-Retina, a
tiny array of photodetectors which can be implanted directly on
the retinal surface. Ready to enter clinical trials in 2013, the
Bio-Retina restores vision to AMD sufferers almost immediately
following the simple implantation process.
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper
said no law could have prevented suspect James Holmes from
carrying out the act of terror that rocked an Aurora movie
theater early Friday morning and left 12 dead.
Retail sales have fallen for three
consecutive months. Monthly jobs reports have consistently
failed to meet expectations, while indices gauging the
manufacturing sector, once the bright spot of U.S. recovery, are
slumping also. Consumer confidence is down and home sales are
off as well despite some improvements seen in the sector.
One
common excuse for gun control, designed to sound scientific, is
10 that guns re a public health problem, that guns are
“pathogens”
(
germs) which must be eliminated to eliminate the “disease” of
gun violence. This simply is not true. To be true, the presence
of a gun would cause the disease (violence) in all those exposed
to it, and in its absence, violence should not be found.
In the first four months of 2011,
186 bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) were found dead in
the Gulf of Mexico, nearly half of them dolphin calves many of
whom were perinatal, or near birth. Researchers now believe a
number of factors may have killed the animals. Writing in the
open-access journal PLoS ONE, scientists theorize that the
dolphins died a sudden influx of freshwater from snowmelt after
being stressed and weakened by an abnormally cold winter and the
impacts of the BP oil spill.
Reps. Elton Gallegly and Steve King
challenged Sec. Napolitano over the issue of work permits. It
took Rep. Gallegly four tries before he could get Sec.
Napolitano to answer his question asking how many illegal aliens
would receive work permits while 14 million Americans remain
unemployed. Rep. King told Sec. Napolitano that he has an issue
when prosecutorial discretion results in the issuance of work
permits and he told her he'll "see her in court".
Now that normalcy has returned, Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va.,
has raised a frightening question:
Did the crippling storm expose a vulnerability to the
nation's energy grid?
"I believe this storm has far greater implications than just
being one for the record books," Rahall said, in joining other
officials to support Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin's efforts to land
federal relief money for West Virginians.
Carved blocks uncovered at La Corona show scenes of Mayan life
and record a political history of the city.Recently a second
Mayan text has been found that reveals an “end date,” for the
Mayan calendar, but don’t schedule your doomsday party just yet.
This end date doesn’t refer to the end of the world.
Dubai is gearing up to be the venue
where world leaders and policy makers will draw the road map for
finding practical, cost-effective and green energy solutions for
sustainable development.
The arguments against an electric
car are growing fewer. A vehicle in development by ECOmove – a
consortium of Danish car builders – has unveiled a car that can
travel 500 miles without refueling. Once a sticking point for
electric vehicles, distance could be ticked off the list of
grievances the driving populace has with electrics.
Although this affects the
concentration of free oxygen, sulfur has traditionally been
portrayed as a secondary factor in regulating atmospheric
oxygen, with most of the free oxygen effect done by carbon.
However, new findings that appeared this week in Science suggest
that sulfur's role in the oxygen cycle may have been
underestimated.
During the past few years the New
Jersey solar industry has boomed. Installed solar generation
capacity exceeded the amount required under the New Jersey
Renewable Portfolio Standard, creating a potential crash of this
thriving industry. A total of over 800 MW of solar generation is
now operating in New Jersey, which is more than even the peak
capacity of the state's first nuclear power plant. Until the
bill was passed, the amount of solar built was several hundred
megawatts more than originally planned at this point in time,
and the excess threatened to put the industry into a severe
decline for the next several years.
The Interior Department has confirmed that it broke a federal
law by not publishing a list of federally recognized tribes by
January 30, 2012.
Nedra Darling, a spokeswoman for Interior, said the
Department is working to publish the list, which is now six
months overdue. She did not say why the delay happened in the
first place.
"In a coordinated display intended
to show they remain a viable force, Iraqi insurgents launched at
least 37 separate attacks throughout the country on Monday
morning, setting off car bombs, storming a military base,
attacking policemen in their homes and ambushing checkpoints,
Iraqi authorities said. At least 99 people were killed and more
than 300 wounded in the single bloodiest day this year,
according to local Iraqi officials in the many areas where
attacks took place."
The River Jordan is neither deep nor wide these days.
The Biblical river, which has inspired countless spirituals
and folk songs, is just a narrow stream in many parts - polluted
and stagnant. But that's about to change.
A government-appointed inquiry into
Japan's Fukushima nuclear crisis raised doubts on Monday about
whether other atomic plants were prepared for massive disasters
despite new safety rules, and delivered a damning assessment of
the regulators and the station's operator.
Each year, 12 million Americans
spend $7.4 billion on payday loans, and seven out of 10
borrowers use these loans to cover ordinary living expenses, a
new report from Pew Charitable Trusts shows.
Bankruptcy decisions by Stockton
and San Bernardino in California signal more cities may be
losing their willingness to pay debt obligations, Moody’s
Investors Service said.
New transparent solar cells will
let windows in homes and offices generate electricity while
still allowing people to see outside, U.S. scientists say.
Over-the-counter pain relievers can kill
more than just pain — taking more than the recommended amount
can kill you as well.
"A Scottish study just found that people
often take too much acetaminophen (Tylenol) without realizing
it, and even a little extra can cause liver damage that can kill
you...
Portland, OR — A new study finds
elevated levels of caffeine at several sites in Pacific Ocean
waters off the coast of Oregon — though not necessarily where
researchers expected.
An aerospace industry report claims
that more than one million jobs will be lost, with another 1
million lost indirectly, if a federal budget-cuttng plan is
allowed to take effect on Jan. 2, 2013, as planned. Arizona job
losses are estimated at 49,000.
Solar activity was low. C2 C1
flare. MEs are not expected to disturb the geomagnetic
field. Solar activity is expected to be at very low levels with
a chance for C-class events for the forecast period (24 - 26
July). The geomagnetic field was at quiet to unsettled levels
with intervals of active to minor storm conditions observed.
The proton event, The geomagnetic field is expected to be
at quiet to unsettled levels with a chance for active periods on
day 1 (24 July) due to effects from a coronal hole high speed
stream.
Illinois’ 23 largest wind farms —
several of which are in Central Illinois — will add $5.8 billion
to local economies over the life of the projects, according to
an Illinois State University study released Tuesday.
The U.S. economy remains mired in a
recession that will last another three years, said Wendy
Liebmann, CEO and Chief Shopper of WSL/Strategic Retail, a
consultancy.
Eight out of 10 Americans told Liebmann in a
survey they "think the recession will last another three or more
years," she told Yahoo News.
Russia's state-owned natural gas
company says the US shale-gas boom is economically unsustainable
-- and it's buttressing its claim with financial data collected
by an American consulting firm located less than 20 miles from
the White House.
Future fuels will be cleaner and
cheaper with more "Made in America" status if the U.S. adopts a
national Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). That's the belief of
scientists from six of the nation's leading research
institutions, including Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the
University of California, the University of Illinois, the
University of Maine, Carnegie Mellon University, and the
International Food Policy Research Institute.
Senators Richard Blumenthal
(D-Conn.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John Hoeven (R-N.D), and
Chris Coons (D-Del.) hosted a U.S. Senate policy briefing as a
first step in launching the new bipartisan Senate Fuel Cell and
Hydrogen Caucus. This caucus will promote the continued
development and commercialization of hydrogen and fuel cell
technologies in the United States. The senators hosted the
briefing to educate the public about the value of these clean
energy technologies – which have helped to create 11,000 jobs in
the United States – and to invite innovative ideas to advance
the industry.
Economist Gary Shilling says if the
U.S. economy isn’t already in a recession, it is getting very
close.
“My view is that our nervous markets are
anticipating this global recession,” Shilling wrote in Forbes
magazine.
“Most stock markets around the world have
largely erased their earlier 2012 gains in anticipation of
further economic weakness and a collapse in corporate profits,”
he noted.
For more than 30 years, every child
in America was taught about the “food pyramid,” which was
established by the United States Department of Agriculture
(USDA) to educate people about how to eat healthy foods. The
USDA was promoting the food pyramid as a way to combat the
growing obesity problem.
It is no secret that the U.S. is
facing a debt crisis today. The national debt has risen to $14
trillion this year and is expected to go up to $16 trillion in
2012. High interest rates and budget deficit problems are among
the main reasons why the national debt has ballooned to this
amount. And as long as the U.S. government can’t find a way to
lower down the country’s debt, the country and its citizens will
suffer from its repercussions.
If you thought 2008 was a heyday for deepwater drilling, you
ain't seen nothin' yet.
At least that's the message suggested by the first two
drillers, Noble Corporation and Diamond Offshore, that reported
second-quarter earnings this week. While earnings were healthy,
it was the commentary by the drillers' managers that made Wall
Street sit up and take notice.
On July 15th, the world’s first
SolarKiosk was officially opened near Lake Langano, Ethiopia.
The portable solar shop was designed in Germany by Graft
architects and provides an “autonomous business unit” that sells
energy, products, tools and services. With approximately 1.5
billion people around the globe who remain without access to a
stable source of light, the SolarKiosk is intended to provide a
safe and affordable solution for inhabitants in off-the-grid
areas.
A widespread drought that's forcing
ranchers to sell off animals has helped shrink the nation's
cattle herd to its smallest number in at least four decades.
The sheer size of China’s aerospace
market appears to have enticed U.S.-based defense contractor
United Technologies Corporation and its subsidiaries, Hamilton
Sundstrand and Pratt & Whitney Canada, to intentionally ignore
U.S. export restrictions by illegally exporting critical
software systems that were used to build China’s first attack
helicopter. China’s desire to circumvent Washington-imposed arms
embargoes is hardly surprising, but the involvement by U.S.
firms is, and seems to be a sign of a new challenge to American
security.
Of Congress, Rogers said, “Every
time they make a joke, it’s a law.… And every time they make a
law, it’s a joke.”
Cities across the Midwest are on alert after zebra mussels
nearly halted one city's water intake system and continue to
threaten other public supplies and waterways.
"Some utilities are being overwhelmed," says John Mitchell,
director of the water practice at Burns & McDonnell. "Planning
for the inevitable invasion of these mollusks is critical.
Almost every surface water supply in the Midwest is at risk."
July 20, 2012
Republicans in Congress have been blunt in their assessment
of the Obama administration's renewable energy policies: they
are a pile of manure.
The indisputable conclusion drawn from Lott's research is
that in every case liberalized right-to-carry laws have caused
violent crime rates to plummet. It's not difficult to understand
why this happens. As a whole, street thugs and other criminal
opportunists are cowards. They fear an armed populace. And
although violent crime will always be with us, the deterrent
effect of a reasonable concealed weapons law does indeed benefit
society as a whole.
The U-3 unemployment rate is the monthly headline number. The
U-6 unemployment rate is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS)
broadest unemployment measure, including short-term discouraged
and other marginally-attached workers as well as those forced to
work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment.
Amonix, the clear market leader in installed high concentrating
photovoltaics (HCPV), has shut down its North Las Vegas
manufacturing operation a little more than a year after its
much-hyped opening.
Crime victims used to be ignored by
criminologists. Then, beginning slowly in the 1940s and more
rapidly in the 1970s, interest in the victim's role in crime
grew.
While solar is currently making the biggest renewable waves in
Japan, the country is also moving quickly toward offshore wind,
with the recent announcement that an offshore wind demonstration
project would begin producing electricity by January.
Last autumn, scientists predicted
that the Petermann Glacier, which is larger than the island of
Manhattan, would soon break way from the Greenland ice sheet.
They were right.
A massive iceberg larger than
Manhattan has broken away from the floating end of a Greenland
glacier this week
Eurozone states need to give up
more sovereignty in order to fix the construction flaws of the
euro, with the bailout fund possibly turning into a budget
authority further down the road, European Central Bank board
member Joerg Asmussen has said.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben
Bernanke painted a dark picture of where the U.S. economy is
headed if Congress fails to reach agreement soon to avert a
budget crisis.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben
Bernanke on Wednesday rebutted Republican lawmakers pushing a
bill that would give Congress the ability to review monetary
policy decisions, saying it could compromise central bank
independence.
Rebels penetrated the heart of
Syria’s power elite Wednesday, detonating a bomb inside a
high-level crisis meeting in Damascus that killed three leaders
of the regime, including President Bashar Assad’s brother-in-law
and the defense minister.
BP America paid a $5.2 million
civil penalty "for submitting false, inaccurate or misleading
reports" regarding royalties from natural gas production on the
Southern Ute Indian reservation in southwestern Colorado, a US
Department of the Interior agency said Wednesday.
The United Kingdom ranks highest on
a new energy efficiency scorecard of the world's 12 major
economies, followed by Germany, Italy, and Japan. The first
International Energy Efficiency Scorecard was published today by
the Washington-based nonprofit American Council for an
Energy-Efficient Economy, ACEEE.
“A war in the Middle East, in the
present context, may last for years,” Brzezinski, who served in
the Carter White House, tells Newsmax in an exclusive interview.
“And the economic consequences of it are going to be devastating
for the average American.
Students attending an energy camp
at Hillsborough Community College's SouthShore campus recently
were charged with enthusiasm about alternative fuels.
CARBON CAPTURE -- a key technology
component of proposed federal regulations for coal-fired power
plants -- doesn't yet exist and, if developed, would create
substantial new challenges, energy industry leaders said Monday.
Ohio's clean-energy economy
accounts for about twice as many jobs as mining and logging,
employing nearly as many people as live in the city of Hilliard,
according to a new report.
A U.S. House committee put the
Obama administration clean energy policy on trial as it
considered legislation that would essentially end the federal
loan guarantee program for clean energy technologies.
With German government yields
collapsing, the two-year rate just touched a new low yesterday -
negative 6bp. The 3-year yield is negative as well.
Conservative thinkers are playing
host to a liberal idea: the enactment of carbon taxes. The issue
is making news right before the national elections in the fall,
and it could gain increasing momentum.
Your mind-blowing chart of the day,
courtesy of Arne Jungjohann at the Heinrich Böll Foundation. To
be fair, there's little need for air conditioning in Germany
compared to the United States, but ...
The latest inflation data from the
Bureau of Labor Statistics show the CPI unchanged in June,
following a 0.3 percent decrease in May. For the full year, the
CPI has risen just 1.7 percent, well below the Fed’s target of 2
percent. Since the beginning of June, an important indicator of
the risk of Japanese-style deflation has begun to rise for the
first time in two years.
The only time we've been lower on
crop conditions in recent decades was during the 1988 drought
(see this link for more background on droughts). However the
current drought is by no means over and we may be going
considerably below 30% on the chart above.
There was 1,635.5 MW of coal-fired
capacity that was retired in the January-May period this year,
with the single largest part of that coming through the March
retirement of the State Line power plant in Indiana of Dominion
Resources (NYSE: D), said a report from the U.S. Energy
Information Administration.
Drexel University research
combining the best features of batteries and supercapacitors
could lead to a more stable, greener energy grid
According to Darnell’s
fourth-edition analysis of “Energy Harvesting & Related
Energy Storage Devices, Worldwide Forecasts”, the energy
harvesting and wireless sensor market has been negatively
impacted in the near-term by the general down-turn in the
economy and particularly by the slow-down in the construction
industry. At the same time, there has been acceleration in
technology development in this sector.
I'm 27 years old.
Actually,
I'm not 27 years old. I'm 26 years old. I just lied on the
internet! And trust me, it really is so easy that a preteen can
do it.
The Food and Drug Administration on
Tuesday approved a new weight loss drug from Vivus Inc. that
many doctors consider the most effective therapy in a new
generation of anti-obesity pills designed to help patients
safely shed pounds.
The US Food and Drug Administration
announced Tuesday that the chemical bisphenol-A (BPA) is now
officially banned from the manufacturing of baby bottles and
sippy cups -- a move that researchers say still falls short of
sufficient regulation. Environmental groups say more should be
done to ban BPA from all consumer products including infant
formula and food and beverage packaging, which are not included
under the new rules.
Native American people and the
distinctive nations they belong to exist in a paradoxical world.
They are the original nations of North America, a fact that is
enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s Commerce Clause and in the
nearly 400 ratified treaties between their nations and the U.S.
Dumping iron in the seas can help transfer carbon from the
atmosphere and bury it on the ocean floor for centuries, helping
to fight climate change, according to a study released on
Wednesday.
The report, by an international team of experts, provided a
boost for the disputed use of such ocean fertilization for
combating global warming. But it failed to answer questions over
possible damage to marine life.
A biotechnology firm in California
said it's taking itself "off the grid" with a fuel cell system
to self-generate electricity for its company headquarters.
The latest weather forecasts call
for the drought afflicting the U.S. Midwest to worsen, taking a
bigger toll on the country's corn and soybean crops,
meteorologists said on Monday.
The same underlying "man-made"
problems that contributed to the Fukushima disaster are in place
in the U.S. and require preventative actions beyond the limited
steps taken far by the U.S. industry and its regulators,
according to five groups commenting on the official report of
the Japanese Parliament's Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent
Investigation Commission.
Two Harvard engineers are planning to spray thousands of
tonnes of sun-reflecting chemical particles into the atmosphere
to artificially cool the planet, using a balloon flying 80,000
feet over Fort Sumner, New Mexico.
The field experiment in solar geoengineering aims to
ultimately create a technology to replicate the observed effects
of volcanoes that spew sulphates into the stratosphere, using
sulphate aerosols to bounce sunlight back to space and decrease
the temperature of the Earth.
Although water is the world’s most
precious commodity, an astounding amount of it is wasted by
industries. Fortunately, water treatment and recovery has become
the focus of several technology companies, including GE, which
recently demonstrated a water treatment technology that
virtually eliminates losses at bottling plants and other
water-related operations. The pilot study of GE’s AquaSel, a
non-thermal brine concentrator technology, took place at the
plant of a leading beverage company in Asia. GE says costs were
greatly reduced and there was almost no liquid discharge.
Despite the Fukushima nuclear power
plant disaster that hit Japan last year, the global appetite for
nuclear energy remains largely unchanged as emerging economic
powers are set to account for much of the growth in worldwide
electricity demand in the coming decades, a U.S. think tank
expert said at a recent seminar in Tokyo.
Corn and soybeans soared to record
highs on Thursday as the worsening drought in the U.S. farm belt
stirred fears of a food crisis, with prices coming off peaks
after investors cashed out of the biggest grains rally since
2008.
Oil markets reacted Monday to a
naval escalation near Dubai, highlighting on-going tensions in
the Persian Gulf region. Oil prices Friday surged higher
following economic statements from China, which has experienced
economic stagnation but not the hard fall predicted by some
market analysts. The opening of an oil pipeline in the United
Arab Emirates during the weekend may have taken some steam out
of this week's crude oil prices, but military tensions in the
Persian Gulf region trumped any significant physical market
conditions.
A battle between House Republicans
and the Obama administration over the 2010 deepwater drilling
moratorium escalated Wednesday, when a key House committee
called on administration officials to testify about the
six-month drill ban.
the Second Amendment offer us any
protection. The Supremacy Clause in our own Constitution
provides that treaties are the "law of the land" akin to a
constitutional provision. The answer is to beat
Obama and give the Republicans a majority in the Senate. Either
will suffice to kill the Treaty. A Republican majority leader
would certainly bring the Treaty up for a vote and it would
certainly be defeated, ending its power over the U.S. and a
President Romney will doubtless renounce the Treaty on taking
office.
Like most individuals who have a
stomach that just doesn't want to cooperate, I thought I had
been doing a fairly good job of eating right. I cooked a variety
of vegetables, I ate fruit, I was picky about the cuts of meat I
selected, and it was whole-grain all the way in terms of bread
and cereal. My milk choices were low-fat and I didn't indulge in
sweets. All in all, I was following a pretty healthy plan.
Sales of alternative-energy
vehicles typically fall rapidly after fuel prices peak, and
although sales are down from the March 2012 high, they remain
stronger than in previous years.
The index of U.S. leading economic
indicators fell more than forecast in June, a sign the U.S.
economic expansion is slowing.
What if Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska,
held a hearing on federal recognition of tribes and no one came?
At least no one from the federal agency that handles tribal
recognition issues? That’s what happened on June 27, when Young
called a meeting of the Subcommittee on Indian and Alaska Native
Affairs, titled, “Authorization, standards, and procedures for
whether, how, and when Indian tribes should be newly recognized
by the federal government,” ..
Johnson & Johnson just released its
new CSR report, which highlights the company's many
achievements. In a few areas the company exceeded its goals,
including reducing carbon emissions by seven percent by the end
of 2010 from 1990 levels. Johnson & Johnson exceeded that goal
by achieving a 23 percent reduction.
A new heating plant at State Correctional
Institution-Laurel Highlands is a winner at several levels,
state Corrections Secretary John E. Wetzel said Tuesday at the
Somerset County facility.
The new system also generates more than enough electricity to
power the state prison using methane gas created by decomposing
material at nearby Mostoller Landfill.
In Libya’s first election in more
than 40 years, voters elected a large number of unaffiliated
candidates to the body charged with writing the constitution and
forming a transitional government, denying both the Muslim
Brotherhood and liberals a majority say in this process. All
sides are now attempting to form alliances to influence the
constitution-writing and position themselves for national
elections next year. While the elections were a victory for
democracy, the disparate candidates and their unique agendas
will complicate decision-making in the new government.
Midday weather updates on Wednesday
indicate more hot, dry weather for the U.S. Midwest, where corn
and soybean crops are rapidly deteriorating amid the harshest
drought in more than half a century.
Chancellor Angela Merkel warned on
Monday that global warming will accelerate at a dramatic rate
unless leaders reach a deal on limiting greenhouse gas emissions
as soon as possible.
The economy on election day won't
improve much from today, with unemployment rates remaining more
or less where they are today, says Mark Zandi, chief economist
at Moody's Analytics.
When we hit the economic downturn
of the late 2000s, electric usage declined in most developed
regions such as Europe, Japan, and the U.S. One of the big
debates in today's electric business is what to expect for
future load growth. Historically, electric usage has been
closely tied to economic growth and lifestyle gains. As gross
domestic product grows, so does electric usage, and people's
lives are assumed to be better off. So the assumption is that as
economic activity picks up, so will electric demand. But lately,
forecasters have questioned whether it is time to reconsider
that assumption.
The latest polls show that both presidential candidates suffer
from major weaknesses. A sputtering economy dogs President
Obama. Mitt Romney scores even lower than Mr. Obama on
favorability.
"I'm optimistic about the year,"
Bender said. "Unfortunately, our customers are going to have
some pretty high bills just because of the amount of energy
they've been using."
Scientists from Nanyang
Technological University (NTU) have invented a new toilet system
that will turn human waste into electricity and fertilisers and
also reduce the amount of water needed for flushing by up to 90
per cent compared to current toilet systems in Singapore.
LAST MONTH four northeastern states, including New Jersey,
won an important federal appeals court decision on storage of
waste from nuclear power plants.
The decision struck down a rule issued last year by the
Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The rule would allow plants to
store radioactive waste onsite for up to 60 years after the
plants shut down permanently. The waste is mostly spent fuel
rods, stacked in pools of water or in dry casks.
Determined to destroy Bill
Clinton's signature achievement, President Obama's
administration has opened a loophole in the 1996 welfare reform
legislation big enough to make the law ineffective. Its work
requirement -- the central feature of the legislation -- has
been diluted beyond recognition by the bureaucrats at the
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Since 9/11, major civil liberties
in the U.S. have been undermined to such an extent that they
seem to be hanging on by the merest of threads, or else by the
mere illusion that they continue to exist. We have been
repeatedly told the tragic events on September 11, 2001 is the
reason why what Vice President Dick Cheney termed “the new
normalcy” had to be put into place. That “normalcy” is now
looking more and more like what has been called
“totalitarianism” historically.
The extent of interest in
widespread drilling in the Arctic for natural resources such as
oil and gas is still uncertain as the commercial viability of
exploration in such a remote environment is unknown and huge
risks remain, a panel of experts said.
In the span of just a few hours,
announcements bouncing between Tehran and Washington showed the
direction of their showdown: New issues are piling up even as
Western envoys try to find a path to move nuclear talks forward.
Economic concerns are on the minds
of voters as Mitt Romney has ticked ahead of President Barack
Obama in a new poll for the first time since becoming the
Republican nominee even in the face of months of negative
advertising and attacks by Obama, the New York Times reported.
A new prototype wind turbine, 30
years in the making, and designed for flat-pack shipping and
easy assembly, has been erected at Keele University in the
UK...The turbine is able to begin rotating during light breezes
as modest as 1.8 m/s (4 mph) in speed.
The Hopi, Navajo and other tribes that hold the San Francisco
Peaks sacred fear contamination and desecration from a
wastewater-to-snow project.Consumer advocate and former
presidential candidate Ralph Nader and a group of individuals
and nonprofit organizations interested in protecting the sacred
San Francisco Peaks from spiritual and environmental degradation
have petitioned the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals for a full
panel rehearing of a recent ruling that imposed sanctions on the
pro bono attorney for the Save the Peaks Coalition.
Automatic cuts in federal spending will cost the economy more
than 2 million jobs, from defense contracting to border security
to education, if Congress fails to resolve the looming budget
crisis, according to an analysis released Tuesday.
The study, obtained by The Associated Press, was conducted
for the Aerospace Industries Association, but it examined the
shared pain for defense and domestic programs from the
across-the-board reductions slated to kick in Jan. 2.
The FBI was too concerned about
political correctness and did not launch an investigation into a
man who was later charged with killing 13 people in a 2009
attack at the Fort Hood military installation in Texas, despite
significant warning signs that he was an Islamic extremist bent
on killing civilians, according to a lawmaker briefed on a new
report about the terrorist attack.
Solar activity was high. CME was
subsequently observed. This CME is not expected to
be geoeffective. C-flare. Geomagnetic field activity
was generally quiet.
Until now, scientists who study air pollution using satellite
imagery have been limited by weather. Clouds, in particular,
provide much less information than a sunny day.
University of Iowa scientists have created a technique to
help satellites "see" through the clouds and better estimate the
concentration of pollutants, such as soot.
Economist Nouriel Roubini is standing by his prediction for a
global "perfect storm" next year as economies the world over
slow down or shudder to a complete halt, geopolitical risk grows
and the eurozone's debt crisis accelerates.
Roubini, the New York University professor dubbed "Dr. Doom"
for predicting the 2008 financial crisis, highlighted five
factors that could derail the global economy.
Congressional pressure is mounting
on the U.S. Department of the Interior for officials there to
explain why they haven’t released any tribal economic and
employment reports since 2007, in violation of biennial
reporting requirements mandated by federal law.
America's shale oil boom is great news for U.S. industry,
jobs and consumers, but it could cost global refiners billions.
Banking on rising demand for transport fuels, oil companies
around the world have committed as much as $100 billion over the
last decade on equipment to turn heavy oil into valuable refined
products such as gasoline, jet fuel and petrochemicals.
As the Midwestern drought has hung
on and more states are reporting damage to their impending corn
crop, Tom Philpott of Mother Jones reflected on a recent
Nature study that found that industrial
agricultural methods were found to produce higher yields than
farms that used organic methods. (He notes he was not convinced
by the study but he continues on that, in any case, "under
conditions of extreme weather, things absolutely change. "Soils
managed with organic methods have shown better water-holding
capacity and water infiltration rates and have produced higher
yields than conventional systems under drought conditions and
excessive rainfall," Philpott reports.
Democrats shouting the loudest
about Mitt Romney’s reluctance to release his tax returns do not
apply the same standards to themselves, according to a McClatchy
News Service report.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California and
Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, the two Democratic leaders of the
Senate and the House of Representatives, are among hundreds of
elected officials from both parties who refused to release their
tax records, McClatchy reported.
Flares, leaking pipelines and tanks
emitted 92,000 tons of toxic chemicals into the air during
accidents, break-downs and maintenance at Texas oil and gas
facilities, refineries and petrochemical plants over the past
three years, finds a report released today by the nonprofit
Environmental Integrity Project, EIP.
Considering their popularity, "alternative energy" is almost a
misnomer for increasingly mainstream energy sources like wind,
solar and biofuels. Some alternative energies still fit the
title, however. These renewables, which will principally provide
power for small devices, use unusual sources to create their
juice, including vibrations, clothing, viruses, water — even the
movements of the human body.
Most mainstream commentators seem
oblivious to the fact that the Fed purchased an unprecedented
61% of U.S. debt issued in 2011.
In Hawaii, the US Navy demonstrated its Green Strike Group as
part of the 2012 Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC), the
world's largest international maritime warfare exercise that
includes 40 surface ships, six submarines, more than 200
aircraft and 25,000 personnel from 22 different nations.
This graphic, put together by
the wind industry, illustrates how an expiration of the
production tax credit may impact employment in the U.S. Notice
the spike in activity before the drop-off. That’s due to the
rush of development we’re seeing currently in the lead up to the
lapse of the credit. But even if the credit is extended at the
end of the year, it looks like 2013 will be a poor year for
installations. Developers need a lead-time of about 18 months,
so many of them have put projects on hold without any clarity on
if the credit will be extended. That’s why we’re already seeing
manufacturers lay people off.
Turkish foreign policy has shifted
to confrontation with the Syrian regime, a former ally, and
supporting Syrian opposition groups. At the same time, Turkey
has been trying to establish a better relationship with Iran,
while ties to another former ally, Israel, deteriorate. Turkey’s
Islamist government may profess adherence to Swiss-like
neutrality, but its actions add up to an activist foreign policy
that both supports and challenges the interests of its NATO
allies.
As the United States suffers a summer of record-shattering
heat and the UK experiences record summer rainfall, a University
of Michigan report finds that Generation X is lukewarm about
climate change - uninformed about the causes and unconcerned
about the potential dangers.
"Most Generation Xers are surprisingly disengaged, dismissive
or doubtful about whether global climate change is happening and
they don't spend much time worrying about it," said Jon D.
Miller, author of "The Generation X Report."
The US Department of Energy on
Tuesday awarded $11 million for nuclear reactor technology in
research and design to improve safety, performance and cost
competitiveness.
Existing home sales in the US
declined 5.4% to 4.37 million annualized units in June 2012 from
May’s upwardly revised pace of 4.62 million. Market expectations
for June were for a stronger 4.62 million reading in the month.
The Fed's Summary of Commentary on
Current Economic Conditions, otherwise known as the ‘Beige
Book', compiled using data collected on or before July 9, 2012
in preparation for the July 31 to August 1 Federal Open Market
Committee (FOMC) meeting, indicated that overall economic
activity "continued to expand at a modest to moderate pace" in
the period since the last report in early June. Specifically,
eight Federal Reserve Districts reported modest or moderate
growth (compared to 10 in the last report), three Districts
reported a slower pace of growth (compared to only one
previously), and one cited "mixed activity" (there was one
report of steady growth in the previous report to round out the
Districts).
The slowdown in the U.S. economy
persisted early in the third quarter with factory activity in
the U.S. Mid-Atlantic region contracting in July for a third
straight month and new claims for jobless aid surging last week.
Although analysts polled by Platts
Monday were slightly off, expecting the average national run
rate to increase to 93.1% of capacity, run rates at 92%--what
the EIA reported for last week--mark a break in a trend where
recent run rates have been approaching levels not seen in the US
since a 93.6% run rate back in July 2007.
The higher the tax rate, the
greater the length people will go to avoid it. France is a case
in point.
An 'Exodus' of Wealthy is underway even before
French parliament has passed Hollande's proposed top tax rate of
75%.
Calls for a moratorium on wind
energy development pending results of a Health Canada study are
not warranted because the balance of scientific and medical
evidence to date clearly concludes that sound from wind turbines
does not adversely impact human health, says the Canadian Wind
Energy Association
Over the past several years, wind farm developers have been
facing increasing complaints about wind turbine noise. After
many years of successfully placing turbines in proximity to
homes in farm and ranch country, where typical setbacks of 800
to 1,200 feet, and noise levels of 50dB or more, were well
tolerated, wind energy companies are finding that residents in
rural areas in the upper Midwest and Northeast are far more
likely than farmers and ranchers to respond negatively to
turbine sound of 40dB or even less. For some in areas where
nighttime ambient noise levels are low, any audible noise is
found to be intrusive, creating a challenging new reality for
wind energy to come to grips with.
Illinois' 23 largest wind farms --
several of which are in Central Illinois -- will add $5.8
billion to local economies over the life of the projects,
according to an Illinois State University study released
Tuesday.
World Trade Organization rules on
food safety and animal and plant health can be used to control
environmental damage caused by alien and invasive species
crossing borders into new habitats, a WTO seminar agreed last
week.
What's
wrong with the U.S. House of Representative's version of the
Farm Bill?
Cloudless skies seldom look so ominous.
A worst-in-a-generation drought from Indiana to Arkansas to
California is damaging crops and rural economies and threatening
to drive food prices to record levels. Agriculture, though a
small part of the $15.5 trillion U.S. economy, had been one of
the most resilient industries in the past three years as the
country struggled to recover from the recession.
July 17, 2012
The largest anti-nuclear protest in Tokyo since twin
earthquake-tsunami disaster caused massive meltdown at the
Fukushima power plant in March 2011.
Anywhere from 75,000 to 170,000 protesters gathered in
Japan’s Yoyogi Park outside Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s
official residence on July 16 to register their opposition to
the restarting of the country’s nuclear program, which is under
way.
The UAE has shipped its first crude oil cargo from Fujairah,
bypassing the Strait of Hormuz oil chokepoint that Iran has
threatened repeatedly to shut down to oil traffic.
In 2011 and so far in 2012, coal exports
through Hampton Roads have surged.
The boom is in part because the commodity has been undercut
by cheap natural gas domestically and in part because of demand
from European countries that are relying more on coal to run
their power plants.
On Thursday, a 64-wheel beast of a
truck creeping along at just under 1 mph hauled a cask of
radioactive waste from a long-dormant power plant to a concrete
pad betweenand the Mississippi River, the first of five such
trips it will make this summer in one of the final chapters of
the Coulee Region's atomic era.
The lead character of the 2011
climate story was a double dip La Niña, which chilled the
Pacific at the start and end of the year. Many of the 2011
seasonal climate patterns around the world were consistent with
common side effects of La Niña.
The head of Britian's intelligence
service warned that Iran will acquire a nuclear weapon by 2014
at the latest, and predicted a military strike may be the only
way to prevent such a calamity.
Sir John Sawers, head of
Britain's MI6, told a group of civil servants Friday that Iran
is on the path to acquiring a weapon and predicted Israel will
act to stop her.
The London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) serves as the
benchmark rate for lending in dollars across the world, serving
as the basis for mortgage rates, credit cards, commercial loans,
financial derivatives—you name it.
Every day, 18 banks from around the world tell Thomson
Reuters the price they would pay to borrow money. Thomson
Reuters compiles that data, cutting off the highest and lowest
four rates submitted, and the BBA publishes a composite LIBOR
number.
A slow or uneven gait in older
patients may be more than the effect of advancing age, according
to three studies that found walking disorders in the elderly
also may be early signs of Alzheimer’s disease.
Like many communities in California
that are struggling economically, Atwater sought creative
solutions to help reduce energy costs associated with a new
wastewater treatment plant. Under the PPA, Siemens procures,
builds, owns, operates and maintains the system, and Atwater
agrees to purchase the electricity generated by the solar array
at a rate guaranteed for 20 years.
Americans’ confidence in television news has dropped to a new
low, with just 21 percent of adults saying they have a “great
deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the news, a new Gallup
Poll reveals.
That’s down from 27 percent last year, from 35 percent in
2003, and from 46 percent when Gallup began tracking confidence
in TV news in 1993.
[Ed: Why we do this newsletter!!]
CryoSolplus consists of water,
paraffin, stabilizing tensides (detergents) and “a dash” of
glycol anti-freeze. When the solution is cool, the paraffin
takes the form of solid droplets. The tensides keep those
droplets suspended uniformly throughout the mixture, as opposed
to clumping together or floating on top.
For the first time, a team of
astronomers has "observed" a filament of dark matter connecting
two neighboring galaxy clusters. Dark matter is a type of matter
that interacts only very weakly with light and itself. Its very
nature is mysterious. Mapping the dark matter filament's gravity
was the key to the breakthrough. The result is considered a
crucial first step by scientists. It provides the first direct
evidence that the universe is filled by a lacework of dark
matter filaments, upon which the visible matter in the universe
is distributed like small beads.
Despite promises from the nuclear
industry to regulators and consumers that they learned from
mistakes of the past, the nation's first two nuclear reactor
projects built from scratch in 30 years are headed toward
hundreds of millions of dollars in cost overruns and months, if
not years, of delays.
Senate Democrats are proud that
they have managed to thwart just about any legislation over the
past year, one of them has claimed.
They view it as an
"an accomplishment," said Den. Ben Cardin of Maryland.
What do you think of when you hear
the word Anonymous? Do you see an Internet vigilante group
fighting against the largest governments and corporations of the
world or just a couple of “script kiddies” taking down Web sites
for the “lulz?” Either way, you probably have strong opinions on
the matter. That may be why Anonymous launched #OpPedoChat.
The European Commission Wednesday proposed further cuts to
carbon dioxide, CO2, emissions from new cars and vans by 2020.
The proposals move the European Union toward its stated goal
of cutting overall greenhouse gas emissions to 20 percent below
1990 levels by 2020 and moving towards decarbonizing the
transport sector to minimize climate change.
The referendum would ask whether
Iranians prefer to continue with the nuclear program or
discontinue it in the face of Western sanctions imposed due to
fears Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons, the opposition
website Jaras reported Thursday.
The Food and Drug Administration
has approved the first drug shown to reduce the risk of HIV
infection, a milestone in the 30-year battle against the virus
that causes AIDS.
While the sponsor of a clinical
trial is often willing to admit dying patients, it is the FDA
that blocks access to experimental drugs or to drug trials from
new and smaller drug research companies. FDA’s decisions are
arbitrary and subjective because the current criteria themselves
are subjective, allowing FDA to do whatever it wishes without
regard to a patient’s welfare.
This rogue agency secretly captured
thousands of emails that its disgruntled scientists sent to
Congress, labor officials, journalists and even the president.
A new era of restoration for the Everglades' vast but damaged
wetlands began Friday with a favorable court ruling and an $80
million infusion of federal funding.
A federal judge has approved an $880 million Everglades
cleanup plan, a ruling that could lead to the settlement of
nearly 25 years of lawsuits.
The Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries described the global economy as "subdued"
and "fragile," predicting no immediate recovery in 2013. World
oil demand is forecast to grow modestly as the song remains the
same for the foreseeable future. Short-term oil markets,
however, may see some volatility as the slowdown in China
factors into the markets. Adjustments to tightened pressure on
Iran, however, should encourage what OPEC described as a
"comfortable" situation for next year.
The same "man-made" problems
underlying last year's nuclear disaster in Japan exist today in
the United States, warn five U.S. groups responding to the
Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation
Commission's report to Japan's Diet, or parliament.
The Internet has won the fight.
SOPA and ACTA are both dead after having been eviscerated by the
combined powers of the world coming together to fight for what
they believe in – basic digital human rights. We can now rest
easy knowing that the war has come to an end. Politicians would
never think to bring them back, even under the guise of
innocuous trade agreements and IP bills, right? Right?
Keep this number in mind: 30 megawatts.
That's roughly the peak electrical demand for a city the size
of Marion -- population 34,768 by the 2010 Census, with slightly
more than 15,000 households and no major energy-consuming
industry -- according to Jim McCalley, Iowa State University
professor of electrical and computer engineering.
Last week’s stunning U.S.
indictments over a plot to export U.S. technology for Iran’s
nuclear program and new threats to close the Strait of Hormuz
suggest that stepped-up efforts to find a diplomatic solution to
Iran’s nuclear program have failed to reduce the possibility of
a military conflict. The size of Iran’s enriched uranium
stockpile – which could be converted into nuclear weapons fuel –
will continue to grow, along with the near-term chances of an
Israeli airstrike.
Iran's foreign ministry said
Tuesday that the presence of foreign forces constituted a "real
threat" to security in the oil-rich Persian Gulf as US Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton declared that Washington would use "all
elements of its power" to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear
state.
A spokesman for Navajo Nation
Speaker Johnny Naize said public sentiment has been
overwhelmingly against‚ a proposal that would build water
facilities for the Navajo and Hopi people in exchange for them
dropping water-rights claims in the Little Colorado River Basin.
A treaty that could unlock massive
Arctic oil and natural gas resources lacks the votes to pass the
US Senate, after two key Republicans announced Monday they will
oppose the treaty.
Republican senators Rob Portman and
Kelly Ayotte, of Ohio and New Hampshire, respectively, said they
would vote against the Law of the Sea treaty over concerns that
the accord would place unacceptable limits on US sovereignty.
Nestle Chairman Peter Brabeck has a
new mountain to climb. The 67-year-old is trying to goad world
leaders into action to avert a looming water crisis.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
(UWM) researchers have identified an inexpensive nanorod
catalyst with efficiencies rivaling that of platinum. Composed
of nitrogen-enriched iron-carbon nanorods, the new catalyst
holds the promise of cheaper, more efficient microbial fuel
cells (MFCs) that generate their own hydrogen from waste water.
A new study by the University of
Miami has found that winds played a key role in the British
Petroleum Deepwater Horizon oil spill in spring 2010. The oil
spill, the largest in the history of the United States, leaked
at least 200 million gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of
Mexico. When the accident occurred, the intense loop current
drew concerns that the oil at the surface could find its way to
southern Florida and the eastern Atlantic Ocean; no oil was
observed in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, but was mainly in the
area of the northern shorelines of the Gulf of Mexico.
France's nuclear waste agency says the amount of such waste
in the country will double by 2030, and some of it will remain
radioactive for 2 million years.
The current 45 million cubic feet of nuclear waste in France
is likely to reach 95 million cubic feet in the next 18 years, a
report by Andra, the agency charged with stocking and disposing
of nuclear waste, said.
“Can it happen to us?” All over the world, technology executives
have been fielding this question from boards of directors and
CEOs in the wake of highly publicized cyberattacks on large,
well-respected companies and public institutions.
“Yes” is the only honest answer...
China, perhaps more than any other
country, faces many important and difficult population
challenges: reproductive health and reproductive rights,
rural-urban migration and reform of the hukou system, and
imbalances in the sex ratio at birth. And two deeply connected
population issues, the rapid aging of the population, on the one
hand, and the low birth rate and the family planning policy on
the other, are of great significance to China's future
development.
The present NRC limits are 5,000
millirem (mrem) per year for radiation workers, and 100 mrem per
year for members of the general public. As noted below, typical
background radiation levels are about 360 mrem per year.
The U.S. Energy Department has begun moving highly
radioactive sludge away from the Columbia River in Richland,
Wash., the agency announced.
At the Hanford Site, a former nuclear production facility,
workers transferred the first large container of sludge from a
basin next to a former plutonium production reactor to dry
storage in the center of the site, the agency said.
It took less than an hour last month for a Montana wildfire
to reduce Scott McRae's ranch to thousands of blackened acres
devoid of the grasses that were to sustain hundreds of cattle.
"That is 500 mouths to feed with nothing to eat in sight,"
said McRae, 53, co-owner of a family ranch founded in the 1880s
in southeastern Montana.
Researchers at the Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility (NIF)
have achieved a laser shot which boggles the mind: 192 beams
delivered an excess of 500 trillion-watts (TW) of peak power and
1.85 megajoules (MJ) of ultraviolet laser light to a target of
just two millimeters in diameter. To put those numbers into
perspective, 500 TW is more than one thousand times the power
that the entire United States uses at any instant in
time.
low level C-class events were
observed, No Earth-directed CME's were observed during the past
24 hours. The geomagnetic field ranged from unsettled to
major storm levels. Solar wind velocity declined also,
with initial values around 510 km/s and end-of-day values around
440 km/s. there is a chance for isolated minor to major
storm periods at high latitudes during the earlier part of 17
July.
Belinda Sturm, assistant professor
of civil, environmental and architectural engineering, grows
green algae in tanks of municipal wastewater in Lawrence, Kan.
The algae is then processed to capture oily lipids, which are
used to produce biofuel, The Topeka (Kansas) Capital-Journal
reported.
Retail sales fell in June for the third straight month, the
longest run of consecutive drops since 2008 when the country was
mired in recession.
Sales slipped 0.5 percent, with declines across a wide swath
of industries from electronics and cars to building supplies,
the Commerce Department said on Monday. Analysts had expected a
small increase.
One of the nation’s most respected
— and accurate — election prognosticators, Larry Sabato’s
Crystal Ball website, concludes that the only prediction
appearing “very safe” right now is that the November
presidential election is going to be very close.
Desert sand, sea salt, volcanic ash
and other forms of natural pollution are adding to rising levels
of man-made dirt sullying the air and making it harder,
especially for Mediterranean countries, to meet EU environmental
regulations.
That increases the number of cities
that have adopted plastic bag bans this year to 42, and the
total number of plastic bag bans in the U.S. to 79 -- nearly
two-thirds of them in California.
Almost a sixth of the world's low-temperature heating and
cooling energy could come from solar power by the middle of the
century, say energy experts.
The move would stop around 800 megatonnes of carbon dioxide
from entering the atmosphere each year, says the International
Energy Agency (IEA) - more than 1.5 times the annual emission in
the UK.
With many North American crops in
trouble due to severe drought conditions, analysts will be
looking at Asia for signs of food inflation. Food inflation may
prevent Asian countries from lowering rates, potentially
creating growth problems not just for Asia, but globally. Right
now the focus has shifted to India and the rising risks of a
poor monsoon season.
As the US zinc market enters the
height of its summer business lull, zinc producers warned this
week that the season's sizzling heat may delay zinc orders
shipped by rail.
Syrian rebels fired grenades at tanks
and troops while regime armor shelled Damascus neighborhoods
Monday, July 16, sending terrified families fleeing the most
sustained and widespread fighting in the capital since the start
of the uprising 16 months ago.
Republican Governors, in Need of
Revenue, Drop Opposition
[ED: And
so there goes the "balance" we once had between local sales (tax
but no freight) and internet (freight but no tax)!! There
goes internet sales! Forcing internet sales to calculate
and charge and pay for sales for 52 states!!! ]
Tucson Electric Power Co. has filed to raise rates by more
than 15 percent, saying it needs its first increase since 2008
to cover rising costs and recoup more than $1 billion in system
investments.
But the utility also wants a rate mechanism to recoup the
cost of lower power sales resulting from new energy-efficiency
programs - as well as a surcharge to offset the cost of
pollution-control upgrades expected under a spate of pending
federal regulations.
The recent compression in US
treasury yields has been nothing short of extraordinary. Driven
by the full realization that we are in a global slowdown, the
5-year hit a record low today of just under 0.6%, following a
decline that has been ongoing for decades.
The U.S. economy is reinventing
itself, fast becoming the "Comeback Kid" while the world's other
major economies remains mired in uncertainty, The Economist
reports.
I to roamed as a child, but I had
miles of Mt’s and forest to wander and wonder in. It is amazing
what I saw and learned by being quiet and patient, such as a
Raccoon fishing under rocks for crayfish in a spring run or a
fox catching grasshoppers for a snack. I also hold that there is
no idea how wonderful earth is because almost no one sees the
Milky Way. Youth are not aware of the billions of stars,
planets, moons and suns that are in space, and I think that
affects their attitude toward religion. Agenda 21 wants to make
it worse by concentrating population in high rise population
centers where the outdoors will be less accessible. There was
less autism, and allergies because we played in the DIRT, and
were exposed to allergens early and became immune to many of the
problems experienced today.
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. For example, 60 cars, weighing a total
of 110 tons, can be replaced by one 12-ton bus, reducing
material use 89 percent.
In addition to the green bin, there
is also a blue bin that collects recyclables. So many bins! So
much recycling, reusing and reducing!
The attorney generals of New York and Connecticut are
carrying out a joint investigation into alleged rigging of the
Libor rates by global banks.
As the investigation over Libor rates in the UK ramp up, New
York AG Eric Schneiderman decided to start his own
investigation, joining Connecticut AG George Jepsen, who has
been probing major banks for six months.
Budget cuts are imposing significant reductions in the size
of the British military, resulting in the hollowing out of a
force that long has been a vital contributor to US and NATO
military operations. The calculation to allocate Britain’s
limited budget to non-defense priorities is sensible given the
protection NATO membership affords, but is also a dangerous
gamble that simultaneously diminishes the country’s standing as
a strong pillar of the Atlantic alliance.
Ukraine's energy and coal industry
ministry on Friday signed an agreement with China Development
Bank securing a $3.656 billion credit line to help the
country switch its power plants over to coal from gas,
the ministry said.
Nation experiences warmest
first-half of year; wildfires claim 1.3 million acres across
nation
With the U.S. increasing
its military forces in the Persian Gulf and Iran's foreign
minister openly warning that if sanctions are fully enforced,
his nation will close the Strait of Hormuz and choke one-fifth
of the world's oil supply, many are asking: Is a war with Iran
imminent?
Florida election officials will
have access to a federal database to help purge its voter rolls
of non-citizens under an agreement reached between state and
federal officials and welcomed on Saturday by Florida's
Republican governor.
Johns Hopkins scientists have
developed a novel anti-cancer drug made from a toxic weed-like
Mediterranean plant that destroys cancer tumors and their direct
blood supplies like a "molecular grenade," while sparing healthy
tissues.
Some people, including the
beekeeper, Terrence Ingram, suspect the raid has more to do with
Ingram's 15 years of research on Monsanto's Roundup and his
documented evidence that Roundup kills bees, than it does about
any concerns about his hives.
Unrefined salt contains more than
80 minerals. It has not been subjected to harsh chemicals and
bleaching that removes these precious minerals. Refined salt has
had all of the minerals removed through chemical processes.
It's time to revel in all the
creation that is around us.
July 13, 2012
When did the inmates start running
the asylum in this country? Why is the United States government
and the state governments fighting so hard to control every
little thing you put into your mouth? We have gone from a free
nation to a government of nannies and it’s impacting every piece
of food that you have available to you.
A natural remedy available over the
counter stops the growth of prostate cells and tumors, according
to researchers from the University of Chicago School of
Medicine. Caffeic acid phenethyl ester (CAPE), a compound
isolated from propolis — the resin used by honeybees to seal
holes in their hives — shut down early-stage prostate cancer by
cutting off the tumor cells' ability to detect sources of
nutrition.
Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC) today
released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey®
(PMMS®), showing average fixed mortgage rates continuing to find
new all-time record lows amid easing bond yields following
June's lackluster employment report. Both the average 30-year
and 15-year fixed-rate mortgage hit new lows. The average
30-year fixed has been below 4.00 percent for 16 weeks. The
average 15-year fixed has been below 3.00 percent for 7 weeks.
An appraiser said Tuesday that he
couldn't find any evidence that a proposed wind farm in
southwestern Lee County would hurt nearby property values long
term.
The global use of microfiltration
(MF) and ultrafiltration (UF) systems for drinking water
treatment has drastically increased since the mid-1990s. One
reason for the increase is their ability to help meet regulatory
requirements for lower filtered water turbidity and for reliably
removing pathogens such as Giardia cysts and Cryptosporidium
oocysts. Another reason is that continual advances in membrane
technologies have led to comparable or lower costs (in certain
cases) for membrane filtration vs. conventional filtration
systems.
Brazil's oil regulator said on
Wednesday it expects to release a report next week on the causes
of a November oil spill in an offshore field operated by Chevron
Corp, an accident that led to criminal charges and civil suits
seeking nearly $20 billion in damages.
Recently discovered cyber espionage
against India’s Eastern Naval Command by suspected Chinese
hackers could pose a serious threat to India’s first
domestically built nuclear capable submarine, the INS Arihant,
as well as India’s overall naval strategy in the South China
Sea. While the full scope of the cyber attack is not yet known,
the sophistication of this attack on a closed computer network
has global security implications.
Congress needs to pass a wind
production tax credit to help manufacturers that serve the wind
industry avoid layoffs, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said
Thursday.
Local hydrogen advocates are
encouraged by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu's change of heart
about the benefits of hydrogen fuel cell technology.
With the aging smokestacks of Salem
Harbor Station as a backdrop, local and state environmental
leaders announced the formation of a new statewide coalition
yesterday, with the aim of shutting down the last coal power
plants in the state.
Indians remove homemade mortar
grenades left by rebel of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, FARC, on a road on the outskirts of Toribio, southern
Colombia, Wednesday, July 11, 2012. Rebels set up a roadblock on
a road leading to Toribio while Colombia's President Juan Manuel
Santos was holding a meeting with cabinet members and local
authorities in the church of the town, that was attacked by
guerrillas last week.
Congress has increased fines for hauling hazardous wastes
without proper registration.
House Bill 4348, approved by the House and the Senate, and
signed by the president, increases the fine for hauling
hazardous wastes without a permit from "not more than $20,000"
to "not less than $20,000, but not to exceed $40,000."
Borrowing technology from
sophisticated telescope mirrors as well as high-efficiency solar
cells used for space exploration, a group of students and
researchers at the University of Arizona is putting the final
touches on a novel power plant that promises to generate
renewable energy twice as efficiently as standard solar panel
technology with highly competitive costs and a very small
environmental impact.
In a decision released today, the court sided with
smart-meter opponents, who argued that utility regulators
ignored their legal mandate to ensure the delivery of safe and
reasonable utility services.
At the same time, though, the court didn't agree with the
view of opponents that the meters violated constitutional issues
related to privacy and trespass.
J.D. Power and Associates has just released the results of
its annual Electric Utility Residential Customer Satisfaction
Study for 2012.
According to the report, customer satisfaction with electric
utility companies has declined for the second year in a row.
However, in relative terms, the news is not that bad.
Without much fanfare and with as
little publicity as possible, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
will go to New York City to sign the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT),
now in the final stages of negotiation at the U.N. The treaty
marks the beginning of an international crusade to impose gun
controls on the United States and repeal our Second Amendment
rights.
In a raw contest between Egypt’s competing centers of power,
legislators Tuesday defied the country’s highest court and its
most senior generals by holding a brief session of the dissolved
Parliament, heeding an order by President Mohammed Morsi in the
face of opposition — but no overt obstacles from judges and the
military.
The amount of people "not in the
labor force" exceeds the increase of population. For instance,
the total population (over 16) increased in 2011 by 1,788,000
and the amount of people not in the labor force increased by
2,060,000. This extraordinary situation has only occurred in
the past three years (i.e., under Obama's administration). In
all the U.S. history this has not happened before
Enbridge Inc, stung by a harsh
rebuke from regulators over a 2010 spill that dumped more than
20,000 barrels of crude into a Michigan river system, has
stepped up inspections and is confident its pipeline network is
safe, the company's incoming chief executive said on Wednesday.
The risk of flooding for many English homes and businesses
could increase fourfold by 2035 if more action to deal with the
impact of climate change is not taken, government advisers said
on Wednesday.
As severe floods continue to batter parts of Britain after
the wettest June since records began, around one in seven homes
and businesses face some kind of flood risk, the climate
advisers said.
Many cities around the country, not
just in California, are struggling to cover their expenses, as
their economies try to recover from the massive housing downturn
and recession, which have led to lower tax revenue for cities.
While municipal bankruptcy filings have been rare until
recently, the lower tax revenue streams will lead to more
filings.
Much has been made of the resilience of U.S. credit card ABS
over the last four years, and today Fitch Ratings has released a
new report providing a detailed analysis of metrics for the
sector throughout the crisis.
Marked credit card ABS collateral performance began to
deteriorate notably beginning in December 2008. Delinquencies
jumped 14%, and chargeoffs soon followed suit. Credit card
performance demonstrated a strong correlation with the
unemployment rate, which rose 15% in fourth quarter-2008
(4Q'08).
Have you priced fresh produce lately? A 3-pound bag of citrus
will set you back $7 or $8. You’ll pay two bucks for a small
head of broccoli ... over $3 a pound for grapes ... a whopping
$4 for a skimpy little package of organic romaine ... alfalfa
sprouts, $4 for a few ounces.
And yet, if you head for your local fast food joint, you can
feast like a king from the dollar menu. A family of four can
fill up for under $12.
Does that seem right to you?
The carbon cycle is a complex
thing. There is carbon in the air (carbon dioxide), carbon in
plants and animals, dissolved carbon in the sea and carbon in
the soil that is constantly circulating to and from. Elevated
levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide may accelerate carbon
cycling and soil carbon loss in forests, as found in new
research led by an Indiana University biologist. The new
evidence supports an emerging view that although forests remove
a substantial amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, much
of the carbon is being stored in living woody biomass rather
than as dead organic matter in soils.
The leadership and citizens of the
Oneida Indian Nation (OIN) of New York think it is important to
pay homage to its role in the Revolutionary War in order to help
Americans realize the strong historical contributions of the
Indian nation—and to grow a bright future of strengthened
relations with the United States.
U.S. policymakers will fail to deal
with a sharp fiscal adjustment coming at the end of the year and
risk sending the country spiraling into a disastrous recession,
says Erskine Bowles, former chief of staff to President Bill
Clinton.
At the end of the year, tax breaks, including
the Bush-era tax cuts, expire, while automatic spending cuts
kick in.
Hydraulic fracturing in Colorado
uses enough water annually to meet the needs of as many as
nearly 300,000 people, according to a report released in June by
Western Resource Advocates.
France’s new socialist government
has announced it is moving forward with plans to raise taxes on
corporations and on the rich, which is almost certain to hurt
job creation and plunge France into crisis. The announcement of
the tax increase follows France's move to lower the retirement
age to 60, which will saddle the government with billions in new
commitments. Expanding the social welfare program and raising
taxes on those who create jobs is likely to kill economic growth
in France. In a worst-case scenario, these new policies will
throw the country into a debt crisis from which it will need to
be rescued.
Unemployment in advanced economies
will remain high until at least the end of 2013, with young
people and the low-skilled bearing the brunt of what is by far
the weakest economic recovery in the past four decades, the OECD
said on Tuesday.
Now it appears that GMO crop failures are growing. Do we face
the risk of famine as well?
In 2009 the South African
Corn Crop Failure was linked to GMO seeds(1). "On January 17
[2010], internationally recognized plant pathologist Dr. Don
Huber, wrote a letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack warning of
the discovery of a new pathogen and a possible link between
Roundup Ready® (GMO) corn and soybeans and severe reproductive
problems in livestock as well as widespread crop
failure."(2)This past March, scientists with the Natural Society
called for immediate action to stop the GMO crop failure threat
Since the downturn, the Fed has
rolled out two rounds of quantitative easing, known widely as
QE1 and QE2, snapping up $1.7 trillion in mortgage securities
held by banks and another $600 billion in Treasury instruments
with the aim of steering the country away from deflationary
decline while creating conditions ripe for investing and hiring
via the massive liquidity injections.
Materials scientists at Harvard
have created a fuel cell that not only produces energy but also
stores it, opening up new possibilities in hydrogen fuel cell
technologies. The solid-oxide fuel cell (SOFC) converts hydrogen
into electricity, and could have an impact on small-scale
portable energy applications.
As the percentage of wind power in
Idaho Power's system grows, the cost of melding the intermittent
power into the region's electric grid rises as well.
The bankruptcies of roughly two dozen U.S. and European
photovoltaic manufacturers have framed much of the story about
an oversupply of solar panels and crashing prices over the past
year. What's less known is the impact on the PV manufacturing
industry in China, where over 50 companies also have closed,
said John Lefebvre, president of Suntech Power's American
operations, during Intersolar in San Francisco on Wednesday.
With the U.S. increasing
its military forces in the Persian Gulf and Iran's foreign
minister openly warning that if sanctions are fully enforced,
his nation will close the Strait of Hormuz and choke one-fifth
of the world's oil supply, many are asking: Is a war with Iran
imminent?
- Iran’s supreme leader, for
the first time, is telling his nation that it must prepare
for war and “the end of times” as it continues to develop
nuclear weapons. State-owned
media outlets, in a coordinated effort, all ran
a similar
story Friday highlighting Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei’s message on the coming of the last Islamic
messiah.
- Until now, the Iranian
media would mostly quote clerics from seminaries on the
issue of the last Islamic messiah to avoid the regime being
labeled messianic.
Japan's weather bureau said on
Tuesday its climate models indicate there is a strong
possibility the El Nino weather pattern, which is often linked
to heavy rainfall and droughts, will emerge this summer.
Device is first to produce electricity by
harnessing the piezoelectric properties of a biological material
Scientists from the U.S. Department of
Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are working on a
device that will let you charge your phone as you walk, using a
paper-thin generator embedded in the sole of your shoe. The
power is generated using harmless viruses that convert
mechanical energy into electricity.
Libya’s liberal parties appeared to
have won the most seats in an assembly to write a new
constitution, but a smooth transition seems to be in jeopardy
since the losing Muslim Brotherhood party refuses to concede and
is challenging the validity of the election. This may foreshadow
the difficulties any new government will have in Libya, given
the population’s lack of familiarity with democratic processes
and peaceful transfers of power.
The summer Olympics will open on
July 27 in London with an unprecedented level of security in
place to deter a terrorist attack. Although it is impossible to
guarantee perfect security, al Qaeda and its affiliates in the
past have relied heavily on the element of surprise to hit soft
targets which will be hard to achieve given the extensive
security of the London games.
Merrill Lynch is urging investors
to embrace a fundamental shift in their investing strategy as
U.S. and Western economic domination crumbles.
The
company is pressing its clients to revamp their investing
strategy — even their basic beliefs about how to choose
investments — in the face of world geopolitical change,
according to The Financial Times.
Chinese banks shares were hit
yesterday on the stock market, led by China Construction Bank
(CCB), which fell by 2.95% in Hong Kong on the news that it is
the biggest lender to Zhejiang Zhongjiang, which is going bust.
Interestingly, three months ago I briefly mentioned Zhongjiang
when one of its subsidiaries, Jinxing Property, filed for
bankruptcy.
A move by the Obama administration
to close nine Border Patrol stations over four states has
spurred outrage from local officials, members of Congress — even
Border Patrol agents.
Though the affected stations are
scattered throughout northern and central Texas, and three other
states, critics say closing them will undercut anti-immigration
efforts in busy areas north of the U.S.-Mexico border, Fox News
reports.
The existence of two different
types of fat – or adipose tissue – in mammals has long been
known: white fat, which stores calories and in excess results in
obesity, and brown fat, which burns calories to generate energy
and heat. Now scientists at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
have confirmed the existence of a third, genetically distinct
type of fat called “beige fat,” which they say is a potential
therapeutic target for treating obesity.
Although most analysts assume that
the world’s population will rise from today’s 7 billion to 9
billion by 2050, it is quite possible that humanity will never
reach this population size, Worldwatch Institute President
Robert Engelman argues in the book State of the World 2012:
Moving Toward Sustainable Prosperity.
I, like so many others, take my
responsibilities as a parent very seriously, and I know that a
large part of that responsibility is to ensure my children`s
protection. If they were threatened in any way, I would stop at
nothing to ensure their safety and survival. Believe it or not,
my wife and I have decided that part of that protection involves
having a handgun in the home.
The National Rifle Association
(NRA) has demanded that the United Nations leave civilian
weapons out of a treaty on international arms sales that it is
negotiating this month.
The director of the National
Security Agency (NSA) has called cybercrime "the greatest
transfer of wealth in history." As such, he urged politicians
and the American population in general to support cybersecurity
legislation being pushed through Congress.
President Barack Obama’s renewed
call to eliminate the Bush-era tax cuts for anyone with annual
income of more than $250,000 is making him a lot of enemies in
his own party.
That’s particularly the case among
Democrats facing competitive congressional races...
The U.S. budget deficit grew by
nearly $60 billion in June, remaining on track to exceed $1
trillion for the fourth straight year.
Another late-Friday afternoon
release from the White House — this one on how agencies should
communicate with the public in emergencies — has Internet
privacy advocates crying foul over a possible power grab.
The executive order — “Assignment of National Security and
Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions” — was released
last Friday in the late afternoon...
The film bills itself as an inside
look inside how Obama's past influences his policy making.
"'2016 Obama's America' takes audiences on a gripping visual
journey into the heart of the world’s most powerful office to
reveal the struggle of whether one man's past will redefine
America over the next four years. The film examines the
question, 'If Obama wins a second term, where will we be in
2016?
OPEC published its latest monthly
oil market report on July 11. Anyone reading it might expect to
find some mention of the fact that one of its members, Iran, is
now under two sets of sanctions which threaten not only its oil
exports but also, ultimately, the volume of crude it produces.
The Peruvian government must
immediately halt violent repression of mining protesters, more
than 80 environmental and human rights organizations demanded
today in a statement that will be delivered to Peruvian
embassies and consulates across the United States and Canada.
Cleaning wastewater requires huge
amounts of energy. ..But an $11.3 million upgrade now under way
promises to slash the plant's power costs, reduce its greenhouse
gas emissions and set the stage for other energy efficiency
projects in the pipeline.
The wind power industry, which has been one of the nation's
fastest growing energy sectors, is facing layoffs and factory
closings as a federal subsidy nears an end.
Without legislative action, the federal Production Tax
Credit, which has fueled the growth of wind farms from West
Texas to New England for nearly two decades, will end.
The fact is there are a LOT of
folks out there inadvertently making some BIG mistakes
A “Perfect Storm” of economic
events forecast to strike the global economy in 2013 is
gathering steam earlier than expected, and the world is
beginning to feel its effects now, says New York University
economist Nouriel Roubini.
Earlier this year, Roubini,
who called the 2008 housing bust and subsequent contraction long
before it happened, predicted a confluence of four events to
merge into an economic hurricane and derail the global economy
next year.
When you see headlines like this:
San Bernardino, California, Weighs Chapter 9 Bankruptcy, you
know 100% without a doubt the city is bankrupt, and the only
question pertains to the filing.
The system is made up of
state-of-the-art solar photovoltaic modules, related power
electronics, and other components, including an advanced
tracking system that follows the sun to maximize energy
production designed to feed the SDG&E electric utility grid,
which SDG&E sees as the future paradigm for large-scale
electrical generation.
Decades after the U.S. gave Laos a
horrific distinction as the world's most heavily bombed nation
per person, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton pledged
Wednesday to help get rid of millions of unexploded bombs that
still pockmark the impoverished country -- and still kill.
The U.S. dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs on the
North Vietnamese ally during its "secret war" between 1964 and
1973 -- about a ton of ordnance for each Laotian man, woman and
child. That exceeded the amount per person dropped on Germany
and Japan together in World War II.
Electric commuter trains, while
quiet and fast, have one glaring inefficiency – when they brake
at a station, the energy of the moving train is lost, even when
the motors are electrically reversed. Capturing the electrical
energy generated during braking is simple, but efficiently
redistributing it through the power grid is not.
As the US mortgage rates continue
to decline to new record lows, the refinancing activity for
those who are eligible has been quite robust. Just when
borrowers sign the papers for a new mortgage (particularly in
situations when the bank covers the closing fees), they are
ready to refinance again. Some households have done this more
than once this year alone.
Lots of consumers would like to go
solar, but the rules can be confusing, making it tough to decide
if it's worth it.
Solar Storms and Electro-Magnetic
Pulse (EMP) disturbances have the potential to paralyze critical
technologies throughout the world. These can be as sophisticated
as the satellites that control the nation's most classified
intelligence to the rudimentary act of turning on the lights.
Without proper measures, no industry will remain unaffected by
these phenomena. The results of such scenario could be ruinous
to the economy and society at large. The increase in magnetic
field geo-activity that results from major sun outbursts may not
directly threaten the safety of people, but do present the
distinct possibility of causing electrical grids to collapse,
disrupt GPS systems and damage, or even deorbit satellites.
"Recession-plagued Spain unveiled
new austerity measures on Wednesday designed to slash 65 billion
euros from the public deficit by 2014 as Prime Minister Mariano
Rajoy yielded to EU pressure to try to avoid a full state
bailout.
Warning anti-government
protesters of an “incinerating summer” instead of an Arab
Spring, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir – who was indicted in
2009 by the International Criminal Court for his role in the
genocide in Darfur in the 2000s – is facing a serious challenge
to his rule due to growing nationwide demonstrations brought on
by the country’s dire economic problems. Despite Bashir’s
repressive rule and the country’s dire problems, African states
recently nominated Sudan to take a seat on the UN Human Rights
Council in 2013.
But new evidence shows that omega-3s may reverse sugar’s
brain damage.
Mainstream medicine is finally waking up to what the natural
health community has known for quite a while. Sugar,
particularly in the form of refined fructose, impairs one’s
cognitive ability. So far the evidence is limited to rats. But
it is very likely that the results apply to humans too.
THE Taliban have again rejected overtures for peace from the
Afghan government, vowing to continue their violent insurgency
across the country.
But at the same time, doubts appear to be emerging within the
terrorist network over their capacity to win the war against the
international forces currently in the country, and even over the
foreign-funded Afghan Army that will be left behind after 2014.
According to the Report Card on
Retail Competition published by the Texas Public Utilities
Commission (PUC), 57 percent of Texas electricity customers have
left legacy utilities and switched to a competitive retail
provider.
...dropping at the rate of more
than one meter a year...The Dead Sea continues to drop at an
astonishing rate, largely due to water diversions from its main
tributary, the Jordan River, to the north. To replenish the
sea's waters, a massive public works project that would import
water from the Red Sea has been proposed. A final report from
the World Bank on the project is expected soon
The amount of people "not in the
labor force" exceeds the increase of population. For instance,
the total population (over 16 years of age) increased in 2011 by
1,788,000 and the amount of people not in the labor force
increased by 2,060,000. This extraordinary situation has only
occurred in the past three years (i.e., under
Obama's administration). In all the U.S. history this has not
happened before.
Once again the financial industry
has been struck with a major scandal that threatens its
stability and long-term health. The recent admission by the
British bank Barclays PLC (NYSE BCS, London: BARC.L) that it
rigged the so-called Libor rate — a key benchmark that
determines short-term lending levels among banks — may only be
the tip of the iceberg as other banks appear to have been
involved. If the scandal grows, it will be another blow to the
beleaguered global economy and could become an issue in the 2012
U.S. presidential campaign.
UK domestic security chief said
last month that the extent and magnitude of foreign,
state-sponsored cyber espionage attacks against the United
Kingdom is “astonishing.” It was a rare public statement for a
senior intelligence official, indicating the seriousness of the
threat the UK is facing and mounting fears that China, in
particular, is now capable of dealing significant blows to
Britain’s economic and security infrastructure.
In the 1800s, when pneumatic tubes
shot telegrams and small items all around buildings and
sometimes small cities, the future of mass transit seemed clear:
we'd be firing people around through these sealed tubes at high
speeds. And it turns out we've got the technology to do that
today – mag-lev rail lines remove all rolling friction from the
energy equation for a train, and accelerating them through a
vacuum tunnel can eliminate wind resistance to the point where
it's theoretically possible to reach blistering speeds over
4,000 mph (6,437 km/h) using a fraction of the energy an
airliner uses – and recapturing a lot of that energy upon
deceleration. Ultra-fast, high efficiency ground transport is
technologically within reach – so why isn't anybody building it?
Should some of the largest online
content providers have to pay up in order to continue to reach
the global market? The United Nations thinks so, according to
some leaked documents obtained by WCITLeaks.org, and such a tax
will be up for debate this December when the agency’s
International Telecommunications Union convenes for the World
Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai.
The United Nations has turned to
Iran to help negotiate a global arms treaty in a move that is
drawing scorn and ridicule around the globe.
US Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton told Vietnam this week that the US government supports
the rights of coastal countries to their exclusive economic
zones as stated in the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea of
1982, according to a statement posted on the Vietnam government
website late Tuesday.
The US solar industry is undergoing
some serious growing pains, with bankruptcies and mergers a
necessary part of that process; meanwhile, competition from
Chinese solar panels has many believing that American solar
simply cannot compete. Not so.
Some of the planet’s tiniest inhabitants may help address two of
society’s biggest environmental challenges: how to deal with the
vast quantities of organic waste produced and where to find
clean, renewable energy.
Once a month, California-based writer Larry Gallagher hauls
eight heavy buckets to a compost pile in his backyard.
Those buckets don’t hold kitchen scraps or yard trimmings;
they’re filled with sawdust, sometimes shredded coconut hulls
and a month’s worth of human waste.
Up until the release of the minutes
from the most recent Federal Reserve monetary policy meeting, it
had been a very quiet trading day. Its not often that the FOMC
minutes will cause a large reaction in currencies but the fact
that the dollar soared minutes after the release to a 2 year
high against the euro goes to show how easily swayed investors
are when it comes to signs of QE vs. no QE. In today's case,
the FOMC minutes was just not enough to satisfy QE3 traders who
wanted a more explicit admission that further asset purchases
would be necessary.
Drinking alcohol has often been
debated in terms of its potential health effects. There is no
black and white answer. Drinking a moderate amount of alcohol as
part of a healthy lifestyle may benefit women’s bone health,
lowering their risk of developing osteoporosis. A new study
assessed the effects of alcohol withdrawal on bone turnover in
postmenopausal women who drank one or two drinks per day several
times a week. Researchers at Oregon State University measured a
significant increase in blood markers of bone turnover in women
after they stopped drinking for just two weeks.
An additional complaint about the noise level of the wind
turbines at Pinnacle Wind Farm at NewPage on Green Mountain has
been filed and dismissed by the Public Service Commission.
The complaint was filed by resident Gary Braithwaite on June
27. In his complaint to the PSC, Braithwaite cites "constant
noise and flicker" and suggests the wind turbines be shut down
until the noise can be stopped.
July 10, 2012
From solar energy to water treatment, from smarter buildings
to electric cars: at Concordia University, “sustainability” is
more than just a buzzword.
18 year-old engineering student Chris Rieger has spent the
last 6 months building his LevLight system, where an LED light
module floats in mid-air while wirelessly receiving its power
from a coil hidden inside a wooden box
The discovery suggests that changing ocean conditions may be
making life harder for some groups of wild salmon -- possibly by
reducing their food supply or increasing populations of
predators.
Anglo American hopes to begin construction of its $3 billion
Quellaveco copper project in Peru soon and has won crucial
community support for its water plan, the global mining company
said on Monday.
A rapid decline for Arctic sea ice extent briefly hit daily
record lows in June, led by extensive ice loss in the Bering,
Kara, and Beaufort Seas, as well as Hudson and Baffin Bay. Snow
extent was unusually low for both May and June, reinforcing the
continuing pattern of rapid spring snow melt of the past six
years.
"A major study on energy efficiency found that the industrial
sector represents the largest potential for increasing energy
efficiency in the country," Bingaman pointed out. "Such
improvements could save $47 billion annually. This bill offers
focused, short-term incentives to help the industrial and
manufacturing sectors make the next generation of efficiency
investments necessary for these sectors to remain globally
competitive and to continue to push innovation."
The California Public Utilities Commission's "2012 California
Solar Initiative Annual Program Assessment" shows that in
2011California reached a major milestone by becoming the first
state in the nation to install more than 1 gigawatt of
customer-generated solar energy; a record 311 megawatts were
installed in the investor-owned utility territories in 2011
alone. Currently more than 122,000 sites across the state host
solar systems to serve on-site solar generation. Further, since
2007, costs for residential solar system have decreased by 28
percent and CSI projects in low income markets (areas with
median incomes of less than $50,000) have increased by 364
percent.
On this July 4th I will bring you wishes of happiness and
good will. However, I also bring a grave warning.
The
United States is on the verge of a massive debt crisis. We all
know we look at the Europeans as the basket cases. However,
there is not really much difference between what is going on in
the U.S. at the moment and what is going on in Europe. The only
real difference is the U.S. dollar is the reserve currency of
the world, and so the country can print money to buy its own
debt. That has helped keep interest rates low.
One of the worst offenders of human rights on the planet
condemns individual gun rights in the US as a human rights
violation.
“The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much
really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a
frying world now.
“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium.
Twelve years is a reasonable time. [The temperature] has stayed
almost constant, whereas it should have been rising. Carbon
dioxide is rising, no question about that.
“We will have global warming, but it’s been deferred a bit.”
If our news media continue to ignore the essential link
between extreme weather and climate change, then we may not act
in time to avert even greater catastrophe.
Today begins the most important 26-day period for our Second
Amendment freedoms in recent history. That's because today,
representatives from many of the world's socialist, tyrannical
and dictatorial regimes will gather at United Nations
headquarters in New York for a month-long meeting, in which
they'll put the finishing touches on an international Arms
Trade Treaty that could seriously restrict your freedom to
own, purchase and carry a firearm.
Scorching temperatures in June's second half helped the
continental United States break its record for the hottest first
six months in a calendar year, the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration said on Monday.
The last 12 months also have been the warmest since modern
record-keeping began in 1895, narrowly beating the previous
12-month period that ended in May 2012.
Coral reefs worldwide are being destroyed by changes in ocean
temperature and chemistry faster than at any time since the last
reef crisis 55 million years ago, thousands of marine scientists
warned in a joint statement today.
According to researchers using data from the SOHO solar
observatory satellite, 25 Earth-directed halo CMEs were detected
during the last eight months of 1997, and now in 2007 we again
are in a time of low activity. But the fact that the Sun's
activity is cyclic means that in the next 1-2 years we should
expect to see CMEs becoming more frequent.
Let me ask you, what would you do right now if you had to
confront one (or more) armed criminals who kicked in your door?
Are you prepared at all to deal with such a
situation?
New research concludes that a one-two punch of drought and
mountain pine beetle attacks are the primary forces that have
killed more than 2.5 million acres of pinyon pine and juniper
trees in the American Southwest during the past 15 years,
setting the stage for further ecological disruption.
U.S. coal production during the first quarter of this year
totaled 266.4 million tons, which was 5.7% lower than the
previous quarter (fourth quarter 2011) and 2.6% lower than the
first quarter of 2011, said the U.S. Energy Information
Administration in the June 27 edition of its "Quarterly Coal
Report." U.S. coal imports totaled 2 million tons in the first
quarter, 25.1% lower than fourth quarter 2011 and down 40.2%
from first quarter 2011.
The oil crisis of 1973-74 brought major changes in the way
Americans consume energy. Smaller cars came into vogue, and
people looked for ways to save electricity, such as insulating
their homes.
According
to a new tracker report, "Energy Storage Tracker," the number of
energy storage projects deployed on a global basis continues to
rise as technologies move at a variety of speeds toward
commercialization. The total number of energy storage projects
deployed and announced (including inactive projects) rose 8%,
from 600 to 649 during the first half of 2012, the tracker
report finds.
Rockwood Lithium is leveraging a $28.4 million investment from
the Recovery Act to expand its lithium production facility in
Kings Mountain, North Carolina as well as its production
operations in Silver Peak, Nevada. The plants will produce
lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate, which are both used to
produce lithium-ion batteries, dramatically increasing U.S.
domestic production of raw and processed lithium materials.
China’s interest rate cut on
Thursday appears to signal that the world’s second-largest
economy is in worse shape than believed and that the government
is possibly beleaguered about its growth prospects, economists
tell CNBC.
Scientists have found a way to use
the body's natural clot- producing mechanisms to deliver
targeted medicine in a study that may have implications for
treatments of heart attacks and stroke
U.S. employers added only 80,000 jobs in June, a third
straight month of weak hiring that shows the economy is still
struggling three years after the recession ended.
The unemployment rate was unchanged at 8.2 percent, the Labor
Department said Friday.
The economy added an average of just 75,000 jobs a month in
the April-June quarter — one-third of the pace in the first
quarter. And for the first six months of 2012, employers added
an average of 150,000 jobs a month. That's fewer than the
161,000 average for the first half of 2011.
Weaker job creation has caused consumers to pull back on
spending.
General Electric Co. says it won't
be adding scores of new renewable energy jobs locally as
previously expected after it put on hold plans for a $300
million solar panel factory in Colorado.
Solar power accounted for 10
percent of Germany's total electricity production in May 2012,
up 40 percent from 2011, according to the Federal Association of
the Energy and Water Industry.
Cyanobacteria are among the most
primitive living beings, aged over 3,500 million years old.
These aquatic microorganisms helped to oxygenate the earth's
atmosphere. At present their populations are increasing in size
without stopping. It appears that global warming may be behind
the rise in their numbers and may also lead toan increase in the
amount of toxins produced by some of these populations.
Research is underway to reduce the
use of food crops for biofuels by shifting to dedicated energy
crops and agricultural residues.
Our
current dependence on fossil fuels is on a collision course with
the need of future generations for a habitable environment.
Supplying more than 80 percent of human energy consumption
globally, fossil fuel combustion contributes to the rise of
atmospheric greenhouse gases such as CO2, nitrous
oxide, and methane, which are widely believed to cause
detrimental climate change. We can mitigate these effects by
using the many available no- or low-carbon methods to harvest
energy, including wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, and solar
approaches, such as the harvesting of plant biomass that can be
burned as solid or liquid fuels.
All of these discoveries—the large
village, the abundance of artifacts and the metal piece—have
convinced Williamson that the history of the Huron needs to be
rewritten, literally. “We not only needed to change the
textbooks, we needed to write one about it,”
Weary West Virginians dumped rotting food from their
refrigerators and tried to clear fallen trees from the roads on
Friday as new storms prolonged the power outages that have
already lasted a week.
The forecast for the weekend called for more record-breaking
heat across the Midwest and into the Eastern United States, with
heavy rains and severe storms in the upper Midwest, the National
Weather Service said.
At the end of the year, tax breaks
such as the Bush-era tax cuts expire, while automatic spending
cuts agreed to during the 2011 debt-ceiling deal kick in. The
combination of the two on Jan. 1, 2013, known as a fiscal cliff,
could siphon as much as $500 billion out of the economy next
year alone, according to some estimates, and wipe out a total of
$7 trillion over a decade.
The U.S. Department of Interior has
announced that two major wind energy initiatives have completed
important environmental reviews, clearing the way for public
comment and final review. Onshore, the final environmental
impact statements have been released for the proposed
Chokecherry and Sierra Madre Wind Farm complex in Wyoming that
would generate up to 3,000 megawatts of power, making it the
largest wind farm facility in the U.S. and one of the largest in
the world.
Disguised as a way to prevent the proliferation of small arms
throughout the world, it is, in fact, a backdoor way to
legislate gun control in the United States and effectively
repeal our Second Amendment.
The ATT will set up a global body, which will require all
nations to regulate firearms so that they can prevent their
exportation to other countries. Inevitably, this will
require countries to inventory the guns in private hands and to
register them. A gun ban is not far away.
Iran has now spread the blame for assassinations of its
nuclear scientists, asserting that German and French
intelligence agencies were also involved in the killings.
The Islamic Republic previously accused Israel, the United
States, and Britain of plotting the assassinations to set back
its uranium enrichment program, which Western powers suspect is
designed to develop nuclear weapons.
The effects of global warming on
temperature, precipitation levels, and soil moisture are turning
many of our forests into kindling during wildfire season.
As the climate warms, moisture and
precipitation levels are changing, with wet areas becoming
wetter and dry areas becoming drier.
The disease may be most easily
transmitted to human beings by eating food contaminated with the
brain, spinal cord or digestive tract of infected carcasses.
However, it should also be noted that the infectious agent,
although most highly concentrated in nervous tissue, can be
found in virtually all tissues throughout the body, including
blood. In humans, it is known as new variant Creutzfeldt—Jakob
disease, and by October 2009, it had killed 166 people in the
United Kingdom, and 44 elsewhere.
Hydraulic fracturing likely didn't create fissures, but
gas from leaking well casings could exploit them.
A Duke University study of well water in northeastern
Pennsylvania suggests that naturally occurring pathways could
have allowed salts and gases from the Marcellus shale formation
deep underground to migrate up into shallow drinking water
aquifers.
Mexico and Canada have succeeded in
a joint effort to strike down an American regulatory policy
passed in 2008 that requires country-of-origin labeling (COOL)
on meat sold in the U.S. Public Citizen reports that the
World Trade Organization (WTO) has ruled against the U.S.
in a case regarding the matter, a move that will potentially
expose millions of Americans to "mystery" meat from unknown
origins.
Although oceans and seas contain
about 97% of Earth’s water, currently only a fraction of a
percent of the world’s potable water supply comes from
desalinated salt water. In order to increase our use of salt
water, desalination techniques must become more energy-efficient
and less expensive to be sustainable. In a new study, two
materials scientists from MIT have shown in simulations that
nanoporous graphene can filter salt from water at a rate that is
2-3 orders of magnitude faster than today’s best commercial
desalination technology, reverse osmosis (RO). The researchers
predict that graphene’s superior water permeability could lead
to desalination techniques that require less energy and use
smaller modules than RO technology, at a cost that will depend
on future improvements in graphene fabrication methods.
Democrats on the House Ways and
Means Committee have introduced a bill that would extend the
renewable-energy Production Tax Credit, providing a
2.2-cent-a-kilowatt-hour credit for electricity produced by wind
turbines, through the end of 2013. Under the proposal, the PTC's
extension would be paid for by repealing dual capacity taxpayer
benefits for the five richest oil and natural gas companies,
which earned a combined $32 billion in profits during the first
three months of 2012. Under the measure, wind project developers
could continue to choose to instead receive a 30 percent
investment tax credit.
New research has concluded that salty, mineral-rich fluids
deep beneath Pennsylvania's natural gas fields are likely
seeping upward thousands of feet into drinking water supplies.
Though the fluids were natural and not the byproduct of
drilling or hydraulic fracturing, the finding further stokes the
red-hot controversy over fracking in the Marcellus Shale,
suggesting that drilling waste and chemicals could migrate in
ways previously thought to be impossible.
Lawmakers in North Carolina, which has a long Atlantic Ocean
coastline and vast areas of low-lying land, voted on Tuesday to
ignore studies predicting a rapid rise in sea level due to
climate change and postpone planning for the consequences.
Opponents of the measure said it was a case of legislators
"putting our heads in the sand" to avoid acknowledging the
possible effects of global warming.
President Obama is setting the
stage for another tax battle with Republicans as lawmakers
signaled on Sunday a worsening deadlock in Congress over how to
tackle critical fiscal deadlines looming at year's end,
including deciding whether to extend tax cuts for the wealthiest
Americans.
President Barack Obama has invited
Egypt's newly elected Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi, to
visit the United States in September, an Egyptian official said
on Sunday, reflecting the new ties Washington is cultivating
with the region's Islamists.
The debate about whether organic
food has more nutrients might be finally settled, at least in
the case of tomatoes. The latest research from the University of
Barcelona shows that organic tomatoes have higher levels of
antioxidants than chemically-grown ones. The research team
studied and analysed the chemical structure of the Daniela
variety of tomato.
State set to invest in purifying brackish water for
commercial sale in Central Texas
Along Interstate 35, between Austin and San Antonio, the
Texas Economic Miracle is thirsting for water. Tight
restrictions on the Edwards Aquifer and the high costs of
pipelines are choking off the potential growth of homes and
businesses.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - The
pioneering work of Abdus Salam, Pakistan's only Nobel laureate,
helped lead to the apparent discovery of the subatomic "God
particle" last week. But the late physicist is no hero at home,
where his name has been stricken from school textbooks.
In the effort to protect the
Serengeti—arguably Africa's most famous ecosystem—one of the
major problems is the bushmeat trade. Population growth, little
available protein, poverty, and a long-standing history of
hunting has led many communities to poach wildlife within
Serengeti National Park. Interviewing over a thousand community
members in the western Serengeti, scientists found that
community members are largely aware that wildlife hunting is
illegal and that conservation of wild species is important, but
hunt animals anyway partly out of necessity.
The poll — conducted before the heatwave now gripping the
eastern United States — finds that 18 percent list global
warming as the single biggest global environmental problem.
That’s down from 25 percent of respondents in the same poll in
July of 2008 and 33 percent in April of 20
The power industry is waiting for a
federal appeals court to rule on proposed emissions controls for
coal-fired power plants, a decision with implications for energy
sectors ranging from natural gas to coal to tradeable pollution
permits.
Hawaii's main energy efficiency and
conservation program -- initially focused primarily on hardware
upgrades such as compact fluorescent bulbs, Energy Star
appliances and air conditioning retrofits -- is now getting some
help from behavioral scientists in its mission to cut the
state's electricity consumption.
A blistering heat wave finally
showed signs of letting up across the U.S. Midwest and Northeast
on Sunday, bringing relief to millions after days of oppressive
temperatures - just as forecasters warned that a new round of
record highs could soon bake Western states.
The birth control pill is a
widespread contraception method. However, large amounts of these
modified estrogens leave the body again in urine. The
conventional methods in sewage treatment plants are unable to
treat this waste water sufficiently because the most frequently
used estrogen ethinylestradiol is very difficult to break down.
As a result, the hormone finds its way into rivers and lakes and
also accumulates in drinking water with serious consequences for
fish and other aquatic life.
The latest EIA "Monthly Energy
Review," with data through March 31, 2012, reveals that
renewable energy sources (biomass/biofuels, geothermal, solar,
water, wind) accounted for 11.55% of domestic energy production
during the first quarter of 2012. Non-hydro renewables accounted
for 8.06% of domestic energy production for the period. While
total domestic energy production from all sources during the
first quarter of 2012 increased by 3.89% compared to the first
quarter of 2011, non-hydro renewables increased at roughly
double that rate - 7.67%.
The underwater world, being called
Doggerland and Britain’s Atlantis, stretched from Scotland to
Denmark when Britain was not an island but connected to the
European continent. It was gradually submerged by water between
18,000 B.C. and 5,500 B.C., according to researchers.
C7/Sf at 09/0830Z. Region 1520
(S17E33) continued its growth phase in area coverage, spot count
and magnetic complexity, but remained relatively quiet. No
Earth-directed CMEs were observed during the previous 24
hours. Solar activity is expected to be moderate with a
chance for X-class events for the next three days (10 - 12
July). The geomagnetic field was at unsettled to minor
storm levels with high latitude major storm intervals. This
activity was most likely a result of CME effects from the 04
July M1 event.
All-electric vehicles that you plug-in overnight are a tough
sell with drivers afraid of becoming stranded with few charging
stations in operation across the nation.
Consumers want hybrids that combine gas with battery power,
like the Toyota Prius, or that plug in but have a backup gas
tank, like the Chevrolet Volt.
A team of researchers at Griffith
University has managed to stretch the capabilities of microscopy
to its ultimate limit. Culminating a five-years effort, the
scientists have obtained a digital image of the shadow cast by a
single atom, in a development that might soon lead to important
advances in scientific observations ranging from the very big to
the very small.
Whirlpools, or eddies, swirl across
the surface of the North Atlantic Ocean sustaining phytoplankton
in the ocean's shallower waters where they can get plenty of
sunlight to fuel their growth, keeping them from being pushed
downward by the ocean's rough surface.
Researchers found that 92.5% of the birds examined had
plastic scraps in their stomach, with an average of .385 grams
(.0136 ounces) of plastic per bird, according to the release.
That's equal to about 5% of the bird's body mass.
The report compares that amount to a human carrying 10
quarters in his or her stomach.
Severe thunderstorms knocked out
power to 1.2 million homes in the D.C. area. Wildfires ravaged
more than 2 million acres in the Rockies. Two-thirds of the
country is in drought conditions, and flooding is expected to
get worse as the time between rainstorms lengthen and, in turn,
grow more intense.
The Sierra Club on June 28 released
a new, 28-page study claiming that the days of cheap coal-fired
power are now over, both in the U.S. and around the world.
While the U.S. small wind turbine
market decreased 26 percent in 2011, exports drove a 13.4
percent increase in U.S. manufacturer sales, according to the
"2011 Small Wind Turbine Market Report." In the U.S., more than
19 MW of small wind systems were installed, with revenues
totaling $115 million. More than 7,300 small wind turbines were
installed in the U.S. in 2011 for the sixth consecutive year
(for comparison purposes, almost twice the number of
utility-scale turbines installed). More than 150,000 total small
wind turbines have been installed cumulatively in the last
decade. The cumulative installed U.S. capacity increased to 198
MW.
As Eurozone depositors look for
safer places to put their money, Denmark has become one of the
"destinations". It's not as popular as Switzerland but good
enough to attract some sizable flows from euros into Danish
Krone (DKK). With DKK pegged to the euro, the central bank has
to buy euros to maintain the peg. And that's exactly what they
have been forced to do for some time, as seen from growth of the
foreign reserve account balances.
It was to be the country’s biggest
solar equipment maker. Instead, it will be exhibited by critics
of President Obama’s green energy plan. In the spotlight now is
General Electric, which has said that it will delay by at least
18 months the construction of a facility to build solar panels.
Solazyme has announced the
commissioning of its first fully integrated biorefinery in
Peoria, Illinois, to produce oil from algae. Solazyme has been
running routine fermentations at commercial scale since 2007 and
began running fermentation operations at the Peoria facility in
Q4 2011. With the successful production of algal oil from the
integrated facility this month, Solazyme has met its start-up
goals for the facility on schedule.
SOLON Corporation, one of the
largest providers of turnkey solar power plants and photovoltaic
(PV) products in the U.S., today announced it has begun
construction on a 460 kilowatt (kW) photovoltaic (PV) system for
the Town of Gila Bend's Reverse Osmosis (RO) Water Treatment
Facility in Arizona.
A green, rechargeable battery that
is suitable for powering electric vehicles and stationary power
storage applications, and that would survive tens of thousands
of charge cycles in a useful life of 100 years without loss of
capacity. What could be a better innovation for our times? Such
a battery has been developed, and recently improved by Stanford
researchers. Oh, one other thing. The battery was invented by
Thomas Edison in 1901.
It is summer time in the US and, of
course, it is warm. But how bad or good is it compared to the
past and what bodes for the future? The average temperature for
the contiguous U.S. during June was 71.2°F, which is 2.0°F above
the 20th century average. The June temperatures contributed to a
record-warm first half of the year and the warmest 12-month
period the nation has experienced since recordkeeping began in
1895. The nation, as a whole, experienced its tenth driest June
on record, with a nationally-averaged precipitation total of
2.27 inches, 0.62 inch below average.
Potentially harmful levels of naturally occurring arsenic,
uranium, radium, radon and manganese have been found in some
bedrock groundwater that supplies drinking water wells in New
England, according to a new U.S. Geological Survey study.
While the presence of contaminants, such as arsenic, in some
groundwater was already known, this new study identifies several
that hadn’t been previously identified.
A new study refutes the commonly
held view that opening a Walmart store lowers the value of
nearby properties — instead, it actually raises home values.
...government shenanigans aren't
all that I'm worried about. We've had some pretty serious
natural disasters around the country that have caused medical
facilities to be stretched to the breaking point. Between
droughts, wildfires, and once-in-lifetime derecho storms,
millions have been left without power in the hottest summer on
record for the United States.
We’ve seen promising moves towards
developing a universal or near-universal influenza vaccine, but
researchers at the Donald P. Shiley BioScience Center have taken
a different tack to ward of the crafty virus. Although the flu
virus actively keeps the immune system from detecting it for a
few days, giving it time to gain a foothold, the researchers
have found that a powerful synthetic protein, known as EP67, can
kick start the immune system so that it reacts almost
immediately to all strains of the virus.
Emboldened by the news that NATO
combat troops will soon leave Afghanistan, the Taliban has
established morality squads in some remote Afghan provinces,
sending a signal that it wants to reestablish its draconian
religious rule over the entire country. Unfortunately for the
West, it has the potential to achieve this goal, as LIGNET
explains.
The federal government recently
announced a new $54 million, 12-week campaign using TV spots to
encourage smokers to give up the habit, and state and federal
spending on anti-smoking efforts have topped $800 million in
some years.
It seems that governmental efforts
to save the underwater and ineligible homeowner from his own
fate are reaching fever pitch. Not only do we hear today of the
up to $300mm in Agriculture Department Rural Housing Service
loans that may have financed ineligible projects or borrowers
with a high potential inability to repay the loans; but
yesterday’s WSJ reports on the growing call for ‘eminent-domain’
powers to be used by local government officials in California to
stop the “housing bust’s public blight on their city”. In yet
another get-out-of-jail-free card, the officials (helped by a
friendly local hedge-fund / mortgage-provider) want to use the
government’s ability to forcibly acquire property to remove
underwater homes, restructure the mortgage (cut principal), and
hand back the home to the previously unable to pay
dilemma-ridden homeowner.
The quest is on to capture carbon
dioxide. And while the notion of separating such releases from
other fumes before they escape the smokestack is prevalent in
most minds, other ideas are also creeping into the mainstream.
Although the TPP covers a wide range of issues, this site
focuses on the TPP's intellectual property (IP) chapter.
The TPP suffers from a serious lack of transparency,
threatens to impose more stringent copyright without public
input, and pressures foreign governments to adopt unbalanced
laws.
The U.S. Congress overcame months of division to pass a massive
transportation bill that secures a two-year extension of highway
funding. The bill sets aside about $105 billion over 27 months
to fund thousands of road, bridge and railway projects,
including repairs to a steadily declining national
infrastructure. legislation notably did not include the
controversial Keystone XL oil pipeline long sought by
congressional Republicans. The package sailed through the House
with 373 votes to 52, and then passed the Senate 74-19, with one
member voting present.
More of the United States is in moderate drought or worse
than at any other time in the 12-year history of the U.S.
Drought Monitor, officials from the National Drought Mitigation
Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln said recently.
Analysis of the latest drought monitor data revealed that
46.84 percent of the nation's land area is in various stages of
drought, up from 42.8 percent a week ago. Previous records were
45.87 percent in drought on Aug. 26, 2003, and 45.64 percent on
Sept. 10, 2002.
* $420 million effort aims to build 3 biofuel refineries
* Government funds would be matched by private capital
* Republicans worry about wasted funds, skewed priorities
We’re coming up on 40 years of OPEC
trying to set the price of oil as high as they can manage. The
oil market is finally at a turning point, non-OPEC production is
up, demand is down, and international economics may have finally
found a bright spot in ‘globalization’.
The water industry must create and
capitalize on “economies of scope,” said a group of more than 80
world water leaders. This key finding offered insight into the
need to address increasing scarcity and cost of the world’s most
precious resources.
For example, a comparison of jobs
data between the start and end of 2011 shows the ranks of the
unemployed fell by 822,000 while the number of people not in the
labor force grew by a larger 1.24 million, the Journal says. The
unemployment rate fell by 0.6 percentage point over that time to
8.5 percent.
Moreover, the participation rate—the share
of the working-age population either working or looking for
work—has fallen by 2.3 percentage points over the four years
through May to 63.8%, a three-decade low.
Nearly 88
million people—about seven times the ranks of the officially
unemployed—aren't part of the headline rate's calculation, the
Journal says.
The extremely long duration of joblessness
that has seen people fall off the rolls has had a bigger
impact than aging since 2008, the Journal says. The civilian
employment ratio, which simply divides employed people by total
population, has dropped from 63 percent to 58.6 percent in just
five years.
July 6, 2012
Obesity is an epidemic. Globally,
more than 1 billion adults are overweight – at least 300 million
of them clinically obese. The obesity and overweight epidemic
pose a major risk for serious diet-related chronic diseases,
including type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension
and stroke, and certain forms of cancer. The health consequences
range from increased risk of premature death, to serious chronic
conditions that reduce the overall quality of life and cost each
and every one of us some serious cash.
Asked Tuesday whether he would handle the Virginia power
outages differently if given a second chance, the president of
Appalachian Power Co. answered without hesitation.
No.
Arizona Public Service has taken
steps to ensure they are quickly able to respond to any power
outages caused by monsoons or high electrical demand this
summer. Monsoon season officially began June 15 and will end on
Sept. 30.
The main breakthrough of the
research is the successful synthesizing of a protein produced by
the human body
The dynamical models, including the NCEP Climate Forecast System
(CFS), largely favor the development of El Niño by
July-September 2012, while the majority of statistical models
predict ENSO-neutral through the rest of 2012.
The United Nations had set a target
for developing countries around the world to cut the proportion
of children who suffer from hunger in half by 2015 from 1990
levels. It is true that childhood hunger has improved since its
peak in 1985. However, insufficient progress has been made, and
only five percent of the developing world is on track to meet
the UN target. One in five infants and children are moderately
or severely underweight, amounting to 110 million children
around the world. Further, another 148 million are mildly
underweight.
China, the biggest supplier of solar power panels, quadrupled a
domestic installation goal for sun- derived energy projects to
21 gigawatts by 2015 to help absorb excess supply of panels and
support prices.
Under an appropriately blazing summer sun, a crowd gathered
Tuesday to celebrate the placement of the first solar panel in
what will be the largest single installation of solar
electricity in the state of Missouri.
Here in the US, we're starting to get a taste of things to
come—and it's bitter. Brutal heat is now roiling the main
growing regions for corn, soy, and wheat, the biggest US crops.
According to Bloomberg News, 71 percent of the Midwest
is experiencing "drier-than-normal conditions," and temperatures
are projected to be above 90 degrees in large swaths of key
corn/soy-growing states Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana through
July 7 if not longer.
A recently published study from
Chalmers University of Technology has gone into the details on
material issues for CSP. The main conclusion is that CSP does
indeed seem to be largely unrestricted, viewing the material
requirements compared to the global reserves. In theory, enough
solar plants could be built to cover -- at the very least --
five times the current global electricity demand.
The drought across the US continues to cause havoc,
driving agricultural commodities prices higher. Corn futures
hit a record this week, exceeding the 2008 highs.
There's new hope for one of North
America's most polluted rivers. In a Strategic Plan released
recently by the California-Mexico Border Relations Committee,
faculty of UC Davis Extension...The New River is highly polluted
with domestic, agricultural and industrial waste from both
countries. "It's certainly an issue of environmental justice
that has gone unchecked for more than 50 years," says Loux, who
served as a consultant and principal investigator for the plan.
The US Environmental Protection
Agency said Tuesday it will maintain its current greenhouse gas
thresholds that target power plants, refineries and other large
facilities while streamlining flexibility with emission limits
applied source-wide rather than at specific emission points.
Firefighters grappling with the two
most destructive wildfires on record in Colorado reported
progress on Monday, but were steeling themselves for a long
season in what has already been a dangerously active fire year
in the western United States.
British registered company,
GlaxoSmithKline, faces $3 billion in penalties after pleading
guilty to the biggest health care fraud case in history. GSK
admitted that physicians had been bribed to push potentially
dangerous drugs in exchange for Madonna tickets, Hawaiian
holidays, cash and lucrative speaking tours. They also admitted
distributing misleading information regarding the antidepressant
Paxil.
A government-sponsored study published recently in The
Open Neurology Journal concludes that marijuana provides
much-needed relief to some chronic pain sufferers and that more
clinical trials are desperately needed, utterly destroying the
U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency’s (DEA) classification of the drug
as having no medical uses.
While numerous prior studies have shown marijuana’s
usefulness for a host of medical conditions, none have ever gone
directly at the DEA’s placement of marijuana atop the schedule
of controlled substances.
The former Countrywide Financial
Corp., whose subprime loans helped start the nation's
foreclosure crisis, made hundreds of discount loans to buy
influence with members of Congress, congressional staff, top
government officials and executives of troubled mortgage giant
Fannie Mae, according to a House report.
What Kallenberg found was that people really are yearning to
have a reasoned, informed discussion on key energy issues and
want to find common ground for moving ahead with a future that
is less dependent on fossil fuels. He began to call these people
"the rational middle."
What, no shouting? No finger pointing? No rhetoric?
As is the case with China and
India, we are now seeing material deterioration in Brazil's
business conditions, particularly manufacturing. The June
manufacturing PMI is showing some unexpected weakness.
U.S. energy regulators have
subpoenaed JPMorgan Chase & Co to produce 25 internal emails as
part of an investigation into whether the bank manipulated
electricity markets in California and the Midwest.
In my view, July 4 is a good
opportunity for us to reflect on the original free and
independent existence of our American Indian ancestors and the
original independence of our nations and peoples. It is
important to remain mindful of the fact that we have an amazing
spiritual and political legacy: Our original existence,
independent and free of any Christian European claims of
dominance or “plenary power” over us.
The leaking of environmentally
damaging pollutants into our waters and atmosphere could soon be
counteracted by a simple mathematical algorithm, according to
researchers.
Millstone Power Station owner
Dominion plans to expand its nuclear waste storage capacity more
than sevenfold at the 520-acre site of its three nuclear power
plants.
Against the steadfast opposition of
American Indians in the state, Minnesota will hold its first
managed wolf hunting and trapping season this fall. As a result,
a cultural clash is brewing between state officials and Indians,
who revere wolves.
A congressional decision to delay
the timing of tax hikes and spending cuts at the end of the year
could lead to more lasting recovery, says Mark Zandi, chief
economist at Moody's Analytics.
More than 1 million homes and
businesses in a swath from Indiana to Virginia remained without
power on Wednesday, five days after deadly storms tore through
the region.
More than 2,000 temperature records
have been matched or broken in the past week as a brutal heat
wave baked much of the United States, and June saw more than
3,200 records topped, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA) said Monday.
The system developed at Langley
flies a kite in a figure-8 pattern to power a generator on the
ground
Numbers are yet to be crunched and
the data analysis goes on, but one thing appears to be certain:
scientists at CERN have discovered a new boson, and it's
probably the Higgs particle, the missing particle of the
Standard Model which is thought to lend all matter its mass.
Both the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN observe a new
particle with mass between 125 and 126 GeV, comfortably within
the band of possible Higgs masses previously identified.
North Carolina Governor Beverly
Perdue on Sunday vetoed legislation that would have lifted a ban
on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and opened the door to
shale gas exploration in that state.
Crude and product futures settled
higher in moderate pre-holiday US trading Tuesday as tensions
escalated between the West and Iran.
A climate model accounting for the
carbon dioxide (CO2) released into our atmosphere
before the industrial revolution has been used to show the
detrimental effect of carbon emissions on global temperature in
the long-term.
Damage from the huge March 11,
2011, earthquake, and not just the ensuing tsunami, could not be
ruled out as a cause of the accident, the panel added, a finding
that could have serious implications as Japan seeks to bring
idled reactors back on line.
Solar activity was high.
several low-level M-class flares. Solar activity is
expected to be moderate with a chance for X-class flares for the
next three days (06-08 July). The geomagnetic field was
quiet to unsettled with an isolated active period due to
residual effects from a coronal hole. The geomagnetic field is
expected to be mostly quiet on days one and two (06-07 July) as
effects from the CH HSS subside. Unsettled to active conditions
are likely on day three (08 July), with a chance for isolated
minor storm periods, due to effects from the CME associated
An obscure legal doctrine leaves
whistle-blowers at the San Onofre nuclear plant with less legal
protection than other California workers, including employees at
the state's only other nuclear plant.
About 1.3 million homes and
businesses in the eastern United States remained without power
amid a heat wave on Tuesday, and storm damage and high
temperatures forced many Fourth of July celebrations to be
canceled.
On Friday Angela Merkel got the
Bundestag approval she was seeking. Germany approved the Fiscal
Compact and the ESM. Germany views the Fiscal Compact as a way
to enforce austerity in the periphery countries.
The ECB continues its relentless
march of balance sheet expansion. For the first time the total
assets of the Eurosystem have exceeded €3.1 trillion.
The Yuma County Board of
Supervisors made it clear that it wants the Foothills Solar
Plant to come with a good road, and they have a preference as to
where the fresh pavement should lead through the scrubby desert.
Mounds of anthracite coal were once
stored at a colliery site in the center of Taylor. The coal
needed to be washed before it could be sold. The water, full of
coal dust, used to run into Keyser Creek, until the federal
government declared it to be a health hazard and ordered the
mining companies to stop.
The California Right to Know 2012
Ballot Initiative, if enacted in November, would require GMO
food—that is, all food containing genetically engineered
ingredients—to be so labeled in the state. Consumers all over
the US are in favor of this by wide margins. It is very
important because, with the full power of the US government
behind GMO, and huge amounts of money flowing back to Washington
from GMO producers, the only way to stop the GMO juggernaut is
to tell consumers what they are buying.
It's finally here. The Obama Administration has laid out an
integrated strategy for commercializing advanced biofuels, with
a focus in this phase on military advanced biofuels at
cost-competitive prices with conventional fuels.
...for water professionals there is
no offseason, as LaFrance went on to describe the mission at
hand — fixing an ailing U.S. drinking water infrastructure
system that will require $1 trillion in investment over the next
25 years..
Thousands of people rushed to
stores on Tuesday to redeem prepaid gift cards they said were
given them by the party that won Mexico’s presidency, inflaming
accusations that the election was marred by massive vote-buying.
The National Education Association
has lost more than 100,000 members since 2010. By 2014, union
projections show, it could lose a cumulative total of about
308,000 full-time teachers and other workers, a 16 percent drop
from 2010.
Only those who are out of work but
actively looking are counted as unemployed, yet if the
government were to factor in discouraged workers into the
headline unemployment rate, the number would be much higher.
Previous methodologies would have resulted in much higher
unemployment rates today as well.
"The reporting
requirements are so different now. You have people saying the
real number is 14 percent and 15 percent and 16 percent by the
way they used to account, and now the number is at 8.2 and you
know if you give up looking for a job, they take you off the
list,..
Thursday's back-to-back closure announcements came out of
Colorado and Germany. The reverberations, though, will be felt
heavily in places like Albuquerque, N.M., and Tipton, Ind.
That's where hundreds of manufacturing jobs will be lost, and
where hundreds more will never be made.
The day’s news left a trail of unemployment and unmet
expectations.
A mining company has cleared all
federal hurdles and now plans to begin mining uranium this fall
about 10 miles south of the Grand Canyon's South Rim.
Polls show that all across this nation Americans
are waking up to Obama's radical agenda as a result of the
recent Supreme Court decision.
They realize they have been LIED to.
President Obama repeatedly said his health care
plan was NOT a tax
US beaches can be dirty places, making about 3.5 million
people sick each year from sewage in the water, said an annual
study Wednesday that rates American beaches by how dirty they
are.
The Natural Resources Defense Council report included 3,000
beaches nationwide and listed 15 “repeat offenders” that have
turned up again and again in the pollution rankings.
Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC) yesterday released the results of its
Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS), showing average fixed
mortgage rates continuing to find new all-time record lows amid
recent data showing less consumer spending and a contraction in
the manufacturing industry. The average 30-year fixed-rate
mortgage has matched or hit a new record low in 10 of the last
11 weeks. The 1-year ARM also averaged a new record low this
week.
The United States has quietly moved
significant new military forces into the Persian Gulf to
discourage an Iranian response to new sanctions imposed on the
Islamic Republic.
...ten years before America
actually declared her independence, revolution had begun. And
that revolution began under a 100-year-old elm tree in Boston,
when on September 10, 1765, a copper plate with large gold
letters was hung in its branches, declaring the tree "The Tree
of Liberty."...Much like today, the first and most obvious means
of raising revenue was through a tax. And on March 22, 1765, the
Stamp Act was passed by the British Parliament.
This tax
had an effect the British were not expecting... it
enraged the colonists like no other tax had up to that point.
Childhood obesity rates are on the
rise as hours spent in physical education are on the decline.
What’s wrong with this picture?
The most important change Roberts
made for integrative medicine is that he changed the mandate,
which in turn has truly major implications for financing
integrative treatments. Under President Obama’s legislation, it
was a legal requirement to buy an insurance policy that met all
US government requirements. Under the law as modified by
Roberts, it becomes a “lawful choice” (his own words) not
to buy this government-defined insurance, to buy some other kind
of insurance, or to buy no insurance at all.
"Delaying action is creating
uncertainty. Companies are scrapping or delaying plans to build
new turbines," Nancy Sutley, chairwoman of the White House
Council on Environmental Quality, said at a news conference
Monday, July 2, under a giant wind turbine in North St. Paul.
Star Wall Street analyst Meredith
Whitney, who called the housing collapse long before it
happened, has downgraded JPMorgan Chase to a hold
recommendation, saying the decision had been "a long time
coming."
With many of us spending more and
more time indoors, it can be a struggle to get the amount of
sunlight our bodies crave. Modern heat-insulating,
sun-protection glazing doesn’t help, as it reflects a noticeable
percentage of the incident sunlight in the part of the spectrum
that governs our hormonal balance.
Natives and their vast lands
introduced Europeans to the concept of individual dignity and a
person’s right to be free. For example, if a Native man didn’t
wish to hunt or fight in battle, he wasn’t forced to do so.
There were also Native women who became warriors and who held
leadership positions within their Tribe. The concept of
individual freedom, in the European mind, became one’s right to
“life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Mixed with
capitalistic greed, such liberty gave birth to the phenomena
once known as ‘The American Dream.”
July 3, 2012
In the wake of violent storms, the
power remains out today for millions of Americans across several
U.S. states. Governors of Virginia, West Virginia and Ohio have
declared a state of emergency. Over a dozen people are now
confirmed dead, and millions are sweltering in blistering
temperatures while having no air conditioning or refrigeration.
As their frozen foods melt into processed goo, they're waking up
to a few lessons that we would all be wise to remember.
The government announced on Monday its
latest effort to spur the development of biofuels through a $62
million investment.
The Obama administration said a key
part of the spending was $30 million in federal funding being
made available to quicken the development of biofuels to replace
diesel and jet fuel consumed by the military and the commercial
aviation and shipping sectors.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack
today announced that USDA has selected for funding 450 projects
nationwide, including 31 in North Carolina, that are focused on
helping agricultural producers and rural small businesses reduce
energy consumption and costs; use renewable energy technologies
in their operation; and/or conduct feasibility studies for
renewable energy projects. Funding is made available through the
Rural Energy for America Program (REAP), which is authorized by
the 2008 Farm Bill.
The projections in the U.S. Energy
Information Administration's (EIA's) Annual Energy Outlook
2012 (AEO2012) focus on the factors that shape the
U.S. energy system over the long term. Under the assumption that
current laws and regulations remain unchanged throughout the
projections, the AEO2012 Reference case provides the
basis for examination and discussion of energy production,
consumption, technology, and market trends and the direction
they may take in the future. It also serves as a starting point
for analysis of potential changes in energy policies. But
AEO2012 is not limited to the Reference case. It also
includes 29 alternative cases, which explore important areas of
uncertainty for markets, technologies, and policies in the U.S.
energy economy. Many of the implications of the alternative
cases are discussed in the "Issues in focus" section of this
report.
As EPA implements Massachusetts
v. EPA, assessing how to regulate CO2 from
biomass sources has proven enormously complex. The biomass
industry argues that using biomass for power is carbon neutral,
as new plant growth can absorb the carbon emitted from
combustion. Environmentalists in turn argue that using biomass
should not give a stationary source a green card to emit CO2,
particularly because it can take many years for regrowth to
absorb the CO2 emitted from harvesting and
combustion.
A new interactive map released by
the group Climate Central summarizes the average temperatures of
each of the 48 contiguous United States for the last 100 years.
By clicking across the country (try it on the map above), you
can see that lately, temperatures have been trending up no
matter where you live.
The largest bubble in American history has accelerated beyond
the point of no return. And just like every other bubble before
this one — it WILL burst.
A cluster of 12 men from the Xikrin tribe chant in their
native language while marching together, arms interlocked,
stomping their feet against the dry red dirt. They say this is
their call of resistance from the Amazon.
The Xikrin are joined by about 150 indigenous people from
three other tribes -- the Arara, Juruna, and Parakana -- that
are occupying one of the work sites at the Belo Monte dam
construction site in what is becoming a high-stakes standoff.
The occupation, which is entering its second week, has halted a
part of the construction on what will be the world's
third-largest hydroelectric dam.
Hydraulic fracturing has brought
together greens and growers in California through a shared
concern about the impact of the practice on water in a state
where it is often in short supply.
Over the last several decades, MLPs
have proven to be highly effective at attracting private
investment in energy projects through the public markets.
However, under current law, MLPs have only been able to invest
in oil, natural gas, coal extraction, and pipeline projects.
Approximately $290 billion (83 percent) of MLP investments have
gone into qualifying energy and natural resources. Of that, just
over 80 percent has gone into midstream oil and gas pipeline
projects.
A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday
upheld the first-ever U.S. proposed rules governing
heat-trapping greenhouse gases, clearing a path for sweeping
regulations affecting vehicles, coal-burning power plants and
other industrial facilities.
Blistering heat blanketed much of the eastern United States
for the third straight day on Sunday, after violent storms
killed at least 13 people and knocked out power to more than 3
million customers.
Emergencies were declared in Maryland, Ohio, Virginia, West
Virginia and Washington D.C., on Saturday because of damage from
the storms that unleashed hurricane-force winds across and a
500-mile (800-km) stretch of the mid-Atlantic region.
U.S. consumers are growing
increasingly on edge, which doesn't bode well for the economy,
economists say.
Gasoline prices may be lower, but high
unemployment rates and uncertainty in Europe are among the many
things crimping consumer spirits, which isn't good, considering
that consumer demand drives about 70 percent of the U.S.
economy.
In the midst of a big week for
health care, energy issues had a number of their own headlines
as well. On June 26, a three-judge panel with the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit dismissed
challenges from industry groups and some states to the
Environmental Protection Agency’s tailoring rule in an unsigned
opinion that reaffirmed the rules in their entirety. The
tailoring rule limits greenhouse gas permitting to the largest
industrial sources
The
latest Pew surveys that focused on the benefits of the euro and
the ongoing wish to maintain the common currency have revealed
some interesting results.
- The Brits are really really happy the UK is
not part of it.
- The Greeks want to keep the euro more than the
Germans.
- And the Italians more than the others think it
was a bad idea.
European cities are planning to
adapt to climate change as the risks become more severe, a
report by UK-based emissions measurement organization the Carbon
Disclosure Project (CDP) and consultancy Accenture showed on
Thursday.
Scientists working
at the world's biggest atom smasher plan to announce Wednesday
that they have gathered enough evidence to show that the
long-sought "God particle" answering fundamental questions about
the universe almost certainly does exist.
The Supreme Court’s decision to
uphold the healthcare reform law Thursday doesn’t eliminate
uncertainty for American companies, experts say.
Indeed,
it could increase that uncertainty. Businesses will remain
reluctant to spend their $1.2 trillion in cash on employment and
expansion, Greg Valliere, chief political strategist at Potomac
Research Group, tells
For a homesteader, gardening is a
crucial element of living off the land. If you grow your own
food, a drought can be a scary and trying time. However,
droughts are a fact of life, and depending on where you live,
may be a fairly regular occurrence. That’s why the best way to
garden through a drought is to plan ahead. Water is, and always
will be, a limited resource. There is only so much water to go
around on this planet, and you need to use yours wisely.
Researchers of Jefferson’s Kimmel
Cancer Center have produced genetic evidence suggesting
antioxidant drugs could help prevent and treat cancer. With
research already showcasing the powers of various cancer
fighting foods, this research further shows how dangerous
mainstream medical testing and treatments can be outranked by
nature’s gifts.
Although a relatively minor player
within the overall bioenergy sector, the market for biogas sits
at the confluence of a number of forces, including increasing
demand for distributed generation, tightening environmental
regulations, and accelerating buildout of infrastructure for
natural gas and for vehicles powered by natural gas. A
byproduct of anaerobic digestion (AD), a process in which
microorganisms break down organic matter in an oxygen-starved
environment, biogas is gaining traction as a versatile energy
carrier with significant potential to meet growing demand within
the power, heat, fuel, and chemical markets.
New analysis by the Guardian shows
the world emitted a record 31.8bn tonnes of carbon from energy
consumption in 2010
The recent drought conditions
across some of areas in the US have caused a number of wildfires
in western states. The media has focused on the fact that some
states are cancelling the 4th of July fireworks in fear that
they could ignite dry brush and trigger yet another wildfire.
Gluskin Sheff chief economist David
Rosenberg has remained bearish on the U.S. economy since the
financial crisis ended in 2009, and now he puts it in stark
terms.
"We are living in a modern day depression,"
Rosenberg tells Yahoo. “Never in the post-World War II
experience have I seen a recovery languish as badly as this
one.”
Florida Gov. Rick Scott tells
Newsmax he will refuse to implement provisions of Obamacare
despite the Supreme Court’s ruling because the healthcare
overhaul will be “devastating” to Florida families and
taxpayers.
Corn supplies in the U.S., the
world’s biggest exporter, are declining at the fastest pace
since 1996 just as a Midwest heat wave damages the world’s
largest harvest for a third consecutive year.
Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Ghasemi
Monday appointed OPEC Governor Mohammad Ali Khatibi his adviser
for hydrocarbon marketing, an unusual move that came as Iran is
grappling to cope with the impact on oil exports of US sanctions
and an EU import ban that came into effect on Sunday.
Iran's Oil Minister Rostam Ghasemi
was reported as saying Tuesday that the country had not yet made
a decision on whether to cut oil exports, playing down comments
made by a senior official last week.
...let men call on God earnestly
that each may turn from his wicked way and from the violence
which is in his hands. Who knows, God may turn and relent and
withdraw His burning anger so that we shall not perish?'" (Jonah
3:5-9)
Japanese gas utilities are
considering expanding their participation in upstream
developments for LNG as part of efforts to lower cost of
importing the product, the Japan Gas Association Chairman
Mitsunori Torihara told reporters Tuesday.
Kamakura Corporation reported
Monday that the Kamakura index of troubled public companies
improved, declining 0.86% to 8.13% in June. The decline in the
index reflects an improvement in corporate credit quality, which
has only shown improvement in four of the last fourteen months.
The FSA released records of
their LIBOR manipulation claim against Barclays. The full
document is attached below. Some of the trader/submitter
conversations are incredible - and it's quite amazing what
people will say on recorded lines, e-mails, or text. No wonder
it's going to cost Barclays half a billion to settle.
Muslim extremists continued
destroying the heritage of the ancient Malian city of Timbuktu
on Monday, razing tombs and attacking the gate of a 600-year-old
mosque, despite growing international outcry.
It's one thing to read of the
disputed claims in the South China Sea involving China and every
other country that lines the edges of this Asiatic body of
water, and it's another thing entirely to see a map that starkly
demonstrates just how boldly and aggressively China is pushing
its claims.
A noted climate scientist says
there is "no doubt" that climate change is "playing a role" in
this year's series of record fires in the western U.S. A massive
wildfire in Colorado has forced the evacuation of 36,000 people,
destroyed over 300 homes, and killed two people. The devastation
wrought by the Waldo Canyon Fire even prompted a visit form U.S.
President Barack Obama. But this is not the only epic fire in
the U.S. this year: less than a month before the Colorado
disaster, New Mexico experienced its largest fire on record in
Gila Nation Forest; the conflagration burned up 247,000 acres
(100,000 hectares). Other major wildfires have occurred in Utah
and Wyoming, as well as other parts of New Mexico and Colorado.
Now that Obamacare has been ruled a
tax by the U.S. Supreme Court, reality is starting to sink in
for all those who emotionally supported it. Promoted as a way to
provide either free health care or low-cost health care to the
masses, the sobering reality is that under Obamacare, health
insurance prices keep rising, not falling. That's no
surprise, of course, since the Obamacare legislation was
practically written by the health insurance companies, and they
sure didn't put their weight behind a sweeping new law that
would earn them less profit.
It was a brilliant move by far
Right (but oh so likable) Chief Justice Roberts to side with the
Dem-appointed Justices and uphold ObamaCare. After all, this is
a massive victory for corporate power, forcing citizens to buy
an expensive insurance product that won’t serve our needs very
well but will profit industry, in lieu of receiving real health
care.
The petroleum complex settling
lower Monday after a slew of poor macroeconomic data, including
contracting manufacturing figures from the US, China and the EU.
Six years ago, Dr. John Khier of
Boston Children’s Hospital began investigating the idea of using
injectable oxygen on patients whose lungs were incapacitated or
whose airways were blocked. He was prompted to do so after a
young girl that he was caring for passed away – she succumbed to
a brain injury, which resulted when severe pneumonia caused her
lungs to stop working properly, which in turn caused her blood
oxygen levels to drop too low. Now, Khier is reporting that his
team has injected gas-filled microparticles into the
bloodstreams of oxygen-deprived lab animals, successfully
raising their oxygen levels back to normal levels within
seconds.
Residents began returning to
charred areas of Colorado Springs on Sunday after the most
destructive wildfire in Colorado history forced tens of
thousands of people from their homes and left the landscape a
blackened wasteland.
Global economies and markets won't
see what they remember as normal times for several decades to
come, says Bill Gross, co-founder of Pimco and manager of the
world's largest bond fund.
Blame hefty debt burdens for
the rough roads ahead, as countries can either default and spend
years rebuilding their finances and credibility afterwards, or
they can print money and run up inflation rates that eat up
debts but deal with high prices for a while.
Lawmakers in Massachusetts have proposed a producer
responsibility bill for mercury-added lamps.
House Bill 4207 aims at increasing the recycling of the
mercury-added lamps, a category of compact florescent bulbs, by
forcing manufacturers to start a collection and recycling
program individually or as a collective. The manufacturers would
be financially responsible for all the costs and expenses of its
collection and recycling program.
Thermal energy storage for air
conditioning has been around for decades. But it's only in the
last few years that the technology is being deployed at utility
scale in California, with municipal utilities taking the lead.
Ice Energy earlier this year relocated its corporate
headquarters to Glendale from Windsor, Colo., in part to better
serve California's municipal utilities.
"Ranching is really mostly about water and grass. So you've
got to look at ways to control water," Price said in an
interview at his 77 Ranch, where temperatures over 100 degrees
drive his cattle into the shade every day and have spurred
swarms of hungry grasshoppers.
A recent stretch of devastating drought in Texas and fears of
ongoing water scarcity across many parts of the United States
are pushing Price and others in ranching and farming into new
frontiers of water conservation.
Conservative interest in the
presidential election hit “stratospheric levels” following last
week’s Supreme Court ruling upholding Obamacare, noted pollster
and author Scott Rasmussen tells Newsmax.TV.
“All that
did was energize conservatives,” declared Rasmussen in an
exclusive interview on Monday. “The conservative interest in the
election was already much higher than that of moderates and
liberals. It went up to really stratospheric levels right after
the ruling. We don’t know if that will continue or if it’s just
a temporary response to the news cycle.”
The research was conducted by Ohio State University along
with their Danish colleagues. According to Ohio State associate
professor Jason Box, the historic images show that the glaciers
were actually melting faster in the 1930s than today. There was
then a brief cooling period in the mid-20th century followed by
accelerated melting in the 2000s.
"Because of this study, we now have a detailed historical
analogue for more recent glacier loss," Box said. "And we've
confirmed that glaciers are very sensitive indicators of
climate."
“The PTC has been an important
player in bringing the wind industry to life.” said Rep. Noem.
“Over 75,000 American jobs are supported by wind, and the
industry is a growing force in South Dakota. With MFG
Manufacturing in Aberdeen, MTI in Mitchell and wind farms in
other areas of the state, wind energy is helping families pay
mortgages and put food on the table. If we fail to extend the
PTC, thousands of jobs will be at risk, and that’s why I’m
pushing to get it on the House floor as soon as possible.”
Solar activity increased to high
levels. Region 1515 (S17E04) produced an impulsive M5/2b flare
at 02/1052Z associated with a Type II radio sweep (estimated
shock speed 1063 km/s), a 380 sfu Tenflare, and a coronal mass
ejection (CME). Geomagnetic field activity is expected to
remain at unsettled to active levels on day 1 (03 July) as CH
HSS effects persist.
Rising sea levels cannot be stopped
over the next several hundred years, even if deep emissions cuts
lower global average temperatures, but they can be slowed down,
climate scientists said in a study on Sunday.
A California Senate committee is
expected to hold a hearing on a potential statewide ban on the
retailers' distribution of plastic bags.
Here are some interesting data
compiled by Barclays Capital that looks at previous incumbent
presidents running for their second term. In each case the
comparison is made between specific economic indicators during a
president's tenure and the votes the incumbent was able to win
in the general elections. Let's look at the good, the bad, and
the ugly of the US economic indicators during the past 4 years
and what those indicators were for the previous incumbents.
An environmental group released a
report Thursday showing that most of the St. Louis area may
violate new standards for sulfur dioxide and is exposed to
unhealthy levels of the pollutant from the stacks of two area
coal-burning power plants.
A disastrous,
appalling
decision
was handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court today. The Court upheld the
individual mandate and socialized medicine, saying both are
constitutional, despite the fact that a recent
poll
found 68% of Americans want all or part of the law repealed. The
federal government can now force us to buy what we don’t want.
Most of us had never heard the term
"derecho" until Friday, when we learned that's what
meteorologists call the kind of massive storm that swept through
the Midwest and blitzed the Eastern Seaboard, killing at least
20 people and leaving a 700-mile swath of destruction and downed
power lines in its wake.
To the immense disappointment of
environmental groups and even some multinational corporations,
Rio+20 failed to produce binding commitments or a plan on how to
strike a balance between consumer demand and the availability of
natural resource.
How does Banco de Sabadell, Spain's
5th largest bank try to keep depositors from moving cash to
Germany or Switzerland? They offer up a juicy deposit rate. The
bigger the portion of your deposit you are wiling to lock up for
a year ("Fund"), the more they will pay.
Researchers say waste may keep
washing ashore in U.S. for decades.
Light debris, like plastic,
Styrofoam and, perhaps, some fishing nets were supposed to reach
the coast later this summer, but big items weren't expected
until 2013 at the earliest. Now, officials up and down the West
Coast and in Hawaii are pondering the best way to handle the
tsunami of debris headed their way.
Research from Frost & Sullivan
finds that U.S. energy consumption will increase by 7.3 percent
over 2010 levels during a 10-year period. To meet this demand,
solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind power will be the fastest
growing renewable technologies, representing more than 40
percent of electricity generation in 2020, supported by a focus
on domestic energy production and sustainability.
Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC) yesterday
released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey®
(PMMS), showing average fixed mortgage rates largely unchanged
helping to keep homebuyer affordability high for those in the
market to purchase or looking to refinance. Both the 30-year
fixed and 15-year fixed rate mortgages matched their all-time
record lows.
The net oil import dependence of the US shows no signs of
stabilizing. It keeps sinking.
The Energy Information Administration's April figures,
released June 28, recorded the fact that US net import
dependence measured in barrels per day reached another recent
low. We'll define "recent" as the time period that began with
the August 2006 net imports of just over 13.4 million b/d, the
highest ever.
U.S. oil companies will be allowed
to drill in more areas of the Gulf of Mexico but won only
limited access to the Arctic under the final version of the
Obama Administration's five year drilling plan that was slammed
by industry and some environmentalists.
Scorching heat, high winds and
bone-dry conditions are fueling catastrophic wildfires in the
U.S. West that offer a preview of the kind of disasters that
human-caused climate change could bring, a trio of scientists
said on Thursday.
Home prices have risen lately but
nothing suggests that a concrete recovery for the sector is
taking place, and prices could fall even lower, Yale economist
and author Robert Shiller said.
"I think it's a good
chance that home prices may fall still further," Shiller told
Newsmax.TV in an exclusive interview.
Sidestepping a new debate over the
nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, the Senate confirmed
two of President Obama's nominees to the beleaguered Nuclear
Regulatory Commission -- including a critic of the proposed
waste dump in Nevada who will become the panel's new chair.
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