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Find out what's
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The Power of Gratitude: It's About What
You Have, Not What You're Going to Get
With the hustle and bustle of everyday
life, it's easy to forget about what and
who you're grateful for.
November 30, 2012
It is now widely recognized by
financial institutions, corporate investors, insurance firms and
regulators that an over-reliance on low-quality legacy credit
ratings was a major contributor to the credit crisis of 2006 to
2011. The Levin Report (United States Senate, April 13, 2011,
pages 243 to 317) summarizes these findings in detail.
Just yesterday, the Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released a new
report predicting that the economy of China will rebound and
grow 8.5% in 2013 and 8.9% in 2014, citing increasing domestic
consumer demand and government spending on housing and
infrastructure as the tailwinds behind this renewed surge
A statewide environmental group and
wind energy advocates from Cape Cod unveiled a report Wednesday
they say shows the potential benefits of wind energy and the
need for extending federal tax benefits for the technology.
Imagine this: billions of taxpayer dollars support the
production of unhealthy processed foods and sugary drinks, while farmers supplying healthier items such as organic
milk are overlooked or even penalized. Worse, despite
an overdue and ticking timeline, Congress is sitting on
its hands instead of passing legislation to address these
imbalances.
Sound like a bad dream? Unfortunately, it’s reality—but it
doesn’t have to be.
Toronto City Council has rescinded its decision to ban
plastic bags in retail operations.
The decision came in a Nov. 27 vote. The Council took into
account legal advice after two industry trade groups filed
lawsuits to overturn the ban.
Some stunning headlines followed
the International Energy Agency's release earlier this month of
its World Energy Outlook 2012. "U.S. Oil Output to
Overtake Saudi Arabia's by 2020," blared Bloomberg, for example.
That may be true, but the more significant aspect of the
Outlook's projections was the prospect for world oil. Under
the right conditions, the report says, the world could produce
increasing amounts of oil through 2035 and meet the world's
growing demand for energy as oil. The catch is "under the right
conditions."
Due to its location at the South
Pole, Antarctica receives relatively little solar radiation.
This means that it is a very cold continent where water is
mostly in the form of ice or snow. This accumulates and forms a
giant ice sheet which covers the land. New data which more
accurately measures the rate of ice-melt could help us better
understand how Antarctica is changing in the light of global
warming. The rate of global sea level change is reasonably
well-established but understanding the different sources of this
rise is more challenging.
An Arizona-based solar energy
provider already planning to bring two solar farms to Alamance
County intends to establish another facility in Graham, pending
approval from the North Carolina Utilities Commission.
The Obama administration provided
struggling battery maker A123 Systems Inc with nearly $1 million
on the day it filed for
bankruptcy, the company told lawmakers investigating its
government grant.
Brent Bozell, a veteran
conservative advocate and fundraiser, says that if Republican
legislators agree to a budget deal that raises taxes he will
urge donors to refrain from giving to offending Republican
congressmen and the party.
What's particularly concerning is
that subsequent recovery has not been as strong as the previous
"cycle". Businesses are becoming increasingly skeptical about
spurts of growth. A similar pattern can also be seen in the ISM
Business Confidence measure.
China just announced that it has
succeeded in landing a J-15 fighter on an aircraft carrier, a
milestone most experts didn’t expect the Chinese military to
achieve for several years.
More than 17,000 people have converged on the Qatari capital
for the latest U.N. climate talks, but the most influential
presence may be Sandy.
The superstorm that ravaged the U.S. Northeast a month ago
seared into the American consciousness an apocalyptic vision of
what climate change could look like. On the heels of devastating
wildfires, droughts and floods this year, Sandy's destructive
power snapped Americans to the reality that rising temperatures
are a risk to their own well-being, not just a concern for
distant lowlands.
Drought is tightening its grip on
the central United States as winter weather sets in, threatening
to ravage the new wheat crop and spelling more hardship for
farmers and ranchers already weary of the costly and ongoing dry
conditions.
Oceanic crust covers two-thirds of
the Earth's solid surface, but scientists still don't entirely
understand the process by which it is made. Analysis of more
than 600 samples of oceanic crust by a team including Carnegie
Institution of Science Frances Jenner reveals a systemic pattern
that alters long-held beliefs about how this process works,
explaining a crucial step in understanding Earth's geological
deep processes.
Protesters hit a riot policeman
after surrounding him during clashes in front of the U.S Embassy
near Tahrir Square in Cairo November 28, 2012. Hundreds of
demonstrators were in Cairo's Tahrir Square for a sixth day on
Wednesday to demand that President Mohamed Mursi rescind a
decree they say gives him dictatorial powers, and two of Egypt's
top courts stopped work in protest.
For whatever reason, something
within the U.S. government doesn't love gasoline-powered cars,
but their owners have resisted efforts by well-meaning
bureaucrats and environmentalists to get them to drive less or
drive something else. The alternatives being pushed by the
government are cars powered by ethanol or electricity.
The U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency was expected to meet a deadline Thursday on a plan to
control emissions from three Arizona power plants that it
contends have impaired visibility at places like the Grand
Canyon, but a spokesman for the agency said the details wouldn't
immediately be available.
Moody’s Analytics expects Euro zone
GDP to stop falling in 2013, according to the Euro Zone economic
outlook presented at its annual economic outlook conference in
London.
Forty-seven glaciologists have arrived at a community consensus
over all the data on what the past century's warming has done to
the great ice sheets: a current annual loss of 344 billion tons
of glacial ice, accounting for 20% of current sea level rise.
As world leaders, scientists and policymakers from 193
nations opened the United Nations climate change conference in
Doha, Qatar, this week, Larry Schweiger, president and chief
executive officer of the National Wildlife Federation, was in
Pittsburgh to sound a warning and issue a challenge.
The global warming debate is over, he said, and it's time to
act. Past time, actually.
The FBI has released their 2007-2011 “Murder Victims by
Weapon” report. The results are contradictory to anti-gun
industry claims that relaxing the ban on assault weapons will
cause more crime.
The report indicates you are more likely to be killed by
hands or feet than by a rifle or shotgun.
The number of financial institutions on the Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation’s (FDIC) “Problem List” declined in 2011
from its peak in 2010. And it has declined further thus far in
2012. Despite this, the number of troubled banks is still
very high from a historical perspective. Combined with the
declining number of institutions overall, the percentage of
total institutions identified as problematic remains near the
record high at 10.57%.
The Clarion River was once thought
to be the most polluted waterway in Pennsylvania. Now, after
decades of cleanup efforts, it has sections designated as part
of the National Wild and Scenic River program in the USA.
Communities surrounding the Clarion value it for recreational
activities. It also provides habitat for extensive aquatic
wildlife. This has allowed species such as river otters to
thrive, and more recently has led to the return of eagles, now
nesting and breeding along the Clarion.
Congressional Republicans dug in to
fight President Barack Obama’s plan to skirt the fiscal cliff,
rejecting his tax-and-spending proposal as the president heads
out today to sell it to the American public.
New research suggests the Grand Canyon, one of the seven
wonders of the world, may have a far more interesting and
ancient history than previously thought, a U.S. study said on
Thursday.
Instead of being shaped by the Colorado River 5 or 6 million
years ago, a new analysis of the minerals in the 280-mile
(450-km) gorge suggests it was formed by a much older river
likely frequented by the dinosaurs that roamed North America
some 70 million years ago.
Gaza's ruling Hamas will not stop
arming itself, the No. 2 in the Palestinian group told The
Associated Press on Saturday, signaling tough challenges ahead
for indirect negotiations between Israel and the Islamist
militants on a new border deal for Gaza.
The media has given a great deal of
attention to Spain's extraordinarily high unemployment rate,
which has exceeded that of the US during the Great Depression.
But how did Spain get from 8% unemployment in 2008 to 25% now?
-
The optimization of a vast arrav of genes related to
intelligence may have peaked in the early stages of human
evolution, when your ability to survive depended much more
than now on your higher cognitive faculties
-
Now that this evolutionary pressure is gone, genetic
mutations that interfere with optimal intellectual function,
or even contribute to disabilities, are becoming more
common; it’s estimated that while there are anywhere form
2,000 to 5,000 genes that play a role in intellectual
ability, all humans now have two or more mutations that may
disrupt their intellectual or emotional stability
OK, first things first – stop
picturing a car with solar panels connected to its engine. What
Missouri-based inventors Matt Bellue and Ben Cooper are working
on is something a little different than that. They want to take
an internal combustion engine, and run it on water and
solar-heated oil instead of gasoline. That engine could
then be hooked up to a generator, to provide clean electricity.
While that may sound a little iffy to some, Bellue and Cooper
have already built a small-scale prototype.
When the Federal Emergency
Management Agency needed to reach North Jersey residents left in
the cold and dark by superstorm Sandy, it printed fliers and
sent agents into the streets to distribute them. In Ridgewood,
elected officials also printed sheets of paper to give
residents, telling them where to find ice and other necessities
they needed to get through an extended power outage.
As Alaska Waste's biodiesel
technician, he spends his days overseeing and operating the
state's only commercial-scale biodiesel plant. It has the
capacity to transform about 250,000 gallons of used cooking oil
per year into fuel for his company's collection vehicles.
Men with excessive fat around their
abdomen, commonly known as a "beer belly," are at an elevated
risk for heart disease and Type 2 diabetes, and now researchers
are adding osteoporosis to the list of potential hazards.
Engineers at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have proposed a new
way of harnessing photons for electricity with the potential for
capturing a wide spectrum of solar energy.
The "solar energy funnel"
takes advantage of materials under elastic strain to produce
unprecedented properties. According to MIT, in this case, the
"funnel" is a metaphor: Electrons and their counterparts, holes
-- which are split off from atoms by the energy of photons --
are driven to the center of the structure by electronic forces,
not by gravity as in a household funnel.
The Great Lakes are home to 20
percent of the world’s surface freshwater and, increasingly,
host to a worrisome class of chemical compounds known as
contaminants of emerging concern.
The Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory (LLNL) is a federally funded research and development
center located in Livermore, California. Their mission, in part,
is to respond with vision, quality, integrity, and technical
excellence to scientific issues of national importance. One such
issue, which is tough to dispute, is the changing climate. The
top-rate researchers at LLNL created a new climate model by
comparing 20 different computer models to satellite
observations. They found that tropospheric and stratospheric
temperature changes are clearly related to human activities.
The front end of the financial deal
now under negotiation in Washington will be akin to the tip of
the tax iceberg. It won't appear threatening. But it's what
under the water that will really matter.
The global market for
light-duty natural gas vehicles (NGV), although highly variable
among different countries, will see many markets in Europe and
Latin America continue to struggle with growing refueling
infrastructure fast enough to meet consumer and fleet needs,
according to Pike Research.
The Vermont Yankee nuclear power
plant received a dubious distinction this week when an
environmental watchdog organization again included it on its
annual list of the worst polluters in New England.
A scathing opinion piece in the
Wall Street Journal by Arthur Levitt, chairman of the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission from 1993 to 2001, points to
the latest closing of the New York Stock Exchange (NYX) due to
Hurricane Sandy, already downgraded to a “post-tropical cyclone”
at landfall, as an example of flawed New York-based financial
market infrastructure.
NYMEX crude and products futures
settled higher Thursday on better-than-expected financial data,
optimism about US budget negotiations, and continuing tension
over the Iranian nuclear program.
NYMEX January crude
settled $1.58 higher at $88.07/barrel, after peaking at $88.69/b
earlier in the session.
Sen. Orrin Hatch tells Newsmax that
Democrats are willing to allow the country to go over the
so-called fiscal cliff so they can then blame Republicans “for
everything that’s wrong.”
On Friday, regulators closed two
more banks: Citizens First National Bank located in Princeton,
Illinois and Heritage Bank of Florida based in Lutz, Florida.
The total number of bank failures for 2012 now stands at 49,
which is behind last year’s pace of 87 and well off the 2010
pace when 143 banks failed at this same time.
Wherever there’s enough of a
temperature gradient between two surfaces, thermoelectric
materials can be used to generate an electric current. If a coat
were made with thermoelectric felt, for instance, a current
could be generated by exploiting the difference between the
wearer’s body heat and the cold outdoor air. Now, scientists
have developed an inexpensive new type of thermoelectric
material, that could make the technology more commercially
viable.
The melting of the
Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets has raised sea levels by 11.1
millimeters since 1992, a fifth of the total rise which
threatens low-lying regions around the globe, a new study
published on Thursday said.
A slowdown in the construction of
pipelines will lead to lower natural gas production growth in
some parts of the Marcellus Shale and could lead to higher gas
prices next year as supply from higher-priced regions makes up
some of the shortfall, investment bank FBR Capital Markets said
in a Thursday report.
The installed price of solar
photovoltaic power systems in the United States is dropping at a
rapid rate, a Department of Energy laboratory says.
The U.S. Department of Energy
has awarded a $1.5 million grant to REhnu to advance
concentrated photovoltaics. REhnu is a spin-off company founded
by University of Arizona optics professor Roger Angel, Director
of the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory Mirror
Laboratory and UA professor.
We speak to a GAO analyst and an
NRC representative to get their viewpoints on the recent
progress and processes of US nuclear fuel storage. The US
Governing Accountability Office (GAO) completed a report that
has now been issued entitled Spent Nuclear Fuel: Accumulating
Quantities at Commercial Reactors Present Storage and Other
Challenges, looking at the future of how to handle spent nuclear
fuel. The report concludes that the amount of spent fuel that
is stored on site at nuclear power plants is increasing by 2,000
metric tonnes per year
Next week, the United Nations'
attempt to take over the Internet will move into high gear when
the International Telecommunications Union meets in Dubai with
representatives from 193 countries to craft a new governing
structure for the Internet. The meetings are expected to last
two weeks.
A new study by MIT researchers
finds the actual amount of methane emissions caused by
production of natural gas in shale formations has been greatly
exaggerated in previous studies, particularly a controversial
Cornell University study released last year.
The chairwoman of a key US Senate
committee Thursday called Superstorm Sandy a "turning point" in
the debate over climate change while another committee member
said the views of climate change deniers should no longer be
tolerated.
A majority of Americans said the president and Congress should
make global warming and developing clean energy a medium or high
priority, researchers at Yale University and George Mason
University found in a survey released Nov. 13.
Egypt: Rammed-Through Constitution Could Lead to Bloodshed
Why Americans are Less at Risk of Phone Hacking
Collapse of EU Budget Talks a Useful Failure
Israel: Racing to Improve Missile Shield Against Iran
Hondurans Face Violent Election Year as Zelaya Returns
South American Trading Bloc Turns Left
Greece: Uncertainty Surrounds New Bailout Agreement
Economic-Military Showdown Looming in China
1947– Humanly
speaking, the Palestinians could have been celebrating the 65th
anniversary of their state today. After all, 65 years ago today,
the U.N. voted on the
“Partition Plan,”
giving part of British Mandated “Palestine” to the Jews
to create the state of Israel, and part to the Arabs to create a
Palestinian/Jordanian state.
To Megan Hildebrandt, President Barack Obama’s Affordable
Care Act means she can no longer be denied health insurance
because of her lymphatic cancer. There’s a big catch: Coverage for the 28-year-old artist and
many other Americans without insurance will come at a
potentially unaffordable cost.
On Thursday, 138 nations voted in the U.N. General Assembly
(UNGA) to declare a "State of Palestine" and recognize it as a
"non-member observer state" within the international community.
Forty-one nations abstained from voting. Only nine nations voted
against the resolution: the U.S., Israel, Canada, the Czech
Republic, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and
Panama.
A three-judge panel with the 9th US
Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday rejected a Alaskan village's
request that it rehear a suit it filed against the country's
largest energy producers, blaming them for global warming.
US consumer confidence climbed by
0.6 points to 73.7 in November 2012 from an upwardly revised
73.1 reading in October (previously reported as 72.2). Market
expectations were for a more modest 73.0 reading.
Consumer spending increased at a
moderate pace in most Districts, with the regions most affected
by Hurricane Sandy noting strong sales growth prior to the storm
and business contacts expecting to recoup sales lost to the
storm in the coming months as consumers replace destroyed or
damaged property. Expectations for the upcoming holiday shopping
season were “mostly upbeat”.
The US Senate on Wednesday agreed
to remove a provision from a defense bill that would have barred
the US military from purchasing large amounts of biofuels.
Consolidation of the U.S. water
industry through privatization or semi-privatization has been
anticipated for some time. However, negative public perception
of the privatization of this essential public service has
prevented this consolidation from taking place. Externalities
are changing this attitude - as access to financing becomes more
challenging for municipalities, raising taxes becomes the only
alternative, but an unpopular option. Many states are enacting
public-private partnership legislation, paving the way for
consolidation to take place.
The venture capital funding market for renewable energy will
triple by 2020, according to Frost & Sullivan.
Driven by positive regulatory policies, environmental support
for lower carbon emissions, and innovation in renewable energy
technology, investors will look to South Asia and Asia Pacific
as emerging areas in renewable energy development while Europe
and North American remain hubs of deal activity.
Renewables deals increased by two-thirds year over year for
2011, although total deal value was down by one-third.
When military veterans search for
jobs, they often want more than a paycheck. Many say they look
for rewarding work and a team of dedicated people focused on a
common mission.
November 27, 2012
Argentina CDS spread has blown out
to new highs last week. In spite of Argentina's government
driving the nation's economy into the ground, this widening was
caused by increased risks of the so-called "technical default"
rather than deteriorating economic conditions.
The trees were moving up the cove.
That's how firefighter Chris Copeland described what he saw
as he looked out the window of his home in the Swan Pond
community of Roane County on the night of Dec. 22, 2008. What
Copeland was explaining to News Sentinel reporter Scott Barker
was just a small result of a catastrophic man-made disaster that
came to be known as the Kingston ash spill.
I recently ground some ancient
einkorn grain and made some flour for baking. I first made
tortillas, which were excellent. Then I got carried away…
England is underwater, it seems.
The rain is falling – splat! – from the leaky gutter by the
window as I write, and with every day it looks more and more
likely that, just like Winnie-the-Pooh, I will soon end up
sitting on a branch with jars of honey lined up beside me,
sending out messages in bottles. “Help! Bibi (me). It’s me Bibi
help help!”.
In what may be taking the “nanny
state” to the extreme, 18 cities and counties in California have
banned residents from smoking — in their own apartments and
condominiums.
China's January-October electricity
export tumbled 7.8% year on year to 15.5 billion kWh while its
import rose 4.8% to 5.19 billion kWh, the State Electricity
Regulatory Commission said Monday.
China's apparent* oil demand rose
6.6% year over year in October to 41.28 million metric tons
(mt), or an average 9.76 million barrels per day (b/d), the
third highest on record, a just-released Platts analysis of
recent Chinese government data showed.
In the northern hardwood forest,
climate change is poised to reduce the viability of the maple
syrup industry, spread wildlife diseases and tree pests, and
change timber resources. And, according to a new BioScience
paper just released by twenty-one scientists, without long-term
studies at the local scale -- we will be ill-prepared to predict
and manage these effects.
AGING, INEFFICIENT AND EXPENSIVE to
upgrade, the Boardman Plant could have joined dozens of similar
coal-fired generating stations consigned to the scrap heap of
history as its owner prepared to permanently mothball its 600
megawatts in 2020.
Gathered in Doha for the UN’s
annual climate change summit, thousands of delegates
representing governments, international organizations and civil
society groups are focused on honoring existing commitments to
curb carbon emissions and turning agreed decisions into action.
Cyber assault is emerging as
the principal concern for energy security. One oil major
told me a few days ago: “We’re constantly under cyber attack.”
But there is still a sense of denial hanging over the issue.
Aspirin has been touted as a wonder
drug, with many studies showing a daily dose can lower the risks
of heart disease and cancer. But new research suggests aspirin’s
risks may outweigh its benefits for some seniors by posing a
threat to their vision.
The U.S. Department of Energy
will invest a total of $11 million into 20 newly announced
projects to help states and local governments develop the
infrastructure, training and regional planning needed to help
meet the demand for alternative fuel cars and trucks, including
vehicles that run on natural gas, electricity and propane.
The EU will not commit to renew
climate funding which runs out in 2013 ahead of talks at the
Doha climate summit, which opens today (26 November). But new
climate aid may be announced in the conference's second week.
In an exclusive interview this
morning with LIGNET, Egyptian parliament member Ahmed Said
described Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi’s decision last week
to place his decisions above judicial rule as “the most serious
and dangerous political decision” made since the beginning of
the Egyptian revolution. Ahmed sees this crisis as crucial to
Egypt’s democratic transition and believes it is forcing
Islamists to decide whether they want to be integrated into
Egyptian society.
"Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi
will meet senior judges on Monday to try to ease a crisis over
his seizure of new powers which has set off violent protests
reminiscent of last year's revolution which brought him to
power.
Einkorn bread has a savory and
nutty flavor. You'll love it! (A Receipe)
As another parliamentary election
approaches, Japan appears unlikely to break free of the
paralysis that has gripped it in recent years. The campaign
issues – which include the debt limit and monetary policy – are
serious and require attention if Japan is to avoid falling over
a fiscal cliff , but neither the incumbent Democratic Party of
Japan nor the opposition, which is expected to win a majority of
seats, has a plan for dealing with this, or an idea of how to
lift Japan out of its decade-long stagnation.
Climate change is affecting all
regions of Europe as glaciers melt, the Greenland ice sheet
shrinks, sea levels rise, snow cover decreases and permafrost
soils warm, finds a new assessment issued by the European
Environment Agency.
A European Union official has told
The Associated Press Tuesday that a deal has been reached that
would pave the way for Greece to receive the next installment of
its much-needed bailout loans.
Israel's Eco Wave Power (EWP) has
just signed a memorandum of understanding agreement with the
Ocean University of China to fund and test its first commercial
scale Wind Clapper and Power Wing wave energy generation system.
Do you ever get the creep feeling
that store mannequins are ... watching you? Well, that
feeling may now be justified. Italian display form company Almax
has recently introduced its EyeSee line of mannequins, that are
equipped with cameras and microprocessors in their heads.
An all-of-the-above energy strategy
may mean leveling the tax code. The wind and solar industries
may potentially receive favorable tax treatment under a
provision of the law that pertains to the fossil fuels or the
tax structure could be totally reformed, wiping out all of those
breaks in exchange for reduced corporate rates.
The Florida Public Service
Commission on Monday unanimously approved the recovery of $151
million in nuclear project costs for Florida Power & Light and
$143 million in costs for Progress Energy Florida.
Forests worldwide are at "equally
high risk" to die-off from drought conditions, warns a new study
published this week in the journal Nature.
Nine new natural gas power plants
are planned in Pennsylvania, more than making up for the loss of
power generation caused by the retirement of 12 old coal-burning
power plants, according to state regulators.
For the first time, an energy
market participant has admitted to a violation of the Federal
Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC) anti-manipulation rule in
an energy trading case.
Actions to limit climate change
must be immediately scaled up and accelerated if the world is to
have any chance of keeping a global temperature rise below two
degrees Celsius this century, finds a new scientific report
released just before countries meet for their annual climate
negotiations.
Allianz Global Investors is
assuming that global growth over the coming year will remain
slightly under trend, with growth in industrial countries,
especially in the Eurozone and UK, likely to remain weak. Asia
is projected to provide a modest tailwind but not at the levels
generated in previous years. Japan, which looks likely to face
recession again, is seen as an exception.
A coalition of the world's largest
investors called on governments on Tuesday to ramp up action on
climate change and boost clean-energy investment or risk
trillions of dollars in investments and disruption to economies.
Atmospheric volumes of greenhouse gases blamed for climate
change hit a new record in 2011, the World Meteorological
Organization (WMO) said in its annual Greenhouse Gas Bulletin on
Tuesday.
I don't want to be told that thanks
to Global Warming - now accepted by the majority (77%) of
Americans and so therefore, in my opinion, a new Tipping Point -
strawberry plants can now survive a Greenland winter.
Owners of some Houston gun shops
say they have noticed an increase of gun sales since President
Barack Obama's re-election, and attribute the rush to the
president's reference in a debate to renewing an assault rifle
ban.
US mortgage prepayment speeds have
accelerated to the highest level since 2004 recently.
The Yasuni-ITT Initiative has been
called many things: controversial, ecological blackmail,
revolutionary, pioneering, and the best chance to keep oil
companies out of Ecuador's Yasuni National Park. But now, after
a number of ups and downs, the program is beginning to make
good: the Yasuni-ITT Initiative has raised $300 million,
according to the Guardian, or 8 percent of the total amount
needed to fully fund the idea.
The government of Iraqi Prime
Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has ignored entreaties from the
Obama administration and freed a top Hezbollah operative accused
of murdering American soldiers.
The human body is under the influence of
the Earth's magnetic field and is keeping some sort of balance
relationship with it. However, under modern day living
conditions, the effect of this field has decreased.
Consequently, we can assume that for a certain human body, this
lack of magnetism has caused some abnormalities. For this
reason, by the external application of a magnetic field to the
human body to supplement this deficiency, such abnormal
conditions can be improved. In other words, I feel that there is
a direct relationship between the decrease in the earth's
magnetic field acting on the human body and the improvement of
abnormal conditions of the human body by the application of
magnetic fields.
A growing number of Democrats
say they are willing to let the country go off the fiscal cliff
if a deal cannot be reached by Jan. 1 that raises taxes on the
top two percent of earners while protecting costly entitlement
programs.
variety of electric motors that
use no rare earth minerals are being developed in the United
States to power future generations of electric vehicles.
The Supreme Court on
Monday cleared the way for a Christian college to pursue a
religion-based challenge against part of President Barack
Obama's healthcare reform,
which it claims forces taxpayers and employers to subsidize
abortions and contraception.
With the global smart grid market at $23.97 billion in 2010,
Frost & Sullivan research forecasts the market growing by 26.6%
between 2010 and 2017.
Unlike biogas, which is produced by
the anaerobic digestion or fermentation of biomass, the
Plant-Microbial Fuel Cell generates electricity while the plants
continue to grow. Importantly, the researchers say the system
doesn’t affect the plant’s growth of harm its environment.
A lengthy and contentious debate
over how to calculate the costs and benefits of renewable energy
is coming to a head at the New Mexico Public Regulation
Commission.
Saudi Arabian oil minister Ali
Naimi Sunday called for the rationalization of the kingdom's
domestic energy use as a senior energy official warned that oil
consumption was growing at 'a frightening level."
The shells of some marine snails in
the seas around Antarctica are dissolving as the water becomes
more acidic, threatening the food chain, a study published in
the journal Nature Geoscience said on Sunday.
A top Democrat and Republican on
energy matters in the Senate left the door open to compromise on
a potential carbon tax, but a top Republican House energy leader
seemed less receptive during a Nov. 15 seminar in Washington,
D.C.
South Korea is to hold public consultations on where to store
waste nuclear fuel as storage capacity at its reactors is
reaching full capacity, the government said on Tuesday.
The plan to set up an independent consultative body comes as
South Korea grapples with its worst nuclear crisis ever after
forged certificates were used by parts suppliers to the nuclear
industry, causing stoppages at two reactors as the bitter Korean
winter draws near.
AP reporting, Syrian rebels capture
a helicopter air base near the capital Damascus after fierce
fighting in Syria, on Sunday, Nov. 25, 2012. The takeover claim
showed how rebels are advancing in the area of the capital,
though they are badly outgunned by Assad’s forces, making
inroads where Assad’s power was once unchallenged. Rebels have
also been able to fire mortar rounds into Damascus recently.
I’ve been purchasing organic white
wheat and spelt in bulk for many years to grind into fresh
flour. My family fortunately does not have any wheat allergies
or problems digesting grains provided they are traditionally
prepared.
Israeli biotech firm says
its modified eucalyptus trees can displace the fossil fuel
industry
Bank reserve deposits normally
decrease when the Treasury’s balances at the Fed rise as the
money the Treasury takes in from taxes and debt sales is
withdrawn from bank accounts, which in turn causes bank reserve
balances at the Fed to fall.
Solar activity has been active for
the past 48 hours. Three M-class flares have fired off from
sunspot region 1618. The largest solar event of this period was
an M3.6 flare event on Nov. 21st 15:10:00 UT. There was an M1.7
at 12:36:00 UT and M1.4 at 19:21:00 UT.
A
U.S. broadcaster says 20 Tibetan students have been hospitalized
after they clashed with police during a demonstration sparked by
anger over a government booklet that called the Tibetan language
irrelevant and criticized recent self-immolations.
Truckers will soon be stepping on
the gas, or the liquefied natural gas (LNG,) that is. General
Electric and Clean Energy Fuels Corp. are partnering to build a
series of fueling stations across the country -- a phenomenon
that they say is demanded by the automotive manufacturers.
For over 7,000 years, mankind has
cultivated and developed wheat for breads and cereals. Today,
we consume more wheat, as a percentage of our daily diet, than
any other food. Just think about that and the effects wheat can
have on our health – good or bad!
British government support for
low-carbon electricity generation will triple by 2020 after the
energy and finance ministries on Friday reached a deal over
costly reforms.
We all agree that waste has become a Herculean issue.
We do it every day -- throw garbage in the waste basket (if
we recycle we should have no waste basket), send it to a garbage
dump (an evil necessity) or to the waste-to-energy facility
(best available technology for now), and send hazardous and
regulated waste to a regulated landfill (not a good thing at
all).
Despite all the chaos left in
Superstorm Sandy's wake, there was one area of the
energy-generating network that suffered little to no damage,
according to the Distributed Wind Energy Association (DWEA).
Wisconsin utilities'
statewide program for energy efficiency, Focus on Energy,
recently underwent an independent evaluation by the Cadmus
Group. Focus on Energy works with eligible Wisconsin residents
and businesses to install cost-effective energy efficiency and
renewable energy projects.
A 17-year-old learned the
hard way that breaking into houses is a pretty bad idea after
police say a woman he attempted to stab during a home-invasion
in Northeast Philadelphia shot him early Saturday morning.
Voters ages 18 to 29 supported Barack Obama by a huge 34
percentage-point margin in 2008, but the youth vote swung 11
points away from the incumbent in this year’s election.
Obama won the youth vote 66 percent to 32 percent when he ran
against John McCain, but his margin dropped to 60 percent to 37
percent against Mitt Romney, according to exit polling conducted
by Edison Research.
November 20, 2012
This week we celebrate
Thanksgiving, a time of plenty and abundance after the harshness
of life in the New World had killed off many of the original
Pilgrims. What turned their plight into the bounty that this
holiday celebrates?
What would be the largest solar
energy project in Sonoma County, generating enough electricity
for 10,000 homes, is being planned for vacant land at the
Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport.
The American Council On Renewable
Energy (ACORE) released the 2012 edition of its report,
Renewable Energy in the 50 States, as an interactive, online
resource. Compiling updated financial data, resource potentials,
market and policy information in one easily-accessed, online
format, the report is intended to be an executive summary for
all who are interested in the highlights of the renewable energy
sector in every state.
It is no secret that for the last
couple decades, as Earth's climate has been changing, sea levels
have been steadily rising. But what is not so well known is that
in 2011, sea levels throughout the world fell sharply. Of
course, with a body of water as large as the world's oceans, a
sharp fall only equates to one quarter of an inch (1 cm). It is
nonetheless, a dramatic change in general trend which caught the
eye of NASA and European researchers.
A majority of Americans, 77
percent, are concerned about the state of U.S. water
infrastructure, and 61 percent are willing to pay more to fix
it. Despite this general consensus, few Americans are aware of
their water consumption, or the extent to which water
infrastructure problems could impact them personally.
Nine candidates are vying for three
seats on the Arizona Corporation Commission in a race that will
affect the state's energy policy - including the pace of
renewable-energy development - in Arizona for years to come.
California, long the national
leader in clean energy policy, is poised to double down on its
investments in the sector, with billions in new subsidies set to
flow in over the next few years.
Australia created the world's
largest network of marine national parks on Friday, protecting
an area of ocean the size of Western Europe in a move which will
prevent oil and gas exploration and commercial fishing in the
most sensitive areas.
Failure on the part of the
government to steer the country away from the fast-approaching
fiscal cliff could prompt ratings agencies to strip the United
States of its triple-A rating, said Erskine Bowles, co-chair of
the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.
The first test flight of China’s
second stealth fighter jet, the J-31 “Falcon Eagle,” on October
31 was meant to trumpet Beijing’s ambitious plans to develop a
military that can join the ranks of Western powers. The new jet
is also a sign of China’s intention to challenge the United
States for dominance in Asia, but significant technological and
manufacturing issues probably mean that the J-31 is at least a
decade away from deployment and will significantly underperform
U.S. stealth jets.
The winners of the Global
Cleantech Cluster Association's Later Stage Awards were
announced last week, reflecting the increasing popularity of the
$163 billion global cleantech market.
All nations will suffer the effects
of a warmer world, but the world's poorest countries will suffer
most from food shortages, rising sea levels, cyclones and
drought, the World Bank’s new report on climate change says.
Climate change will likely lead to
more frequent extreme weather events as well as droughts and
floods, triggering serious social and political disruption that
poses a potential threat to U.S. national security, a National
Research Council report shows.
The average cost of shipping coal
by railroad to power plants increased almost 50% from 2001 to
2010, with rail transport accounting for more than 70% of U.S.
coal destined to the electric power sector, said a new report
from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
A breeze may be slowly stirring again for the wind energy
industry after months of sitting becalmed.
The election results have picked up the hopes of proponents
of wind energy for some kind of renewal of the most important
subsidy for wind power, the production tax credit.
Russian exports of natural gas to
Europe will drop 4-5% year on year in 2012, energy minister
Alexander Novak told the Gas of Russia forum Tuesday, though he
gave no concrete figures.
An all-of-the-above energy strategy
may mean leveling the tax code. The wind and solar industries
may potentially receive favorable tax treatment under a
provision of the law that pertains to the fossil fuels or the
tax structure could be totally reformed, wiping out all of those
breaks in exchange for reduced corporate rates.
In the U.S., there are detailed numbers on existing
landfills, material recovery facilities and waste-to-energy
plants.
But when it comes to organics recycling and composting
operations, there's just no clear answer.
The issue of resolving customer
conflict online commenced probably around the time the first
customer received an ecommerce order and found dissatisfaction
with the process. We've notably seen this with auction sites
like eBay and others, where a feedback system helps but doesn't
completely satisfy every single dispute to potentially arise.
Sixty-eight percent of Americans see climate change as a
"serious problem," according to a poll released on Friday.
The poll was conducted by Rasmussen on Monday, the day before
the U.S. presidential election.
Of the 1,000 likely voters surveyed, 68 percent said they
thought climate change is a somewhat serious or very serious
problem, while 30 percent of respondents said it was not a
serious problem.
Allowing taxes to rise would
be a small price to pay to get U.S. lawmakers to accept spending
cuts on entitlement programs, even if it leads to a “moderate
recession,” former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said
Friday during an interview on Bloomberg Television and also at a
panel discussion in Washington.
The owner of an Arizona gun store
said he will not sell weapons to customers who voted for
President Obama because “you have proven that you are not
responsible enough to own a firearm.”
Never let anyone tell you something can't be done.
Ohio State University achieved its goal of going zero waste
at its Ohio Stadium – diverting a record 98.2% of its total
generated waste from the landfill during a Nov. 3 matchup
against the University of Illinois. Total attendance was
105,311.
Solar power has grown increasingly
popular across the U.S. Sun Belt, but hardly anywhere has it
taken hold as it has in Hawaii. Friendly tax credits, the
highest average electricity rates in the nation and the most
aggressive renewable energy program adopted by any state have
sent homeowners scrambling to install photovoltaic systems on
their roofs.
If he were a true born-and-bred American, he would know ...
and take to heart ... one very important fact about the
foundations of our nation.
He would know that in 1620, the Pilgrims tried socialism -
and utterly failed at it. For several years, the colony raised
crops in "communal service." It didn't work. So Bradford
instituted one historic change that was to ensure the
flourishing success of the colony and change American history
ever afterwards. Communal agriculture was abandoned and private
planting was established. Here is Governor Bradford's own
account from the original source documents:
This aerial photo is of the clear
cutting that has begun on the San Francisco Peaks. The first
step in converting sewage to artificial snow for the Arizona
Snowbowl's ski area. The Peaks are a sacred site to many Native
American tribes.
There is no debate on climate
change in Germany. The temperature for the past 10 months has
been 3 degrees above average and we’re again on course for the
warmest year on record. There’s no dispute among Germans as to
whether this change is man-made, or that we contribute to it and
need to stop accelerating the process.
The great "Sandy debate" is on. US economic data is coming in
weaker than expected and some argue that it can't all be
explained by the hurricane. Case in point is the initial jobless
claims report from last week
MACS0647-JD was observed by the
Hubble telescope, though not directly. It’s much too faint to be
picked up by the orbiting observatory, so the image had to be
magnified first. Between Earth and MACS0647-JD, at a distance
from us of 5.6 billion light years, is a galactic cluster called
MACS J0647+7015.
The use of autonomous drones – “killer robots” that could
fire weapons with no human control – must be prohibited by
international treaty, human rights campaigners and lawyers have
said.
Weapons being developed that could choose and attack targets
without human intervention should be pre-emptively banned
because of the danger they would pose to civilians in armed
conflict, they said.
The human brain, arguably the most
complex object in the known universe, is a truly remarkable
power-saver: it can simultaneously gather thousands of sensory
inputs, interpret them in real time as a whole and react
appropriately, abstracting, learning, planning and inventing,
all on a strict power budget of about 20 W. A computer of
comparable complexity that uses current technology, according to
IBM's own estimates, would drain about 100 MW of power.
For citizens of a country that
imports 98 per cent of its energy needs, the notion of personal
energy independence may seem like a far-fetched futuristic
fantasy.
Given the recent procession of
storms, hurricanes, tornadoes and other natural disasters,
you're probably thinking about taking practical steps to protect
yourself and your family, such as sacrificing a goat to the
local god of weather phenomena.
Iran is hoping that cold winter
weather will drive crude prices higher as it strives to boost
already recovering oil exports, oil minister Rostam Ghasemi said
Monday.
"The closer we get to cold days, the demand for
oil increases and this can impact on oil price as well," Ghasemi
said, quoted by semi-official news agency Fars.
Renewable energy has become
the most cost-effective way to generate electric power for
hundreds of millions of people globally who are not on the grid,
according to IRENA research. Renewable energy has also become
the least-cost option for extending grid supply in areas with
suitable resources, such as sun and wind, IRENA contends.
We knew that Ashkelon had been
targeted for the past six days with a relentless barrage of
rockets and missiles. We knew it was risky. But we also felt the
Lord was telling to go and see how the staff was doing,
encourage them, pray with and for them, and try to get a better
understanding of what they and the residents of Ashkelon face.
I'm so glad went.
It is not your imagination -
there is an increase of earth changing events. Something has
changed with the Sun and Earth - and it is coming from the Milky
Way.
More than
three decades now have passed since Ralph Reed began the process
to create the Mallard Lake landfill near Anderson, Ind., a move
that would spark a battle for the ages where neither opponents
nor proponents have been willing to give up the fight.
Every year, untold tons of lawn
clippings end up in landfills – or at best, in compost heaps. US
Department of Agriculture chemist Syed H. Imam, however, has
come up with what could be a better use for them. He’s been
making them into fireplace logs, that have some big advantages
over conventional artificial logs.
Highlights this week include: the Fleishmann Memorial project
has successfully replicated Celani's cell; Rossi's independent
tests are nearly done; CF not for bozos any more; Widom-Larson
Theory at ANS Conference; CF research starts at U of MO; LENR
Panel Session at American Nuclear Society National Meeting.
Maui County has begun soliciting
bids from companies to build a waste-to-energy project that
would divert about 450 tons of garbage a day from the Central
Maui Landfill and burn it to produce power that could be sold to
Maui Electric Co. or used by county facilities.
The spotlight is on
micro-renewables in residential and commercial applications,
thanks to the rapid depletion of fossil fuels. This technology
will aid sustainable power production and lower dependency on
conventional grid power by improving the competence of energy
harvesting systems, without being detrimental to the
environment, according to research from Frost & Sullivan.
Moody's Investors Service has today
downgraded France's government bond rating by one notch to Aa1
from Aaa. The outlook remains negative.
Over the last few years, there have
been attempts to predict wind energy's impact on the Kansas
economy, but never a study that utilizes actual empirical data.
Until now.
In early 2013 the Frankenthal-based
pump and valve manufacturer KSB will launch its new compact unit
for reverse osmosis seawater desalination. The
SALINO Pressure Center
consists of an axial piston pump and an axial piston motor,
arranged on a common shaft. Driven by the diaphragm return flow,
the axial piston motor transfers its power directly to the pump
shaft.
An oil spill at an ExxonMobil facility offshore from the
Niger Delta has spread at least 20 miles from its source,
coating waters used by fishermen in a film of sludge.
A Reuters reporter visiting several parts of Akwa Ibom state
saw a rainbow-tinted oil slick stretching for 20 miles from a
pipeline that Exxon had shut down because of a leak a week ago.
Locals scooped it into jerry cans.
In his stirring acceptance speech,
re-elected President Barack Obama noted that climate change
would be on the agenda in his second administration--despite its
marked absence during the campaign.
What does it mean for bioenergy? The Digest will have a
round-up of opinion in tomorrow’s edition, and coverage will
continue throughout the month as changes in Washington flow from
the election result.
Some quick positives and negatives.
A new study released today by the
Center for Climate Strategies (CCS) contends that cheap natural
gas and the lagging economy are not the main drivers of declines
in U.S. carbon emissions.
In his second episode for season three of his "Conspiracy
Theory" series, professional wrestler, former Navy SEAL and
former Minnesota governor, Jesse Ventura and his team tackle the
Death Ray subject.
This one really hits home because it deals with a weaponized
version of both Tesla and Hutchison technologies. And people who
talk about this are dying, including the person who launched
this episode.
Sales of previously owned U.S.
homes unexpectedly climbed in October, showing record-low
mortgage rates are helping spur the world’s largest economy.
There's little argument --
even from mainstream medicine -- that too many doctors routinely
prescribe antibiotics for illnesses, such as the common cold,
for which these prescription drugs do nothing. The result is a
potentially nightmarish proliferation of antibiotic resistant
superbugs. Bottom line: if people do become ill with a life
threatening bacterial infection, antibiotics may no longer have
the ability to zap the germs. So, people infected with superbugs
have a harder time getting well, longer hospital stays and a
greater likelihood of dying. Besides the massive
over-prescribing of antibiotics, the use of these
pharmaceuticals in animal feed has also been shown to contribute
to antibiotic resistance. In fact, animals are a major source of
superbugs because they are given the majority of Big Pharma's
antibiotics that are sold in the U.S.
Expect markets to roil in
volatility in the short term as the Federal Reserve “trashes”
the dollar by sticking with its ultra-loose monetary policies,
said publisher and one-time presidential candidate Steve Forbes.
The Fed has said it will stick with its quantitative easing
(QE) program until it sees noted improvement in the labor
market.
With global demand for
underground resources, such as oil and natural gas, forecast to
grow, well stimulation techniques are becoming increasingly
important. Researchers at Texas Tech University have developed
new techniques to enhance these processes, such as hydraulic
fracturing or "fracking".
For every one unit of energy that
is converted into electricity in power plants today, two units
of energy are thrown away. This wasted energy is primarily in
the form of heat – or thermal energy – and, there is technology
available today that can turn this waste into a usable energy
stream.
Solar activity has been active for
the past 48 hours. Three M-class flares have fired off from
sunspot region 1618. The largest solar event of this period was
an M3.6 flare event on Nov. 21st 15:10:00 UT. There was an M1.7
at 12:36:00 UT and M1.4 at 19:21:00 UT.
China’s heavy-handed response to
the recent spate of self-immolations in Tibet is a signal that
all is not well in China and that conditions may indeed worsen
under the new leaders that were chosen at last week’s Chinese
Communist Party Congress.
The United States needs to update its energy policy to
reflect the boom in natural gas and oil production that has
boosted manufacturing jobs, said the top Democrat on the Senate
energy committee on Thursday.
Ron Wyden, who is in line to take over the panel's gavel in
January, said he sees the opportunity for "transformative energy
policy" to both spur jobs created by the newfound wealth of
energy while also protecting air and water from pollution.
Aspartame is the most dangerous food additive on the market
today, accounting for over 75 percent of adverse reactions
reported to the FDA, including seizures and death
In 2011, the United States emerged from a damaging budget battle
with a downgrade of its pristine triple-A rating for the first
time in history. In 2013, it could be dealt even a bigger blow.
The battle over avoiding the so-called fiscal cliff is the
first of a likely series of partisan confrontations in
Washington in the coming year that, if not resolved, could cause
more downgrades of the U.S. credit rating.
US commercial crude stocks are
expected to show a 1 million barrel increase for the reporting
week ended November 16, according to analysts polled Monday by
Platts.
The U.S. Department of Justice has ended an antitrust
investigation into Monsanto Co's soybean genetic traits business
and the seed industry, the company said.
The DOJ had demanded information in January 2010 from
Monsanto on the company's soybean genetic trait business after
complaints that Monsanto was trying to limit access to push a
new, pricier product instead.
The US Environmental Protection
Agency on Friday rejected 10 state governors' petitions to
temporarily relax the Renewable Fuel Standard in response to the
severe Midwestern drought.
The agency found it "highly
unlikely" that temporarily waiving the policy would have a
significant impact on ethanol production or demand and therefore
would have little or no impact on corn, food or fuel prices.
Existing home sales in the US increased to 4.79 million
annualized units in October 2012 from the revised 4.69 million
reported in the previous month. Market expectations were for
sales to remain unchanged in the month.
After a terrible summer for US ethanol producers, the country
has shifted from net ethanol exporter to net importer for the
first time in nearly three years.
The US imported 21,000 barrels per day more ethanol in August
than it exported, according to the latest stats available from
the Energy Information Administration’s Petroleum Supply Monthly
report.
The benefits of regular exercise
are well known, but what exactly are you getting in return for
your efforts? A research a collaboration between the U.S.-based
Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the National
Cancer Institute has attempted to answer this question by
quantifying how much longer people live depending on the levels
of exercise they engage in.
When military veterans search for
jobs, they often want more than a paycheck. Many say they look
for rewarding work and a team of dedicated people focused on a
common mission.
Every individual, business and
building creates waste -- much of it recyclable. Even so, it's
not uncommon for reusable and recyclable materials to end up in
landfills. Although the 34% overall recycling rate in 2010 was
an improvement over previous years, there's more we can do. The
question I'd like to address is this: How can businesses adopt
more sustainable waste management operations?
Chalk one up in the “solution”
column for alcohol. A new water treatment technique, borne out
of the whiskey distillation process, has the potential to save
millions of lives by making dirty water potable.
Barack Obama's re-election may have seemed like a sure win
for solar and wind power, given the President's history of
supporting green energy.
But the optimism quickly darkened in the aftermath. In the
days following the election,
renewable energy stocks fell, along with the broader market.
When the first settlers moved to the upper Midwest, just
about everyone had a turbine of some sort, and one company
expects turbines to soon become the norm again in Otter Tail
County.
Instead of using wind to directly power saw mills and farm
equipment, turbines can now efficiently generate enough
electricity to power schools, farms or businesses with a 100
percent return on investment rate of about eight years, said
Renewable Energy SD President Shawn Dooling.
The
World Bank is urging stepped-up efforts to meet world
carbon-reduction goals after looking at what it says would be
the catastrophic consequences if average world temperatures rise
more than 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end
of the century.
The International Court of Justice ruled Monday that a group
of tiny islands in the western Caribbean belongs to Colombia,
but also granted Nicaragua control of a large swath of the
surrounding sea and seabed that could hold oil reserves.
Based on evidence presented by lawyers for both nations,
"Colombia and not Nicaragua has sovereignty over the islands,"
the court's President Peter Tomka told delegations from both
sides.
Companies in the United States are
reining in investment plans at the fastest rate since the
recession, posing another hurdle to the lukewarm recovery.
Half of the country’s 40 largest publicly traded corporate
investors have announced plans to trim capital spending this
year or next, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of
conference calls and securities filings.
LIGNET Senior Analyst David Wurmser
said in a phone interview from Tel Aviv this morning that Iran’s
support to Hamas is a major factor behind the hundreds of
missiles fired on Israel from Gaza over the last week and
believes pro-Iran Hamas factions could extend the violence.
Wurmser assesses that several factors, including intensified
Western pressure to end the conflict, could actually accelerate
the timeline for an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza.
November 16, 2012
Wind energy advocates have just weeks to save a
multibillion-dollar tax break, arguing half the jobs in the
industry will be lost if Congress allows it to expire as
scheduled at the end of the year.
But opponents are boosting their efforts to kill the tax
credit as Congress resumes work this week to grapple with the
nation's huge deficit problem. A group tied to the oil industry
is circulating a study saying it's time for wind to stand on its
own without the help.
The plight of utilities to change consumer energy consumption
behavior just got more difficult.
Research conducted by the Shelton Group found that 18 percent
of Americans blame their utility and 25 percent blame their
inefficient home for their rising energy bills rather than their
own increasing energy use. Further, even those who have changed
their consumption habits or made energy-efficient upgrades
believe that their utility bills have gone up or remained the
same.
China is one of the fastest growing
wind markets in the world with its rapidly expanding demand for
renewable energy. GBI Research reports that China's revenue is
growing significantly from this sector and that of last year's
top 10 players in the global wind turbine market by market share
four were Chinese.
More than 8,500 solar installation jobs have been created in
the past year and continued industry-wide growth is expected in
2013, according to research from The Solar Foundation (TSF).
The solar industry in the U.S. now employs 119,016 people-- a
13.2 percent employment growth rate over last year
After months of frothy conditions,
credit valuations are finally beginning to correct. High Yield
has traded down materially, as investors have had enough of
ridiculous pricing in this market.
The recent Israeli strike against
numerous Hamas targets reminded us of the Middle East risks
premium that may not be fully priced into the markets. The
Middle East situation may indeed represent one of those "tail
risks." The rising uncertainty sent crude oil prices sharply
higher, reversing earlier declines
Cracks detected in the Oyster Creek
nuclear power plant's reactor and problems with its water intake
system during superstorm Sandy have some environmental groups
calling for the 43-year-old facility to shut down earlier than
scheduled.
At the same time California has
implemented Assembly Bill 32 and launched its landmark
cap-and-trade program requiring the state's heaviest polluters,
including fossil-fuel power plants and oil refineries, to pay
for carbon emissions permits, the Geothermal Energy Association
has released a report detailing greenhouse gas emissions as they
relate to geothermal with a focus on California.
Hostess Brands Inc., the
maker of Twinkies and Wonder Bread, says it's going out
of business after striking workers across the country crippled
its ability to make its snacks.
The company had warned
employees that it would file a motion with U.S. Bankruptcy Court
Friday seeking permission to shutter its operations and sell its
brands if plants hadn't resumed normal operations by a Thursday
evening deadline. The deadline passed without a deal.
The
closing would mean the loss of about 18,500 jobs.
Vermicomposting uses worms, rather
than chemicals to create fertilizer. It relies on methods that
have always been available but are generally not used in the
large-scale production of commercial fertilizer. Worms — rather
than chemicals — eat the organic substances such as corn cobs,
potato peelings, apple cores, etc. and convert the discards to
nutrient-rich organic fertilizer. The process doesn't require
synthetic compounds and works faster than that compost pile you
have in your back yard.
Obamacare. What a travesty. The majority of Americans don't
support it, but that doesn't seem to matter one bit. The Supreme
Court upheld it, and as Obama begins his second term, the
"reforms" are going full steam ahead.
The big promise: more affordable health care coverage for
all.
Ask the workers at Papa John's, or Krogers, or Stryker
Corporation what they think of Obamacare. They've had their
hours cut back or lost their jobs altogether because of health
care reform. Affordable health care is the least of their
worries now. They just want to keep a roof over their head and
food on their table.
For those still puzzled over
stubbornly supra-$100/barrel oil prices, the International
Energy Agency’s latest monthly report Tuesday provided a wealth
of fresh bearish data set to further baffle oil market watchers.
Energy-starved India is becoming a vibrant market for
renewable energy. This bodes well for a country that has often
seen its industrial and economic growth inhibited by a truncated
supply of conventional power.
Established oil and gas reserves
are likely to run out by 2034, but new technologies can tap 10.2
trillion barrels of unconventional reserves, according to Lux
Research. Lux contends that innovations in ways to tap
unconventional oil and gas reserves could mean more than 250
years' worth of resources.
IDF retaliates by hitting 70 terror sites in one hour. Ground
offensive being planned. 30,000 reservists being mobilized.
Casualties rising.
Japan's
domestic shipments of solar cells and modules rose 80 percent in
the July-September quarter after the government started an
incentive program for clean energy in the first month of the
period.
Domestic shipments increased to 627
megawatts from 348 megawatts in the same quarter last
year, the Japan Photovoltaic Energy Association said in
a statement today.
Hurricane Sandy left a trail of
destruction on the Eastern Seaboard and, two weeks later, some
communities are continuing to struggle. Some have suffered
devastating personal loss and many businesses have been severely
disrupted. Canadian businesses that have customers or suppliers
in the affected areas—including IT service providers or call
centre services—have been impacted.
Highlights this week include: the Fleishmann Memorial project
has successfully replicated Celani's cell; Rossi's independent
tests are nearly done; CF not for bozos any more; Widom-Larson
Theory at ANS Conference; CF research starts at U of MO; LENR
Panel Session at American Nuclear Society National Meeting.
Today is America Recycles Day, a
nationally recognized day dedicated to promoting recycling in
the US. All across the country, thousands of events are being
held to celebrate recycling awareness in communities.
Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC) released
yesterday its U.S. Economic and Housing Market Outlook for
November showing what a healthy national housing market should
look like taking into account recent trends, key housing
indicators and the shifting demographic patterns that will
define a new and realistic trajectory over the next five years.
A healthy housing market should have activity below the levels
recorded during the peaks of the prior decade.
In his stirring acceptance speech, re-elected President Barack
Obama noted that climate change would be on the agenda in his
second administration — despite its marked absence during the
campaign.
Obama then tried to unify a divided
country by closing with a popular American rallying cry
of how the US "is the greatest nation on earth" and our
best days as a nation are yet to come.
There's optimism across the natural gas industry that future
growth will be as plentiful as domestic shale gas reserves,
according to a Black & Veatch report.
When asked about their view of the industry's future growth,
92 percent of respondents stated they were either "optimistic"
or "very optimistic."
The public is skeptical President
Barack Obama and congressional Republicans can reach a deal by
the end of 2012 to avert the fiscal cliff, according to a new
survey from Pew Research Center and The Washington Post.
Most Americans believe the automatic spending cuts and tax
increases triggered by lack of a deal would have a mostly
negative effect for both the broad economy (62 percent) and
their own personal finances (60 percent).
Solar activity has been at low
levels for the past 24 hours. Solar wind speed, as measured by
the ACE spacecraft, reached a peak speed of 488 km/s at
15/0453Z. This observation was consistent with the continue.
This observation was consistent with the continued influence
of a weak, negative polarity, coronal hole high speed stream.
Republican presidential nominee
Mitt Romney is telling top donors that President Barack Obama
won re-election because of the "gifts" he had already provided
to blacks, Hispanics and young voters and because of the
president's effort to paint Romney as anti-immigrant.
Has the pressure to compete in a world market beset by an
equipment glut and plummeting prices over the past two years led
to an increase in poor quality solar panels?
PSEG Solar Source, Salt River
Project and juwi solar are formally celebrating the completion
and launch of Arizona's 25 MW PSEG Queen Creek Solar Farm.
A new study of the economics of coal-burning power plants has
found that some of Minnesota's oldest units aren't worth
upgrading.
The study being released Tuesday by the Union of Concerned
Scientists (UCS) says that up to 18 percent of the nation's
coal-based generation is ripe for retirement because adding
up-to-date environmental controls would make them more costly to
operate than natural gas generation or wind power.
This new finding furthers ECMs new
equation identifying a connection between our galaxy Milky Way,
channeling charged particles in a narrow bands which would have
a significant effect on our Sun, all planets in our solar
system, and all that lives on them.
After Hurricane Sandy left millions
in the dark, a long-delayed federal study Wednesday says the
U.S. power grid is also vulnerable to terrorist attacks that
could cause months of blackouts and billions in economic damage.
Hurricane Sandy was a monster. It
changed lives and changed the actual land shapes along the
coasts affected. The USGS has released a series of aerial
photographs showing before-and-after images of Hurricane Sandy's
impacts on the Atlantic Coast. Among the latest photo pairs to
be published are images showing the extent of coastal change in
North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and Delaware. The photos,
part of a USGS assessment of coastal change from as far south as
the Outer Banks of North Carolina to as far north as
Massachusetts, show that the storm caused dramatic changes to
portions of shoreline extending hundreds of miles. Pre- and
post-storm images of the New Jersey and New York shoreline in
particular tell a story of a coastal landscape that was
considerably altered by the historic storm. Meanwhile, images
from hundreds of miles south of the storm’s landfall demonstrate
that the storm’s breadth caused significant coastal change as
far south as the Carolinas.
As the popular vote counts emerge
and we move out from under the shadow of the media spin, we are
learning the real reason Romney lost. The mainstream media is
pushing the story that a massive turnout among minorities and
the young drowned the white male vote as America changes its
demography.
The United States needs to update
its energy policy to reflect the boom in natural gas and oil
production that has boosted manufacturing jobs, said the top
Democrat on the Senate energy committee on Thursday.
“The devastation wrought by
Hurricane Sandy in the United States and the Caribbean in recent
weeks reminds us how destructive extreme and volatile weather
can be. The costs of inaction are increasingly clear to all, as
extreme weather inflicts loss of life and livelihoods and the
destruction of property and infrastructure on communities around
the world,” said Helen Clark, administrator of the UN
Development Program. “Yet, out of every problem comes an
opportunity.”
Heavy duty trucks in the US will
continue to switch from diesel to natural gas even without
federal tax incentives, but the rate of switching would be
faster if Washington offered incentives to build fueling
stations, Jim Arthurs, president of natural gas engine maker
Cummins Westport said Wednesday.
In an effort to enhance American
security and address climate change, the U.S. military is
diminishing its footprint. The military is producing cleaner
power, reducing energy consumption, managing water and
minimizing waste. Their efforts encompass vast numbers of
vehicles, ships, planes, buildings, lands, and other facilities.
Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC) yesterday
released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey®
(PMMS®), showing fixed mortgage rates dipping to new all-time
record lows amid indicators of higher consumer confidence and
lower wholesale prices. The previous record low for the 30-year
fixed was set the week of October 4, when it averaged 3.36
percent, and the 15-year fixed was set the week of October 18,
when it averaged 2.66 percent.
I know that we’ve all heard that
statement before, but it’s as true today as it was the day that
Mohandas K. Gandhi said it. It’s impossible to bring about the
kind of effectual change you want to see around you without
truly living out your values in a personal way.
Day three of the Gaza crisis has
Israel keeping its foot on the gas with more punishing air
strikes against Palestinian militants while Hamas seems to have
found its second wind after the disastrous loss of one its top
commanders. Two rockets landed in open fields outside of
Jerusalem today, the first time the city has ever been targeted
by rockets fired by Gaza militants. A failed Egyptian diplomatic
mission to Gaza and harsh anti-Israeli rhetoric by Egyptian
President Mohammed Morsi could worsen this conflict by
emboldening Gaza militants to keep up their attacks.
Why Eyeglasses Can Actually Make Your Vision Worse Glasses
Only Treat the Symptoms NOT the Problem
The high degree of uncertainty
about the economic and political landscape muddles the
investment picture for corporate decision-makers. Worries about
fiscal cliffs in the United States and Japan, industry
regulation, high budget deficits, and the potentially damaging
consequences of unconventional monetary policy are all mentioned
as deterrents to capital expenditures. What will it take to
persuade more companies to open up their wallets?
November 13, 2012
Seven important steps to removing the most obvious cancer risks
from your home include checking for and removing: radon,
nonstick-coated pots and pans, makeup and personal care products
with toxic ingredients, BPA-lined cans and plastic containers,
cleaning products and air fresheners, toxic building materials
and household cleaners, as well as common pesticides and weed
killers
West African nations on Sunday
agreed to send some 3,000 troops to help the country of Mali
wrest back control of its northern half, which was seized by
al-Qaida-linked fighters more than six months ago, according to
an official involved in the discussions, and a statement read on
Nigerian state television.
A California city that recently
emerged from bankruptcy is taking a new approach to budgeting --
this time, by asking voters how it should spend the taxpayers'
money.
The conservative American
Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is launching an effort to
repeal state-based laws that require utilities to provide
escalating amounts of power from renewable sources like wind and
solar energy.
The corporate-backed group of state
lawmakers has developed so-called model legislation called the
“Electricity Freedom Act,” which it hopes to advance in several
of the roughly 30 states that have renewable electricity
standards.
A panel of federal judges is
considering an appeal from three environmental and anti-nuclear
groups hoping to stop the relicensing of Seabrook Station.
The Antarctic ice sheet is one of
the two polar ice caps of the Earth. It covers about 98% of the
Antarctic continent and is the largest single mass of ice on
Earth. It covers an area of almost 14 million square km and
contains 30 million cubic km of ice. That is, approximately 61
percent of all fresh water on the Earth is held in the Antarctic
ice sheet, an amount equivalent to 70 m of water in the world's
oceans. In East Antarctica, the ice sheet rests on a major land
mass, but in West Antarctica the bed can extend to more than
2,500 m below sea level. The land in this area would be seabed
if the ice sheet were not there.
The Democrats in California took a
supermajority in both the Assembly and Senate, something that
hadn't been done since 1883. That means, even with a Republican
sitting in the governor's chair in Sacramento, if they act
together, the Democrats can do whatever they want in the state,
overriding any veto.
This is deadly serious. The
Cascadia Suduction Zone is susceptible to mega-quake measuring
9.0+ - and it is over due in its 300 year cycle. This is not a
"warning" but an "alert". A Warning means it is inevitable - an
Alert means it is between likely and probable.
Austere "fiscal cliff" tax
increases and federal spending cuts set for the end of the year
would send the economy back into recession and cause a spike in
the jobless rate to 9.1 percent by next fall, congressional
budget analysts said Thursday.
Asia may once again hit the play
button when it comes to either resuming or restarting nuclear
construction. Any movement, of course, has been on pause since
the Fukushima nuclear accident in March 2011. But the need for
those countries to achieve cleaner air and energy independence
remains paramount.
In his opening statement to the
pivotal Chinese Party Congress that opened in Beijing today,
outgoing Chinese President Hu Jintao was remarkably candid in
criticizing graft and corruption and conceded that these
problems have contributed to protests and are a threat to the
party and the regime. It was made clear, however, that Hu’s
likely successor, Xi Jinping, plans no significant political
reforms and will continue to build up the Chinese military to
press China's territorial claims.
Summary: Security
researchers from Symantec are warning about a recently
intercepted flood of Xmas themed malicious and fraudulent
campaigns.
I regard low-dose aspirin as a
tonic and preventive that everyone should consider, particularly
those who are at risk for cardiovascular disease.
Peter Schiff, CEO of Euro Pacific
Capital, isn’t particularly optimistic about the financial
impact President Barack Obama’s re-election will have on the
economy.
"If Obama thinks that [President George W.] Bush
dealt him a weak hand, wait until we see how much weaker the
hand is going to be that Obama deals his successor," Schiff
tells Yahoo.
"We're going to be in much worse shape.''
More fuel-efficient cars are siphoning off gas-tax revenues
that support highway maintenance in Oregon.
As a result, state transportation officials are considering a
mileage tax on vehicles that average 55 miles or better on a
gallon of gasoline.
Energy efficiency is making great gains in both home
construction and appliances, according to date from the US
Energy Information Agency.
Last year, 26% of all the new single-family homes in the US
met voluntary Energy Star standards.
Voters supported an eco-minded
measure to ban fracking for natural gas in Longmont, Colo., but
rejected one to require boosting wind and solar energy in
Michigan. A split verdict for the environment?
FBI agents investigating CIA
Director David Petraeus's affair were shocked when told by
bureau officials that despite the national security
implications, no action would be taken on their findings until
after the presidential election: Only then would President Obama
ask for Petraeus’ resignation.
Unlike some of the other large
cities around the world, such as London and Amsterdam, that have
comprehensive flood defense systems with levees and storm surge
barriers, New York was completely at the mercy of the elements.
In California it’s San Francisco.
In New England, it’s Boston. Now, 2012 is proving that Georgia
is rising as the cleantech epicenter of the South. This year we
witnessed IKEA flip the switch on two large scale solar
installations and Quality Technology Services announce a more
than $1 million investment in solar for their Atlanta and
Richmond data centers. Meanwhile, Georgia Solar Utilities
emerged to propose building 90MWs of solar in Georgia, and
selling it to Georgia Power, which itself has a 50 MW solar
initiative.
Greek
lawmakers approved the country's 2013 austerity budget early
Monday, an essential step in Greece's efforts to persuade its
international creditors to unblock a vital rescue loan
installment without which the country will go bankrupt.
Shoring
up Europe's banking sector and strengthening oversight of
economic policies topped the agenda of a meeting Tuesday of the
European Union's 27 finance ministers that was expected to
expose divisions among the continent's powers.
The International Energy Agency predicts renewables will
become the world's second-largest source of power generation by
2015 and close in on coal as the primary source by 2035.
But according to the 2012 edition of its flagship
publication, the World Energy Outlook, the agency warns this
rapid increase is critically dependent on continued subsidies.
Two weeks ago, few New York residents had any inkling that
some of them would soon be dumpster diving in order to find
food. Or that they would be standing in line for four, five, six
hours or more (with small children along) just to collect a few
MREs and a bottle of water. New Jersey residents had no idea
that their friends and neighbors would be coming to blows in
stores over what little food was available, or that they would
be reduced to pleading for help from media, government, and the
Red Cross.
Many of them undoubtedly thought a few cans of soup, a jar of
peanut butter, and a case of bottled water would be enough to
see them through.
The U.S. EPA will likely move
forward with revising landfill air emissions standards after
President Barack Obama was elected to a second term, CEO of the
Solid Waste Association of North America said.
Climate change might eventually cause millions
of deaths and all kinds of natural disasters. But don't tell
that to a climate-change sceptic if you want them to do anything
about it.
Instead, focus on how mitigation efforts can
help people become more warm and caring towards others or how it
can promote economic and technological development. That's the
advice psychologists give after confirming the strategy in an
experiment.
In a widely expected move, the
International Trade Commission ruled US solar manufacturers
were harmed by the pricing tactics of Chinese competitors -
affirming a series of anti-dumping and anti-subsidy tariffs
imposed by the US Department of Commerce in October.
Some 17 power plants have been privatized and 27 other plants
will be privatized by the end of the Iranian calendar year
(March 19, 2013), the Iranian Energy Minister Majid Namjou said
on Monday.
Adding that some 44 power plants are being privatized, Namjou
went on to note that the process of privatization in Iran's
power generation sector is in the final stages,the IRNA News
Agency reported.
"According to the Constitution, the generation and
distribution sectors of the power industry should be privatized
and the transmission sector should remain state-owned," he
noted.
Israel fired a guided missile into
Syria on Sunday in a potent "warning shot" after mortar fire
from fighting between Syrian troops and rebels hit the
Israeli-occupied Golan Heights for the second time in four days.
After months of speeches and
debates, and billions of dollars of campaign ads, the elections
are over and President Obama has won a second term in office.
Now comes the hard part: how to move forward in a polarized
political environment where the two major parties don”t agree on
the overall role of government, on most policies, and all too
often, not even on the facts.
A wind generation facility that its
producer, Pattern Energy, calls the largest wind generation
facility in the Caribbean began producing energy on the island
of Puerto Rico Oct. 28.
More than half of commodity trading
companies, particularly oil and natural gas producers and
electric and gas utilities, have budgeted no money to comply
with new derivatives reform regulations, according to a survey
released Monday.
What is one of the largest expenses
of your grocery budget? Unless you're a vegetarian, it's
probably meat. Prices on meat have been going up, up, up, and
last summer's drought has pushed meat prices up even higher
because livestock feed got so expensive. It seems that every
time you go to the grocery store, meat prices have gone up
again.
Implementing alternatives to
traditional electricity infrastructure is more critical than
ever in light of the extended, widespread outages in New Jersey
and New York in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, a New Jersey energy
regulator said.
The Mid-Atlantic Solar Energy
Industries Association (MSEIA) and the Pennsylvania Solar Energy
Industries Association (PASEIA) today released a study by
consulting firm Clean Power Research showing that solar power in
New Jersey and Pennsylvania delivers value to the electric grid
that exceeds its cost by a large margin, making it a bargain for
energy consumers.
New Zealand says it will not be signing up to a second
commitment period on greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto
Protocol.
Instead, the government said, it would opt for a non-binding
pledge under the United Nations Framework Agreement on Climate
Change.
According to the latest issue of EIA's "Electric Power Monthly,"
with data through to August 31, 2012, net electrical generation
from non-hydro renewable energy sources (i.e., biomass,
geothermal, solar, wind) was 12.95% higher during the first
eight months of the year compared to the same period in 2011. In
total, those sources have accounted for 5.25% of U.S. net
electrical generation thus far in 2012 compared to 4.57% during
the first two-thirds of 2011. Combined with conventional
hydropower, renewable sources have accounted for 12.50% of net
U.S. electrical generation since January 1, 2012. However,
hydropower output is 14.16% lower in 2012 than it was in 2011.
Food production in North Korea has
risen for a second year but the impoverished country still faces
shortages and widespread malnutrition, the United Nations' Food
and Agriculture Organization on Monday.
Norway, the world's eighth largest
crude exporter, warned on Tuesday that its 2012 target of
producing 1.6 million b/d of oil may not be met, after output
figures for October came in below expectations.
The
Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, which produced the preliminary
October totals, said oil output came in at an average 1.472
million b/d.
Roughly a third of the nation’s
nuclear plants got hugged by Hurricane Sandy and according to
the Nuclear Regulator Commission, they performed as expected.
That should not surprise anyone as those facilities have been
constructed here to withstand such an onslaught.
President Barack Obama will face a
two-fold challenge in energy policy in his second term: make
good on his promise to act on climate change, while at the same
time foster growth in oil and gas production that has spurred
jobs and manufacturing.
Barack Obama was clearly not the
candidate of the American Petroleum Institute. But leaders of
the organization profess not to be concerned by the President’s
re-election. In this week’s
Oilgram News column, Regulation & The Environment, Gary
Gentile discusses why the API says it came out just fine from
the election.
Seals and seabirds in Alaska waters
near the Bering Strait have been showing up contaminated with
oil from an unknown source, and marine experts were headed to
the region to investigate the mystery, federal and state
officials said on Friday.
Rich nations are dismaying
developing countries with pledges merely to continue aid to help
them combat climate change in 2013 despite past promises of a
tenfold surge to $100 billion a year by 2020.
When the major networks declared
last night that President Obama had carried Ohio and had thus
clinched the White House, the analyses concluded that it
centered on the auto bailout, not the coal industry.
As
it turns out, the president didn’t need to carry Ohio to win a
second term, having secured enough of the battleground states to
give him a comfortable margin of victory. But the state still
represents a cross-section of voters that any candidate would
love to have in their column. To that end, President Obama
focused on the revival of the auto industry that is integral to
the region while Mitt Romney pounded Obama for his
administration’s “war on coal.”
Two Massachusetts Institute of
Technology doctoral candidates are designing a nuclear power
plant that would convert nuclear waste from conventional
reactors into electricity -- a plant you could walk away from,
they said, without the risk of a radioactive leak like the
meltdown last year that crippled parts of Japan.
There could be new hope for people
facing vision loss due to conditions such as retinitis
pigmentosa or wet age-related macular degeneration. Scientists
from the University of Southampton have discovered that
easily-gathered corneal cells may be able to take the place of
degraded retinal cells, thus preventing or curing blindness.
Attorney General Eric Holder knew
as early as late summer that former CIA Director David Petraeus
was the subject of an FBI investigation that eventually
uncovered an affair that Petraeus was having with his
biographer, Fox News reported on Monday.
The continued use of fossil fuels could push global
temperatures 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit (6 degrees Celsius) higher
by the end of the century, according a report released Monday.
While nearly 200 nations at the 2009 United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change agreed to limit the average global
temperature increase to 3.6 degree Fahrenheit (2 degrees
Celsius) by 2050, too few nations have taken measurable steps to
hitting that mark, accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers said
in its annual carbon report.
Such unanimous support for Obama in
these Philadelphia neighborhoods, primarily in almost
exclusively black sections of West and North Philadelphia,
stokes fears of fraud, despite little hard evidence, experts
say.
C2 event observed. Solar
activity is expected to be at low to moderate levels on days
one, two, and three (13 Nov, 14 Nov, 15 Nov). The
geomagnetic field is expected to be at mostly active with a
chance for minor storm levels early on day one (13 Nov) due to
the arrival of the CMEs.
Researchers at the Energy
Biosciences Institute (EBI) are generating bio fuels from
renewable sources, such as sugar and starch, using a process
that could be commercialized in as little as five to ten years.
Although the fuels are currently more expensive to produce than
those made from petroleum, they contain more energy per gallon
than ethanol and the researchers say that, if adopted, could
help to cut greenhouse gas emissions from transportation.
San Juan County residents in
Washington State passed Initiative Measure No. 2012-4to ban the
growth of genetically modified organisms. The initiative makes
it illegal to “propagate, cultivate, raise or grow plants,
animals and other organisms which have been genetically
modified” in San Juan County.
Israel's commerce and industry
minister Shalom Simhon wants Israel to guarantee local gas
reserves for at least 50 years, or more than double what a
government appointed panel recommended, the minister said in a
letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Senate Intelligence Committee
will investigate why the FBI failed to immediately notify the
White House and Congress when it discovered that ex-CIA Director
David H. Petraeus was involved in an extramarital affair.
A South Korean nuclear power plant
will be shut down for weeks as regulators investigate cracks
found in control rod tunnels, officials said.
Billionaire investor George Soros said the eurozone’s debt
crisis is threatening the forces that have held the bloc
together as well as the ideals that led to the creation of the
European Union.
“The euro crisis is threatening Europe’s cohesion and the
ideals behind the European Union,” Soros said at the Martti
Ahtisaari Day seminar in Helsinki on Friday.
Energy giant SSE is set for fresh
heat from customer groups this week when it reveals earnings
figures just weeks after hiking winter fuel bills for
households, writes Ben Griffiths.
Among women smokers who quit before the age of 40, more than 90
percent of the excess mortality caused by continuing smoking was
avoided; for women who quit before the age of 30, 97 percent of
excess mortality was avoided.
Syrian anti-government groups
struck a deal Sunday under intense international pressure to
form a new opposition leadership that will include
representatives from the country's disparate factions fighting
to topple President Bashar Assad's regime, activists said.
The months and months of
campaigning, the hundreds of millions of TV advertising, the
incessant travel schedules of the candidates, and the vigorous
efforts of both sides to get their vote out made little or no
difference in the outcome of the Election of 2012.
Thousands of protesters have gathered outside Kuwait's
parliament to denounce voting law changes and to rally around
calls to boycott next month's parliamentary election.
Rights groups estimate 18,000 people joined the peaceful
demonstration Sunday, the latest sign of the Gulf nation's
deepening political crisis.
Most agree that stereotyping is
wrong, but the associated problems are much more destructive.
Research by psychologist Dr. Stephanie Fryberg (Tulalip) at the
University of Arizona reveals that not only do mascots lower the
self-esteem of Indian children, but they also raise the
self-esteem of white children. In other words, images like Chief
Wahoo of the Cleveland Indians allows for white children to feel
good about dehumanizing their Indian classmates. Such
environments contribute to the low performance of Indian
students, leading to high drop out rates and failure in other
sectors of adult life.
When the assessment of damage in
the tri-state region from Hurricane Sandy is finished,
Connecticut could get some hard evidence to justify spending
what could be billions on putting more of its electric lines
under ground.
- Urine is put into an electrolytic cell, which cracks the
urea into nitrogen, water, and hydrogen.
- The hydrogen goes into a water filter for purification,
which then gets pushed into the gas cylinder.
- The gas cylinder pushes hydrogen into a cylinder of
liquid borax, which is used to remove the moisture from the
hydrogen gas.
- This purified hydrogen gas is pushed into the generator.
- 1 Liter of urine gives you 6 hours of electricity.
An advisory panel to the US Nuclear
Regulatory Commission said Friday it does not support
requirements that 31 nuclear units install expensive external
filters, saying a more general requirement that the plants
improve protection from radiation release would be a better
regulatory step.
The United States will overtake
Saudi Arabia and Russia as the world's top oil producer by 2017,
the West's energy agency said on Monday, predicting Washington
will come very close to achieving a previously unthinkable
energy self-sufficiency.
-
Ancient humans had to graze constantly to find enough
calories to live on, but as there are only so many hours in
a day, and raw, mostly vegetable, foods do not contain many
calories, this put a metabolic limitation on how big the
brain could grow.
-
Researchers believe that it was the shift to a cooked-food
diet that gave humans the extra calories they needed to
allow their brains to get bigger.
-
Even when ancient humans moved their meals to the hearth,
they still ate a far more significant portion of raw foods
than people do today – and their food was in unprocessed
form.
-
There is a growing movement of people who believe eating
foods that are concordant with your genetic ancestry can
help you avoid many of the diseases associated with our
modern diet, including diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
Before Murray Energy’s Chief
Executive released 156 people from his Ohio-based coal
operations, he blamed the Obama administration’s “war on coal.”
He went on to say a public prayer, bemoaning that America’s
young people would not know the country in which he grew up.
But what Robert E. Murray failed to mention is that the
federal regulations started by the 1990 Clean Air Act under
President George Bush I are only part of the mosaic. The other
parts include a dark recession that repressed electricity demand
along with a boom in unconventional natural gas, or shale gas.
And he did not mention that he has been a fierce partisan, able
to give some $1.4 million in contributions since 2007, say news
reports
The number of jobs in the U.S.
clean energy sector is dwindling as time continues to run out on
a federal tax credit that could revive the sector's job growth,
a green-energy business group reported Thursday, Nov. 8.
November 9, 2012
Environmental groups today praised
“champions” who won seats in Congress in Tuesday’s elections
because they support clean energy investments, environmental
protection and public health safeguards.
Roughly $30 million in campaign
contributions have flowed from the oil and gas industry to
congressional candidates and political action committees in 2012
to stall regulation of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Now
many towns have swung into action to pass fracking bans to
protect their citizens.
U.S. gasoline stocks rose 2.875
million barrels to 202.377 million barrels for the reporting
week ended November 2, U.S. Energy Information Administration
(EIA) data showed Wednesday.
Scientists from the ARC Centre of
Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at the University of
Queensland say the rapid collapse of the coral community is
potential evidence of the link between man-made changes in water
quality and the loss of corals on the Great Barrier Reef.
Can a hyperbaric chamber help you
prevent cancer?
Research has revealed that a deficiency
of oxygen metabolism in the cells can lead to tumor growth.
MIT-educated health expert Raymond Francis has written about
this in his book, Never Fear Cancer Again, and a recent study in
the Journal of Molecular Cell Biology has confirmed that this is
most likely the primary cause of cancer, he tells Newsmax
Health.
-
The longest ever human aspartame study, spanning 22 years,
found a clear association between aspartame consumption and
non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and leukemia in men
-
Leukemia was associated with diet soda intake in both sexes
The giant Homer City power plant
continues to generate electricity as up to $750 million in new
pollution control equipment is installed -- and a bankruptcy
filing on Tuesday by a related entity will keep that process
going, the plant's primary owner said.
It really is all China's fault, say
most solar experts, but the Chinese government's motivations
aren't necessarily malicious.
...a growing body of research shows
you can get fit in a fraction of the time compared to the "old
standard" recommendations of exercising 30 minutes to an hour
most days of the week by using high-intensity interval training
(HIIT) such as Peak Fitness.
China's ruling communists opened a
pivotal congress to initiate a power handover to new leaders
Thursday with a nod to their revolutionary past and a broad
promise of cleaner government while keeping off-stage the main
event _ the bargaining over seats in the new leadership.
Rising temperatures due to climate
change could mean wild arabica coffee is extinct in 70 years,
posing a risk to the genetic sustainability of one of the
world's basic commodities, scientists said.
The Climate Group is calling for an "American Clean
Revolution" to scale up investment in cleantech and renewable
energy.
The group believes this will future-proof American
infrastructure, boost the economy and avert catastrophic weather
events caused by global warming.
With the financial crisis in Europe
deepening, more Europeans are leaving their homes and crossing
borders to seek work, placing extraordinary pressure on the
agreement to allow free movement of Europeans in Europe, known
as the Schengen agreement. If the migrations continue, countries
like Switzerland may withdraw from the agreement altogether,
reversing the open borders agreement that was a hallmark of the
new Europe.
Democrats retained control of the
US Senate in Tuesday's election, paving the way for a potential
opponent of natural gas exports and vocal critic of commodity
market speculation to take over a key energy committee.
Comparing this reconstruction to
records of major Maya building episodes and warfare, they
conclude that an extended period of generous rainfall helped
spur the growth and proliferation of Maya city-states, and a
prolonged dry period played a key part in their collapse. But
many archaeologists remain reluctant to adopt climate as the
chief driver of Maya society.
Shale gas and advances in oil and
natural gas extraction technologies over the last five years
have provided a large economic stimulus for the United States.
That is the conclusion of new research from the American Clean
Skies Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to
advancing America's energy independence and a cleaner,
low-carbon environment through the expanded use of natural gas,
renewables and efficiency.
Serious business awaits the
nation's lawmakers, the 'fiscal cliff' foremost. But the results
of Election 2012 could give Washington's main players cause to
dig in their heels
President Obama won the re-election. This has been the big
global headline for the past two days, and it has allowed the
renewable energy industry to let out a huge sigh of relief.
There’s hope.
But after skimming through the numerous Obama headlines, I
came across a few election stories that haven’t made the front
page.
Is Russia's dominance in gas exports coming to an end? This
is the conclusion of GBI Research in its latest report.
European shale prospects could reshape the continent's energy
market dynamics by easing reliance on Russian natural gas
imports, according to GBI.
During October 2012, the Pacific Ocean continued to reflect
borderline ENSO-neutral/ weak El Niño conditions. Equatorial sea
surface temperature (SST) anomalies increased across the Pacific
Ocean during the latter half of the month, which was also
reflected in the Niño indices
The exodus of customers from Commonwealth Edison has
environmental groups clamoring to change a law that requires
ComEd customers to pay for renewable energy development.
By law, 25 percent of Illinois' electricity must come from
wind, solar and other renewable resources by 2025. But the
customer base expected to help pay for energy from those sources
is shrinking dramatically as a result of aggregation.
The U.S. EPA has approved a plan to
stop cleanup at the site of a major 2008 coal-ash spill in
Tennessee and monitor the site for the next 30 years,
The Environmental Protection Agency
announced today it has approved TVA's preferred plan for dealing
with the final cleanup phase of the 2008 Kingston Fossil Plant
coal ash spill.
At first glance, hydrogen seems
like a brilliant alternative fuel for motor cars. It burns so
clean that all it produces is water, it’s the most abundant
element in the universe and it doesn’t need all those rare earth
elements and heavy metals that electric vehicles depend on. The
only trouble is, it’s very difficult to handle.
s waste is increasingly moving across EU borders for recovery
or disposal, the European Environment Agency (EEA) is warning of
a big rise in the export of hazardous waste to countries outside
of Europe.
Increasingly stringent and harmonised waste policies in the
EU have led countries to transport more waste material
elsewhere, for example if they do not have the facilities to
recycle or dispose of particular types of waste.
The European Union appears to have
met several objectives to reduce the impacts of air pollution,
according to the original scientific understanding used to set
the objectives. But when using the improved scientific
understanding of air pollution now available, it becomes clear
that emissions need to be even further reduced to protect health
and the environment.
The European Union launched an
investigation on Thursday into alleged state subsidies for
Chinese solar panel manufacturers, intensifying the conflict
over the multi-billion dollar solar power equipment market that
is straining trade ties.
Altering the course of U.S social
policy, Maine and Maryland became the first states to approve
same-sex marriage by popular vote, while Washington state and
Colorado set up a showdown with federal authorities by
legalizing recreational use of marijuana.
Goldman recently published their
projections for GDP levels by nation 38 years into the future.
This has to be a difficult forecast to make - involving
assumptions that, if changed slightly, could impact the outcome
materially. Nevertheless it is worth taking a look at these
results.
Greece's euro partners won't be able to release the country's
next batch of bailout cash next week, even though the Greek
Parliament narrowly backed more unpopular austerity measures
Thursday.
'It has begun'. I posted an
article yesterday showing historical evidence of a solar eclipse
window which begins 14 days prior to the event, and 14 after. In
an upcoming article, I will describe what the possible reasons
would be for a solar eclipse to set off earthquakes and
volcanoes.
When bad events happen, they don't
happen in a vacuum. These events are not singularities which
wreak havoc and then go away, leaving us to resume our lives.
They infiltrate our world at the most basic levels, leaving us
vulnerable and with the sudden understanding that we are
miniscule beings in a human construct that really cares nothing
for us.
Researchers at Rice University and
Lockheed Martin may have developed a low-cost method of creating
longer-lasting, high-capacity lithium-ion batteries. Currently
graphite is used as the anode in commercial li-ion products,
despite the fact that a silicon anode could potentially store
ten times more lithium ions. The team says it has solved one of
the problems associated with silicon, which nearly triples the
energy density of current li-ion designs.
On a recent broadcast of the news show Democracy Now hosted by
Amy Goodman, Cynthia Rosenzweig, co-chair of the New York City
Panel on Climate Change, went out of her way to begin her
comments on Hurricane Sandy and the effects of global warming to
issue a disclaimer: "but first Amy, I need to make something
very clear: any one storm cannot be associated directly with
climate change…we have to be very careful not to say Hurricane
Sandy was caused by climate change."
Pentagon Press Secretary George
Little confirms an Iranian military plane fired upon, but did
not hit, an unarmed U.S. drone aircraft a week ago. Little says
the drone was in international airspace.
Upper respiratory problems may be
caused by bacteria, viruses, allergies, asthma, and even
inhalation of various pollutants. Symptoms of respiratory
problems can include chest congestion, difficulty breathing and
irritated nasal or throat passages. If you, or someone you’re
close to, has experienced these symptoms, you know they can be
very disruptive.
Developers familiar with Mexico's rapid installation of wind
power projects are predicting that the country can ramp up from
1,000 MW of current capacity to as much as 12 GW by 2020. The
prediction was made at 19th Annual Border Energy Forum,
organized here last week by the Texas Land Office, by Pablo
Gottfried Blackmore, a member of the directors council of the
Asociación Mexicana de Energía Eólica, the country's national
wind trade group. Others at the forum, including Mannti Cummins,
the wind energy director for American Shoreline Inc., also
echoed bullish predictions for the country's wind potential.
* Fewer people overall voted in
2012 (about 117 million) compared to 2008 (about 125 million).
* President Obama received some
6.6 million fewer votes in 2012 than he did in 2008 (60,217,329
in 2012 votes compared to
66,882,230 votes in 2008)
Even after a week of repairs to the
electricity grid in the US Northeast in the wake of Hurricane
Sandy, the number of customers without power inched back up
Thursday morning as another storm bringing rain, wet snow and
high winds hit the area, the US Department of Energy said.
While the 2001-02 drought in the
West played a key role in pushing the pine beetle outbreak into
a true regional epidemic, the outbreak continued to gain ground
even after temperature and precipitation levels returned to
levels nearer the long-term averages, said Chapman of
CU-Boulder’s geography department. The beetles continued to
decimate lodgepole pine forests by moving into wetter and higher
elevations and into less susceptible tree stands -- those with
smaller diameter lodgepoles sharing space with other tree
species.
Due to the masterful efforts of an
international team of astronomers, a new super-Earth planet has
been discovered within the habitable zone of a star just 42
light years from Earth. Part of a six planetary system, the
super-Earth known as HD 40307g has several promising attributes
in terms of its ability to support life and because of its
relative proximity it may soon be possible to observe the planet
optically.
President Barack Obama will face a
two-fold challenge in energy policy in his second term: make
good on his promise to act on climate change, while at the same
time foster growth in oil and gas production that has spurred
jobs and manufacturing.
Stocks plummeted today amid worries
both at home and abroad, as the Dow Jones industrial average
recorded its worst loss this year. Anxiety about further
gridlock in Washington, D.C., and grim European economic reports
weighed heavily on trading sentiment.
President Obama has won another
four years in office. In the wake of destruction left by
Hurricane Sandy, the country may have experienced its first
election disrupted by global warming. What makes this even more
troubling is that the urgent crisis of climate change was never
meaningfully discussed in the debates or on the campaign trail.
After a year of punishing droughts in our nation’s breadbasket,
extreme heat across most of the country, and wildfires that
devastated our forests and property, it is now time to turn up
the heat on our political leaders. Even with the continued
polarization in Washington D.C., there is much President Obama
can do to adopt science-based solutions that permanently drive
down our carbon emissions and more effectively prepare for the
climate-related disasters that will continue to threaten our
lives and livelihoods.
In an effort to reduce its carbon
footprint, Opelika City Hall has taken proactive steps over the
past several months of utilizing solar panels for electricity.
The Palestinians took the first
step toward raising their status at the United Nations from an
observer to a nonmember observer state Thursday by circulating a
draft resolution to the 193 U.N. member states and asking for
their support.
Imagine a forest landscape where
every tree is aligned and equally spaced apart. A forest where
there are no sounds, no undergrowth and a distinct lack of
species. Could this be the fate of our environment as carbon
forestry becomes a common way to offset greenhouse gas
emissions? Or, could it supplement reforestation programs and
slowly ease the biodiversity crisis?
With the 2012 election over and President Barack Obama's
re-election secured, U.S.-based renewable energy producers are
already looking ahead to what they expect will be four more
years of continued support for their endeavors.
Researchers said Tuesday they had seen
the earliest-ever warning signs of Alzheimer's disease — among a
high-risk group of 20-somethings — in the ongoing quest for
early detection and prevention.
A major problem in the search for a cure
for this debilitating form of dementia is that symptoms appear
years after irreversible brain decay has already set in.
Store sales in the US dipped on a
YoY basis last week as we see the first effects of Hurricane
Sandy on high frequency economic data. The effect is expected to
be temporary however.
You comfort them over a skinned
knee in the playground, and coax them to sleep with a soothing
lullaby. But being a nurturing mother is not just about
emotional care – it pays dividends by determining the size of
your child’s brain, scientists say.
According to recent research, if
Americans cut back on the amount of time spent sitting down, it
could add years to their life expectancy.
Carnegie Mellon University's
(CMU's) Nanorobotics Laboratory has received US$787,000 in
funding from the National Institutes of Health, which will be
matched by CMU, to develop a squishy robotic capsule that can be
controlled while inside the body. The capsule could replace
invasive endoscopes by performing camera imaging, drug
injection, tissue sampling, and more.
Solar photovoltaic technology has
been transformed into a commercially viable energy-generating
technology in the past decade due to continuous technological
advancements and growing demand for clean energy, and has shown
robust growth even during economic slowdown, according to the
report.
Just off a country road is a sight few people ever imagined
in this corner of southeastern North Carolina.
Solar panels cover a 35-acre field that once produced corn,
tobacco and other crops. When the sun shines, the panels
generate enough electricity for hundreds of homes.
History is a wise teacher to any who will listen. As the old
saying goes, “There is nothing new under the sun,” and this is
especially true for our nation this week" Throughout recorded
history, countless nations and leaders have made unwise, foolish
decisions that seemed good in the short-term but wound up being
costly choices in the end.
7 SETS OF QUESTIONS TO ASK AFTER
PRESIDENT OBAMA?
Starting with: "Is the implosion of
American more or less likely now?" Joel C. Rosenberg
The Dow industrials lost more than
300 points in a sell-off on Wednesday that drove all major U.S.
stock indexes down over 2 percent in the wake of the
presidential election as the looming "fiscal cliff" debate and
Europe's economic troubles returned to the forefront.
The U.S. will undoubtedly
"compromise" and sign the treaty, all the time reassuring us
that it is protecting our constitutional right to bear arms.
Merrill conducts a periodic survey
of US institutional money managers. One area the survey focuses
on is a set of questions on the so-called "tail risks", the less
probable but potentially devastating events that negatively
impact financial asset valuations. Here are the survey results
from September and October of this year.
A total solar eclipse will take
place on 13-14 November 2012 (UTC), beginning locally on
November 13 west of the International Date Line over northern
Australia, and ending on November 14 east of the date line off
the western South American coast. Its greatest magnitude is
1.0500, occurring only 12 hours before perigee, with greatest
eclipse totality lasting just over 4 minutes
Turkey is drawing up contingency
plans with the NATO military alliance to fortify its border with
Syria, and a Patriot missile deployment is one option on the
table, Turkish officials say.
Solar activity took a jump over the
last 48 hours producing a least one M-class flare and a
following CME. The event occurred on Nov. 8th from sunspot
region 1611 as it's coming around the eastern limb of the Sun.
A CME was observed in association with this event...
Up to 250,000 new and used vehicles
may have been damaged to the point that they need to head to the
scrap yard because of Hurricane Sandy, the New York Daily News
reported.
Hot and dry conditions in parts of
middle America deepened an ongoing drought in many states over
the last week, according to a climatology report issued
Thursday.
U.S. Geothermal Inc., a leading
renewable energy company focused on the development, production
and sale of electricity from geothermal energy, today announced
an update on the construction of its three module, 22 net
megawatt geothermal power plant at the Neal Hot Springs project,
located in Malheur County, Oregon.
Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC) yesterday
released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey®
(PMMS®), showing fixed mortgage rates mixed following
the monthly employment report but continuing to hover near their
record lows over the past six weeks. Last year at this time, the
30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 3.99 percent, dropping
below 4.00 percent for the first time since Freddie Mac started
reporting its weekly mortgage rates survey in 1971
The
fact is, the country is almost there. The chart below shows the
decline in imports as a percentage of consumption, or what the
DOE calls “products supplied.” It actually dipped to less than
40% for one recent month — February of this year — and in the
most recent month’s date (for August) was just less than 41%.
The US Northeast was gradually
returning to service Tuesday following widespread outages last
related to Hurricane Sandy. Below is a summary of the most
recent developments:
The company today announced it
planned to cut global workforce down another 3,000 people by the
end of next year -- 1,000 of which will come before the end of
this year.
Proposal 3, which called for
amending the Michigan Constitution to require 25% of the state's
energy to come from renewable resources by 2025, was easily
trounced Tuesday.
Recent E Source research reveals that U.S businesses are huge
energy hogs, wasting more than $60 billion in energy annually.
This is bad news for commercial businesses but great news for
utilities. This wastefulness presents significant opportunities
for utilities to increase enrollment in energy-efficiency
programs.
Christopher Ruddy’s
Perspective: It was the worst of times and the
worst of times.
With the 2012 election results in,
there are no short- or even medium-term "silver linings" for
Republicans.
President Barack Obama has won a decisive
victory and the GOP, expecting to gain Senate seats, actually
had a net loss of three.
November 6, 2012
Britain is facing its worst
ecological disaster in at least a generation, as a devastating
fungus that has already wiped out most of continental Europe's
ash trees, appears to have taken root in rural England,
conservationists say.
The three units, the last of which
became operation at the end of October, represent one of the
largest generation sources on Georgia Power's system. Together,
the plants can produce in excess of 2,500 MW of energy -- more
than five times the electricity of the coal units they replaced
and enough to power about 625,000 homes.
The owner of six coal-fired
electric generating plants in Illinois, including the shuttered
Crawford and Fisk stations in Chicago, is on the verge of filing
for bankruptcy.
China's leader in-waiting, Xi
Jinping, will have no choice but to embark on political reforms
to leave a lasting mark the way the current leadership has done
with economic reforms, exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai
Lama said on Monday.
Monsanto has long been trying to establish control over the
seeds of the plants that produce food for the world. They have
patented a number of genetically altered food crops, which can
only be grown with proper license, and the seeds for which must
be purchased anew each year.
Alas, genetically engineered (GE) crops cannot be contained.
And rather than being found guilty of contaminating farmers'
property, Monsanto has successfully sued hundreds of
unsuspecting farmers for patent infringement when unlicensed GE
crops were found growing in their fields. Many farmers have
subsequently, quite literally, lost their farms.
In testimony delivered on September
12, Brandon Wales, director of the Department of Homeland
Security’s (DHS) Infrastructure Threat and Risk Analysis Center,
admitted that DHS remains unprepared for the possibility of an
electromagnetic pulse (EMP) event or attack.
Would you rather take a $1,500
mass-marketed drug with toxic ingredients to prevent premature
childbirth, or a ten-dollar compounded nontoxic version? You may
not have a choice.
-
Among people aged 70 to 89, those who ate the most
carbohydrates and sugars were more likely to develop mild
cognitive impairment, including problems with memory,
language, thinking and judgment.
-
As you overindulge on sugar and grains, your brain becomes
overwhelmed by the consistently high levels of insulin and
eventually shuts down its insulin signaling, leading to
impairments in your thinking and memory abilities, and
eventually causing permanent brain damage.
gypt's
new Coptic pope said Monday the constitution now being drafted
will not be acceptable if it is overtly religious, a sign he
would campaign with his Christian minority and secular groups
against increasing Islam's role in the new charter.
Federal Reserve Bank of San
Francisco President John Williams said central bank purchases of
bonds will help spur U.S. economic growth to 2.5 percent next
year and 3.5 percent in 2014 while not fueling inflation.
Some 7,700 gallons of fuel spilled
from Phillips 66's Bayway refinery in Linden, New Jersey, after
Hurricane Sandy, the U.S. Coast Guard said on Monday, reporting
an apparent second leak at the New York harbor oil trading hub.
Estimates of economic damage from
Hurricane Sandy are now ranging between $30 - $50bn. This is
clearly a large number.
Germany's share of renewable energy
sources in overall electricity consumption rose to a record 26%
for the first nine months of the year, German energy industry
association BDEW said Monday.
Wind power remains
Germany's most important source of renewable energy, increasing
its share to 8.6% for the first nine months of 2012 from 8% for
the same period in 2011, it said.
These
executives bet against their companies after asking taxpayers
for help, and cashing out as taxpayer money went to waste.
Chelation has long been favored by
many integrative doctors. Now conventional cardiologists with
vested interests in surgery and drugs are trying (and failing)
to trash the study. What a surprise.
The annual rate of reduction of carbon emissions per unit of
GDP needed to limit global warming to 2ºC, has passed a critical
threshold according to new analysis from PwC.
And the report's author warn the rate of reduction now
required has never been achieved before and add: "This isn't
about shock tactics, it's simple maths."
More than 2.25 million Americans will likely die from medical
harm in this decade – the equivalent of wiping out the entire
populations of North Dakota, Rhode Island, and Vermont
The world's food security depends
on the quality of the forward-looking agricultural studies we
are carrying out today, says Mark Holderness. Climate change,
population growth and competing demands for land and resources
are putting great pressure on the world's food systems.
Smallholder farmers in the developing world, who produce much of
the food for the poorest people, are threatened by devastating
droughts and floods, food price spikes, and persistent poverty.
At a time when coal generation is
being phased out and electricity demand is on the rise,
utilities are increasingly shifting energy policy to a focus on
renewable sources.
Iranian oil minister Rostam Ghasemi
renewed Monday a threat to halt all oil exports if the West
imposes more sanctions against Tehran, oil ministry news service
Shana reported.
"If the West increases sanction
pressures, the Islamic republic, in reaction, will revise the
trend of its crude oil exports," Ghasemi was quoted as saying.
"Iran is not willing that such a thing happens in the world."
With Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM)
signaling that it's planning to sell its stake in a huge oil
field in southern Iraq in favor of new drilling projects to
access large untapped reserves in northern Iraq’s
semi-autonomous Kurdish region, power is shifting dramatically
away from Iraq’s government. The winners are Exxon and the Iraqi
Kurds, with one poised to reap large profits and the other more
political power, as LIGNET explains.
The small sandy square in front of Yasushi Takemoto's
apartment in Koriyama, a city of 328,000 about 150 miles
north of Tokyo, looks like a normal public park. On a recent
weekday morning, a group of children played on the swings
while the retired dentistry professor strolled under the
trees.
Beneath the soil in one unmarked, unfenced corner, however,
lie hundreds of bags packed with radioactive dirt, sludge from
drainage ditches, and other contaminated debris.
Kuwaiti police used stun grenades,
smoke bombs and teargas to disperse thousands of demonstrators
calling for greater democracy in the country. The rally came as
the emir was meeting with the representatives of the opposition.
During each national election year the League publishes its
Congressional Voter Guide.
The League’s Voter Guide allows members and concerned
citizens to evaluate their Congressional representatives on key
issues.
Maine's largest wind developer has scaled back a proposed wind
farm on Bowers Mountain in the eastern part of the state in an
effort to appease regulators and lessen environmental impacts.
When Michigan residents go to the
polls on Tuesday they'll have a chance to do something that no
other U.S. voter has ever done: enshrine a clean energy mandate
in the state Constitution so politicians won't be able to weaken
or abolish it at a whim.
Ever hear of National EMP Awareness Day? Most of your leaders
in Washington haven’t either, and that’s why all of us may be in
grave danger.
An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack constitutes one of the
single greatest threats to modern national security. Typically
triggered by a high-altitude nuclear warhead, an EMP can damage
unprotected electronic devices, disrupt communications, and
permanently destroy American infrastructure. The 2008 Graham
Commission lists a host of likely outcomes to a successful
strike: planes falling from the sky, cars stalling on the
roadways, electrical networks failing, food rotting—the list
continues for pages.
Major nations failed to reach
agreement on Thursday to set up huge marine protected areas off
Antarctica under a plan to step up conservation of creatures
such as whales and penguins around the frozen continent.
A Tunisian invention that harvests wind energy through a
design inspired by sailboats promises cheaper, more efficient
wind energy.
The bladeless wind turbine, the Saphonian, named after the
wind divinity that was worshipped by the ancient Carthaginians,
also promises to be more environmentally friendly than existing
wind turbines that produce noise and kill birds through their
blade rotation.
A
consortium of five Arizona community colleges has been awarded a
$13.5 million federal Trade Adjustment Assistance Community
College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grant to train
trade-impacted workers and other adults for high-skill,
high-wage employment and advancement in sustainable energy and
mining industries.
The spin is that Obama inherited a
mess — the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
This is true; however, his solutions were just as big of a mess.
With oil becoming scarcer and more
expensive, the economics of the industry may finally tip in
favor of one of the most neglected areas of its business - the
technology for cleaning up oil spills.
Residents who live near the
Kewaunee Power Station with its 556-megawatt nuclear reactor
still are absorbing the recent news that the plant will shut
down in May, taking with it 655 jobs and leaving behind --
possibly for decades -- scores of concrete canisters filled with
spent nuclear waste.
Solar activity was low. No
Earth-directed CMEs (coronal mass ejections) were observed.
The geomagnetic field is expected to be mostly quiet for the
next three days
Sea levels are rising faster than expected from global
warming and new research is said to reveal the reasons why.
The last official IPCC report in 2007 projected a global sea
level rise between 0.2 and 0.5 meters by the year 2100. But
current sea-level rise measurements meet or exceed the high end
of that range and suggest a rise of one meter or more by the end
of the century.
The superstorm Sandy will likely
end up as the second-largest insured flood loss in U.S. history,
behind only Hurricane Katrina, a top executive of a leading
flood insurance provider said on Thursday.
The devastation and heartache that
Hurricane Sandy has delivered to the East Coast — especially to
New York and New Jersey, as well as my home state of
Pennsylvania — is monumental in scope and will be felt for years
to come. While the repercussions of Sandy are almost universally
negative, they say every cloud has a silver lining, and hers may
be no different. The superstorm may be the catalyst for
much-needed water and wastewater infrastructure improvements
that the industry has been clamoring for.
Monetary-stimulus measures that
have weakened the dollar to jolt the economy will send the
economy into depression at a time of soaring prices, likely
around 2014, he wrote: "The next presidential term most likely
will see the onset of a domestic, hyperinflationary great
depression."
Embattled photovoltaic solar power
manufacturer Amonix announced on Tuesday that it has broken the
solar module efficiency record, becoming the first manufacturer
to convert more than a third of incoming light energy into
electricity – a goal once branded "one third of a sun" in a
Department of Energy initiative. The Amonix module clocked an
efficiency rating of 33.5 percent.
A team led by researchers at the
University of Maryland School of Public Health has found that
the superbug methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)
is prevalent at several U.S. wastewater treatment plants. MRSA
is well known for causing difficult-to-treat and potentially
fatal bacterial infections in hospital patients, but since the
late 1990s it has also been infecting otherwise healthy people
in community settings.
In the eyes of the government, I'm
probably considered a criminal. All because I had the audacity
to seek out wholesome, nutrient-dense, naturally prepared food.
It all started six years ago, when one of my children got sick,
and conventional medicine had nothing to offer him. Nothing.
Despite taking him to some of the best hospitals and doctors in
the region, nobody had any answers. And meanwhile, I watched my
9-year old suffer in pain day after day after day. It went on
for over a year. Some days he could barely get out of bed.
The great energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable
sources of energy is under way. As fossil fuel prices rise, as
oil insecurity deepens, and as concerns about pollution and
climate instability cast a shadow over the future of coal, a new
world energy economy is emerging. The old energy economy, fueled
by oil, coal, and natural gas, is being replaced with an economy
powered by wind, solar, and geothermal energy. The Earth’s
renewable energy resources are vast and available to be tapped
through visionary initiatives. Our civilization needs to embrace
renewable energy on a scale and at a pace we’ve never seen
before.
There’s a problem with the
seasonally adjusted number. The SA number for this month will
subsequently be revised in each of the next 5 years as the BLS
attempts to fit the SA number to the actual change. It will also
have a major benchmark revision in February, when the annual
benchmarking process is finalized.
The world will have to cut the rate
of carbon emissions by an unprecedented rate to 2050 to stop
global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees this
century, a report released by PwC on Monday showed.
Snow and rain and cooler
temperatures helped ease suffering in drought-stricken areas of
the United States over the last week, though some areas saw
conditions grow worse, according to a climatology report issued
Thursday.
I read the news reports with tears
in my eyes because I know how these people feel--I understand
their heartbreak, their devastation, and their need to identify
someone... anyone... out there who cares about what's happening
to them....You cannot depend on an impersonal construct such as
government to save you. You must reach down to the inner
recesses of your soul, drag out that spirit of stubbornness and
gutsy determination, and take control of your fate and your
future.
Retrofitting engines on existing
Navy ships, like the USS Arleigh Burke pictured here, with RDE
technology could improve fuel efficiency
More residents have power Saturday
evening, but there's still more than 114,000 customers waiting
for electricity to come back on.
Contrarians argue that Hurricane
Sandy isn't proof of climate change. But local scientists say
the recent storm offers more damning evidence that Rhode
Island's weather and landscape are undergoing a long-term
transformation — one with a steep cost in dollars and human
health.
In the end, they had to depend on
the government. Many went hungry. ..And Nero Fiddled
While Rome Burned...Now, imagine if scenes like the
media reported in Sandy's aftermath weren't just limited to
hurricanes and natural disasters. What if pockets of hunger,
like those across New Jersey and New York, became the norm?
What would happen to you, your loved ones, and your community
then?
November 2, 2012
Ohio has nearly 10,000 people whose
jobs involve improving energy efficiency, and their work
generates $2.1 billion in annual sales, according to a new
report.
Toronto Hydro-Electric System
Limited (Toronto Hydro) crews are working to restore power to as
many customers as possible today following the storm damage that
impacted Toronto's electricity grid. The damage was most severe
at 4 a.m. this morning, with more than 60,000 without
electricity in Toronto. Currently, over 300 outages affecting
approximately 32,000 customers are ongoing.
In a re-election bid mired with questions about Benghazi,
President Barack Obama can now officially add another hot-button
issue to his plate: the recent bankruptcy of solar company
Abound Solar, which has been called "Colorado's own Solyndra." A
criminal investigation is now officially underway, headed up by
the Weld County District Attorney's Office in Colorado, for what
it calls "possible securities fraud, consumer fraud and
financial misrepresentation."
With no helicopter, they would have to check each tower on
the transmission line by foot or on all-terrain vehicles.
Transmission lines are the high-voltage lines that run
through the mountains, sometimes on wooden poles and sometimes
on giant steel structures, feeding power to substations.
Air Fuel Synthesis, Ltd. (AFS), a small company in the
northern English county of Durham, has recently made headlines
for a chemical process that claims to synthesize gasoline from
air and water. In essence, AFS is using energy to unburn fuel so
that it can be burned as fuel again – a great deal of energy.
Sixty kWh of electric energy are used up to store 9 kWh of that
energy in a liter of gasoline. When you take into consideration
that gasoline vehicles are about 15 percent efficient, a car
fueled with synthetic gasoline would use roughly 35 times more
energy on a given trip than would an electric vehicle. Not, it
would seem, a prescription for a commercially valuable green
product.
The majority of protheses available
today that replace the lower leg, ankle, and foot are passive
devices that store energy in an elastic element (similar to a
coiled spring) at the beginning of a step and release during
push-off to give you some added boost. While this type of
prosthetic is energy efficient, it doesn't replicate the full
power we get from our muscles.
Although there is an urban legend
that the world will end this year based on a misinterpretation
of the Mayan calendar, some researchers think a 40-year-old
computer program that predicts a collapse of socioeconomic order
and massive drop in human population in this century may be on
target
In 1995 Dr. Andrew Wakefield, a
respected gastroenterologist and Fellow of the Royal Colleges of
Surgeons and Pathologists, posed two seemingly innocuous
questions…
Unknown to him at the time, these two simple queries would
pit him directly against some of the world's most
powerful interests – including political, corporate and
multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical forces. This book details
how those interests seemingly had no interest in the
truth and definitely no desire for his questions (and
the answers they suggested) to see the light of day…ever.
With a European banking union
forming and London at risk of losing its status at the world's
most important financial center, the UK is being forced to
confront the issue of its continued participation in the
European Union. If the EU indeed becomes more federal in
character, the UK could withdraw as a member and take its
chances going it alone. But this would have risks of its own.
Barclays, already rocked by an
interest rate rigging scandal, unveiled new U.S. regulatory
investigations into the bank's financial probity on Wednesday
and said its profit was hit by charges for mis-selling
insurance.
Once developed, the system should
allow users to virtually experience being in a remote location
by seeing, hearing and even feeling that location through the
sensory inputs of a robot located there. That robot, in turn,
would relay the user’s speech and movements to the people at
that location. Now, two of the CORDIS partners have put an
interesting slant on the technology – they’ve used it to let
people interact with rats.
In a New York Times
editorial on Monday, the caption read "A Big Storm Requires Big
Government." The author of the piece argued that "disaster
coordination is one of the most vital functions of 'big
government'" so we should not be so eager to downsize the
federal monstrosity that exists in Washington DC today...
What a sad life, to be so helpless.
A California man got an early morning beat down after being
pummeled by a karate student who found him drunk in her
bathroom.
Jannine Ramirez had just won a karate competition when she
arrived at her Fresno apartment early Sunday and heard someone
in the bathroom. Ramirez, 20, kicked down her bathroom door,
then kicked the intruder through a shower door.
A recent study by University of Manchester scientists has
strongly suggested that ... cancer is a modern, man-made disease
caused by environmental factors such as pollution and diet.
Monday's mammoth storm that caused
severe flooding, damage and fatalities to the eastern U.S. will
raise pressure on Congress and the next president to address the
impacts of climate change as the price tag for extreme weather
disasters escalates.
The impacts of climate change and a carbon-intensive
economy cost the world around US$1.2 trillion a year — 1.6 per
cent of the total global GDP (gross domestic product), states
'Climate Vulnerability Monitor: A Guide to the Cold Calculus of
A Hot Planet'.
For this reason, "adapting to climate change is very
likely a cost-effective investment in almost all cases and
should be central to any climate change policy",
the report says.
Now that I'm no longer adding
scraps to my bokashi composting bin multiple times a day, I tend
to forget it's still loitering under my kitchen sink. There's no
odor; the putrefying organics are sealed tightly inside the bin.
And it's completely silent, with none of the gurgling or
bubbling noises you'd expect from a fermentation process. The
bin only sees any action when I drain the bokashi tea every few
days.
In a
startling and very positive new twist to the intense drama
unfolding in the Middle East, the prospect for an all-out
Israeli-Iranian war now appears to have been pushed back by
eight to ten months. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak was
interviewed by a British newspaper this week. Barak indicated
that while events could change yet again, it would now appear
that the likelihood of a major war with Iran before next fall
has been significantly reduced.
Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps,
family-owned maker of the top-selling natural brand of soap in
North America, announced today that they have donated another
$250,000 to Proposition 37, The California Right to Know
Genetically Engineered Food Act.
Prop. 37 is a
common-sense November ballot measure that will help consumers
make informed choices about the food they eat.
It’s hard during the events of
Superstorm Sandy to worry too much about what happened in oil
markets last week. It seems like eons ago. So consider this
week’s EIA data and analysis of it to be like looking at a past
that was very different from the present, even though it was
only a few days ago. (That reminds us of the famous statement of
the noted quipster and baseball reliever, the late Dan
Quisenberry, who said: “I’ve seen the future and it’s much like
the present, only longer.”)
While most of us probably take it for granted, energy plays an
integral role in our daily lives—in commuting to work, running
the dishwasher, charging our mobile devices, and cooling an
office building, not to mention the manufacture of every product
we buy. For better or for worse, nearly everything we do
requires energy, and we use more energy now than we ever have
before.
Environmental advocates said they
fear flooding from Hurricane Sandy has carried toxic materials
from New York City superfund sites to other locales within the
city, the New York Daily News reported.
While there is much interest in
developing various forms of energy storage at the present day,
the popular contemporary technologies involve high capital cost.
Many researchers have actively been seeking alternative mobile
and stationary technologies that involve lower capital costs.
Part of this research has revolved around increasing the energy
storage capacity of classical thermal energy storage
technologies. Many native societies have for centuries heated up
rocks on a fire, then burying the heated rocks along with
vegetables and animal protein that the stored thermal energy
would cook.
Banks in the U.S. reported stronger demand for auto loans and
commercial and residential mortgages during the third quarter,
according to a Federal Reserve survey.
The Fed described the share of banks reporting increased
demand as “significant.” Demand for most other loan types was
“about unchanged,” the Fed said in Washington in its quarterly
survey of senior loan officers.
The federal government has secured
its first conviction in the killing of Border Patrol Agent Brian
Terry, an incident that led to the uncovering of the Fast and
Furious gun walking scandal.
Manuel Osorio-Arellanes pled
guilty to first degree murder in federal court in Tucson in
exchange for prosecutors promising not to seek the death
penalty.
Researchers at Stanford University
have developed an experimental solar cell made entirely of
carbon. In addition to providing a promising alternative to the
increasingly expensive materials used in traditional solar
cells, the thin film prototype is made of carbon materials that
can be coated onto surfaces from a solution, cutting
manufacturing costs and offering the potential for coating
flexible solar cells onto buildings and car windows.
The impending threat to U.S. banks, domestic and global
economies, and the stock market in general, is the federal
“fiscal cliff”—the term coined by the media and analysts broadly
covers:
- Expiration of the Bush tax cuts on December 31
- Budget sequestration
- Hitting the debt ceiling
- Expiration of Operation Twist
These important components of the fiscal cliff weigh heavily
on banks, the financial sector and the world economy.
More than a year and a half after
an earthquake and tsunami destroyed the Fukushima Dai-ichi
nuclear power plant in Japan, many fish in the area contain
levels of radioactive cesium that are just as high as they were
soon after the disaster.
Germany is known for its
cutting-edge policies on green issues, and its drive towards a
clean economy. One of its latest eco-breakthroughs comes from
the University of Freiburg's Biofoambark project. Researchers
there are trying to green up the insulation foam used in
construction, by replacing its petroleum-based ingredients with
a naturally-occurring compound that ordinarily goes to waste in
the lumber industry.
A new report released by GTM Research is forecasting that
between now and the year 2015 approximately 180 PV module
manufacturers across the globe will close operations or succumb
to acquisition. The report, titled "Global PV Module
Manufacturing 2013: Competitive Positioning, Consolidation and
the China Factor," analyzed over 300 PV module manufacturers in
the United States, Europe, and Asia. According to the report,
the current downturn in the worldwide PV manufacturing segment
is likely to last until 2014.
There is exciting news on the
Journal of Nuclear Physics. Andrea Rossi announced that the
Hot Cat plant we have all been excited about will start
operations in February of next year! This is great news, and
comes on the heels of a busy and exciting autumn season for the
E-Cat.
Wind and solar are relatively safe forms of energy, a feature
that we tend to overlook until a disaster hits like the
"superstorm" that disabled New York City's power grid this week.
Unlike fossil fuel plants, they require no
combustible fuels to generate electricity. And
there is no danger that they will leak radiation as did
the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant following last
year’s tsunami in Japan.
While hundreds of Seacoast
residents were still without power Wednesday as the region
cleaned up from the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, utility
companies are steadily restoring service to customers statewide.
Despite offering numerous
advantages over its rotating brethren, most notably the ability
to reach the high-speed winds found at higher altitudes,
kite-based energy systems are yet to really get off the ground
in a meaningful way. But things are looking up.
The facility will help the island
achieve the current administration’s aggressive plan to
diversify Puerto Rico’s energy sources. It will also help exceed
the goal of generating 12% renewable energy by 2015, 15% by 2020
and 20% by 2035.
In
its 75-year history, modern ground source geothermal energy
(GSGE) has flown so far under the radar, it might as well lie in
your granddad's root cellar. But unlike root cellars, built as
crude geothermal systems to preserve perishables in a static
environment, a ground source geothermal heat pump (GSGHP) can
deliver a dynamic and effective heating or cooling system.
After slamming the Jersey Shore and
flooding large sections of New York City, Hurricane Sandy has
left a massive headache in the Philadelphia region: widespread
power outages that could leave thousands of Pennsylvania and New
Jersey homeowners without electricity or heat for as long as a
week.
America will benefit to the tune of
billions every year when we end one of our worst domestic
policies since ... the prohibition of alcohol.
A study
released Wednesday by a respected Mexican think tank asserts
that proposals to legalize the recreational use of marijuana in
Colorado, Oregon and Washington could cut Mexican drug cartels'
earnings from traffic to the U.S. by as much as 30 percent.
Despite all the pleas to the
general public to be prepared, most people don't think disaster
will strike them. They'll mumble about the need to lay in some
supplies just in case "something" happens and then never do it.
They'll go about their day, blissfully in denial about the
ability of life to be transformed from idyllic to monstrous in
the blink of an eye.
The National Congress of American
Indians overwhelmingly voted to keep non-federally recognized
tribes as full voting members of the 68-year-old organization...
“It was a historic vote,” Norwood
said. “There were some who had a misguided and misinformed
position and they tended to be the loudest voices on this issue
and in circulating information, but obviously what we saw (in
the vote) was the silent majority of people who understand what
the organization was about when it was established and who
understand that we have to come together and it was a real
blessing to see that support.”
The U.S. Northeast began crawling
back to normal on Wednesday after monster storm Sandy crippled
transportation, knocked out power for millions and killed at
least 50 people in nine states with a massive storm surge and
rain that caused epic flooding.
Wind energy in the United States has grown by more than 18
times since 2000, although it still accounts for just 4 percent
of total U.S. electrical-generation capacity. This year is
expected to be the biggest ever for the industry, as companies
move projects up a year to try to complete them before the Dec.
31 tax credit expiration date.
But even as projects are moved up, the layoffs are happening
because of the lack of orders for next year.
The two men have fairly similar
governing records on energy and environmental issues. Their
campaign rhetoric, however, has differed on just about
everything except boosting the nation's production of oil and
natural gas.
Moving beyond batteries
“We have developed a way to convert
electricity into a liquid fuel by taking the hydrogen from water
using electrolysis and the nitrogen from the air to make
ammonia. Once we have the anhydrous ammonia, it can be used in a
gen-set to regenerate electricity and also be used as vehicle
fuel and as a fertiliser,” Maxwell says.
Unlike most other process
technologies, the renewable fuels produced by this process are
fungible replacements for petroleum-based jet and diesel fuel.
The Biofuels ISOCONVERSION process includes patented Catalytic
Hydrothermolysis (CH) reactor technology, developed by Applied
Research Associates (ARA), which utilizes water as a catalyst to
quickly and inexpensively convert plant and algal oils into
stable intermediate oil products, which are very similar to
petroleum crude oil. The intermediate oils are processed with
hydrogen using CLG’s ISOCONVERSION™ catalysts to produce
renewable jet fuel and diesel.
Two major products pipelines
serving the US East Coast offered the first real glimpse of
supply hope on Thursday, announcing restart plans for crucial
regional arteries.
After all, it says right on the door that concealed weapons
are allowed in the bank. They’re practically encouraged by the
sign: “Management recognizes the Second Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution as an unalienable right of all citizens.”
So when the robber walked out of the bank a short time later
with a red bank bag full of cash, maybe he shouldn’t have been
surprised that bank president David W. Thompson followed him out
to the parking lot. Thompson watched the masked robber get in a
Ford pickup parked in a handicapped spot up front, then pulled
his Colt .380 handgun and pointed it at the man.
President Obama and Governor Romney
agree that the U.S. is too dependent on foreign oil. But their
views differ significantly on how to reduce or even end that
dependence to make the country energy self-sufficient.
Around a quarter of mobile phone
towers in the ten East-coast states hit by Hurricane Sandy have
been damaged or destroyed, the Federal Communications Commission
has said.
Tropical rain forests have been called 'the lungs of the
world.' They also provide the last remnants of habitat for some
of our rarest animals, as well as thousands of plants yielding
medicines and cures, with many more yet to be discovered. But
forests are also home to millions of people, too.
On the heels of the recent biomass regulations imposed by the
Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER), the 50-MW
Russell Biomass plant, which has been in the works since 2005,
has been terminated.
Green Party presidential candidate
Jill Stein was arrested this morning after bringing supplies to
climate justice activists sitting in trees to stop construction
of a pipeline to carry crude oil from the Alberta tar sands to
Gulf Coast refineries.
Several developments Thursday
showed companies were taking significant steps to go around the
power problems in the New York area. Most facilities in the
area–particularly those in the whole New Jersey-Staten Island
corridor–continue to struggle with no power, flooding, or both.
By the end of the day Thursday, though, there was a fair amount
of good news. Buckeye Pipelines said it had restored most of its
eastern pipeline system. It doesn’t have power at its Linden, NJ
terminal, but it brought in generators to allow the terminal
partial operations.
While Americans on the East Coast
struggle to recover from Hurricane 'Sandy' - stretches of Asia
have been battered by typhoon "Son-Tinh" that has cost more than
30 lives since it first struck last week.
There were some differentials that
increased, but clearly, softness was the order of the day.
Traders repeatedly cited the realization in the markets that
activity in the entire New York/New Jersey region–people going
to work, going to school, going to wherever–is going to take a
several-days holiday, and with it, some demand for
transportation fuels will decline....The best news is coming out
of Philadelphia. The refinery operated by Delta Airlines at
Trainer is operating normally
It’s beginning to be clear that
concerns about docks in Sandy were unfounded; concerns about
refineries have mostly turned out to be not a problem; but
terminals in the New York area are a real mess.
Since peaking in 2005, US domestic
energy CO2 emissions have fallen by 8.6 percent. A
new report asserts that up to half of this reduction may be down
to "energy switching," as generators switch from coal to shale
gas (partly on cost grounds), which emits about half the CO2
when burned. Yet the same report, from the Tyndall Centre for
Climate Change Research, questions the wisdom of touting shale
gas as a low-carbon technology, with its authors actually
asserting that "the exploitation of shale gas reserves is likely
to increase total emissions." How so?
The brutal force and enormous
breadth of Hurricane Sandy may leave as many as 10 million
people in the dark from West Virginia to Maine and even as far
west as Chicago.
In a stunning move yesterday, U.S.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called for new leadership of
the main Syrian opposition group, the Syrian National Council
(SNC), and said it can no longer be viewed as the visible head
of the Syrian opposition. The move comes as Western states are
increasingly concerned about infighting within the SNC, short
shrift it is giving to Syrian minority groups, and a rise in
extremist activity among Syrian rebels fighting the Assad
regime.
Texas is coming up short in terms
of both water and energy, but the state's economy has fared
better than many other parts of the country due to low taxes,
business friendly regulations and a strong energy sector.
Given that in today’s world every
major and many minor disasters “go viral” in minutes rather than
hours or days it is worth taking a moment to reflect on how
widespread the impacts would be if any number of “scary energy
scenarios” were to take place. It should be noted that these
events are themselves “Black Swans” because although they are
predictable they are so unlikely that they are ignored by
politicians and the general public until they occur at which
time there is typically a huge, global over-reaction.
There are certainly many economic
issues that bear on the current election. Following are the
topics that have come up most frequently in conversations with
clients, and the posture of the major candidates on each of
them.
The Taliban appears poised to
emerge as the clear winner in the already losing war against
drug production in Afghanistan after the NATO-led international
force pulls out in 2014. The insurgents have taken advantage of
bureaucrats who can be easily bribed and are protecting opium
growers in exchange for a share of their profits. The revenue
that the Taliban makes on narcotics production is essential to
its operations and is certain to grow as the NATO-led force
withdraws.
Official with China's Defense Ministry says Beijing is
'paying close attention to the relevant moves by the Japanese'
Japan and the United States will
hold a biennial joint military exercise in Japan in November in
a move likely to further anger China amid heightened tensions
between the two Asian giants over disputed islets in the East
China Sea.
A new E Source report reveals that
U.S. businesses waste more than $60 billion annually on energy,
presenting significant opportunities for utilities to increase
enrollment in energy-efficiency programs. The report includes
energy-use data from a variety of industries, including
restaurants, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, data centers,
education, and government.
The Manufacturing ISM number did
not surprise to the downside as Goldman's GSAI was indicating.
The divergence between GSAI and the ISM has in fact widened, as
the corporate sector exhibits a great deal of pessimism.
Nevertheless US manufacturing continues to struggle. The longer
trend for ISM seems to be trending lower.
Both New England terminals linked
to the US' 1 million-barrel heating oil stockpile were fully
operational Tuesday, despite the passage of Hurricane Sandy,
according to a spokesman for the Department of Energy, which
oversees the reserve.
Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC) yesterday
released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey®
(PMMS®), showing fixed mortgage rates moving slightly
lower while continuing to remain near their all-time lows this
week amid signs of a growing economy and low inflation.
Nuclear facilities have proven resilient In the eye of
Hurricane Sandy, according to the Nuclear Energy Institute.
In Sandy's path were 34 nuclear plants that had undergone
comprehensive advance planning and preparation to maintain
safety against high winds, flooding and grid disturbances.
The number of planned layoffs by
U.S. firms jumped 41.1 percent in October to the highest level
in five months, although the number includes more than 10,000
jobs in U.S.-owned auto plants in Europe, a report said on
Thursday.
America's wind industry recently marked a landmark
achievement: 50GW of installed capacity. But the jubilation was
short lived. As the sector reached a new level of
maturity, companies were announcing job losses and factory
closures in anticipation that a crucial tax credit would not be
extended. “These truly are the best of times and could be the
worst of times for American wind power,
More than 53,000 utility workers
from around the U.S. and Canada are working arduously to restore
electricity to millions who lost power as a result of Hurricane
Sandy.
The goal of EGS is to produce
electricity by extracting energy from the earth’s heat. To
accomplish this, a subsurface system of fractures is formed in
hot, impermeable rock, and water pumped down from the surface is
circulated through these fractures and returned to the surface
as the energy source for a geothermal power plant.
'Our land is limited and we would
eventually run out of storage space,' manager says
About 200,000 tons of radioactive
water — enough to fill more than 50 Olympic-sized swimming pools
— are being stored in hundreds of gigantic tanks built around
the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant. Operator Tokyo Electric Power Co.
has already chopped down trees to make room for more tanks and
predicts the volume of water will more than triple within three
years.
The most frustrating, depressing, annoying and disruptive
news someone suffering without power for several days can get:
It may be out for at least another week.
Groans can be heard from Lower Manhattan to Westchester
County to the Jersey Shore as utility companies warn residents
battered by Hurricane Sandy that it may well take that long for
the lights to come back on.
The standoff between Japan’s prime
minister and its legislature over the debt limit is the latest
sign that the world’s third largest economy may be in trouble.
The consequences for Japan of failing to reach a compromise on
the debt could be far reaching, ranging from slower or stalled
rates of economic growth to a backlash against the two main
political parties.
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