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"If a nation expects to be ignorant and
free in a state of civilization, it expects
what never was and never will be..."
Thomas
Jefferson
Can
this not be taken to an even greater level,
to that of preparation and being
independent? We cannot realistically be free
from the control of others if we don't have
the knowledge or the tools to manage our own
destinies. If we can't grow a simple garden
for our food, if we can't utilize food
storage methods to put up food for the
future, if we can't make do without the
trappings of "civilization" such as
electricity or gas, then we aren't really
free at all. [ed]
...it illustrates a broader issue
that confronts electric-vehicle owners throughout the country
and is slowing the pace of EV adoption. There's just a
smattering of publicly available charging stations throughout
the U.S. Though more come online every day, charging
infrastructure is still lagging.
Forget what you've been told about
losing brain function as you age - this tool looks at how the
brain works, and 74,000 scans from 90 different countries have
proven it's possible to recover, repair, and regain brain
functionality that was previously lost...
Pedophilia, which was an indirect consequence of the Boarding
School system.
In the late 19th century, when Indians were forced onto
reservations by the U.S. government, Indian children from the
ages of 5 years onward were forcibly taken from their homes and
placed in boarding schools run by religious denominations of all
sorts, with the approval and sanctioning of the government.
Despite the drug violence that has
dominated headlines, Mexico has a resilient and healthy economy
that investors should be eyeing with interest. In the last 17
years, the Mexican economy has become one of the world’s most
open and business growth has been steady despite the economic
difficulties faced by some of the country’s biggest trading
partners.
As he grins serenely and his burgundy robes billow in the
fresh Himalayan wind, it is not difficult to see why scientists
declared Matthieu Ricard the happiest man they had ever tested.
The monk, molecular geneticist and confidant of the Dalai
Lama, is passionately setting out why meditation can alter the
brain and improve people’s happiness in the same way that
lifting weights puts on muscle.
Canada's strongest earthquake in
more than 60 years has struck off British Columbia's coast. The
magnitude 7.7 quake struck at 8:04 p.m. PT Saturday and was
centered off Haida Gwaii, formerly the Queen Charlotte Islands.
It could be felt as far away as Edmonton and Yukon.
The deepening crisis in Europe’s
automobile industry rippled throughout the continent in October
as Ford (NYSE:F) unveiled plans to shutter three auto assembly
and parts plants. The news highlighted the steep decline of an
industry that is unlikely to recover in the near term, despite
the efforts of governments.
Asia's two largest economies, China
and India, could see combined gasoil exports surge 33-47% or 2
million-2.5 million mt year on year in the fourth quarter, up
from 1.5 million-1.7 million mt in Q4 2011, amid a gloomy global
economic outlook and increased refining capacity, traders said.
The Crovel Tactical by Gearup
Center is part lethal weapon and part outdoors multi-tool,
packing three sharp edges, a saw, a spike, and a bottle opener
into a compact three-pound (1.3-kg) shovel, which is correctly
weighted for hurling like a throwing axe. With a keen eye on
marketing, the company cites the Crovel Tactical as an ideal
piece of kit for survivalists, campers, and budding
zombie-slayers.
For 20 years, I have been testing
my patients for heavy metal toxicity. After thousands of tests,
I can assure you the vast majority of Americans have high levels
of heavy metals, such as mercury, lead, arsenic, cadmium, and
nickel.
A new study shows prescription
sleeping pills bring an increased risk of dying early—or getting
cancer. So why is FDA rubber-stamping such dangerous drugs?
A leading Jewish human rights group
is once again calling on President Obama to sever ties with the
Muslim Brotherhood after its former leader, new Egyptian
President Mohamed Morsi, was seen answering “amen” to a call to
“destroy the Jews.”
There are some 24 members of the
Oklahoma legislature who identify as tribal citizens, the most,
by far, of any state. Most are Republicans, and are represented
as members of the party’s leadership (as are the Democrats).
“We discussed quite thoroughly the
fluoridation of water supplies and how we were using it in
Russia as a tranquilizer in the prison camps. The leaders of our
school felt that if it could be induced into the American water
supply, it would bring about a spirit of lethargy in the nation;
where it would keep the general public docile during a steady
encroachment of Communism. We also discussed the fact that
keeping a store of deadly fluoride near the water reservoir
would be advantageous during the time of the revolution, as it
would give us opportunity to dump this poison into the water
supply and either kill off the populace or threaten them with
liquidation, so that they would surrender to obtain fresh water.
Police say no charges will be filed
against an Arkansas man who they say shot someone who tried to
break into his home.
Officers say a man who lives on Fick
street came home today to find Ryan Gingerich hiding under his
child's bed. Wtnesses say Ginerich had a wrecking bar and a
screwdriver in his hands. The homeowner ran to get a gun and
Gingerich jumped out a window. Police say Ginerich didn't stop
when the homeowner told him to, so he was shot.
Icebergs start as ice sheets
attached to the land or a glacier. They are large monsters of
solid ice but they do break off the ice sheet before they float
out to sea. How do they break up afterwards at sea? An
international team of scientists has discovered a previously
unknown mechanism by which large tabular icebergs break up out
at sea as part of a study carried out on the Peterman Iceberg in
Baffin Bay over the summer. Scientists observed that the gradual
creation of a huge underwater ice foot produced so much buoyancy
that it broke large chunks off the main iceberg thus causing the
iceberg to slowly disintegrate. This discovery was captured on
camera as a film crew followed the expedition for Operation
Iceberg.
Using renewable energy is not new
to Ikea. The company owns wind farms in six European countries
and has 342,000 solar panels on its stores, warehouses and
factories that generate 27% of the company's electricity,
Reuters reported.
Over the past several decades, U.S. industries have injected
more than 30 trillion gallons of toxic liquid deep into the
earth, using broad expanses of the nation’s geology as an
invisible dumping ground.
No company would be allowed to pour such dangerous chemicals
into the rivers or onto the soil. But until recently, scientists
and environmental officials have assumed that deep layers of
rock beneath the earth would safely entomb the waste for
millennia.
Two dozen investors with more than $800 billion in assets
under management are urging an immediate extension of the
production tax credit for renewable energy, which expires
December 31. The investors say this tax credit supports the U.S.
wind industry by creating economic benefits for wind power
producers and their suppliers.
The operator of Japan's
quake-struck Fukushima nuclear power plant said on Friday it
could not rule out the possibility that it may still be leaking
radiation into the sea.
With the U.S. economy on its heels
and China still growing more than 7 percent, some analysts have
speculated that the renminbi could one day replace the dollar as
the world’s primary reserve currency.
Don’t bet on it in
the near future, says Mark Mobius, executive chairman of
Templeton Emerging Markets Group.
Researchers already know that our
subconscious minds sometimes know more than our conscious minds.
Physiological measures of subconscious arousal, for instance,
tend to show up before conscious awareness that a deck of cards
is stacked against us.
The Obama administration, citing
environmental concerns, has banned drilling on half of the vast
National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska in a move decried even by
Alaska’s congressional delegation.
Hurricane Sandy is currently
heading north towards the US mid-Atlantic coastline, packing
maximum sustained winds of around 85 mph, according to an update
from the US National Hurricane Center at 0900 GMT Monday.
The storm has already caused substantial disruption to oil
market infrastructure. Below is a summary of the main impact so
far:
Lawmakers can steer the economy
away from a recession next year even by striking even a
less-than-optimal agreement that averts the fast-approaching
fiscal cliff, but brinkmanship and bickering could mean
otherwise, said Neel Kashkari, head of global equities at fund
giant Pimco.
Auto Data Corp. which keeps track
of automotive statistics from sales to promotions, said the
Toyota Prius has become the bestselling vehicle in California,
the nation's single largest vehicle market.
In urgent request from the CIA for
military back-up during the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S.
consulate in Libya and another assault hours later was denied by
U.S. officials. These same officials also told CIA officers
twice to “stand down” rather than help the Americans when shots
were heard that night in Benghazi.
B6 flare. No Earth-directed
CMEs were detected during the reporting period. Solar
activity is expected to be low with a slight chance for M-class
flares. The geomagnetic field is expected to be quiet on day 1
(30 October). Quiet conditions are expected again on day 2 (31
October) until the arrival of the CMEs from 27/28 October, when
there is a chance for active conditions late in the period.
Active conditions are again likely with a chance for minor storm
conditions on day 3 (01 November).
President Obama has been largely silent about gun control
during his first term, but many gun owners have expressed
concerns that he would address the issue if he is re-elected and
no longer constrained by re-election worries.
Gun control advocates who have also stayed relatively quiet
during Obama’s first term are already coming forward. The Johns
Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research has issued a new
report whose recommendations include the regulation of gun
designs and banning “problem drinkers” from owning firearms.
Nitrates from the fertilizer and
manure that Iowa's farmers apply to their fields, mixed with
sewage and runoff from suburban lawns, flow 800 miles down the
Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico.
There, the
potent blend feeds algae that bloom, die and decompose, robbing
the Gulf's waters of oxygen and creating a so-called dead zone -
also known as hypoxia - each summer along Louisiana and Texas.
Shellfish and other creatures capable of moving to more
hospitable waters do so.
Exxon Mobil (XOM) has been
displaced as the world’s largest oil company due to the
acquisition by state-owned Russian oil giant Rosneft of TNK-BP,
a Russian oil firm owned jointly by BP (NYSE: BP, London: BP)
and a group of Russian billionaires. Politics and patronage
appear to have played a significant role in the ascent of
Rosneft, which is run by Putin’s close friend Igor Sechin. This
deal raises major concerns about how Putin will use his control
of Rosneft, now the world’s largest oil company, and the
potential for corruption.
No doubt, the name and concept "Air
Fuel" strikes the "magic" button in the head, but I knew the
second I heard it, and that it was covered in the mainstream
press, that it would just be a matter of chemistry, and probably
not very practical. ...
The company hopes that within two
years, it will build a larger, commercial-scale plant capable of
producing a ton of petrol a day. It also plans to produce green
aviation fuel to make airline travel more carbon-neutral.
Superstorm Sandy slammed into the
New Jersey coastline with 80 mph winds Monday night and hurled
an unprecedented 13-foot surge of seawater at New York City,
flooding its tunnels, subway stations and the electrical system
that powers Wall Street. At least 16 U.S. deaths were blamed on
the storm, which brought the presidential campaign to a halt a
week before Election Day.
The jobless rate probably rose in
October as U.S. employers kept a tight rein on payrolls with the
nation closing in on the so-called fiscal cliff, economists said
before a report this week.
Bitter Seeds raises critical questions about the human cost
of genetically modified agriculture and the future of how we
grow our food and other essential crops
The film couldn’t be more timely, as California stands
poised to vote on Proposition 37, which would require
genetically engineered foods to be labeled, on November 6
The number of Tibetans who
self-immolated in the last one week is now seven, rights groups
have said, adding that news of two more cases that took place in
the Tibetan Autonomous Region earlier this week only coming out
on late Saturday.
still refuses to submit to
third-party safety testing
After months of complaints,
negative feedback, bad press and no small amount of controversy,
the Transportation Security Administration has announced
it will begin removing its naked body scanners out of key
airports around the country.
The US Department of Energy said
Monday that 26% of the Northeast's 1.17 million b/d of petroleum
refining capacity is shut and the remaining four plants are
running at reduced rates while Hurricane Sandy approaches the
region.
US personal spending rose a stronger than expected 0.8%
in September 2012 following 0.5% and 0.4% increases in
August and July, respectively. Market expectations were for
a 0.6% gain in September.
If utilities aren't thinking
seriously about renewable energy, they'd better start. Renewable
energy is quickly moving from an initiative of progressive
"green" utilities to an industry imperative. And it brings with
it serious challenges -- and benefits -- for utilities and
consumers alike.
After claiming 69 lives in the Caribbean countries it ravaged
last week, Hurricane Sandy struck land near Atlantic City, New
Jersey about 8 pm Monday night. Four hours later, 11 more people
have lost their lives to the howling winds and flooding rains of
the enormous storm.
Victims of the 2009 shooting at
Fort Hood in Texas that killed 13 people and wounded dozens more
are outraged that the U.S. government refuses to classify it as
an act of terrorism.
One place you don't expect to see
waves lapping against the shore is in the middle of a desert.
But that's exactly what's happening deep inside the United Arab
Emirates, where a recently formed lake is nestled into the sand
dunes, and a new ecosystem is emerging.
Here's how manmade carbon pollution
is making many of the most destructive kinds of extreme weather
events -- Frankenstorms -- more frequent and more intense.
The owners of a ship which smashed
into a reef off a popular New Zealand holiday spot, causing the
country's worst environmental disaster in decades, pleaded
guilty to causing marine pollution and were fined on Friday.
A U.S.-based rights group says a
24-year-old Tibetan farmer has become the fourth man to set
himself on fire this week in a far western Chinese county to
protest against Chinese rule.
I'm a little concerned about this next election. As a gun owner, I'm
joined by 80 million other adult gun owners across this nation who share
my trepidation. Gun manufacturers can't keep up with firearm demand, and
national retailers like Cabela's and the Bass Pro Shops are planning
huge inventory increases should the president win re-election. In fact,
firearms background checks have risen 200% during these past four years
of the Obama administration as people snatch up weapons in anticipation
of more gun control laws. And they have a right to be worried. Gun
confiscation has happened before in this country.
Medicating children with
attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a
double-edged sword, not only because of the steep health risks
posed by the medications themselves, but also because many kids
labeled with "ADHD" actually do not have ADHD at all.
Most Americans have scant understanding about their water
supply, but they are concerned about it, and believe recycling
water gives the United States an advantage over other countries,
a survey said on Tuesday.
However, Americans are less accepting of drinking recycled
wastewater in a practice known as toilet-to-tap, the survey
found.
There's evidence that the wind's picking up, and it's not all
hot air. According to a report published on October 17 by the
American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), 2012 has been a record
year for the development of wind power within the United States.
The U.S. wind industry has surpassed 50,000 megawatts of
electrical power generation capacity, with a total of 4,728
megawatts added this year alone and another 8,430 megawatts in
active development throughout 29 states and Puerto Rico.
The ancestors of modern bacteria
were single-celled microorganisms that were the first forms of
life to appear on Earth, about 4 billion years ago. For about 3
billion years, all organisms were microscopic, and bacteria and
archaea were the dominant forms of life. Bacteria have a bad rap
as agents of disease, but scientists are increasingly
discovering their many benefits, such as maintaining a healthy
gut. A new study now suggests that bacteria may also have helped
kick off one of the key events in evolution: the leap from
one-celled organisms to many-celled organisms, a development
that eventually led to all larger multicelled animals, including
humans.
Uncertainty is never good for any
market or economy, and the water and wastewater industry is no
exception. The tenuous status of the current U.S. tax rates and
whether they will be allowed to expire at the end of this
calendar year should be sounding alarms throughout our industry.
Unless the President and Congress enact tax extender legislation
to maintain the current rates, we will be facing as a nation
what many people are calling “Taxmageddon” and its uncertain
fallout.
The global economy is definitely
cooling, although the United States is managing to inch along,
said Berkshire Hathaway Chief Executive Warren Buffett.
The U.S. housing sector is showing signs of life, which will
keep the world's largest economy in recovery mode, while stocks
are still the best place for investors to keep their money,
despite earnings from large U.S. companies like Caterpillar, 3M
and DuPont that point to a cooler global economy.
All 36 cell phones torn apart in a
new study to identify which phones are the most toxic, tested
positive for chemical hazards such as lead and mercury.
CHAMP, which stand for
Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile
Project, is a cruise missile that replaces an explosive weapon
with a sort of “death ray” for electronics. The effect is
similar to Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) bombs that show up in
James Bond films and give military planners nightmares about
computer networks being disabled in a split second.
As China prepares for a
once-in-a-decade leadership transition with the Party Congress
that opens on November 8, economic forecasts leave much to be
desired. In news that Beijing will probably attempt to downplay,
China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced on October
18 that the Chinese economy slowed for the seventh consecutive
quarter to the lowest level in 13 years. However, other data
provided reasons for cautious optimism for a turnaround in the
Chinese economy in the coming months.
China’s announcement that it is
leasing a North Korean port on the Sea of Japan is adding fuel
to the fire of regional territorial disputes. China claims the
move is for purely economic reasons. However, China routinely
asserts its political and diplomatic policies via
passive-aggressive economic means, and this development has real
implications not just for Japan, but for South Korea and Russia
as well.
China's apparent oil demand* rose
9.1% year on year in September to 40.12 million metric tons
(mt), or an average 9.8 million barrels per day (b/d), the
highest on record, a just-released Platts analysis of recent
Chinese government data showed.
Many water utility executives are concerned that demand for
water will soon outstrip supply and say that wasteful consumer
behavior is the biggest threat to the supply.
On the contrary, new research from GE reveals that Americans
blame large industries (74 percent), agriculture (69 percent),
and utilities and power companies (67 percent) for contributing
an "extreme amount" or "quite a bit" to water scarcity.
Hurricane Sandy howled across the
Bahamas on Thursday as a powerful Category 2 storm, packing
winds up to 105 miles per hour and moving north at about 20 mph.
The storm is forecast to reach the northwestern Bahamas and be
felt in Florida tonight, says the U.S. National Hurricane
Center.
Muscle tissue burns three to five
times more energy than fat tissues, so as you gain muscle, your
metabolic rate increases, which allows you to burn more
calories, even when you're sleeping or physically inactive.
Perhaps because of their greater muscle mass, a man's resting
metabolic rate can be up to 10 percent higher than a woman's (of
the same age and weight),1
giving them a weight-loss advantage right out of the gate
With construction of Duke Energy’s
(NYSE: DUK) Edwardsport coal gasification power plant virtually
complete, extensive testing is under way to prepare for
commercial operations next year, Duke said.
Recent protests in Egypt over the
last week are the latest sign of growing disillusionment with
President Mohammed Morsi and suggest that whatever presidential
honeymoon he may have had is over. Four months into his term,
Morsi has raised his international profile, but domestic issues
remain largely unresolved. More demonstrations are likely in
coming months over a new constitution and the government’s
failure to improve the lives of Egyptians and meet their
sky-high expectations from last year’s Arab Spring revolution.
Overturning decades of conventional
wisdom, researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have found that
moderately high indoor concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2)
can significantly impair people's decision-making performance.
The results were unexpected and may have particular implications
for schools and other spaces with high occupant density.
Officials at the White House and
State Department were advised two hours after attackers
assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on
Sept. 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for
the attack, official emails show.
All eyes are on California where
Proposition 37, which would require labeling of foods produced
using genetic engineering. It will be put to voters on November
6th. In recent weeks, the battle over GMO labeling has taken an
ugly turn. In a true David versus Goliath battle, the opposition
will apparently stop at nothing to defeat the measure.
The U.S. Treasury Department and
Internal Revenue Service are looking into the possible misuse of
a federal solar rebate program by at least one mainland solar
company that operates in the Hawaii market.
The Federal Reserve on Wednesday
stuck to its plan to keep stimulating U.S. growth until the job
market improves even as it acknowledged some parts of the
economy were looking a bit better.
NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic
Telescope Array (NuSTAR), has caught its first look at the
giant black hole parked at the center of our galaxy. The
observations show the typically mild-mannered black hole during
the middle of a flare-up.
The United States will produce more
energy from fossil fuels than ever before this year, according
to a data analysis by a University of Michigan economics
professor.
The situation at Japan's stricken
Fukushima nuclear power plant has been stabilized but is still
precarious, more than a year and a half after disaster struck, a
senior Japanese regulatory official said on Wednesday.
Global risk appetite continues to
improve. The CS index is still below the early 2012 LTRO-induced
euphoria, but is on the rise nevertheless. The dotted line
indicates "panic" level, which is exactly where the index was a
year ago.
Good
news on Israel’s southern border today: In a strange but welcome
twist, the government of Egypt stepped in last night and
actually persuaded Hamas and other pro-Iran terror groups to
cease their fire of rockets and mortars against Israel. Could
the truce be broken? Yes. Could Hamas and the other terror
groups change their mind? Yes. But for now, things are mostly
quiet again. This is positive but surprising on several levels.
Whether low-tech or high-tech,
there are many exciting new frontiers in medicine. But how much
of it will one-size-fits-all regulators and their corporate
cronies allow to see the light of day?
To attract Chinese investment for
development of the Alberta oil sands and other natural
resources, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is pushing through a
treaty that gives away Canadian legislative and judicial
sovereignty with no public debate, warns a Canadian
international investment law expert and law professor.
Appointing a secretary general to
run OPEC’s Vienna headquarters should be easy. It never is. The
job is technically an administrative one, but political
rivalries between key producers have overshadowed the
appointment process for years.
Many frequently wonder: what is the cost to the
taxpayer/ratepayer of the various benefits (federal, state,
utility) bestowed on renewable energy projects, and is there a
more cost-effective way to support these fledgling technologies?
Also, how do U.S. support structures compare in cost to other
places, say, Germany, which incentivizes investment in renewable
technologies through feed-in tariffs (FITs)?
Could your gut flora play a role in cancer growth? According
to recent research, the answer is a tentative yes.
Findings published in the journal Nature1
report the discovery of microbial-dependent mechanisms through
which some cancers mount an inflammatory response that fuels
their development and growth. These findings provide new insight
into how cancer cells can hijack your body's inflammatory
reaction by exploiting microbial-dependent immune cells.
His tribe, the Oglala Sioux, have passed a proclamation
declaring June 26 as Russell Means Day.
“It is our belief that Russell Means should be honored as a
respected elder for his life-long accomplishments, dedication,
and patriotism to the Oglala Sioux Tribe,” said John W. Yellow
Bird Steele, the tribe’s president in the proclamation.
Investors have called upon Congress to immediately extend the
Production Tax Credit for renewable power.
Bolstered by the PTC, wind has accounted for 35 percent of
newly installed electricity generation capacity in the U.S. over
the last five years. Production costs are down more than 90
percent since 1980. But when the PTC
With advanced signals warfare
systems provided by Russia, Iran has been able to interfere with
recent satellite transmissions, censoring news about its economy
that it doesn’t want Iranians to see. This and other related
actions show that Iran is not only technologically prepared for
signals warfare, but also that it wants to make sure that the
United States and Israel know that it is.
A 9-year-old schoolboy was among at least 12 people that
insurgents killed across Iraq on Wednesday, rattling nerves
ahead of a holiday weekend.
Violence has declined since the height of Iraq's insurgency,
but the attacks once again showed that Sunni extremists seeking
to undermine the Shiite-led government remain a lethal challenge
to Iraq's security.
ONCE UPON A TIME,
hardly anyone dissented from the idea that, for better or worse,
the United States of America was different from all other
nations. This is not surprising, since the attributes that made
it different were vividly evident from the day of its birth. Let
me say a few words about three of them in particular.
Terrorists in Gaza have escalated their war against Israel. Just
today, more
than 80 rockets, missiles and mortars have
been fired from Gaza at civilian population centers in southern
Israel. Israeli schools in the south have all been closed.
Residents are being told to stay in or near their bomb shelters
Wind turbines have become a
familiar sight in the blustery port of Choshi on the eastern tip
of the Kanto Plain, but this 126-meter-tall machine is
different. Besides being one of the biggest wind turbines in
Japan, it stands in the ocean, ready to take advantage of steady
marine winds.
Greater monitoring of the grid made
possible by smart-grid investments funded by New York agencies
and utilities and the US Department of Energy mean operators
could avoid a major blackout such as the one that struck the
Northeast in 2003, the head of the New York Independent System
Operator said Wednesday.
The ultra-violent street gang MS-13
has been fingered by the U.S. Treasury Department as a
transnational criminal organization, but LIGNET believes that
future law enforcement victories gained by freezing the group’s
financial activities could be offset by its new “joint venture”
with a deadly Mexican drug cartel. The Los Zetas cartel has
reportedly engaged in the training of MS-13 gunmen in Mexico and
there are signs of joint criminal activity between the cartel
and MS-13 in Guatemala that could potentially spread beyond
Central America into America’s border region.
Groundwater extraction triggered
the 11 May 2011 Lorca earthquake in southern Spain, suggests a
study published online this week in Nature Geoscience. The study
highlights the influence of human-induced perturbations to the
Earth's crust on seismic activity.
Maui County has agreed to pay a
$380,000 fine, implement enhanced gas monitoring and
build a renewable energy wind farm to resolve alleged
violations of air pollution laws at the Central Maui Landfill in
Puunene, Hawaii.
As ECM has stated in every article
related to the Mayan calendar - and the date Dec. 21st 2012.
There will be no difference on Dec. 20th or 23rd. The ending of
one cycle and the beginning of another "does not" reflect the
notion of flipping a light switch. However, Mayan prophecy and
new modern scientific findings do parallel in many ways.
The Greenland ice sheet is a vast
body of ice covering 660,235 square miles, roughly 80% of the
surface of Greenland. It is the second largest ice body in the
world, after the Antarctic Ice Sheet. The ice sheet is almost
1,500 miles long in a north-south direction, and its greatest
width is 680 miles. The mean altitude of the ice is 7,005 feet.
And it is all melting. Freshwater losses in Greenland have
accelerated since the early 1990s, with the south-east of the
island seeing losses rise by 50 per cent in less than 20 years,
according to new research from the University of Bristol.
In one swift move, Korean business conglomerate Hanwha Group has
officially positioned itself as the third largest solar
manufacturer in the world. With the purchase of bankrupt solar
cell manufacturer Q.CELLS, the newly launched entity –
appropriately named Hanwha Q.CELLS – now claims ownership of a
total of 2.3 gigawatts of manufacturing capacity across Germany,
Malaysia and China. That multinational position also puts Hanwha
in the unique position of being able to deliver supply to any
region in the world without concern over trade sanctions.
A balloon launch this week by South
Korean activists to drop 120,000 leaflets on North Korea
promoting democracy sparked unusually harsh threats by the North
Korean regime that probably reflect its economic problems and
growing isolation. Pyongyang has engaged in similar rhetoric
this year, including a threat to attack President Lee’s offices.
The South Korean government wants to stop activities like
leaflet balloon launches, believing they are unnecessary
provocations of the North Korean government that could
eventually lead to a military incident.
Once completed, CVSR will power a
yearly average of 100,000 homes with clean, renewable solar
energy, while protecting and conserving more than 12,000 acres
of land in and around the Carrizo Plain in southeastern San Luis
Obispo County, about 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles.
Electricity from CVSR is being sold to PG&E through 25-year
power purchase agreements.
The Obama administration on
Thursday released the final details of a western Gulf of Mexico
oil and natural gas lease sale planned for November.
The
lease sale, scheduled for November 28 in New Orleans, will cover
20.8 million acres off the coast of Texas, according to the US
Department of the Interior.
President Barack Obama and
Republican challenger Mitt Romney offer vastly different visions
of the nation's energy future that have key implications for
Silicon Valley, which has reinvented itself as a global center
of clean technology.
Ok, so the subject of climate change didn’t come up during
any of the three presidential debates. Can we then conclude that
any movement in that direction will get elbowed out over the
next four years? Nope.
Many areas of the drought-stricken
United States continued to see improvement over the last week as
steady rains started recharging parched soils, but for key
agricultural areas of the U.S. Heartland, there was little
relief, according to a climatology report issued Thursday.
a few low-level C-class events.
did not produce any flares during the period. . a chance for
M-class events for the next three days (26 - 28 Oct). The
geomagnetic field is expected to be quiet for the next three
days (26 - 28 Oct).
Taking responsibility for our
actions is a part of the very fabric of our nation. America was
built by men and women who believed in the worth of freedom,
and they took on the responsibility of fighting for and
protecting this great cause. In the same way, I believe that
good people like you are doing the same thing.
You’re taking responsibility for yourself, your loved ones, and
your community by carrying a gun for protection from those who
prey on the innocent and un-expecting. And for that, I
applaud you.
With more Americans unemployed than
at any time since the Great Depression, President Obama is
making it easier for illegal aliens to take American jobs.
That's right: With 20 million Americans having trouble finding
work, President Obama's bypassed Congress to
unilaterally give amnesty and work permits to 2-3 million
illegal aliens currently in the United States. It means
more job competition and wage depression for the working class
and fewer jobs for returning veterans and recent graduates.
Rockies Express Pipeline flows have
dropped 33% this month alone as Marcellus Shale supplies
continue to displace Rockies gas from Eastern markets and recent
wintry weather in the region kept supplies local.
Rice is the most important grain with regard to human nutrition
and caloric intake in the world, providing more than one fifth
of the calories consumed worldwide by the human species. Without
rice and the world will be a much different place. More carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere, coupled with rising temperatures, is
making rice agriculture a larger source of the potent greenhouse
gas methane, according to a study published in Nature Climate
Change by a research team that includes a University of
California, Davis, plant scientist. The authors note that
relatively simple changes in rice cultivation could help reduce
methane emissions.
A horse riding with an empty saddle
stands outside Little Wound High School in Kyle, South Dakota
after traveling down the Big Foot Trail from Porcupine during an
honoring service for American Indian Movement activist Russell
Means on Wednesday, October 24. The horse saddle was left empty
in memory of Means, who passed away on Monday. He was 72.
Russia’s recent announcement that
it is interested in creating a new rail-based system to use as a
mobile launch platform for nuclear missiles is troubling on many
levels, but most of all in what it says about how Russia sees
itself in the world. Insecure about its diminishing power
vis-à-vis the United States and paranoid about China’s growing
leverage in Asia, Russia’s new aggressive stance has not gone
unnoticed in Washington and Beijing.
Higher crude prices and increased
production will enable Saudi Arabia to collect a record Saudi
Riyals 1.08 trillion ($288 billion) in oil revenue in 2012, 4%
higher than last year, Riyadh-based Jadwa Investments said in a
report to clients Wednesday.
Soul is a name given by the spiritually-inclined to the life
giving substance. The word itself does not describe its
composition. Given that spirituality has traditionally probed
this question in great detail, can science provide a parallel?
U.S. researchers say they've
created self-powered sensors that could monitor a nuclear
reactor in a disaster even when electrical power to the reactor
fails.
According to the latest "Energy Infrastructure Update" report
from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's Office of Energy
Projects, 433 MW of new electrical generating capacity was added
in the U.S. in September -- all from solar and wind sources. The
total consisted of five wind projects totaling 300 MW and 18
solar projects totaling 133 MW.
Although a layer of snow can cause
a solar-cell blackout for a period, not many regions experience
heavy snow for more than a few months, they said, and even in
midwinter panels don't usually stay snow-covered for long.
Solyndra, the solar panel maker that failed despite a $528
million federal loan, on Monday won court approval for its plan
to repay creditors and end its politically charged bankruptcy,
after a judge overruled objections by the U.S. government.
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Mary Walrath in Delaware rejected the
government argument that the plan was improper because its main
purpose was to provide tax breaks.
Green technology is developing. Not
only would the economy become greener but thousands of jobs
would also have been created from enterprising individuals all
over the United Kingdom in the creation, science, and
development let alone the installation of all technologies.
Chevron today lost its U.S. Supreme
Court bid to block global enforcement of a $19 billion judgment
by an Ecuadorean court in a long legal fight over contamination
of the Amazon rainforest.
Recently, there has been an
increase in popularity for off-grid solar systems for
independence from utilities and grid-interactive systems for
flexibility to easily switch from drawing from the grid when
it's up or switching to off-grid power from other sources when
the grid is down. This has resulted in more attention being paid
to the technology providing the battery storage for backup power
-- the solar charge controller. If you work in the energy
industry, or more specifically, in the cleantech energy
industry, chances are you have a good understanding of solar
charge controllers.
Dementia usually is considered a
disease of the elderly, but Alzheimer’s disease and other types
of dementia are detected in many who are younger than 65, and
early diagnosis of the disorders can be elusive, a leading
specialist on dementias told a recent Capitol Hill briefing
hosted by AAAS.
Children who love to eat tuna fish
may be at greater risk of mercury poisoning than anyone has
realized, finds the first study on mercury in school lunches
published Wednesday by the Mercury Policy Project.
Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC) yesterday released the results of its
Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS®), showing fixed mortgage
rates moving slightly higher while continuing to remain near
their all-time lows helping to support the housing market.
The biggest challenge facing the
solar industry is politicization, which is to be expected in an
election year. However, solar is an unusually partisan issue.
Ironically, solar energy is now more cost-effective than
nuclear, which was heavily government-subsidized for
generations.
The order allows DNR to seize and
destroy non-conforming animals—some farmers’ principal
livelihood and what remains of porcine genetic diversity—and
will not compensate farmers whose pigs are destroyed. Even pet
pigs could be in danger.
It was standing room only in the
Recreation Park on Tuesday night -- with "BP Go Home" protesters
occupying one side and green-shirted Voters for Wind filling the
other.
As we finally begin to see
improvements in the US housing market, it is important to note
that we still have roughly 9 million mortgages that are
"underwater" (the mortgage balance is higher than the value of
the home). That's almost one fifth of the overall market.
"I know my dad," Matt Romney said
to a crowd of 7,500 people gathered for the rally. Consol
estimated the number attending the rally by counting the cars
entering the Poplar Gap Park concert venue. "He is someone who
cares about this great nation." He said his father had a
singular reason for seeking the presidency. "It was his time to
give back," he said.
"Well, Charlie, what I've said
is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax
for purposes of fairness." Barack Obama, 2008
"I mean, I do think at a certain point you've
made enough money." Barack Obama, 2010...
When you look at the above quotes,
you begin to realize that this president does not speak
in reference to equality of opportunity but in regard toequality of outcomes.
Why are Japan and China fighting over what is essentially a
group of uninhabited islets and barren rocks in the East China
Sea? Platts' Vandana Hari, Thomas Hogue, and Song Yen Ling
investigate, as well as examine how the dispute is affecting the
oil markets in the rest of Asia.
They’re not pulling any punches in
the tight Arizona Senate race, where the attacks are getting
increasingly personal.
Former U.S. Surgeon General
Richard Carmona, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, has accused
six-term Republican Rep. Jeff Flake of “picking on veterans.”
And Flake’s supporters are running ads that suggest Carmona has
problems controlling his anger and dealing with women.
The risk of conflict in the South
China Sea is significant. China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia,
Brunei, and the Philippines have competing territorial and
jurisdictional claims, particularly over rights to exploit the
region's possibly extensive reserves of oil and gas. Freedom of
navigation in the region is also a contentious issue, especially
between the United States and China over the right of U.S.
military vessels to operate in China's two-hundred-mile
exclusive economic zone (EEZ). These tensions are shaping—and
being shaped by—rising apprehensions about the growth of China's
military power and its regional intentions. China has embarked
on a substantial modernization of its maritime paramilitary
forces as well as naval capabilities to enforce its sovereignty
and jurisdiction claims by force if necessary. At the same time,
it is developing capabilities that would put U.S. forces in the
region at risk in a conflict, thus potentially denying access to
the U.S. Navy in the western Pacific.
A combination of expiring tax
breaks and inbound spending cuts taking place at the same time
next year — known as a fiscal cliff — could throw the country
into a recession yet investors aren't pricing such scenarios
into their trading strategies, a Bank of America Merrill Lynch
survey of fund managers shows.
BP Plc. on Thursday said its
ill-fated Macondo well remains sealed and that an oil sheen
spotted on the Gulf of Mexico near the site of the sunken
Deepwater Horizon is likely from a cofferdam used in an attempt
to cap the runaway well in 2010.
Russell Means has been called the
most famous American Indian since Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse
by the Los Angeles Times and recognized as a natural
leader with a fearless dedication and indestructible sense of
pride. This morning at 4:44 a.m. Means walked on amongst the
ancestors.
The buildings sector is becoming increasingly interested in
energy efficiency as evidenced by an international Economist
Intelligence Unit survey commissioned by the Global Buildings
Performance Network.
More than seven of 10 real estate and construction executives
surveyed globally believe energy-efficiency legislation benefits
the building sector, including 75 percent of respondents in the
United States. However, a lack of enforcement of existing
regulations is blocking energy-efficiency investments.
...what if doctors could come up
with an effective technique that costs nothing, is easy to use,
and works as well or better than drugs but without the side
effects? Such a treatment has been used by doctors in Russia,
Europe, Canada, and elsewhere for 60 years, and it’s finally
starting to gain favor with American doctors.
In the last 70 years the population
of Istanbul has grown 15-fold and this rapid urban development
has come at a price: the Bosphorus, which has been used as a
garbage dumb for centuries, is now so badly polluted that
floating rubbish is a common sight alongside many of Istanbul's
waterfront neighbourhoods.
With just 2 1/2 weeks left before
election day, there's an urgency on all fronts in the
presidential race. For activists, it's not just about whether
President Obama or Mitt Romney will win, but whether either man
will pay attention to their issue.
In a 13-minute segment broadcast
Sunday night, CBS’s “60 Minutes” explored Colorado’s budding
medical marijuana industry, and heard from a former drug cop
turned tax enforcer who insisted that the industry has helped
Denver beat the recession.
Add in the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, or AB 32,
which aims to reduce the state's greenhouse gas emissions to
1990 levels, and residents might be waiting a long time for rate
relief, as the city may pass along costs to customers in an
effort comply with mandates from Sacramento.
But one official believes green energy will eventually
translate into green savings.
While preparing breakfast Saturday morning, I watched my
friend pull two slices of burnt toast out of the toaster and
with a grimace move to toss them into the trash can.
Computer models have accurately
forecast conditions on Mars and are valid predictors of climate
change on Earth, U.S. and French astronomers said on Tuesday.
While cows cannot contract HIV themselves, they do
nonetheless produce antibodies in response to the introduction
of the foreign protein. Those antibodies are passed along in the
colostrum, or first milk – that milk already has a naturally
high antibody content, in order to protect newborn calves
against infections.
In laboratory tests, the milk-derived HIV antibodies were
found to bind with HIV, inhibiting it from entering human cells.
Mr. Obama insisted he would help
Israel after Iran attacks the Jewish state. But if Iran attacks
Israel with nuclear weapons, it would be too late for American
military assistance to do much good. Indeed, it is immoral for
an American president to vow to defend Israel only after she has
been attacked with nuclear weapons. Yet this is the President's
position.
The film Doctored reveals the hidden truth behind the
chiropractic profession’s struggle against ignorance, and the
systematic and deliberate campaign by the American Medical
Association (AMA) to destroy complementary medicine
Drought retreated across many areas
of the United States over the last week as storm systems pushed
through parched areas, bringing coast-to-coast relief from
record-breaking dry conditions.
Forget conspiracy theories of
Washington politicians and their state-level counterparts
cooking data to make jobless data look better.
A
longer-term view of employment data consistently points to a
tepid economy that receives applause from markets looking for a
silver lining when they can find it, said Lindsey Piegza, an
economist at FTN Financial.
But Manifest Destiny is still the
centerpiece in American thinking about the world. It’s topic one
in tonight’s debate between President Barack Obama and
Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
Did battery technology die with the declared bankruptcy of
A123 Systems? While the electric car battery maker has fizzled
out, it is now hitching a ride with Johnson Controls, which will
buy up its factories and help bankroll the enterprise.
Last week’s EU summit left many
central issues unaddressed, damaging the credibility of eurozone
policymakers’ efforts to address the region’s ongoing debt
crisis. EU leaders agreed that a single supervisory body will
take responsibility over eurozone banks from next year, allowing
the new eurozone bailout fund — the European Stability Mechanism
(ESM) — to bypass national governments and lend directly to
troubled banks.
Which evolved first, teeth or the
jaw? Teeth are used for breaking down food, whereas the jaw is
the opposable structure used to grasp prey and food. All living
jawed vertebrates have teeth, but it has been understood that
the first of these jawed vertebrates lacked those pearly whites.
Instead, it was thought that these prehistoric creatures had
scissor-like jawbones that were used for capturing prey and
eating.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is taking steps to
ease the regulatory burdens on the natural gas and oil pipeline
industries including that of unnecessary filings.
Last week, FERC proposed three regulatory reform actions and
issued a staff report identifying next steps
Low power prices as a function of
weak demand in the Midwest and the lack of a capacity market
within the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator
region have led Dominion Resources to shut down its Kewaunee
plant in Wisconsin, according to Fitch Ratings. Dominion said it
would close the plant during the second half of 2013.
Residents living near gas fracking
sites suffer an increasingly high rate of health problems now
linked to pollutants used in the gas extraction process,
according to a new report released Thursday.
France will move surveillance
drones to West Africa and is holding secretive talks with U.S.
officials in Paris this week as it seeks to steer international
military action to help Mali's feeble government win back the
northern part of the country from al-Qaida-linked rebels, The
Associated Press has learned.
The Earth stopped getting warmer nearly 16 years ago,
according to newly released data — from the beginning of 1997
until August 2012 there was no discernible rise in global
temperatures.
This pause or “plateau” in warming has now persisted for
about the same length of time as the previous period when
temperatures rose, from 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures
had been stable or declining for about 40 years, The Daily Mail
reported.
Much of the current discussion
about green jobs focuses on the renewable energy industry, but
green jobs are pervasive throughout the economy. Industries with
higher proportions of green jobs have higher job growth than
that of the overall economy, according to research from the
Economic Policy Institute.
Several environmental protection groups have filed a lawsuit
against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over granting what they
believe to be an illegal mining permit.
According to a statement from Kentuckians for the
Commonwealth and the Sierra Club, a permit granted to Leeco
Mining is unlawful due to the destruction of streams and
possible adverse health effects.
It doesn't seem possible. A huge
factory can operate without big, ugly green dumpsters outside,
overflowing with waste tossed in by employees who don't give a
thought to the materials destined for a landfill.
The plastics industry needs to work
harder at turning waste into a valuable resource, be it through
recycling or energy recovery, according to PlasticsEurope.
Asked who will win the November
election, 64 percent of global investors said President Obama
and just 28 percent chose Romney. American investors were less
bullish on Obama — 54 percent said the president will be
re-elected, and 37 percent said Romney will win, while the rest
had no opinion, according to the poll by Bloomberg Markets.
Will Obama announce a deal with
Iran for a moratorium on the enrichment of uranium in return for
the dismantling of some of the international sanctions against
the regime? And will the announcement be timed to appear just
before the election?
These are trying times for Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, who has seen his power and prestige wane as the
nation’s economy crumbles and the end of his second and final
term nears.
Despite official denials by
American and Iranian officials, LIGNET believes an October 21
New York Times article claiming that Iran agreed in principle to
one-on-one talks with the United States after the U.S.
presidential election is accurate. While Obama officials may
have leaked word of this agreement to influence the presidential
election, Iran probably agreed to the bilateral meeting to buy
time to advance its nuclear program and to drive a wedge between
the United States and its European allies.
A long-standing dispute over three
islands strategically located in the middle of the Persian Gulf
near the Strait of Hormuz is threatening to escalate hostilities
between Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Control of the
islands is likely to play a critical role if Tehran follows
through on its threat to close the Strait if its nuclear
facilities are attacked by Israel or the United States.
President Barack Obama’s
administration is responsible for security failures in Libya and
botched its response to a Sept. 11 attack that killed U.S.
Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, said Senator
Lindsey Graham, a Republican on the Senate Armed Services
Committee.
The next Malaysian general election
is likely to occur prior to early 2013 and will have sweeping
consequences for social programs in the country as well as the
balance of power in the Asia-Pacific region. The prime
minister’s political coalition, the Barisan National (BN)
[translated as the National Front] has ruled Malaysia since 1973
and has built up solid ties to China. The potential for major
political upheaval, combined with Malaysia’s important location
in Asia, means that this upcoming election will be of
significant consequence and could potentially impact Chinese
security interests in the region.
The Falklands War 30 years ago had
many causes, but the potential for offshore oil reserves was
always thought to be one of the reasons why Argentina tried to
reclaim the archipelago by force. Now, drilling actually has
begun and so far, the results are far from spectacular. In
addition, Argentina’s political stance isn’t helping.
Do you think you eat much
genetically engineered food? The creepy truth is, most of us
probably wouldn’t know given the lax labeling laws.
But Environmental Working Group (EWG) has taken it upon
themselves to do a little sleuthing for us, what they found
isn’t exactly comforting.
To obtain such precise information,
Hestia draws on sources such as local air pollution reports,
traffic counts, and property information available to tax
assessors known as the APN (assessor’s parcel number). That data
is combined with a modeling system that quantifies CO2 emissions
on a micro level, such as for individual buildings and streets.
The latest version of the National
Electrical Code contains revisions that could greatly impact
alternative energy systems. Specifically, Article 690 in the
Code, which applies to solar power systems, has industry
watchers buzzing because it specifies that only "qualified
persons" can install a PV system. In the past, the issue of
qualifications was generally left to state and local agencies.
The Orionid meteor shower will rain bits of Halley's Comet on
Earth tonight in a promising weekend "shooting star" display.
You can even watch the celestial fireworks online if bad weather
spoils your local view.
The 2012 Orionid meteor shower will peak early Sunday (Oct.
21), but should still be an impressive sight throughout the
overnight hours of late Saturday...
Pesticides used in farming are also killing worker bumblebees
and damaging their ability to gather food, meaning colonies that
are vital for plant pollination are more likely to fail when
they are used, a study showed on Sunday.
The United Nations has estimated that a third of all
plant-based foods eaten by people depend on bee pollination and
scientists have been baffled by plummeting numbers of bees,
mainly in North America and Europe, in recent years.
Wind turbines have the potential to
be very useful in providing renewable power to remote
communities which have little or no infrastructure.
Unfortunately, larger turbines tend to require a relatively
involved set-up, with specialist gear needed to construct and
maintain the turbines. The Portable Power Center (PPC) by Uprise
Energy innovates in this regard by providing a self-contained
unit which folds within a shipping container, and can be
transported by truck.
More than half the world’s species
of apes, monkeys and lemurs - humanity’s closest living
relatives – are on the brink of extinction and in need of urgent
conservation measures, wildlife experts warned today. The
world’s 25 most endangered primates are named in a new report
released at the UN’s Convention on Biological Diversity in
Hyderabad.
With cold and flu season
approaching faster than you can say “Achoo,” you might be
wondering how you can pump up your immunity to avoid the chills,
fever, aches and sniffles this year. Traditional wisdom would
say “get your vitamin C” or “use that hand sanitizer”! But
there is another way that you can help boost your immunity, and
it comes in the form of friendly little bacteria: probiotics.
President Barack Obama isn't
talking about it and neither is Mitt Romney. But come January,
163 million workers can expect to feel the pinch of a big tax
increase regardless of who wins the election.
A temporary
reduction in Social Security payroll taxes is due to expire at
the end of the year and hardly anyone in Washington is pushing
to extend it. Neither Obama nor Romney has proposed an
extension, and it probably wouldn't get through Congress anyway,
with lawmakers in both parties down on the idea.
The effectiveness of this process
to create biofuels is surprising to many, since most people
think that heating fuel to vapor is the same as burning it.
an M5/1f event. Solar
activity is expected to be moderate to high with occasional
M-class flares, and a slight chance for an isolated X-class
flare for the next three days. The greater than 2 MeV
electron flux at geosynchronous orbit was at high levels
throughout the period. The geomagnetic field is expected
to be quiet for the next three days
As news of his walking on spreads across Indian country,
we’ve taken the time to look back at Russell Means’ storied
life. He passed at 4:44 a.m. on October 22 at his home in
Porcupine, South Dakota.
Means laughed in response to being called the most famous
American Indian since Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse by the
Los Angeles Times. Last year he told the Rapid City
Journal: “I thought Jim Thorpe was,” he said with a grin. “Jim
Thorpe was my hero.”
Thousands of spectators, many
wearing flowered lei, feathered headdresses and traditional
attire, and others carrying banners and flags assembled at
Piazza San Pietro as Pope Benedict XVI presided over a special
mass to name seven new saints at the Vatican on October 21 one
of which was the first American Indian Kateri Tekakwitha also
known as “Lilly of the Mohawks.”
Amid a glut of cheap natural gas
and stiffening environmental rules, Santee Cooper will shutter
its two oldest coal- and oil-fired power plants, following the
lead of other U.S. electricity providers.
Apparently doing something good can
be contagious. Or at least this seems to be the case with solar
power adoption. According to a study by Yale and New York
University, published though Marketing Science, individuals are
most likely to install solar panels on their home if one of
their neighbors has also done so.
Chanting and waving signs to
protest high electricity prices, thousands of unarmed indigenous
demonstrators blockaded a highway in western Guatemala, forcing
a standoff with police. Two truckloads of soldiers arrived and
gunfire erupted, killing eight protesters and wounding 34.
State health officials in New Mexico changed the vaccine
exemption form so that philosophical objections are no longer an
option. The New Mexico Department of Health simply said they
changed the form because the prior one allowed for
“misinterpretation of the law.” From now on, parents will be
required to state their religious beliefs in order to qualify
for a non-medical vaccine exemption for their children to attend
school.
Coal-fired power plants currently
provide about a third of all U.S. electricity -- down from about
50 percent a few years ago. But the long-term prospects for U.S.
coal consumption appear on the decline, fueled by competition
from lower-priced natural gas and concerns about stringent new
greenhouse gas emission regulations from the federal
Environmental Protection Agency. Power providers have shuttered
some coal-fired power plants and converted others to burn gas.
Britain faces large fines for
breaching European Union law on water treatment after plants in
northern England and London dumped raw sewage into waterways,
the European Court of Justice ruled on Thursday.
Urine samples collected from city dwellers in Berlin all tested
positive for glyphosate, with values ranging from 0.5 to 2
nanograms per milliliter (ng/ml), which is five to 20 times the
permissible upper limit for glyphosate in German drinking water
Who are the Europeans and Central
Asians to check on how we run our elections? The political
system in the United States is significantly freer and less
controlled by the government than in any European country and
the nations of Central Asia are largely despotic dictatorships.
The drought that ravaged the United
States this year does not appear to be abating and may spread
through the winter, government forecasters said on Thursday.
Stronger data suggests that the
U.S. housing recovery is gaining momentum, but Fitch Ratings
notes that, while the strength of some numbers is encouraging,
enthusiasm should be measured, as we believe recovery will
likely occur in fits and starts. Irregular trends in consumer
confidence and still-high unemployment continue to restrain the
recovery, and an unresolved U.S. fiscal cliff issue as well as
ongoing financial woes in Europe certainly have not helped.
About 18,800 megawatts (MW) of
power capacity at U.S. nuclear operators are expected to be
offline at the peak of the 2013 spring refueling season, down
roughly a third from a year earlier, Reuters data showed.
As Army officers, Duane Enger and
Justin Van Beusekom each spent time in Iraq trying to win a
grinding war. Last week, the two Minnesota veterans found
themselves hunkered down in Washington battling political
gridlock to preserve wind power as a part of the United States'
energy arsenal.
According to the research, 30
percent of senior water utility executives believe it is highly
likely that national water demand will outstrip supply due to
increasing populations and changing environments, highlighting
the need for a significant shift change in the management and
production of water supplies. Another 54 percent believe the
risk is "moderately likely."
Clean
Edge's inaugural U.S. Metro Clean Tech Index
subscription service, released today, provides the industry's
most comprehensive and objective analysis of how the 50 largest
U.S. metro regions, and the individuals, businesses, and
organizations that operate there, compare across the clean-tech
spectrum.
First the good news: US net
petroleum imports have dropped a lot in absolute and relative
terms in recent years....
Now the bad news.
“Yet what we are seeing is we are spending more on oil,
spending more on these imports, not just per barrel but
overall,” she said. “We’re importing less oil but we’re sending
more money overseas for oil.”
This year saw the Arctic sea ice extent fall to a new and
shocking low, while the U.S. experienced it warmest month ever
on record (July), beating even Dust Bowl temperatures.
Meanwhile, a flood of new research has convincingly connected a
rise in extreme weather events, especially droughts and
heatwaves, to global climate change, and a recent report by the
DARA Group and Climate Vulnerability Forum finds that climate
change contributes to around 400,000 deaths a year and costs the
world 1.6 percent of its GDP, or $1.2 trillion. All this and
global temperatures have only risen about 0.8 degrees Celsius
(1.44 degrees Fahrenheit) since the early Twentieth Century.
Scientists predict that temperatures could rise between 1.1
degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) to a staggering 6.4
degrees Celsius (11.5 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the
century.
Despite this, governments around the world have been slow to
tackle climate change; global greenhouse gas emissions continue
to rise year-after-year.
Sea piracy worldwide fell to its
lowest level since 2008 over the first nine months of this year
as navies and shipping companies cracked down on attacks off the
coast of Somalia, an international maritime watchdog said
Monday.
If you like to snack on the occasional bag of microwave
popcorn, it's probably the buttery flavoring that you crave.
This comes from an artificial flavoring called diacetyl,
which is a natural byproduct of fermentation found in butter,
beer and vinegar... and also a chemical made synthetically by
food companies because it gives foods that irresistible buttery
flavor and aroma.
Almost 2,000 people from Akwesasne
and Kahnawake will flock to the Vatican for the ceremony that
will grant sainthood to Kateri Tekakwitha, the first indigenous
woman of Turtle Island to be canonized by the Catholic Church.
The canonization will take place on Sunday.
California's implementation of
mandatory sales tax collection for online sellers keyed an up
and down ecommerce sales cycle as the days of tax-free internet
buying reached an end in September 2012.
Brokerage founder Charles Schwab
tells Newsmax that if Mitt Romney is elected the economy will
“pick up steam” and reverse the “no-growth policy” of President
Obama that is crushing seniors with low interest rates.
He also predicts that Obama’s plan to raise taxes on wealthier
Americans would not solve even “a fraction” of the problem with
the federal budget deficit.
China appears to be stepping up the
pressure on Japan over the Senkaku Islands with its announcement
that it is deploying drones to monitor Japan’s “territorial
transgressions.” Beijing is unlikely to deconflict its operation
of these drones with Japan, which could increase the potential
for air accidents with Japanese planes and further heighten
regional tensions.
Two Spokane property owners
investing thousands of dollars in solar energy panels say
financial incentives from federal and state governments made the
decision easy.
Congress passed the far-reaching
Clean Water Act 40 years ago. The measure scored dramatic
environmental successes, including with Lake Erie. But now Erie,
and the law, are besieged.
Welfare spending has grown
substantially over the past four years, reaching $746 billion in
2011 — or more than Social Security, basic defense spending or
any other single chunk of the federal government — according to
a new memo by the Congressional Research Service.
Salt Marshes are marshy areas found
near estuaries and low-energy coastlines. The water can vary
from completely fresh to completely salt water, and is greatly
affected by the tides. Salt marshes support diverse wildlife up
and down the east coast of the United States. They also serve an
important function in stabilizing the coastlines because the
plant roots anchor the otherwise highly erodible soil.
Unfortunately, salt marshes have been dying away over the past
20 years without a full understanding of how and why. However, a
new report from the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole,
MA postulates that the cause of the decline is due to excess
nutrients seeping into the marshes. These nutrients from sewer
systems and lawn fertilizers, such as nitrogen and phosphorus,
have been shown to cause salt marsh loss.
A Bangladeshi man was arrested for
allegedly plotting to bomb the New York Federal Reserve in lower
Manhattan as part of a sting operation by federal authorities
who provided the suspect with fake explosives.
A new study shows your lifestyle
choices in middle age have a direct impact on how you'll spend
your Golden Years. If you're fit at 50, you're much more likely
to be healthy into your 70s and 80s.
Emerging from the global economic recession, investments in
renewable energy technologies continued their steady rise in
2011, with total new investments in renewable power and fuels
(excluding large hydropower and solar hot water) reaching
$257bn, up from $220bn in 2010.
The will-it-or-won’t-it saga of
Greece’s exit from the eurozone took a turn for the better on
Wednesday as EU leaders are expected to extend to Athens a
second tranche of bailout assistance. While the new funding
prevents a likely Greek default and exit from the 17-nation
currency union, it also represents another EU move to kick the
can down the road on Greece’s debt crisis.
It looks like Greece is close to
clinching the deal with troika for additional bailout funding...
At this stage many view Greece's
fiscal situation as untenable. Credit Suisse expects the debt to
GDP ratio to stand at 175% by the end of this year, which is 12%
above IMF's projection from earlier this year. Financially
isolated (with massive liquidity problems) and squeezed by tough
austerity measures, the nation will have a difficult time
growing into its debt (to levels that would make the current
debt levels sustainable). Many now think that another government
debt restructuring should be a serious consideration.
Images have been released of a
design for the College of the Desert's new self-sustaining "Net
Zero-plus" campus to be built at Palm Springs. The "Net
Zero-plus" refers to the design's aim of generating more energy
than it uses.
The findings, which provide the
first simulation of past ice-sheet retreat and collapse over a
ten thousand year period in Antarctica, shed new light on what
makes ice stable or unstable and will help refine predictions of
future ice extent and global sea-level rise, the researchers
say.
Iraq's prime minister pressed for faster deliveries of weapons
to help arm his country's military during a Thursday meeting
with a senior U.S. defense official....Al-Maliki said Iraq needs
to beef up its defenses to protect the country's security and
national sovereignty, and to tackle terrorist groups that
continue to threaten Iraq's stability more than nine years after
the U.S.-led invasion.
According to GlobalData, harnessing
just a small portion of marine energy (tidal and wave power)
could solve the majority of the world's energy crisis.
Native Peoples face the
never-ending torrent of racial stereotypes, misconceptions and
sports logos. When Natives are discussed outside of cultural
understanding, there is the caricature of the intrepid warrior
making his last stand, the government dependent and the
victimized Indian who needs to be saved. Or simply the belief
that Natives don’t exist.
A report naming Nebraska as one of the worst states for its
energy efficiency standards didn't yield new information for
Loup Public Power District CEO and President Neal Suess.
Suess said the conditions aren't right at the local utility's
or government level to invest in energy efficiency.
"It does not surprise me that Nebraska's ranked that low," he
said.
New European Union sanctions on Iran which came into law on
October 16 include an assets freeze on more than 30 companies
involved in the Islamic Republic's oil and gas sector.
Added to the banned list are the ministries of petroleum and
energy, the National Iranian Oil Company and several of its
subsidiaries both inside and outside Iran, the National Iranian
Tanker Company and the National Iranian Gas Company
Tribes are stepping up their fight
against the terminals that would enable coal to be brought from
Montana and Wyoming to the Pacific Coast for transport to China
and the rest of Asia, and are being joined by non-Natives, with
fishers at the forefront.
US President Barack Obama and
Republican challenger Mitt Romney sparred over who truly has the
most jobs-friendly "all-of-the-above" energy plan, with Romney
saying the president is untrustworthy when it comes to
supporting more fossil fuels development, while Obama accused
the former Massachusetts governor of being a puppet of the oil
and gas industry.
The U.S.’s sovereign credit rating will be cut as “fiscal
theater” plays out in the world’s biggest economy, according to
Pacific Investment Management Co., which runs the world’s
biggest bond fund.
“The U.S. will get downgraded, it’s a question of when,”
Scott Mather, Pimco’s head of global portfolio management, said
at a briefing in Wellington, New Zealand. “It depends on what
the end of the year looks like, but it could be fairly soon
after that.”
Wind energy plans continue to blow
away in New York, as the industry faces a glut of cheap natural
gas, uncertainty over federal support and dwindling financing.
The amount of wind power expected to one day plug into the
state's electrical grid has fallen by more than two-thirds since
2009 as developers shelve projects.
The U.S. can achieve energy independence by 2025, according
to new research commissioned by Claremont Creek Ventures, an
investor in early-stage ventures that reduce reliance on
traditional energy.
But first there are hurdles to clear, including penetration
of electric and natural gas vehicles into the market; increased
public and private sector investment in renewables and
energy-efficiency technologies; and significant upfront
investment in domestic oil reserves and Canadian delivery
systems for Canadian oil.
slight chance for an isolated
M-class event. a high speed stream from a negative
polarity coronal hole. The greater than 2 MeV electron flux at
geosynchronous orbit was at high levels throughout the period.
The geomagnetic field is expected to be mostly unsettled on 21
Oct due to a high speed stream associated with a negative
polarity coronal hole.
He has labeled China an oppressor
of human rights, a flagrant violator of intellectual property
rights, an aggressive promoter of cyber espionage, and worst of
all for China, a currency manipulator.
[ED:
This shows the power of a strong stance. Reminders of
Reagon!
Reactions
anticipating confrontation resulting in positive change.
Geomagnetic storms can affect power
prices and reliability of the grid even in the absence of a
blackout and better space weather forecasting could improve the
ability to assess vulnerability of the grid, researchers have
concluded.
Geomagnetic storms, also known as solar
storms, are receiving increased attention among industry and
regulators, but the conversation has focused on the impact of
blackouts resulting from solar storms, such as occurred in 1989
on the Hydro Quebec grid.
[ED: But we don't
even try to protect the "grid". Attempts have been struck
down without positive action. It remains true that the
absolute best way to protect yourself is to go "off grid".!
But in a strongly worded rebuke, Corporation Commission
Chairman Gary Pierce blamed TEP for the delay and said the
utility should drop a request for performance incentive payments
for reaching energy-efficiency goals.
TEP had proposed an array of new energy-efficiency programs
to begin by mid-2011, to meet a state mandate. But the matter
has been hung up over issues including the performance incentive
and a proposal to allow TEP to recover some revenue it expects
to lose as efficiency programs take hold.
The pacemakers of the future will
be small, leadless and everlasting thanks to energy harvesting
(EH)...heartbeat's vibration energy harvesting offers a great
opportunity to develop hermetic systems, not in contact with any
human body fluids; it was then chosen by HBS consortium (HBS for
Heart Beat Scavenger) to power Sorin's future pacemakers.
Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC) yesterday
released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey®
(PMMS®), showing fixed mortgage rates edging slightly
lower with the 30-year fixed averaging 3.37 percent, just above
its all-time record low of 3.36 percent, and the average 15-year
fixed dipping to a new all-time record low at 2.66 percent.
Big dreams for renewable energy often goad people into
imagining big wind projects, with hundreds of turbines.
But lots of smaller projects are just as likely to add up to big
numbers.
Counting wind projects from 1999-2010 (based on data from
LBNL's excellent Wind Technologies Market report) the average
size of an American wind project is 80 megawatts (MW). The
size of projects has risen in the past decade, from about 50-60
MW, but largely because the average turbine size in U.S. wind
projects has nearly doubled to 1.79 MW in that time period
People like me throw the term
around loosely, partly because we sense the gathering of such a
force, and partly (to be honest) to help wish it into being by
sheer dint of repetition. Clearly there is growing sentiment in
favor of reforming American agriculture and interest in
questions about where our food comes from and how it was
produced. And certainly we can see an alternative food economy
rising around us: local and organic agriculture is growing far
faster than the food market as a whole.
Wireless utility meters found on many homes and small
business could be putting out a welcome mat for would-be
burglars, U.S. security experts say.
Analog meters that measure water, gas and electricity
consumption are rapidly being replaced by automated meters that
broadcast readings every 30 seconds for utility company
employees to read as they walk or drive by with a receiver.
The recent assassinations of a
Yemeni intelligence officer and a Yemeni citizen working at the
U.S. embassy are propaganda victories for al-Qaeda and its
associated groups. The killings also raise the possibility that
terrorists have a list of Yemeni officials that they intend to
target. If true, the existence of such a list could undermine
perceived security gains made by the United States and Yemen.
Though the term “super food” has
only been in circulation in recent years, the idea of
super-nutritious and life giving foods have been around since
the beginning of time. As a matter of fact, it’s likely that
ancient man had a far better idea of what true superfoods are
than what we gather as we wade through aisles of cans and boxes,
seeking out those things that are in their most natural forms.
Still, today anyone can compile a hefty superfoods list for the
next shopping day.
A number of villagers in Andar district and adjoining areas
have launched uprising against Taliban militants over the past
months and reportedly have expelled the Taliban fighters from
several villages.
The Afghan government has been supporting the uprising
against Taliban militants elsewhere in the militancy-ridden
country.
President Barack Obama vowed in February 2009 that the
economic stimulus legislation he was signing would create
construction jobs for 400,000 people building and rebuilding the
nation's infrastructure.
But despite a price tag now estimated at $833 billion, there
are 925,000 fewer construction jobs in the United States than in
February 2009, and 1,035,000 fewer than when Obama was
inaugurated, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
A team of
researchers from North Carolina State University have developed
a breakthrough method for one of the biggest headaches
associated with using electronics — accurately determining the
amount of charge left on a device’s battery.
Alabama Power Co. said recently
that it has received approval from the Alabama Public Service
Commission to purchase more electricity from Midwestern wind
projects. A new purchase of electricity from Buffalo Dunes Wind
Project, LLC, the firm said, mirrors one previously approved
with Chisholm View Wind Project, LLC. Combined, the deals add up
to 404 megawatts of electricity, and each project is under
contract for 20 years.
The North Pole is losing its ice cap. Comparing recent melt
seasons with historical records spanning more than 1,400 years
shows summer Arctic sea ice in free fall. Many scientists
believe that the Arctic Ocean will be ice-free in the summertime
within the next decade or two, and some say that this could
occur as early as 2016. The last time the Arctic was
completely free of ice may have been 125,000 years ago.
Research headed by Professor
Christopher Exley at Keele University has shown that regular
drinking of up to 1 litre a day of Spritzer, a silicon-rich
mineral water, removes aluminium from the bodies of people with
Alzheimer’s disease and in some individuals offered
clinically-significant protection against cognitive decline.
Dr Byrne explains: “Clean Technology is a term used to
describe knowledge-based products or services that improve
operational performance, productivity or efficiency, while
reducing costs, inputs, energy consumption, waste or pollution.
“The increase of harmful algal blooms in estuaries and
freshwater aquatic systems around the world is a major global
problem because of the serious threat they pose to wildlife,
livestock and humans,” he said.
The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, famed for seeking
“happiness” for its citizens, is aiming to become the first
nation in the world to turn its home-grown food and farmers 100
percent organic.
The tiny Buddhist-majority nation wedged between China and
India has an unusual and some say enviable approach to economic
development, centred on protecting the environment and focusing
on mental well-being.
Chinese corporate profits show no
sign of a second-half recovery as analysts cut earnings
estimates in September by the most in 2-1/2 years, a red flag
for investors who expect the world's second-biggest economy to
start picking up soon.
China’s decision last week to not
send its top finance officials to an important international
meeting in Tokyo greatly alarmed the global financial world
since it reflected more than growing tensions between the two
countries. The snub demonstrated that China does not plan to
play by the traditional rules in these forums, even if this
means endangering the global economy over minor disputes.
Climate change has become a sleeper
issue in a number of Senate races as Democrats attempt to paint
their opponents as extreme, based on their views on the issue.
It’s a largely straightforward peg for an attack that some
Democrats hope will appeal to centrist voters that may be swayed
if they see the Republican candidate as part of the party’s
extreme.
Kentucky Utilities and affiliated
company Louisville Gas and Electric announced Monday that they
expect to shut down three coal-fired electrical generation units
months ahead of schedule as part of their effort to comply with
new federal environmental regulations.
Central bank easing around the
globe has allowed financial markets to defy gravity, climbing
ever upward in the face of poor economic fundamentals, says
Pimco CEO Mohamed El-Erian.
A continuation of the
monetary accommodation won’t end well, he writes on CNBC.
Central banks are “all in” when it comes to the easing, as
evidenced by this week's round of interest rate cuts in Brazil
and Korea, El-Erian says.
The U.S. budget deficit has topped $1 trillion for a fourth
straight year, but a modest improvement in economic growth
helped narrow the gap by $207 billion compared with last year.
The Treasury Department said Friday the deficit for the 2012
budget year totaled $1.1 trillion. Tax revenue rose 6.4 percent
from last year to more than $2.4 trillion, helping contain the
deficit.
Undeterred by a punch to the
face, a 70-year-old Fayette County woman greeted a late night
intruder in her home with several rounds from her .38-caliber
revolver, authorities said.
Bisphenol-A (BPA) is one of the
world's highest production-volume chemicals and as a result of
its widespread use has been found in more than 90 percent of
Americans tested. BPA is an endocrine disrupter, which means it
mimics or interferes with your body's hormones and "disrupts"
your endocrine system.
Extra Fuel is designed to be safe –
not because of what is in it, but what isn't. The reason why
gasoline is so dangerous to keep stored in a car is because it
isn't one simple chemical. It’s a mixture of organic compounds
and some of them, such as butane, pentane, hexane and heptane,
are extremely volatile. They vaporize at relatively low
temperatures and if stored in a vehicle on a hot day they can
pop the vent on a storage can and fill the car with dangerous,
flammable fumes.
Will the U.S. Federal Reserve look the other way if inflation
overruns its target?
Risking the wrath of politicians and the central bank's
hard-won reputation for keeping prices stable, three top Fed
officials are touting plans for boosting employment that
explicitly allow for inflation to run above the Fed's
2.0-percent goal.
Well, Felix has gone and done it.
Today over the arid countryside near Roswell, New Mexico, the
Austrian daredevil successfully accomplished a feat that has
been in the works since 2003 – he broke the record for the
world’s highest parachute jump, dropping from an unofficial
altitude of 128,100 feet (39,045 meters) – about 1.5 miles (2.4
km) higher than expected. In the process, he also became the
first skydiver to exceed the speed of sound by reaching an
estimated speed of 833.9 mph (1342.8 km/h) while in freefall.
That's Mach 1.24 – the first supersonic skydive.
Colder temperatures this winter are
expected to bring with them increased heating bills. Compared
to last year, this winter is expected to be 18 percent colder in
the Northeast, according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric
Administration (NOAA). While the price of heating oil,
natural gas, and electricity are expected to be relatively
stable, colder temperatures will mean greater fuel consumption,
which translates into higher heating bills
With the wind industry bleeding
jobs in anticipation of the expiration of a tax credit at the
end of the year, the Climate + Energy Project, a Kansas-based
nonprofit group advocating renewable energy, is seeking to turn
up the heat on the state's four U.S. representatives opposed to
renewing the tax credit.
The extent and duration of the two
2011 warming events combined with the high salinity observed by
the researchers suggested the cause was not a transient warm
core ring, but the Gulf Stream itself that carried warm, salty
water to the outer shelf.
Rising production from independent
producers will account for the bulk of the 6 million b/d growth
in world oil demand over the next five years, leaving the call
on the OPEC oil cartel to grow by just 860,000 b/d over the
forecast period, the International Energy Agency said October 12
in its latest medium-term oil market outlook.
The number of immigrants both legal and illegal in the United
States hit a new record of 40 million in 2010, a 28 percent
increase from 2000, a wide-ranging new report reveals.
And the number of immigrants plus their children born in this
country now stands at around 50 million, accounting for about
one-sixth of the U.S. population, according to Steven A.
Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration
Studies
In total, Iran exported 5 billion kilowatt hours of
electricity to neighboring countries in the first half of the
current year, IRNA quoted Behzad as saying.
"The amount shows 51 percent increase compared to the same
period previous year", he explained.
The U.S. economy is bleeding thanks
to the interest of big Wall Street banks and policymakers like
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke who cater to them, said
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon
said recently he did the Federal Reserve “a favor” by agreeing
to take over troubled Bear Stearns during the 2008 financial
crisis that ended with the government bailing the sector out.
“I don’t owe Mr. Dimon anything,” McCain told CNBC.
Four months after snapping up
nearly the entire island of Lanai, billionaire Larry Ellison has
presented his vision of paradise: an eco-lab based on solar
power, with electric cars replacing gas guzzlers and sea water
transformed into fresh water for an organic farm export
industry.
With the approaching deadline to
renew the production tax credit fast approaching, the same types
of lay-offs could occur at other wind-related businesses, says
the American Energy Association. It is asking U.S. lawmakers to
bridge their differences and realize that jobs are stake.
Opponents of the tax credit, however, say that it cost too much
and that free market forces should take over.
Is the U.S. on the right track regarding domestic energy
policy and domestic energy resources? A new Harris Interactive
research poll finds that Americans are divided on that front.
The poll, commissioned by the Propane Education & Research
Council, found that 45 percent believe the U.S. is headed in the
right direction; 43 percent are on the opposite end of the
spectrum and believe the direction is wrong.
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch tweeted
on Saturday that it would be a “nightmare for Israel” if
President Obama is re-elected to a second term.
Vice
President Joe “Biden outright lied about personal relations with
Bibi. Susan Rice for State real nightmare,” opined the
81-year-old Murdoch, who built the world’s largest media
corporation with assets that include Fox News, The Wall Street
Journal and the New York Post.
The 2000 to 3000 MW, 1000-turbine
CCSM wind farm is significant not only because it will be the
largest in the U.S., but because it has been named to BLM's list
of "2012 Renewable Energy Priority Projects" and the White
House's seven "nationally and regionally significant" renewable
energy projects.
It sounds almost too good to be
true: a dietary supplement that makes people feel more energetic
and alert, boosts memory and mood, and has almost no side
effects.
"Our industry now faces downward
pressure on demand; supply abundance; a slowdown in the
deployment of renewables; and reduced momentum on climate change
legislation," Falih said in a speech made to the Oxford Energy
Institute on September 20 and just released by Saudi Aramco.
Two years after a groundbreaking
ceremony attended by President Obama, a Michigan plant built
with $150 million in taxpayer funds to make batteries for hybrid
vehicles is putting workers on furlough — before a single
battery has been produced.
ORNL is getting more than $2
million from the DOE's SunShot Initiative Concentrating Solar
Power program for a project titled "low-cost self-cleaning
reflector coatings for concentrating solar power collectors"
focused on developing a transparent superhydrophobic coating to
keep the collector mirrors clear of debris by preventing dust
from sticking to the mirror surface, maximizing the amount of
reflected sunlight from the collector mirrors while decreasing
cleaning costs.
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta
said the Pentagon and American intelligence agencies are seeing
an increase in cyber threats that could become as devastating as
the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks if they aren’t stopped.
“A
cyber attack perpetrated by nation states or violent extremist
groups could be as destructive as the terrorist attack of 9/11,”
Panetta said Thursday night.
“Such a destructive cyber
terrorist attack could paralyze the nation.”
Andrea Rossi, the inventor of the Energy Catalyzer, has
shared the results of an extended test of a high temperature
module. If the results are verified by the group of third party
scientists working towards validating the technology, it could
mean the "hot cat" is a true breakthrough with huge implications
for all of human civilization.
The incident happened in the small town of Bad Fallingbostel
in the country’s north. Workers at the facility accidentally
poured nitric acid into a tank, which contained sodium
hydroxide, and caused a chemical reaction.
The nitrous gases which participated in the reaction are
considered extremely dangerous if they come into contact with
the human body.
The Gratiot County Wind project
sits near Breckenridge. Voters in November will decide on
Proposal 3, a proposal that would put an energy mandate in the
state constitution.
While the overall lung cancer
five-year survival rate in the U.S. is 15 percent, the odds of
survival increase significantly with early detection. However,
the expense or invasiveness of current screening methods and the
lack of symptoms at early stages of the disease means most
people aren’t diagnosed until the cancer is well advanced.
Findings by researchers at the University of York could pave the
way for a simple blood test that would detect the disease even
in its early stages.
The UBS Global Asset Management
Cyclical Market Forum, held quarterly to discuss three plausible
economic scenarios and their potential implications for
investments over the next 12 months, found its Q3 Forum
dominated by discussion of the US “fiscal cliff”—the impending
spending cuts and tax increases that will automatically be
enacted next year, unless specific political action is taken
prior occur to January 2, 2013.
Oil prices could nearly double,
costing the United States millions of jobs, if Iran is permitted
to obtain a nuclear weapon — even if the Iranians don’t use the
weapon, a new report warns.
Solar activity is expected to be
low with a chance for an isolated M-class event. The
geomagnetic field was quiet to unsettled during the past 24
hours. The solar wind velocity at the ACE spacecraft showed a
steady downward trend from initial values around 495 km/s to
end-of-day values near 400 km/s. The greater than 2 MeV electron
flux at geosynchronous orbit reached high levels during the
period. The geomagnetic field is expected to be quiet to
unsettled for the next three days.
Fifteen years ago, Utah-based
prospector William A. Barnes was on a solo gold-dredging
expedition in the wilds of Northern California. One night, he
heard something disturbing the rocks in the canyon above his
campsite. He proceeded to watch as that indistinct “something”
came trudging downhill, until it stood only about three feet
(0.9 meters) from his tent. At that point, upon seeing its size,
shape, and profile against the brightly-moonlit quartz hillside,
he became a firm believer in the legendary creature commonly
referred to as Bigfoot or Sasquatch.
A new study led by the University
of Leicester, in association with colleagues at Loughborough
University, has discovered that sitting for long periods
increases your risk of diabetes, heart disease and death.
Traditional blinds and curtains have nothing on electronically
tinted smart glass. Whereas curtains are an all-or-nothing
solution to streaming in sunlight, and blinds obscure
visibility, smart glass allows a clear view no matter the tint.
Smart glass is also an energy efficient way to handle heat — the
sunnier the day, the dark the tint; cloudier days, the lighter
the tint. This exceptional advancement in control over how much
sunlight and heat entering a building can have a significant
impact on energy costs.
John Taylor makes an interesting
point on his blog with respect to the bloated government
regulation in the US. Here are two charts that compare the
recovery from the recession in the early 80s (during the Reagan
administration) with the current economic recovery. One trend
that really stands out is the number of federal workers employed
in regulatory activities (excluding transportation security).
The two trends are drastically different.
Spain’s decision to host U.S. Navy
ships capable of shooting down ballistic missiles from Iran will
strengthen NATO’s strategic position in Europe and the greater
Mediterranean, but will further aggravate its already cool
relations with Russia. While concerns have been raised about the
capabilities of the European missile shield, the agreement will
help Spain’s struggling economy and indicates Madrid’s
continuing strong ties to the United States and NATO despite the
country’s domestic problems.
Salt River Project went live on a
19 megawatt solar plant in Queen Creek last week, raising the
company's retail electrical needs from renewable sources to 10
percent.
The states are trying to jumpstart
the natural gas vehicle market. A coalition of 22 U.S. governors
is saying that their respective states will buy at least 10,000
such cars and trucks if the automakers will agree to produce
them.
In The Lord Of The Rings,
the Hobbits live in the Shire in their distinctive dwellings
known as Hobbit Holes. They're really just homes built into
hillsides, with banked earth sitting atop the basic structures.
While the Hobbits are fictional creatures, their homes are not,
as people have been taking up residence in similar dwellings for
many years. And the idea has now taken a firm hold with those
interested in working with, rather than against the environment.
In other words Hobbit Holes are real and, on this occasion at
least, the Shire can be found in Switzerland.
For the second time in a week,
Turkey stopped and searched a Syria-bound plane for weapons,
increasing the likelihood of a military conflict between the two
nations. While NATO will still try to avoid military action in
Syria without a UN mandate, Western pressure on Russia will
increase due to a report that the Assad regime is using
Russian-made cluster bombs on civilians.
Copyranter, Buzzfeed's ad blogger,
says this 40-second spot, put out by the South Dublin (Ireland)
County Council, is "the best anti litter commercial of the year"
and the best since Keep America Beautiful's classic crying
American Indian commercial from the 1970s.
“Projecting 2013’s brackets is more
complicated than usual given the uncertainty surrounding the
potential expiration of the Bush cuts, originally enacted in
2001 and 2003, and more recent stimulus bill tax cuts originally
passed in 2009,” the Foundation observes.
The U.S. economy will remain stuck
in idle and very few jobs will be created if President Barack
Obama is re-elected in November, said Tim Kane, chief economist
at the Hudson Institute and founder of the social-networking
firm StoryPoint.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics
(BLS) will unveil a massive downward revision to its
surprisingly strong September jobs report after November’s
elections, said billionaire real-estate mogul Donald Trump.
The U.S. unemployment rate fell to 7.8 percent in September
from 8.1 percent in August, the BLS reported last week, far
outpacing many analysts’ expectations.
Green house gasses, nuclear
waste.....these are concerns with our most widely used power
generation technologies, fossil fuel combustion and nuclear
fission. Fusion power holds the promise of abundant energy, no
green house gas emissions, and little to no waste products.
Fusion is getting closer to commercial reality. Until now, it
has been produced only in the lab, and only for the briefest of
time scales. Scientists in several countries are getting much
closer to sustained fusion and this offers the real potential
for commercial power production!
U.S. Ambassador Terry Kramer warned
on Friday that a proposal to give a United Nations agency more
control over the Internet is gaining momentum in other
countries.
Proposals to expand the U.N.'s International
Telecommunications Union's (ITU) authority over the Internet
could come up at a treaty conference in Dubai in December.
European telecommunications companies are pushing a plan that
would create new rules that would allow them to charge more to
carry international traffic.
Enough to Produce Four Times The
Biofuel Made from Corn
Non-food crops, farm residues and
waste -- collectively known as “biomass” -- have the power to
dramatically increase our nation’s renewable energy supply, the
Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) concluded in a report
released today.
US residential housing supplies
remain at multi-year low levels. The inventories of unsold homes
as measured in months (time to clear the inventory) are at the
lowest level since 2006.
So this year I broke the pledge and
burned my packaging waste. I know you zero-wasters are cringing
right now, but for me, it was the right decision. The last thing
I wanted in bear country was rotting chicken salad in my pack.
Interdependence has been a
consistent theme in the world of oil for many years, the idea
that even a small supply disruption in one part of the globe can
have an impact thousands of miles away. Well, say goodbye to
that notion, or at least part of it. The International Energy
Agency has looked into the not-too-distant future and it sees a
world divided between an increasingly self-contained western
hemisphere and pretty much everywhere else.
The
White House is "aiming for a small pop, a flash in the pan, so
as to be able to say, `Hey, we're doing something about it,'"
said retired Air Force Lt. Col. Rudy Attalah,
As it weighs a possible upgrade to
its aging Prairie Island reactors, Xcel Energy Inc. is finding
the economics of nuclear power as challenging as the engineering
Zuni decided to build the first
Native American aviary for nonreleasable eagles. “They said,
‘Send them to us. We’ll care for them,’ ” said Early. As the
eagles naturally molted their feathers, these were collected for
tribal members’ use.
U.S. distillate stocks fell 3.177
million barrels to 120.882 million barrels for the reporting
week ended October 5, U.S. Energy Information Administration
(EIA) data showed Thursday.Analysts polled by Platts expected
U.S. distillate stocks to decline, but by a much smaller 400,000
barrels.
A new study suggests that human
have been producing traceable amounts of atmospheric methane
earlier than thought. The results will challenge global warming
predictions, because what was assumed to be 'natural' levels of
methane, have in fact been inflated by human activities since
Roman times.
Australia switched on its first
utility-scale solar farm on Wednesday, bringing the country a
small step closer to achieving ambitious renewable energy use
targets that traditional coal and gas power producers are now
fighting to soften.
Natural gas, renewable sources of energy, and energy
efficiency measures are stepping up to replace coal because they
make more economic sense. That development is good news for U.S.
carbon dioxide emissions which are now at a 20-year low, as well
as emissions of other harmful pollutants like mercury, sulfur
dioxide, and nitrogen oxides.
But, while natural gas will inevitably play a role as we make
a transition to a clean energy future, it alone cannot deliver
the reductions in global warming emissions that we need to avert
the worst consequences of climate change. Natural gas also comes
with other environmental and potential health risks and is
subject to considerable price volatility.
At least 130 projects that capture
and store carbon emissions at coal power and industrial plants
must come online by 2020 if the world is to stay on course to
keeping the rise in global temperatures below a threshold deemed
dangerous by scientists, a new report released Wednesday said.
Global investment in clean energy
fell to $56.6 billion in the third quarter of this year, down 20
percent year-on-year and signalling 2012 will see the first
annual decline in eight years, a report by analysts Bloomberg
New Energy Finance said on Tuesday.
The energy landscape of South
Carolina and the country is rapidly and dramatically changing in
light of cost-effective energy that is also greener and more
efficient than that of the past.
For the next couple weeks, Waste & Recycling News reporter
Kerri Jansen will be blogging about her experience with bokashi
composting, a new method of composting developed in Japan and
gaining popularity in the U.S.
There is a hole in the Volcker Rule
that banks are trying exploit. But before jumping to
conclusions, let's walk through the following logic. The Volcker
Rule prohibits significant proprietary trading and limits banks'
investments in hedge funds and private equity to 3% of Tier-1
capital. It also prohibits banks from holding more than 3% of
any one fund's assets. The purpose of Volcker Rule is to focus
the bulk of banks' capital on its primary business of lending.
Seems clear-cut, right?
"Today is a red-letter day for
Pennsylvania," DEP Secretary Mike Krancer said. "With this
approval, Moxie now has all that it needs from DEP to move
forward with the construction of this historic facility, which
will use clean, pipeline-quality, locally produced natural gas
as fuel."
American elections have often been defined by who is not
allowed to vote.
Two days before the Declaration of Independence, for example
the New Jersey Constitution declared that all residents “who are
worth fifty pounds” could vote. (That included women and African
Americans, but by 1807 that line was rewritten so that only
white men were eligible.)
If common ground exists between the Obama and Romney
campaigns, it is in the area of energy efficiency. But even such
a non-contentious issue must still get parsed out and removed
from the back burner where it has long been sitting.
With the presidential campaign
headed down the final stretch, it is expected that the two main
candidates will slow up. What? While their slugfest will remain
in high gear, their highly toxic rhetoric will begin to ease as
they seek to woo the independent and moderate voters.
These bodies of water, and
countless others, are now thriving thanks in large part to the
regulations set forth by the Clean Water Act. “It’s only when
you don’t have access to water that you suddenly realize just
how irreplaceable that resource is, and how much the ecosystem
is at the heart of community and economy,” Jackson said.
The work is not complete, however, as even today 8% of Americans
do not have access to water that meets all federal standards. An
old and crumbling infrastructure has much to do with the failure
to reach 100%, and was identified by Jackson as the prevailing
issue for municipalities in North America. Other challenges
mentioned were the financing of municipal projects, dealing with
the repercussions of climate change such as drought and extreme
weather, and protecting water from emerging contaminants derived
from pharmaceuticals and personal care products.
We are seeing more seasonality
adjustments fun and games from the US Department of Labor. The
drop in the initial jobless claims was so large, it looks
suspicious. Lee Adler has a detailed write-up on seasonality
adjustments following last Friday's employment report
(discussed - and yes, the post contains all sorts of Bloomberg
charts). The premise is that this drop actually happened earlier
(which explains the sharp decline in the unemployment rate last
week) and is only now showing up in the numbers. Either way, it
is certainly a welcome development for the US economy.
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
President Narayana Kocherlakota said the U.S. central bank
shouldn’t automatically raise interest rates from the current
record low near zero when the outlook for inflation rises above
2.25 percent.
Over the past few years, an
interesting pattern has emerged, where political supporters of
genetically engineered (GE) foods are feasting on organics,
while promoting unlabeled GE foods for everyone else.
After years of debate over the benefits and safety of
geothermal energy on Hawaii Island, the community remains
divided, even as Puna Geothermal Venture pumps out 38 megawatts
on the volcanic lands outside Pahoa.
Meanwhile, HVO scientists — who study the dangerous gases
and seismic activity of the volcano on a daily basis — have
remained mostly quiet.
Greenhouse gas emissions rise when
economies expand but don't fall as quickly when recession
strikes, perhaps because people stick with a higher-emitting
lifestyle from the boom times, a study showed.
Environmental activists from
Greenpeace broke into restricted areas surrounding two Swedish
nuclear power plants on Tuesday to highlight what they said were
safety deficiencies.
Sizzling temperatures and lack of
rains have scorched maize or corn crops across eastern Europe,
further reducing global supplies already hit after the worst
drought in the United States in 50 years.
Danish researchers were quite
surprised when they realized that exercising for less amount of
time (even without using high-intensity type training)
still produced greater weight loss, without making any planned
dietary changes
Testimony about poor security at
the U.S. consulate in Benghazi to a congressional hearing
yesterday appeared to change the terms of the debate over the
September 11, 2012 terrorist attack that resulted in the deaths
of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other
Americans. The testimony by career State Department and defense
personnel was compelling and appeared to point to major
shortcomings in U.S. diplomatic security as well as policy
problems facing the United States and its European allies in the
Arab world due to the downside of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings
As a result of that centuries-long
process, domination is now a world in which we live without
noticing; it is similar to the way a fish lives in water without
noticing. Yet, we have no theory to account for systems of
domination and their consequences on humans and ecological
systems. There is no Department of Domination Studies in your
local college or university. Good luck finding a professor of
Domination Studies. There aren’t any.
According to a new poll, 74 percent
of Americans agree that climate change is impacting weather in
the U.S., including 73 percent who agreed, strongly or somewhat,
that climate change had exacerbated record high temperatures
over the summer. The findings mean that a large majority of
Americans agree with climatologists who in recent years have
found increasingly strong evidence that climate change has both
increased and worsened extreme weather events.
More U.S. coal-fired power plants could retire due to
environmental regulations and weaker-than-expected electric
demand, costing the industry up to $144 billion, economists at
consultancy Brattle Group said.
In a new study, Brattle's economists forecast 59,000 to
77,000 megawatts (MW) of coal plant capacity would likely retire
over the next five years.
Calculating the fuel costs of a
traditional vehicle is quite easy – just look at the price
read-out on the gas pump or receipt after you finish filling it
up. The cost of filling up an electric vehicle's battery can be
a bit more difficult to pin down because you don't get a receipt
on the spot and the cost of electricity fluctuates regularly. GM
plans to make the process easier for Chevy Volt owners with a
new app currently being tested designed to give Volt owners a
full cost breakdown.
European finance ministers are
hailing the new euro bailout fund, the European Stability
Mechanism (ESM), as a defense against the ongoing European debt
crisis, but it looks unlikely to solve the region’s economic
challenges. While a heftier package than its predecessor, the
ESM will probably be short of sufficient funds to deal with
major bailouts on the horizon and overlooks key economic
problems that Europe is struggling with.
There are currently two HPV vaccines on the market, but if
there was any regard for sound scientific evidence, neither
would be promoted as heavily as they are.
A legal case against Shell is set
to begin Thursday in a Dutch court with the Anglo-Dutch major
facing charges of causing environmental pollution in Nigeria.
It’s likely that the issue of
nuclear waste will remain buried until well after the 2012
presidential election. But if you listen to the General
Accountability Office, the matter shouldn’t sit for too long.
The NOSB—a division of the USDA—is
responsible for regulating all organic crops and determining
what can be called “Certified Organic.” The board is meeting
next week, and on the agenda will be whether to allow eight
synthetic substances in organic baby food, primarily in organic
infant formula.
Palo Verde Nuclear Generating
Station's Unit 2 recorded the best performance in plant history
beginning with its last refueling outage in spring 2011 to the
current scheduled maintenance and refueling outage, which
commenced over the weekend. The 1,340-megawatt unit operated for
a plant-record 518 consecutive days, producing enough
electricity over that time to equal the production of almost
three Hoover Dams.
As a way to help meet California's
renewable energy goals, Pacific Gas & Electric will delve into a
research and demonstration project with the help of $1 million
from the California Energy Commission.
The tribe will continue its fight
against a 40-year extension of onsite nuclear waste storage on
Prairie Island.
"Four more decades of storage could
expose all of us to the vulnerabilities of aging facilities,
human error, and natural disasters," said Tribal Council
President Johnny Johnson. "But the real problem with the request
is that it's based on the fiction that it's only a 40-year
extension for only 48 dry casks. There's already enough nuclear
waste in the spent fuel pool to fill another 30 casks -11 more
than the 48 casks in the current license, and in just 20 more
years of plant operation the plant will generate enough waste to
fill 98 casks. Washington politics will continue to delay the
creation of a federally-mandated geologic repository like Yucca
Mountain, and the 98 casks containing more than 2,500 tons of
radioactive nuclear waste will be stranded indefinitely along
the banks of the Mississippi River and within 30 miles of the
metro area."
A total of five proposed export
terminals -- two in Washington, three in Oregon -- would process
coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana on its
way to energy-hungry Asian markets. Longview is one of the five
sites currently under consideration for a new terminal. Plans
for a sixth facility in Grays Harbor were dropped earlier this
year.
largest flare of the period, the
most complex region with a Beta-Gamma magnetic classification.
No Earth-directed coronal mass ejections were observed. Solar
activity is expected to be low with a chance for isolated
M-class activity. in day 3 (14 October) a coronal hole
high speed stream is expected to move into geoeffective position
causing quiet to unsettled conditions with a chance for active
periods.
Russian leaders may be hoping that
President Vladimir Putin's 60th birthday celebrations last week
overshadowed announcements made by the Central Bank of Russia
that left little room for optimism about Russia’s economic
outlook. In its forecasts for the next three years, the bank
revealed that it expects Russia's export surplus to be reversed
by the year 2015, an occurrence that will mark a sudden reversal
of fortune for Russia’s economy.
The Russian government said
Wednesday that it would not renew a hugely successful 20-year
partnership with the United States to safeguard and dismantle
nuclear and chemical weapons in the former Soviet Union when the
program expires next spring, a potentially grave setback in the
already fraying relationship between the former cold war
enemies.
The year-end fiscal adjustment
shouldn’t raise as many red flags as it is, as the country’s
chronic health issues are much more dangerous, said broker,
author and financial commentator Peter Schiff.
At the end
of this year, tax breaks are scheduled to expire at the same
time automatic cuts to government spending kick in, a
combination known as a fiscal cliff that could send the country
into a recession next year if left unchecked by Congress.
The Cleantech Group released its
preliminary investment numbers on Tuesday to show that solar,
once the top money grabber, ceded that spot to transportation,
biofuel and green chemicals during the third quarter of this
year.
South Korea’s decision to increase
the range of its ballistic missiles could easily be interpreted
as a move to forestall a North Korean attack. But a more
accurate assessment would take into account many changes in East
Asia, including worry over an arms buildup underway in China and
Japan, as well as saber-rattling from the north. For Seoul, the
missiles are not just about defense but about keeping up with
the technological advancements of other militaries in the region
so as not to be perceived as the region’s “weak sister.”
Since time immemorial, Native
Nations have lived in harmony with this land and in solidarity
with all our relations. Our continued survival depends on this
vital relationship. We perpetuate this harmony for our continued
survival and world peace. We carry out our religious duties for
the good of all. Endangering us endangers us all.
"There is mounting concern across
the U.S. about the impact of trace organics, such as hormones
and pharmaceuticals, in our water systems and the potential
threats they pose on human health, wildlife and the
environment," said Dr. Rebecca Klaper, the lead scientist from
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who worked on the study. "This
research showed that when Actiflo® Carb is added to a
wastewater treatment process, it removes a significant portion
of the pharmaceuticals tested."
A recent report on causes of death
shows that suicide has now overtaken traffic accidents as the
leading cause of injury-related death in the US. One reason for
that is because car accident occurrences are down. But even so,
the rate of suicide rose by an unhealthy 15 percent between 2000
and 2009, and poisoning (the number one cause of which is
prescription drugs) rose by a whopping 128 percent.
NATO members do not want to be
drawn into the Syrian conflict, but might be forced to because
of growing tensions between Turkey and Syria which increased
yesterday when Turkey intercepted a Syrian airliner. While it is
unclear whether this is Turkey’s goal, Ankara seems to be
picking a fight with the Assad regime that could result in a
regional conflict.
Aside from emitting less carbon
dioxide (CO2), switching much of the Texas power generation
portfolio from coal-to-natural gas could also conserve a lot of
water.
If you've ever felt that you're
overweight, it's your own fault because you are not smart enough
to eat the right foods and you're too lazy to exercise... that's
exactly what the government and food industry would like you to
believe.
The United Nations was founded to provide a forum in which the
world’s nations could negotiate their differences to avoid armed
conflict. Its administrative role was restricted to policing
peace agreements after they were concluded and providing
humanitarian assistance around the world.
Turkey’s confrontation with
Syria spread on Thursday to include Russia, Syria’s principal
military ally, when Turkey’s prime minister said Russian
munitions intended for Syria’s government had been impounded
from a Syrian commercial jetliner forced to land in Turkey.
Millions of pounds of unexploded
bombs dumped decades ago off the coasts of 16 states, from New
Jersey to Hawaii, could now pose threats to shipping lanes and
the 4,000 oil and gas rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, oceanographers
warn
Getting access to electricity is
the main obstacle to growing economies in struggling nations.
That’s why some global organizations have prioritized such
electrification efforts.
The goal is to map out greenhouse
emissions across the most populated cities in the United States.
This in itself would account for almost a quarter of all CO2
emissions in the world.
indicated that overall economic
activity “generally expanded modestly” in the period since the
last report in late August. 10 of the 12 Federal Reserve
Districts reported that growth continued at a modest pace, while
one noted a “levelling off” in activity and another indicated
some slowing in the pace of growth. These assessments of
economic conditions represent a modest improvement from the last
report in which three Districts reported a slowing in growth and
one cited mixed activity.
Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC) yesterday
released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey®
(PMMS®), showing average fixed mortgage rates edging slightly
higher while remaining near their all-time record lows coming
off the employment report for September.
The United States on Wednesday set
steep final duties on billions of dollars of solar energy
products from China, but turned down a request from lawmakers
and U.S. manufacturers to expand the scope of its order.
"Unilateral trade barriers will not
make any one company more competitive, but will make solar less
competitive against other forms of electricity generation," said
E.L. "Mick" McDaniel, managing director of Suntech America, a
division of one of China's biggest solar manufacturers.
Nine out of 10 high-schoolers chose
not to drink and drive in 2011, according to the CDC. Safety
advocacy groups and government agencies have worked with youths
and parents on the issue.
Across the country, and among many
kinds of organizations, there's an emerging trend that's
ambitious, yet achievable: diverting 100% of an organization's
waste from landfills.
Ninety-one people including doctors, nurses and other medical
professionals were charged criminally in a new sweep of Medicare
fraud involving seven U.S. cities and $430 million in alleged
false billing, officials said on Thursday.
It was the government's second big raid in recent months
Vice President Joe Biden
acknowledged Thursday that he and President Barack Obama want to
raise $1 trillion in taxes on the wealthy as part of a plan to
let some Bush-era tax cuts expire, giving Republicans fresh
fodder to criticize the Democratic ticket just days after the
vice president said the middle class has been buried during the
past four years.
However, the problems in the state
that have caused spot and retail prices to spike are occuring
against a backdrop of refinery and pipeline problems, but
refineries have largely shifted already from making summer-grade
gasoline to winter-grade gasoline, raising a question about
whether Brown's mandate will have any impact.
Idaho Power officials say they are preparing to appeal a
federal ruling that challenges company efforts to shut down wind
farms during periods of low demand.
But where and how the fight will take place remain to be
seen.
Gaping U.S. deficits are treatable
conditions but not without some pain, and the sooner Washington
acts, the less painful treatment will be, said John Allison,
president and CEO of the Cato Institute.
While TVA's half-century-old Allen
Fossil Plant in Memphis continued consuming piles of coal to
make electricity, agency officials gathered on the other end of
the state last week to dedicate a sleek, $775 million facility
that represents a quantum shift in how the Mid-South gets its
power.
Already under pressure to curb
noxious air pollution, the owner of four coal-fired power plants
in Illinois is facing new legal complaints about toxic chemicals
and heavy metals leaching from decades-old waste ponds.
Plans to bring to life a decade-old power plant, built but
never used, seem to be gaining steam.
Owner Invenergy had considered converting the abandoned
facility into an ethanol and electrical power plant. More than a
year ago, it dropped the ethanol portion and said it plans a
natural gas-fired electrical power plant instead.
The U.S. government has been on a
borrowing binge the past few years, fueled in part by low
interest rates that make borrowing very inexpensive. The Great
Recession began in December 2007, and at that time, the U.S.
government was paying an average interest rate of 4.69 percent
on its marketable securities. This is the rate on securities
held by the public or foreign governments and not the rate on
issues for programs like Social Security, which consist of
special bonds designed specifically for that program.
The rebound would likely be
interpreted as a short-term boon to growth, though it could bode
ill for household balance sheets if it is not accompanied by a
rise in real wages, which have been stagnant.
L-Arginine is converted in the blood vessels into a chemical
called nitric oxide. Nitric oxide causes blood vessels to open
wider for improved blood flow. L-Arginine also stimulates the
release of growth hormone, insulin, and other substances in the
body.
Meat prices are astronomical and
they seem to be going up daily. And while prices are continuing
to rise, I'll have to say the quality of the meat is going down.
I looked at a couple of T-bone steaks in my local grocery store
the other day, and I have seldom seen the lines of gristle and
inedible parts that those steaks had.
Iraqi oil output is set to more
than double over the rest of the current decade, rising to 6.1
million b/d by 2020 and reaching 8.3 million b/d in 2035, the
International Energy Agency said Tuesday in a special report on
the Middle East country.
The IMF staff’s Global Projection
Model (GPM) uses an entirely different methodology to gauge risk
but confirms that risks for recession in advanced economies
(entailing a serious slowdown in emerging market and developing
economies) are alarmingly high.
As George Osborne proudly talks
about cutting £10bn from the welfare budget, the reality is
setting in that UK's £120bn deficit target is likely to be
breached and debt to GDP ratio will reach well over 90% (from
under 70% today) in the next few years. The double-dip
recession that reduces tax receipts has been the key culprit.
"We need to clean up the air," said Frieda Rector of Modesto,
one of nearly 100 people who visited the plant. "This is a
source we can use that won't pollute the air."
The tour was sponsored by solareverywhere.org, which promotes
the technology, and the Civic Engagement Project at Modesto
Junior College.
Speakers at an industrial energy
conference Thursday said there are economic and moral reasons
why businesses should be good stewards and make efficient use of
the Earth's limited resources.
The past year has seen a major
uptick in deployments of electric vehicle supply equipment
(EVSE). This acceleration is a direct result of developments in
the market for plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs): More than
135,000 PEVs will be sold globally in 2012, and growth is
expected to continue at a steady pace.
The distribution system piping in
U.S. public water systems that rely on non-disinfected well
water or “ground water” may be a largely unrecognized cause of
up to 1.1 million annual cases of acute gastrointestinal illness
(AGI), involving nausea, vomiting and diarrhea, scientists are
reporting.
A group of researchers at the
University of Washington has found a way to isolate and identify
medically interesting molecules using little more than scraps of
office paper, a Ziplock bag and a cheap diluted solvent. If
properly developed, the system – which requires minimal costs
and know-how to build and operate – could be made to administer
a wide range of medical tests nearly free of charge.
This adaptive nature demonstrated
by introduced species could serve them well as the climate
continues to warm. At the same time, the non-natives' potential
ability to become even more invasive could threaten the survival
of native species already under pressure from land-use changes,
researchers say.
Philippine government negotiator
Marvic Leonen speaks during a press conference in Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia, Sunday, Oct. 7, 2012. Philippine President Benigno
Aquino III said Sunday his government reached a preliminary
peace agreement with the largest Muslim rebel group in a major
breakthrough toward ending a decades-long rebellion in the
country’s south.
Vaccine proponents have stated that
there are over 20,000 studies that "prove" the safety of
vaccines. But a closer inspection of those studies would likely
reveal otherwise.
The campaign ads for Proposal 3 on
the Nov. 6 ballot could lead a voter to conclude that its
passage would bring Michigan's reliance on renewable energy
sources for its power in line with forward-thinking states
across the nation.
Two CMEs were observed. The
geomagnetic field began the period at unsettled levels before
the arrival of the CME from 05 October around 08/0445Z. At that
time, a transient passage was observed at ACE and was then
followed by a subsequent sudden impulse (21nT at Boulder) to
Earth's magnetic field at 08/0515Z. Conditions increased to
active levels for a sole period, before major storm levels began
and lasted for two periods (06-12Z). The remainder of the day
saw a recovery back to unsettled and active levels.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s
long and close relationship with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev
is fraying because of growing differences between the priorities
and governing styles of the Kremlin’s two most senior
politicians. The rivalry reflects Medvedev’s inclination to
sympathize with a growing number of Russians who reject Putin’s
tilt toward Soviet-style authoritarianism.
He is not just a vice presidential
candidate. He is the author and intellectual founder of the
modern Republican agenda. There can be no more profound and
articulate a spokesman to defend and elaborate the Romney agenda
to America.
While the esteemed candidates for
President of the United States debate the fate of Big Bird on
Sesame Street, the real issue for ecommerce professionals on the
internet's Main Street involves the collection of sales taxes.
Washington wants to find a way to get state sales taxes
collected by all online sellers from all buyers who should be
liable for such taxes. The quaint idea of requiring a physical
"nexus" in a state to require a seller to collect sales taxes is
rapidly becoming past tense.
More than nine out of 10, or 92
percent, want the United States to be involved in the
development and use of more solar energy. For the most part,
political parties actually agreed with 84 percent of
Republicans, 95 percent of independents, and 98 percent of
Democrats in support of solar.
Cities and states around the
country are shoring up battered retirement plans by reducing
promised benefits to public workers and retirees. All told,
states need $1.4 trillion to fulfill their pension obligations.
It's a yawning chasm that threatens to wreck government budgets
and prompt tax hikes or deep cuts to education and other
programs.
“It makes the case that people who get covered have better
outcomes and live longer,” Hughes said. “But does that mean that
putting people only into Medicaid will have better health
outcomes? No.”
But health advocates argue that the findings cannot be
ignored.
Electric cars, often touted as "green" vehicles, might cause
as much or more pollution than gasoline- or diesel-powered cars,
European researchers say.
Greenhouse gas emissions can rise dramatically if coal is
used to produce the electricity to charge cars, and electric car
factories can emit more toxic waste than conventional car
factories, researchers at the Norwegian University of Science
and Technology said.
"In a world where corruption,
greed, and political maneuvering often win out over the virtues
of the human spirit, we believe, perhaps naively, that an
exception might exist in the experimental sciences. The history
of science is littered with individual incidences of fraud,
patent stealing, and flagrant misrepresentation; but here [cold
fusion] we found a contemporary conspiracy that overshadows most
of what we've discovered in the Phenomenon Archives."
Creating this new fund clearly
shows that Terra Firma has confidence in the continued growth of
renewable energies even after some governments have chosen to
reduce their subsidies in the wake of the ongoing financial
crisis.
On March 22, 1987, a tugboat towed
a barge piled high with bales of trash away from a pier on New
York's Long Island. For the most part, no one noticed. It wasn't
unusual for New York to export its garbage; this load of
municipal waste, bound for a landfill in North Carolina, was as
boring as they came.
Experts believe the next deadly human pandemic will almost
certainly be a virus that spills over from wildlife to humans.
The reasons why have a lot to do with the frenetic pace with
which we are destroying wild places and disrupting ecosystems.
Emerging diseases are in the news again. Scary viruses are
making themselves noticed and felt. There's been a lot of that
during the past several months...
The exchange of fire stoked fears
that Syria's civil war will escalate into a regional
conflagration drawing in NATO member Turkey, once an ally of
President Bashar Assad but now a key supporter of the rebels
fighting to topple him.
Raccoons, skunks, possums and certain other animals have long
been city dwellers, but now larger wild carnivores are moving
into urban areas, according to a symposium presented today at
EcoSummit 2012, an international conference held in Columbus,
Ohio.
Leading the way are coyotes, which have established a
territory just five miles from Chicago O'Hare International
Airport. They appear to be paving the way for other large
mammalian carnivores.
Many political supporters of genetically engineered (GE) foods
are feasting on organics, while promoting unlabeled GE foods for
everyone else, including Mitt Romney, President Obama, and
former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
"What jumped out is how many
Americans feel it is acceptable for homeowners to walk away from
a mortgage and go into foreclosure. If Americans carry on with
that mindset, it will continue to cause problems as the economy
undergoes a slow recovery."
Two nuclear reactors were shut down in South Korea Tuesday
after unrelated technical malfunctions, the plants' operators
said.
Neither reactor is in danger of releasing radiation,
officials at Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, Yonhap News Agency
reported. The first reactor, the Shingori 1 in Busan, South
Korea, 280 miles south of Seoul, was shut down after it detected
a problem with the control rod that governs the rate of fission
inside the reactor.
Arizona Public Service Co. plans to decommission the three
oldest units at Four Corners Power Plant by the end of the year,
a company spokesman said Wednesday.
The Phoenix-based utility will continue to operate units 4
and 5, which produce the majority of power at Four Corners.
Holistic dentists have been warning the public about them for
years. But it’s a huge and extremely lucrative industry—so most
dental surgeons are turning a blind eye to the health risks.
Over 41,000 root canals are performed every day in dental
offices across the country—that’s 25 million every year.
Genetically modified (GM) vaccines are already being produced –
some are even on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention’s (CDC) recommended vaccine schedule – even though,
as is the case with GM foods, we know very little about their
long-term effects
During September 2012, the trend
towards El Niño slowed in several key oceanic and atmospheric
indicators. However, the Pacific basin reflects borderline
ENSO-neutral/ weak El Niño conditions. Equatorial sea surface
temperatures (SST) remained elevated across the Pacific Ocean
Did you know that the multi-billion drug category known as
“acid blockers,” despite being used by millions around the world
daily, may not work as well as the humble ginger plant in
relieving symptoms of indigestion and heartburn?
Ginger is a spice, a food, and has been used as a medicine
safely for millennia by a wide range of world cultures. Research
on the health benefits of ginger is simply staggering in its
depth and breadth.
New research from the Brattle Group
-- an update to an analysis conducted in 2010 -- finds that
59,000 to 77,000 MW of coal plant capacity are likely to retire
over the next five years as a result of the impact of emerging
Environmental Protection Agency air quality regulations on
coal-fired power plants. This is approximately 25,000 MW more
than previously estimated.
Lane County commissioners are
considering whether to throw their support behind an effort to
establish a new bulk cargo terminal in Coos Bay that would
handle coal shipped by rail through Eugene.
The privately held U.S. wind power
developer plans to begin construction of the $250 million,
30-megawatt (MW) Block Island project by early 2014, ahead of a
farm proposed by Cape Wind long expected to be the nation's
first offshore facility.
A year after the U.S. government raced to meet a deadline to
finish loan agreements with dozens of clean energy companies,
less than half the total money promised has been handed over.
Technical questions and companies' own failures in hitting
contractual milestones are behind some of the holdups.
Canadian pipeline owner Enbridge
has been ordered to do another round of cleanup work in
Michigan's Kalamazoo River, more than two years after the
company's Line 6B spilled crude oil into the river, the US
Environmental Protection Agency said Wednesday.
The U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency recently announced 11 Great Lakes Restoration Initiative
grants for projects in Michigan and Ohio to improve water
quality and reduce excess nutrients that contribute to harmful
algal blooms in Great Lakes watersheds.
Europe's nuclear reactors need
investment of 10-25 billion euros, a draft European Commission
report said, following a safety review designed to ensure a
disaster like Japan's Fukushima cannot happen.
Global food prices are reaching
levels that have sparked riots in recent past, and researchers
say unrest could erupt across the planet in the very near
future.
The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s Food
Price Index averaged 213 points in August, unchanged from the
previous month.
Any level over 210 increases the chance
of igniting riots similar to the those that took place around
the Arab Spring uprising, according to research conducted by the
New England Complex Science Institute in Cambridge, Mass.,
National Public Radio reports.
Bad economic news from France
continues to pour in, pointing to weakness in the Eurozone core
states. As discussed earlier, France is facing a second
recession in 3 years. This morning's manufacturing PMI numbers
confirmed the nation's economic difficulties. The chart below
compares Markit Manufacturing PMI with INSEE Production index,
which is reported on a lag. The PMI survey has been a good
predictor of the country's manufacturing output and is now at
levels not seen since 2009.
While the Socialist government of
French President François Hollande unveiled a budget last week
that included higher taxes on large corporations and a
75-percent tax bracket for the super-rich, there were also major
reductions in public spending, marking a turn away from the kind
of stimulus spending Hollande had promised during his campaign
to help stimulate job creation. Hollande, it appears, is
conceding at least in part that France cannot spend its way out
of this recession.
Is it possible to develop large
solar projects with households as backers, and do it again and
again? That's the idea behind solar gardens or community shared
solar, a trend catching fast in the US.
Joe Biden has been bragging on the
campaign trail in Florida about a free health “exam” for
seniors. What kind of “exam” is this?
What about the free colonoscopy?
Well, it does say something about today’s world that a national
politician would campaign today by offering a free colonoscopy.
You wouldn’t think the voters would find it something to look
forward to. In the old days, national politicians promised a
“chicken in every pot.”
German use of coal to generate electricity has declined steadily
from 1990 to 2011, according to readily available statistics on
the German electricity system. The percentage of coal-fired
electricity in German electricity generation has fallen from
56.7% in 1990 to 43.5% last year — a decrease of more than 10%
despite a increase in total electricity generation during the
same period of about 10%. At the same time the share of
renewable energy in the electricity mix has increased from 3.6%
to 19.9%, mostly due to the rapid development of wind energy and
biomass.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer said on
Tuesday that her state is in mourning over the fatal shooting of
another U.S. Border Patrol agent and the wounding of another.
Recent research shows that 45 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous
exercise in the morning may reduce food cravings, both
immediately afterward and throughout the day
A common assumption about exercise
is that it will motivate you to eat more. But recent research
turns this assumption on its head by showing that 45 minutes of
moderate-to-vigorous exercise in the morning may actually
reduce your food cravings
Requests from military voters for
absentee ballots have dropped significantly since 2008 — and by
as much as 70 percent in Virginia and Ohio — leading a GOP
senator to conclude that they are yet another example of how the
U.S. Defense Department under President Barack Obama has failed
the nation’s military.
The world economy will take at
least 10 years to emerge from the financial crisis that began in
2008, International Monetary Fund Chief Economist Olivier
Blanchard said in an interview published on Wednesday.
Iraq is aiming to raise crude oil
production to 3.4 million b/d and exports to 2.6 million b/d by
the end of this year, Thamir Ghadhban, chairman of the prime
minister's advisory committee, said Tuesday.
Output in
2013 will average 3.5 million-3.6 million b/d, with exports
rising to an average of 2.9 million b/d, he told reporters on
the sidelines of the CWC Iraq Megaprojects Conference in Dubai.
Kamakura Corporation reported
Monday that the Kamakura index of troubled public companies
closed the month of September at 6.23%. A decline in the index
reflects improved credit quality. The index reflects the
percentage of the Kamakura coverage universe that has a default
probability over 1%. The index hit an intra-month high of 7.28%
on September 4th, while the intra-month low of 6.05% was on
September 20th.
DNA testing shows that this
procedure done by tens of millions of people can leak toxins
into far-reaching locations in your body... And heart attacks
could be transferred 100 percent of the time. Also linked to
other serious conditions. Don't wait to find out the truth...
As recently as 1906, Mayo Clinic in
conjunction with Weston Price DDS, MS as head of research for
the dental association of that time, announced that root canals
were a haven for disease-producing bacteria.
The United States and the European Union are “nowhere close to
ending” the financial crisis and German-led austerity efforts
may lead to a 1930s-style economic depression, Nobel laureate
Paul Krugman said.
Five years into the crisis, the United States needs “another
round of stimulus” and Federal Reserve officials “should be
doing whatever they can” to aid the recovery, while Europe needs
a fiscal union to save its single currency, Krugman said in a
speech in Belgrade today.
On September 25, Kuwait’s highest
court ruled against the Emir’s attempt to rig future
parliamentary elections in his favor. It was a victory for
judicial independence, but also has empowered the Islamist
political movement in the country. The Islamists now stand
poised to gain control of the next parliament, but this is less
of a cause for concern than it may seem, as LIGNET explains
A laundry additive created by
researchers from the University of Sheffield and the London
College of Fashion turns clothing into a photocatalytic material
that can help remove nitrogen oxides (NOx) from the air. One of
the most prominent air pollutants, nitrogen oxides are emitted
from the exhausts of ICE-powered vehicles and aggravate asthma
and other respiratory diseases.
Anyone can look up at the sky and
make a guess at tomorrow’s weather. But having actual data
informs your opinion and makes your guess a little more
accurate....
Because while everyone’s got an
opinion about the health of the cleantech space, as in weather
forecasting, data matters.
The discovery by NASA rover Curiosity of evidence that water
once flowed on Mars - the most Earth-like planet in the solar
system - should intensify interest in what the future could hold
for mankind.
The only thing stopping Earth having a lifeless environment
like Mars is the magnetic field that shields us from deadly
solar radiation and helps some animals migrate, and it may be a
lot more fragile and febrile than one might think.
Scientists say earth's magnetic field is weakening and could
all but disappear in as little as 500 years as a precursor to
flipping upside down.
NASA’s twin Radiation Belt Storm
Probes (RBSP) took a musical interlude and listened to the Earth
singing to itself. This “Earthsong,” as NASA calls it, was
recorded by the two spacecraft as they orbited inside the highly
radioactive Van Allen Belts that surround the Earth. The “song”
is in the form of radio waves generated by the belts and the
study of it may provide a clue toward answering the question of
how to protect satellites and astronauts from deadly radiation
storms.
US natural gas prices have
stabilized just under $3.50/MMBTU (for Henry Hub delivery NYMEX
futures) - about 20% above the August lows. Production continues
to be considerably higher than in 2011 but growth in production
has finally slowed. Rig count in the Gulf and elsewhere is
lower.
The single biggest factor hindering
the convenience, and therefore the adoption, of electric
vehicles is the batteries used to power them. While filling up
an ICE vehicle takes just a few minutes at the pump, electric
vehicle recharge times are measured in hours. Engineers at the
University of California, San Diego, have developed new
algorithms that improve the efficiency of existing lithium-ion
batteries and could allow them to be charged twice as fast than
is currently possible.
Nigeria lost of a total of $7
billion in potential oil revenue in 2011 due to theft through
sabotage attacks on pipelines and production facilities in the
Niger Delta, constituting a major drain on the nation's economy,
central bank chief Lamido Sanusi said.
After countless speeches, meetings
and behind-the-scenes discussions, the war in Syria remained the
unsolved problem that loomed over this year's gathering of world
leaders at the United Nations.
At the height of the tangerine season in Croatia's Neretva
river delta, two pickup trucks scour a maze of water channels
carrying an odd-looking contraption: a mortar-like pipe spraying
orchards with sterilized flies.
Each launch sends into the air thousands of males of the
fruit fly, one of the most harmful orchard pests, in what
advocates say is a prime example of how nuclear science can
benefit both agriculture and the environment.
They have been bombarded with radioactive Cobalt-60...
A new book says President Barack
Obama hoped to put Osama bin Laden on trial, showing the U.S.
commitment to due process under law, if the al-Qaida leader had
surrendered during a U.S. raid in Pakistan last year.
A staggering two-thirds of Americans are overweight, and
about one-quarter to one-third of adults fall into the obese
category and it is projected to go to FIFTY percent by 2030.
Obesity is now so common that it leads to more doctor visits
than smoking1
– and rates have been on the rise for decades now.
The fact that obesity is now an epidemic is not up for
debate. What's causing it, however, is.
There are more storage technologies than one may imagine.
Batteries are the primary format, but other technologies are
being developed, reports Joyce Laird.
If there were a way to make your child a better reader, or
improve their performance in math – and it was free,
natural and absolutely safe – would you do it?
Of course you would!
Virtually every parent hopes their child will excel
academically, and for kids the boost to reading and math skills
can be a tremendous lift to their self-esteem.
As announced in July, Progress Energy Carolinas, a subsidiary
of Duke Energy (NYSE: DUK), on Oct. 1 will officially retire two
coal-fired power plants, including the utility's first
coal-fueled facility built in 1923.
The utility will close the Cape Fear power plant, near
Moncure, N.C., and the H.B. Robinson Unit 1 power plant, near
Hartsville, S.C., as part of its ongoing fleet-modernization
program.
Currently it seems as if prices for
solar photovoltaics (PV) change by the minute, with rumours of
ever lower prices. These lower prices are in many cases referred
to as “progress and proof” of reaching ‘grid parity’ – but they
are coming at a cost.
The topic of the US debt ceiling is
covered widely in the media and the blogosphere. It is
often accompanied by a great deal of finger pointing. Let's try
to take an unbiased look for a second. The map below shows how
total government debt level increased under either the
Democrats' or the Republicans' controlled White House, the
Senate, or the House.
Wednesday night was a dry one for those playing renewable
energy-themed drinking games during the first debate between
President Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt
Romney. In the course of the entire 90-minute debate, which
focused specifically on domestic issues with the economy and
health care taking front and center, not a single mention was
made of global warming or climate change by either candidate.
Fifty years from now, Georgia Power
CEO Paul Bowers doesn't believe electrical power will be
generated in any form other than the bread-and-butter sources
the utility relies on now.
Major emerging economies'
obligations to cut emissions under a climate change agreement
should not be the same as those of rich countries, Brazil's
chief negotiator said, signaling a retreat to an old position
that has hamstrung years of U.N. negotiations.
A 200-year period covering the
heyday of both the Roman Empire and China's Han dynasty saw a
big rise in greenhouse gases, according to a study that
challenges the U.N. view that man-made climate change only began
around 1800.
Mitt Romney Thursday reversed his
controversial remarks about 47 percent of American voters being
dependent on government and not paying taxes, telling Fox News’
Sean Hannity that he was “just completely wrong.”
Republican presidential candidate
Mitt Romney says he would honor temporary work permits for young
illegal immigrants who were allowed to stay in the U.S. because
of an executive order signed this summer by President Barack
Obama.
Most people’s image of plants is
actually upside down. For most of our photosynthetic friends,
the majority of the plant is underground in the form of an
intricate system of roots. The bit that sticks up is almost an
afterthought. That’s a problem for scientists trying to study
plants because growing them in media that allow you to see the
roots,...
By the end of the year, Shams 1 will be the first major
renewable energy plant in Abu Dhabi to supply solar power to the
emirate.
With a capacity to generate 100 Megawatt of electricity,
enough to power 20,000 homes, Shams 1 is a Concentrated Solar
Power (CSP) plant, one of the largest in the world and the first
of its kind in the Middle East and North Africa.
The world's largest coral reef -
under threat from Australia's surging coal and gas shipments,
climate change and a destructive starfish - is declining faster
than ever and coral cover could fall to just 5 percent in the
next decade, a study shows.
A new survey of physicians shows
that if the Presidential election were held today, 55 percent
would vote for Mitt Romney and 36 percent would support
President Obama, according to a survey conducted byJackson &
Coker, a division of Jackson Healthcare, the third largest
healthcare staffing company in the US.
Letting the economy speed over the
dreaded fiscal cliff at the end of the year would very likely
throw the country into a recession, though lawmakers will likely
save the day and steer the country away from disaster, a new
CNNMoney survey of economists finds.
After Wednesday night's smashing
debate victory for Romney, we may expect the national and swing
state polls to change in the Republican's direction. But not by
as much as they should. These polls are biased in favor of
Obama and here's the data to prove it:
Despite two days of Turkish
artillery fire into Syria in response to an October 3 Syrian
mortar bomb that hit a Turkish town and Turkey’s parliament
authorizing military operations against Syria, war between the
two nations does not appear likely. While the aftermath of the
Syrian attack showed that Turkey is prepared to aggressively
defend its territory, it also indicated that there is little
support from Europe or the United States to join Turkey for
possible military action against Syria.
Researchers at the Tokyo University
of Science have turned to sugar as part of a continuous effort
to control Japan's growing import costs associated with building
lithium-ion batteries. It seems that sugar may be the missing
ingredient for building rechargeable batteries that are more
robust, cheaper, and capable of storing more energy.
Vinegar has been a trusted home
remedy that your mother, grandmother, and their grandmothers
have known. It literally can be used from head to toe. Scalp
problems such as dandruff, athlete's foot, yeast infections,
even headaches are no match for this remedy. It can also be used
as a cosmetic to help protect and beautify your skin!
Turkey's Parliament authorized
military operations against Syria on Thursday and its military
fired on targets there for a second day after deadly shelling
from Syria killed five civilians in a Turkish border town.
At closer inspection, liberalised
energy markets paired with cheaper natural gas prices could mean
the US hosts some no-go zones for existing and future nuclear
energy plants. But add carbon pricing into the long-term mix and
nuclear energy comes with its advantage.
US gas customers may see their
average winter heating bills increase by 7% compared to last
year due to colder weather, though total winter heating bills
will still be among the lowest in the past decade, the American
Gas Association said Thursday.
U.S. households are facing an average tax increase of $3,446
in 2013 if Congress doesn’t avert the so-called fiscal cliff,
the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center said in a study released
Monday in Washington.
The top 1 percent of households face some of the largest tax
increases and would see their average federal tax rates hit 40.5
percent, up 7.2 percentage points from this year. That would
translate to an average tax increase of $120,537.
The head of the Humane Society of
the United States is running for a seat on the board of Tyson
Foods Inc, the latest move by the largest U.S. animal protection
group in its bid to stop the use of confining stalls for housing
pregnant sows.
Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC) yesterday
released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey®
(PMMS®), showing average fixed mortgage rates falling to new
all-time record lows for the second consecutive week on mortgage
securities purchases by the Federal Reserve and indicators of a
weakening economy. The Federal Reserve's purchase of long-term
fixed mortgage securities allowed the 15-year fixed-rate
mortgage at 2.69 percent to fall below the 5-year ARM's rate at
2.72 percent. The last time the average 15-year fixed was lower
than the 5-year ARM was the week ending October 15, 2009.
Washington’s decision to end a
25-year ban that prevented New Zealand naval vessels from
docking at American ports is the latest sign of a U.S. effort to
foster allies in the Asia-Pacific region as part a buffer
against continuing Chinese expansion. While a minor diplomatic
gesture of goodwill toward New Zealand, LIGNET regards the U.S.
move as indicative of a strategy aimed at countering China’s
military buildup, as well as its near and long-term threat to
the region and American interests.
Environmental and consumer groups
have long been frustrated by advertising that touts products as
good for the environment when, in fact, they often are not.
Newly developed technique can kill antibiotic-resistant
germs
Infectious bacteria received a taste of their own medicine
from
University of Missouri
researchers who used viruses to infect and kill colonies
of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, common disease-causing bacteria. The
viruses, known as bacteriophages, could be used to efficiently
sanitize water treatment facilities and may aid in the fight
against deadly antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
The warp drive broke away from
being a wholly fictional concept in 1994, when physicist Miguel
Alcubierre suggested that faster-than-light (FTL) travel was
possible if you remained still on a flat piece of spacetime
inside a warp bubble that was made to move at superluminal
velocity. Rather like a magic carpet. The main idea here is
that, although no material objects can travel faster than light,
there is no known upper speed to the ability of spacetime itself
to expand and contract.
More drone hits on Islamist
insurgents in Yemen, a new U.S. arms package, and a military
reorganization should give Yemen a leg up in its conflict with
al-Qaeda and other Islamist militants. The increased U.S.
support appears part of an air-land battle plan to leverage
drone operations and combine them with ground troops trained by
U.S. special operations personnel. This could enable the Yemeni
military to better engage extremist militants and take back
territory in the south.
Hundreds of Muslims in Bangladesh
burned at least four Buddhist temples and 15 homes of Buddhists
on Sunday after complaining that a Buddhist man had insulted
Islam, police and residents said. Members of the Buddhist
minority in the Cox's Bazar area in the southeast of the country
said unidentified people were bent on upsetting relations
between Muslims and Buddhists.
As state government, business and
military leaders gathered in Camarillo on Thursday to discuss
ways to break the nation's dependency on gasoline, word came
down that the governor had just signed a bill meant to
strengthen their endeavor.
Genetically modified (GM) vaccines are already being produced –
some are even on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention’s (CDC) recommended vaccine schedule – even though,
as is the case with GM foods, we know very little about their
long-term effects
In the aftermath of the sharp
selloff in NYMEX crude futures nearly two weeks ago, analysts
and pundits remain conflicted about how and why the front-month
contract fell more than $3/b in just one minute. As we wrote
earlier, analysts and pundits just don’t seem to know what
happened.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben
Bernanke renewed a pledge to sustain record stimulus even after
the U.S. expansion gains strength, while saying policy makers
don’t expect the economy to remain weak through 2015.
Where is our ultimacy? What is it
that we revere so much that we get upset over it? If we had to
be honest, we're pretty much like the ancient Romans. We have a
collapsing financial system, unemployment at a real rate of over
14%, energy prices which are skyrocketing, and a federal
government that is taking away more and more of our freedoms.
But what gets us upset?
As local activists honored Mayor
Rahm Emanuel this week for brokering a deal that scuttled two
coal-fired power plants in Chicago, three women gathered around
a dining room table in suburban Will County couldn't help but
feel left out.
A new and unexpected voice has come
out in support of Proposition 37, the California Right to Know
ballot initiative to label genetically modified organisms
(GMOs). Troy Roush, an Indiana farmer featured in the 2009
documentary Food, Inc., grows GMO corn and soybeans.
He also agrees with 65 percent of Californians who believe
consumers have the right to know what’s in their food.
How could one man, 5 feet tall and barely 100 pounds,
excavate, shape, and hoist hundreds of massive coral blocks, the
largest weighing 28 tons, into a structure by himself? This
mystery has intrigued people for decades, drawing visitors from
all over the world. But the truth is much less intriguing,
though still impressive.
The United States is "drowning in
unemployment," its economy is running at stall speed and
inflation is "not a problem," but easier monetary policy is not
the answer, one of the Federal Reserve's most hawkish
policymakers said on Friday.
Ununtrium is part of a group called
superheavy or transuranic elements (those with atomic numbers
greater than 92 – the atomic number of uranium). To date, all
the transuranic elements having 93-117 protons have been
discovered and confirmed (although 115 and 117 are still not
officially recognized), save for element 113. Until now.
With tensions escalating between
China and Japan over control of the Senkaku Islands, Japan is
poised to amend its constitution, changing the provisions that
limit the ability of its defense forces to act. It is unlikely
that China and Japan will go to war over the islands, but it
appears that the dispute will affect their relationship for
years to come and may compel Japan to abandon the pacifist
stance it has maintained since World War II.
If Congress does nothing and the
United States plunges off the "fiscal cliff" in three months,
taxes would rise for 90 percent of Americans due to automatic
increases in income and payroll taxes and other financial
shocks, said a report issued on Monday.
Bad economic news from France
continues to pour in, pointing to weakness in the Eurozone core
states. As discussed earlier, France is facing a second
recession in 3 years
Temperatures high in the Norwegian Arctic are above those in
a natural warm period in Viking times, underscoring a thaw
opening the region to everything from oil exploration to
shipping, scientists said on Thursday.
Last week, sea ice on the Arctic Ocean set a record low since
satellite observations began in the 1970s. In recent years,
mussels have been found off the Norwegian archipelago of
Svalbard for the first time since the Viking era 1,000 years
ago.
Embattled Attorney General Eric
Holder started the week on Monday with a barrage of bad news,
making his chances of holding on to his job in a second Obama
administration more unlikely.
Documents released in
Mexico linked weapons bought under the shambolic Fast and
Furious gunrunning scheme with dozens of murders south of the
border — including two mass killings that left a total of 34
dead.
Requests from military voters for
absentee ballots have dropped significantly since 2008 — and by
as much as 70 percent in Virginia and Ohio — leading a GOP
senator to conclude that they are yet another example of how the
U.S. Defense Department under President Barack Obama has failed
the nation’s military.
Plastic nanoparticles released when plastic debris decomposes
in seawater can have an adverse effect on sea animals, Dutch
scientists have found.
Nanoparticles of plastic measuring just thirty millionths of
a millimeter, invisible to the naked eye, are responsible for
inhibiting feeding and growth in mussels, according to new
research by Professor Bart Koelmans of Wageningen University and
his research team.
ran's rial plunged against the U.S. dollar in open-market
trade on Monday, taking its loss in value over the past week to
more than a quarter in further evidence that Western sanctions
are shattering the economy.
The freefall suggests sanctions imposed over Iran's nuclear
program are undermining its ability to earn foreign exchange and
that its reserves of hard currency may be running low.
Output in 2013 will average 3.5 million-3.6 million b/d, with
exports rising to an average of 2.9 million b/d, he told
reporters on the sidelines of the CWC Iraq Megaprojects
Conference in Dubai.
When I built my company … (whoops,
I guess I'm not being politically correct). I didn't build my
company? Who did? As I recall, I spent countless hours with
little or no sleep, working 16- to 20-hour days gambling every
cent I had.
Antibiotics are severely overused –
not just in medicine, but also in food production. In fact,
about 80 percent of all the antibiotics produced are used in
agriculture – not only to fight infection, but to promote
unhealthy (though profitable) weight gain in the animals.
Hence, if you want to avoid overexposure to antibiotics, it's
also crucial to avoid conventionally-raised meats.
Kamakura Corporation reported
Monday that the Kamakura index of troubled public companies
closed the month of September at 6.23%. A decline in the index
reflects improved credit quality. The index reflects the
percentage of the Kamakura coverage universe that has a default
probability over 1%. The index hit an intra-month high of 7.28%
on September 4th, while the intra-month low of 6.05% was on
September 20th.
DNA testing shows that this
procedure done by tens of millions of people can leak toxins
into far-reaching locations in your body... And heart attacks
could be transferred 100 percent of the time. Also linked to
other serious conditions.
Root Canals are Breeding Grounds
for Bacterial Toxins
On September 25, Kuwait’s highest
court ruled against the Emir’s attempt to rig future
parliamentary elections in his favor. It was a victory for
judicial independence, but also has empowered the Islamist
political movement in the country. The Islamists now stand
poised to gain control of the next parliament, but this is less
of a cause for concern than it may seem, as LIGNET explains
A laundry additive created by
researchers from the University of Sheffield and the London
College of Fashion turns clothing into a photocatalytic material
that can help remove nitrogen oxides (NOx) from the air. One of
the most prominent air pollutants, nitrogen oxides are emitted
from the exhausts of ICE-powered vehicles and aggravate asthma
and other respiratory diseases. The researchers claim one person
getting around town in clothing treated with the additive for a
day would be able to remove roughly the same amount of nitrogen
oxides produced by the average family car each day.
Do you ever get weary from it all?
I would love to go back to the days where all I had to worry
about was going to work, coming home to the family, and spending
evenings and weekends simply piddling in the yard, reading a
good book, or watching a movie with a bowl of popcorn propped
between the four of us. We were happy.
A soft-spoken Minnesota farmer was
cleared of violating state laws for distributing raw milk
Thursday, a verdict advocates for such foods called their first
major legal victory.
Picture this. You have a motor turning a larger output
generator, and the generator is producing enough energy to keep
the motor running, as well as enough left over to power other
things. (It's a little more complicated than this, but that is
the general idea.) All you need to get it going is a starter
motor, temporarily, like on an automobile engine, and once the
system is going, it stays going, unless it is shut off.
Sounds like a clear case of violating the law of conservation
of energy, right?
This is the second strong
warning the space and atmospheric agencies have put out for
cycle 24. Several coronal mass ejections (CMEs) along with
coronal hole and filament discharges have been produced over the
last 72 hours. The cumulative effect of these events has caused
an unexpected alert. The status of this event has been placed as
a G3 'Strong' event.
A new study by Swiss research group
Empa found that some biofuels, especially the ones made from
crops cultivated on deforested land, produce more GHG emissions
than petrol.
The
nation’s largest nuclear utility is leading a full court
lobbying blitz to eliminate subsidies for the wind energy
industry, which built 35 percent of new U.S. electricity
generation capacity since 2007.
Most undecided voters want more
action from President Obama and Congress to fight global
warming, and a substantial percentage say the topic will
influence their ballot for president, a new poll shows.
Both President Barack Obama and
Republican nominee Mitt Romney say they support maintaining the
Renewable Fuel Standard in answers to an American Farm Bureau
Federation questionnaire on agricultural issues.
A New Equation is Born:
Increase Charged Particles (galaxy) =>Deceased Magnetic Field
(earth) =>Increase Outer Core Convection =>Increase of Mantle
Plumes =>Increase in Earthquake & Volcanoes =>Cools Mantle and
Outer Core =>Return of Outer Core Convection (mitch battros
2012)
Pollster and political analyst
Scott Rasmussen tells Newsmax that despite new polls showing
President Obama pulling ahead of Mitt Romney, the race is still
close and “could go either way.”
several C-class x-ray events, No
Earth-sided CMEs were observed leaving the solar disk.
The geomagnetic field began the period at active levels, as weak
CME effects from the previous period continued in progress. The
first period of 1 October saw an increase to severe storm
levels, after a second CME arrived. Sudden Impulse (SI) to
Earth's magnetic field.
According to the World Health
Organization, there are currently 347 million diabetics
worldwide, with 90 percent of those people having type II
diabetes specifically. It occurs when fat accumulates in places
such as muscles, blood vessels and the heart, causing the cells
in those areas to no longer be sufficiently responsive to
insulin. This insulin resistance, in turn, causes blood glucose
levels to rise to dangerous levels.
Let me pause and give you a brief
update on what I've learned. Each of these bullets deserves a
story, and you can be looking for updates in the days ahead as I
get time to develop them.
The state will make sure that past
and current owners are held responsible for the cleanup of the
Salem Harbor Station power plant, the state's top energy
official said yesterday.
Janet McIntyre suffers from the blood cancer leukemia, and
she has experienced seizures and renal failure since gas wells
were drilled near her home in Connoquenessing Township, western
Pennsylvania.
McIntyre says she is exposed to noxious odors and her once
clean water is now tainted. “Can I say it was because of them? I
don’t know, but I do know a lot of people with the same
illnesses,” she said.
Over the last
decade, 29 states have created energy efficiency resource
standards (EERS) or efficiency goals (see map below). These
programs vary greatly from state to state; most of them are
mandatory goals while some are voluntary, some have small
savings goals while others are more ambitious, some have
relatively near-term goals while others are more long-term, and
each incentivizes or mandates savings in various ways.
A new survey of physicians shows
that if the Presidential election were held today, 55 percent
would vote for Mitt Romney and 36 percent would support
President Obama, according to a survey conducted byJackson &
Coker, a division of Jackson Healthcare, the third largest
healthcare staffing company in the US.
If you've been thinking about
grabbing a Survival Seed Bank ... or two or three ... now's the time. It's the end of the
season, we're clearing out the warehouse, and we're letting
these go for half price. The Survival Seed Bank is always
a smart investment ... but as this election season approaches,
you'll want to be sure to have one tucked away as a safety net
in case Obama gets re-elected. I'll tell you why in a minute.
Tucson Electric Power (TEP), Pima Community College (PCC) and
other partners will use a federal grant to expand energy
industry job training programs in Arizona.
The United States Department of Labor awarded a $13,477,799
Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career
Training (TAACCCT) grant to the Arizona Sun Corridor Get Into
Energy Consortium (Consortium), an association of five community
colleges in Arizona.
Mexico’s banks, once considered a
financial backwater for tin-pot investors, look pretty good
these days relative to some of their American and European
cousins.
In fact, Mexico’s banks are so profitable now
they can offer a lifeline to those in more developed nations, ..
Researchers from the Tokyo
University of Science have found pyrolyzed sucrose to be a
surprisingly effective material for the anode of sodium-ion
batteries
Thanks to what happened last July,
the gun grabbers are back in full force. Not that they ever went
away. Whenever there is mass shooting you can rest assure the
anti-gun side will be there to dance in the blood of the victims
so they can further their own agenda. It's always during the
time of tragedy when the attacks on our Second Amendment rights
are the most intense.
Federal regulators are partially
opening the door for a Minnesota Indian tribe to challenge Xcel
Energy's request for a 40-year extension on its license to store
highly radioactive waste in casks on the site of the Prairie
Island nuclear power plant near Red Wing, Minn.
The Japanese power company J-Power
today said it will resume construction of a nuclear power plant
in Aomori prefecture at the northernmost tip of Japan’s main
island, just as a typhoon delivered high winds, pounding rain
and high waves to the area.
Energy is the lifeblood of the U.S.
military. The various branches of the U.S. Department of
Defense (DOD) combine to form the single largest consumer of
energy in the world, surpassing the consumption totals of more
than 100 nations.
U.S. households are facing an average tax increase of $3,446
in 2013 if Congress doesn’t avert the so-called fiscal cliff,
the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center said in a study released
Monday in Washington.
The top 1 percent of households face some of the largest tax
increases and would see their average federal tax rates hit 40.5
percent, up 7.2 percentage points from this year. That would
translate to an average tax increase of $120,537.
Natural gas output in the US Lower
48 states rose 0.4%, or 290,000 Mcf/d in July from June, the US
Energy Information Administration said Friday in its monthly
natural gas gross production report.
Washington’s decision to end a
25-year ban that prevented New Zealand naval vessels from
docking at American ports is the latest sign of a U.S. effort to
foster allies in the Asia-Pacific region as part a buffer
against continuing Chinese expansion. While a minor diplomatic
gesture of goodwill toward New Zealand, LIGNET regards the U.S.
move as indicative of a strategy aimed at countering China’s
military buildup, as well as its near and long-term threat to
the region and American interests.
The U.S. Postal Service, on the
brink of default on a second multibillion-dollar payment it
can't afford to pay, is sounding a new cautionary note that
having squeezed out all the cost savings within its power, the
mail agency's viability now lies almost entirely with Congress.
The worst drought in more than half a century baked more than
two thirds of the continental United States this summer and its
harsh effects continue to plague the parched cities and towns of
the Great Plains.
Ask the 94,000 people of San Angelo, Texas who are running
out of water. Fast.
V3Solar has developed a cone-shaped
solar energy harvester that is claimed to generate over 20 times
more electricity than a flat panel thanks to a combination of
concentrating lenses, dynamic spin, conical shape, and advanced
electronics
For the first time since he became
president of Venezuela in 1999, Hugo Chavez is close to losing
an election. In poor health and weighed down by a dismal record
in office, he is also confronted with a young, telegenic
challenger, Henrique Capriles Radonski, who has captured the
support of many Venezuelans. If Chavez does lose the election,
it is an open question whether he will actually give up power,
as LIGNET explains.
Infectious bacteria received a
taste of their own medicine from
University of Missouri
researchers who used viruses to infect and kill colonies
of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, common disease-causing bacteria. The
viruses, known as bacteriophages, could be used to efficiently
sanitize water treatment facilities and may aid in the fight
against deadly antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Nigeria's worst flooding in decades
has displaced more than 10,000 people in the centre of the
country over the past week and stranded some villagers on
rooftops, emergency services said on Thursday.