The Power of Gratitude: It's About What
You Have, Not What You're Going to Get
With the hustle and bustle of everyday
life, it's easy to forget about what and
who you're grateful for.
March
29, 2013
Gov. Jay Inslee has joined with Oregon
Gov. John Kitzhaber to ask the Obama
administration to review the climate-change
consequences of leasing and exporting
Western coal.
"Increasing levels of greenhouse gases
and other pollutants resulting from the
burning of coal ... are imposing direct
costs on people, businesses and communities
in the U.S. and around the world," said the
letter sent Monday to Nancy Sutley,
chairwoman of the White House's Council on
Environmental Quality.
How much wind power is now
installed globally? Which
turbine company supplied the
most turbines? BTM's annual
report has now been
published...
Did you know that most scientists and
astronomers (who are studying the subject)
agree that the chance of a large-scale solar
storm happening is inevitable, if not
imminent?
But so what?
Here's what: A large-scale solar storm
could easily cause a major blackout across
the entire United States lasting 12 months
or more.
And here's why...
Our power grid is extremely complex...
and... at the same time, in bad need of
upgrades and repairs. It's so bad, ...
Instead of collecting data
on incoming and outgoing
callers (among other general
information), as “pen
register” searches are
intended to do, the ACLU
said that agents commonly
used a vehicle-mounted
technology called the
“stingray” that intercepts
all nearby communications in
order to pinpoint the
location of a particular
signal. The ACLU argues that
these devices in effect
resulted in a de facto
wiretap, when that was not
yet authorized.
During its annual conference
here, the American Council
for an Energy Efficient
Economy (ACEEE) recognized
Arizona's investor-owned
electric utilities Arizona
Public Service Company and
UniSource Energy Services
for their cutting-edge
energy efficiency programs.
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According to critics, the new edition of
the American Psychiatric Association's
(APA) diagnostic "bible" – the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for
Mental Disorders (DSM) -- will label
healthy people with a mental condition
and make them prime candidates for
unnecessary prescriptions of
mind-altering antidepressant and
antipsychotic drugs
-
Virtually none of the mental disorders
described in the DSM can be objectively
measured by empirical tests; instead,
they're completely subjective
-
By turning normal emotions and difficult
life circumstances into “illnesses” the
DSM-5 has resulted in the rampant
over-medicalization and over-diagnosis
of mental illnesses within the
psychiatric profession
While the emerging link
between natural gas fracking
and earthquakes has been
grabbing a lot of attention,
another problem has been
bubbling up under our feet:
a series of earthquakes in
normally calm areas has been
traced to conventional oil
drilling operations. In
particular, Oklahoma has
been hit by a string of
unusual earthquakes over the
past couple of years,
including the biggest one
ever recorded in the state,
a magnitude 5.7 temblor near
Prague on November 6, 2011.
When BP was accused of
improving its environmental
record on Wikipedia Jimmy
Wales stood by the oil
giant's practices on
Wikipedia. That's because
unchecked image cleanup by
Big Oil's PR reps - with
readers none the wiser - is
standard operating procedure
for the "Internet's
encyclopedia."
BROOKSVILLE, Maine — Voters here made
their town the fifth in Hancock County to
pass a local food sovereignty ordinance that
thumbs its nose at state and federal
regulations for direct-to-consumer sales of
prepared foods and farm products.
In a referendum election on March 4,
residents voted 112-64 to approve the “Local
Food and Community Self-Governance
Ordinance,” which states that producers or
processors of local foods are “exempt from
licensure and inspection,” so long as the
food is sold directly by the producer to a
consumer.
If you read the reports from
major energy agencies and
industry associations, you
might be tempted to conclude
there is a bright future
where all types of renewable
energies will flourish and
coexist peacefully. Well,
they will not. Much like in
any other sector, some
technologies will trump
others. Previously we
analyzed how solar
photovoltaic (PV) is winning
over concentrated solar
power (CSP), and we will now
look into the relationship
between offshore wind and
wave energy.
Four years ago, the
environmental movement had
been riding high until its
“magic carpet ride” suddenly
crashed. But the re-election
of Barack Obama has given
the green cause renewed hope
and one that is manifesting
itself both on Capitol Hill
and in the market place.
The victories are not of
the ticker-tape parade
variety, but they are subtle
ones that have achieved
environmental gains.
These are heady times for
tidal energy, says Matthew
Reed, engineering director
at Marine Current Turbines
(MCT). "It's all kicking off
now," he said in an
interview at RenewableUK's
Wave & Tidal 2013 event in
mid-March. "There's a sense
of excitement."
On February 12 2013,
the President signed
Executive Order (EO) 13636
entitled “Improving Critical
Infrastructure (CI)
Cybersecurity.”
Working within the confines
of existing laws and agency
authority, the EO directs
better cybersecurity
information sharing,
creation of a cybersecurity
Framework, and development
of a DHS voluntary to
encourage the adoption of
the framework by CI, all of
it with civil liberties and
privacy concerns in mind.
“The real threat to the U.S.
is concern that things like
Cyprus start to impact
bigger and bigger dominoes
in Europe, whether it’s
Italy or Spain, and messes
up all the financing
mechanisms we’re desperately
trying to arrange to keep
things moving forward
there,” Sterman says.
"President Barack Obama on
Thursday sternly rebuked
opponents of pending [victim
disarmament] measures,
accusing them of 'running
out the clock' and hoping
that the nation forgets last
year's Newtown school
shooting in order to keep
popular reforms from passing
into law. 'The entire
country was shocked, and the
entire country pledged we
would do something about it
and that that this time
would be different,' the
president said of the gun
massacre that killed 20
children and six adults.
'Shame on us if we've
forgotten.'"
The shale gas and oil
bonanza is transforming
America’s energy outlook and
boosting its economy
More than 700,000 civilian
defense workers will be
forced to take 14 days of
furloughs instead of 22
between April and the end of
the fiscal year, officials
said, softening the blow of
the automatic spending cuts
known as sequestration.
Teflon appears to be inert and
safe until it is heated to high
temperatures when it can emit fumes
toxic enough to poison birds.
The exact temperature at which
this occurs is not clear.
While the economy continues
to show signs of recovery,
the size of the government’s
food-stamp program is
expanding.
Since
2008, enrollment in the
Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program, or SNAP
as it is called, has jumped
70 percent, reaching a
record 47.8 million people
in December 2012. Budget
experts believe it will
increase again this year,
according to The Wall Street
Journal.
A retired Western Washington
University professor
testified to a
Republican-controlled state
Senate committee Tuesday
that climate change stopped
in 1998 and that
human-caused greenhouse
gases are not responsible
for fluctuations in the
Earth's temperatures or
melting polar ice caps.
Tucson residents living in crime-ridden
areas could soon receive free shotguns.
Operating on the premise an armed
neighborhood is a safer neighborhood, a
group led by former mayoral candidate Shaun
McClusky is raising money to purchase
shotguns and provide training for anyone who
lives in a mid- to high-crime neighborhood
and can pass a background check.
The project is part of a developing
nationwide movement to see if more guns
really do translate into less crime.
For the first time in nearly 50 years,
state-owned utility Santee Cooper generated
less electricity from coal in 2012,
according to the Moncks Corner-based
company.
Not since 1966 has the utility produced
more power from different sources than
pollution-causing coal, utility spokeswoman
Mollie Gore said.
Less than 60 percent of Santee Cooper's
electricity came from the fossil fuel last
year. Coal usually accounts for about 80
percent of power production, ..
The internet around the world has been
slowed down in what security experts are
describing as the biggest cyber-attack of
its kind in history.
A row between a spam-fighting group and
hosting firm has sparked retaliation attacks
affecting the wider internet.
It is having an impact on popular
services like Netflix - and experts worry it
could escalate to affect banking and email
systems.
Mikhail Gorbachev believes
his achievements as Soviet
leader have not only been
reversed but “distorted,
violated, and destroyed.”
And he had harsh
words for current Russian
leader Vladimir Putin, who,
he said, understands the
country’s problems but is
looking in the wrong
direction for a way out.
"As conservatives, as pro
energy development people,
we have to give confidence
that we're not interested in
just sort of raping federal
lands, that we are sensitive
to the fact that these
properties are not owned by
a single individual that has
individual property rights,
but they're owned by the
aggregate of individuals of
this country," Cramer said
in a wide-ranging interview
Tuesday. "That requires a
little more diligence, it
requires a little more care,
it requires more consensus
in how we approach that."
Based on the legislative language,
Georgia Power customers have a voluntary
option to join the solar party.
"They'll be able to check a box on their
bill to say they want to get some of their
power from solar energy,"
Flocks of birds and how they
seem to move together have
always fascinated any
observer of them. New
research from the
Universities of Exeter and
Cambridge reveals for the
first time that, contrary to
current models used to
explain the movement of
flocks, the differences
between bird species and
social relationships between
individuals play a critical
role in determining the
dynamics of mixed-species
flocks. The unified behavior
of bird flocks has puzzled
scientists for hundreds of
years. One naturalist from
the turn of the century even
suggested telepathy may be
involved.
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Men and women tend to experience stress
differently. Stomach-churning anxiety is
far more common in women than men, as is
feelings of sadness in response to
stress, and not being able to stop
thinking about that which worries them
-
When you dwell on negative emotions you
internalize the stress, which can
prevent you from coming up with
constructive ways to address them.
Stress can improve once you find more
active methods of coping
-
Stress plays a major role in your immune
system, and can impact your blood
pressure, cholesterol levels, brain
chemistry, blood sugar levels, and
hormonal balance. It can even “break”
your heart, and is increasingly being
viewed as a cardiovascular risk marker
What’s the simplest way to
tackle global warming? Make
sure that fossil fuels are
priced properly and not
subsidized.
A new Websense report
suggests that approximately
94 percent of endpoints
which run Oracle's Java are
vulnerable to at least one
exploit, and we are ignoring
updates at our own peril.
Several Supreme Court
justices on Wednesday
indicated interest in
striking down a law that
denies federal benefits to
legally married same-sex
couples, presenting the
possibility of a major
change in a few months in
gay marriage law.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, a
potential swing vote, warned
of the "risks" that the
Defense of Marriage Act
(DOMA) infringes upon the
traditional role of the
states in defining marriage.
According to the most recent
issue of the "Monthly Energy
Review" by the U.S. Energy
Information Administration
(EIA), with data through
December 31, 2012, renewable
energy sources and natural
gas expanded rapidly during
the Obama Administration's
first term while coal,
nuclear power, oil imports
and use, energy consumption,
and CO2 emissions all
declined significantly.
London – Stringent
legislations on wastewater
residue disposal have
fuelled investments in the
global sludge treatment
market. Rapid infrastructure
development, particularly in
developing countries, has
resulted in a rise in the
number of wastewater
treatment plants and
heightened sludge
production, further
providing a large
addressable market for
sludge treatment systems.
Melissa Giroux of Chelsea is concerned
that a high-voltage power line to be
installed in front of her home could cause
health problems, especially for her
children.
She and others are asking lawmakers to
require new lines to be set back at least
300 feet from homes and other areas.
Lockheed Martin has been awarded a patent
for Perforene material, a molecular
filtration solution designed to meet the
growing global demand for potable water.
The Perforene material works by removing
sodium, chlorine and other ions from sea
water and other sources.
Sensationalism always gets better ratings
than rationale.
What does this do to honest, well-meaning
Americans who are unfamiliar with the issues
at hand in the media? It causes them
to attach legitimate emotions to false
solutions.
Commonly used pesticides are damaging honey
bee brains, studies suggest.
Scientists have found that two types of
chemicals called neonicotinoids and
coumaphos are interfering with the insect's
ability to learn and remember.
A report released by NRG
Energy (NYSE: NRG) states
that a $506 million project
to convert a coal-fired
power plant in Dunkirk,
N.Y., could reduce wholesale
electricity prices in
Western New York by as much
as 5 percent and reduce
harmful greenhouse gas
emissions, according to the
Buffalo News.
A recent project involving
smart grid technology from
GE Digital Energy
demonstrates a more
efficient and cost effective
way of covering the energy
requirements of an off-grid
remote community…
Distillate futures closed US
trading sharply higher
Wednesday, holding onto
boosts seen in the wake of
an unexpectedly bullish
inventory report released in
the morning by the Energy
Information Administration.
NYMEX April heating oil
settled up 3.41 cents at
$2.9154/gal, while the May
contract closed trade 3.80
cents higher at $3.0368/gal.
Front-month heating oil
expires at the close of US
trade on Thursday.
ICE April gasoil was up
$14/mt at $916/mt at the
time of the 2:30 p.m. EDT
(1830 GMT) NYMEX market
settle.
Fox News commentator Bill
O’Reilly says supporters of
gay marriage have offered a
"compelling argument," while
opponents have done little
more than “thump the Bible.”
"The compelling argument
is on the side of
homosexuals,” O’Reilly
stated on his show “The
O’Reilly Factor” on Tuesday.
It is not enough for the
Republican Party to
acquiesce in a bipartisan
bill for immigration reform
-- the scars its image bears
in the Latino community run
too deep for that.
Republicans need to get out
in front on the issue.
Immigration reform needs to
be a Republican bill. Only
then can we hope to heal the
scars left from the party's
role in scuttling reform in
2005 and 2006.
Jury deliberations were set
to begin on Thursday in the
federal trial of Tonawanda
Coke Corp, which has been
charged with fouling the air
for years, and whose
environmental manager is
accused of hiding plant
deficiencies from U.S.
regulators.
There are currently 4
numbered sunspot regions on
the disk. Solar activity is
expected to be very low with
a chance for a C-class
flares on days one, two, and
three (29 Mar, 30 Mar, 31
Mar). he geomagnetic field
is expected to be at quiet
to active levels on day one
(29 Mar) and quiet to
unsettled levels on day two
(30 Mar). Quiet levels are
expected on day three (31
Mar).
A $506 million project to
convert the coal-fired power
plant in Dunkirk to less
expensive natural gas could
reduce wholesale electricity
prices in Western New York
by as much as 5 percent
while also reducing harmful
greenhouse gas emissions,
according to a report
released today by the
plant's owner.
Viewing the solar industry (and all of its
technologies) from the outside an observer
would be confronted by two distinct views.
View number one: THIS IS THE GREATEST TIME
IN THE WORLD FOR SOLAR. GROWTH IS OFF OF THE
CHARTS. THIS IS THE BEST YEAR YET. View
number two: This is the worst time for
manufacturers of photovoltaic technology.
Enter at your own risk and consider failure
the likely outcome.
Unfortunately both of these views
are both true and untrue depending
on the prism of the vested interest
involved.
In the past few years, "the
cloud" has revolutionized
consumer tech – nearly as
much as the mobile devices
that it often accompanies.
But how much has it changed
us? Has cloud computing
lived up to the tremendous
hype that it promised a few
short years ago? Let’s
revisit 2011’s favorite
buzzword, two years later.
Climate scientists have linked the
massive snowstorms and bitter spring weather
now being experienced across Britain and
large parts of Europe and North America to
the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice.
Both the extent and the volume of the sea
ice that forms and melts each year in the
Arctic Ocean fell to an historic low last
autumn, and satellite records published on
Monday by the National Snow and Ice Data
Centre (NSIDC) in Boulder, Colorado, show
the ice extent is close to the minimum
recorded for this time of year.
As the current ECPA stands,
law enforcement has the
ability to obtain emails
without a warrant. There are
some laws currently making
their way through Congress
to change this, but law
enforcement agencies
obviously like things as
they are. In fact, one
agency in particular thinks
it needs even more power to
spy on your private
communications.
With a population totaling 50 million,
Korea has become an industrial powerhouse
known for its vibrant consumer electronics,
shipbuilding, automobiles,
telecommunications, computers, steel,
petrochemicals and semiconductors. Today, it
is striving to become a growing force in the
renewable energy market too.
It has some way to go, however...
Since the dawn of human
civilization stealing values
from the populace has been
the essential purpose of
governments.
The
Pharaohs and Kings of
ancient civilizations
actually owned in the
entirety all the lands under
their dominion and control
together will all the
personal property including
the pitiful human
inhabitants who lived at the
whim and mercy of their
rulers.
Everything on the menu was "free"
Wednesday: brown water, black water, chalky
water and "water that you wouldn't even give
your dog."
Tables, complete with printed menus, a
bread appetizer and a wine glass full of
brown, murky water, were displayed along
with information about the harmful affects
of mountaintop removal for the purpose of
mining coal.
Greenhouse gases and thus temperatures
are skyrocketing and will most likely reach
epic proportions by the year 2100,
scientists at Oregon State University and
Harvard University have found.
Funded by the National Science
Foundation’s Paleoclimate Program, and
published in the March 8 issue of the
journal Science, the study covers
11,300 years and finds temperatures higher
than they have been over 70 to 80 percent of
that time
...
Syria's opposition opened an embassy
Wednesday in Doha, Qatar, a day after Arab
League representatives meeting there allowed
the rebels to take Syria's seat at the
summit.
The embassy is the first for the Syrian
National Coalition, which has been
recognized by more than 100 nations as the
legitimate representative of the Syrian
people.
Seed packet displays seem to
have popped up everywhere,
but you need to give them a
wide berth. Most of those
seeds are going to give you
more disappointment than
anything else.
After
all, what is a seed packet?
It's a promise. A promise of
a great garden.
In this day, with growth and
progress honoured above all
else, the natural world is
at the mercy of human
endeavour. Allowed to run
its course, the open market
will drain the land of all
life over and above what is
fundamental for its own
survival. The more fragile
and economically superfluous
species of the world - the
lynxes and lesser spotted
eagles, right down to the
field cricket or river jelly
lichen - remain only for as
long as we consider their
existence a moral
imperative, and their
extinction as a cause for
shame. It is this that
drives conservation.
Cyprus: Bailout Deal Will Do
More Harm than Good
France: Disastrous 75
Percent Tax Hits a Brick
Wall
With Energy Deal, a
Russia-China Alliance Looms
Large
Russia Tries to Bully U.S.
With ‘Bomber Diplomacy’
China: New Leadership
Unlikely to Tackle Pollution
Crisis
The Three Mile Island accident occurred
34 years ago -- March 28, 1979.
For those living in the area at the time,
it remains a chilling time.
For those too young to remember, it's
hard to overstate the panic at the time.
On the Arctic Circle, a chef is growing
the kind of vegetables and herbs - potatoes,
thyme, tomatoes, green peppers - more
fitting for a suburban garden in a temperate
zone than a land of Northern Lights,
glaciers and musk oxen.
Some Inuit hunters are finding reindeer
fatter than ever thanks to more grazing on
this frozen tundra, and for some, there is
no longer a need to trek hours to find wild
herbs.
Welcome to climate change in Greenland,
where locals say longer and warmer summers
mean the country can grow the kind of crops
unheard of years ago.
A mile-long train hauling
oil from Canada derailed and
leaked 30,000 gallons of
crude in western Minnesota
on Wednesday, as debate
rages over the environmental
risks of transporting tar
sands across the border.
Freddie Mac (OTCQB:
FMCC) yesterday
released the results of its
Primary Mortgage
Market Survey® (PMMS),
showing average fixed
mortgage rates moving
slightly higher for the week
but still remaining near
historic lows. The average
30-year fixed-rate mortgage
has remained below 4 percent
for over a year providing
support to the ongoing
housing recovery.
The Vermont Supreme Court
this week denied a petition
submitted by the New England
Coalition to force the
shutdown of the Vermont
Yankee nuclear power plant,
the Brattleboro Reformer
reports.
Contaminated water may have spilled into
the Athabasca River from a broken pipe at
Suncor Energy Inc's oil sands project in
northern Alberta, sparking new fears about
pollution of the river from the massive oil
sands developments along its banks.
The Athabasca is the main source of
drinking water for aboriginal and other
communities downstream and has been the
subject of several controversial reports on
its water quality.
This is the time of
year when people in the
Northeast become excited
about the return of warmer
weather and longer daylight
hours. The robins and the
geese are returning from
their winter get-away
vacation spots down south.
Gardeners are looking
longingly through seed
catalogues and making their
selections. Farmers are
waiting patiently for the
last of the snow to melt, so
they can prepare their
fields for planting. Female
horses, cows and the other
four-leggeds are growing
larger with new life. The
first shoots of crocus and
hyacinth are peeking up and
winking at us.
We've seen all the research
on the various benefits --
from stress reduction to
health and cognitive
benefits, including an
increase in attention and
creativity and so on. So
once you begin to practice
mindfulness, you begin to
think of it as just part of
your life. And there are
some ways to make it easier
to incorporate into your
life. First of all, keep it
really simple; brief
practice is fine.
March
26, 2013
Pumping gas is an excellent
time for existential
contemplation. Next time
you're topping off the tank,
think about where that
gasoline came from. Saudi
Arabia? No, let's go back
even farther: Your gasoline
began its life 300 million
years ago as a leaf of
ancient seaweed or a
prehistoric shark with a
heart condition. When that
shark died and that seaweed
shriveled, they decomposed
on the ocean floor. Over the
millennia, as more and more
organic matter settled on
top of the shark and
seaweed, the pressure and
heat converted the carbon
from those dead creatures
into the viscous goo we call
crude oil.
In Dallas, grease is good.
And not just any grease, but
the grease used to cook
French fries, onion rings
and yes, even pickles. In an
effort to save money on fuel
and reduce its carbon
footprint, the city's school
district is converting all
of its 1,700 buses to run on
a special engine that runs
on both biodiesel and
recycled vegetable oil
donated by local
restaurants. In 2009, the
first bus, the Fryer Flyer,
took to the road. Officials
expect to save $400,000 each
year by running its entire
bus fleet on the biofuel.
Three-quarters of U.S. states get a poor
grade when it comes to requiring healthcare
providers to clearly indicate the price of
their services, according to a new report.
“Wonder why you can’t get a straight
answer on how much a healthcare procedure
will cost you? One big reason: State laws
which allow hospitals and other providers to
keep costs hidden until they send you the
bill,” Kaiser Health News observes.
Algae pioneer now at 50%
above original productivity
target — aims to complete
demo in 2013, head for
commercial-scale in 2014.
In Florida, Algenol
confirmed that the company
had exceeded production
rates 9,000 gallons of
ethanol per acre per year —
and company CEO Paul Woods
said that ” I fully expect
our talented scientific team
to achieve sustained
production rates above
10,000 by the end of this
year.”
President Barack Obama's
plan to use federal
agencies, and the
Environmental Protection
Agency in particular, to
drive his second-term
climate change agenda might
be in peril if he cannot
fill vacant seats on the
federal court that has
jurisdiction over major
national regulations, legal
experts say.
Downtrodden US East Coast
refiners will thrive this
year as refining margins
begin to rally thanks to
increased rail shipments of
cheap light sweet crude from
the Bakken Shale in North
Dakota.
The influx could soon result in a “major
shift” of East Coast refinery margins up the
curve of US refiner profitability, Baker O’
Brien analyst Charles Kemp said, adding that
regional utilization rates should also
improve.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on
Monday defended the central bank's
aggressive easing of monetary policy, saying
while it was aimed at bolstering the U.S.
economic recovery, it was helping other
countries as well.
The Fed's asset-purchase programs, aimed
at keeping long-term borrowing costs down
and spurring investment, have been
criticized overseas for their adverse impact
on emerging market currencies.
Cyprus' Finance Minister
Michael Sarris said on
Tuesday big depositors in
Cypriot banks could lose
about 40 percent of their
deposits as part of a
10-billion euro ($13
billion) international
rescue plan.
Bipartisan efforts to bypass
presidential authority now
needed to sign off on the
Keystone XL Pipeline has
positive ramifications for
the project. Both the U.S.
House and Senate have
popular bills pending that
would allow the
controversial line to go
through based on the U.S.
Department of State’s
previous approval.
Renewable energy use in Ohio
is rising at a pace thought
unlikely only a few years
ago, with retailers,
manufacturers and commercial
businesses speeding up the
transition.
Scientists have developed a new way to
calculate the carbon footprint of batteries
needed to store wind and solar power for the
electrical grid.
A key problem is that the US electrical
grid has virtually no storage capacity, so
grid operators can’t stockpile surplus clean
energy and deliver it at night, or when the
wind isn’t blowing.
Environmental problems have
contributed to numerous
collapses of civilizations
in the past. Now, for the
first time, a global
collapse appears likely.
Overpopulation,
overconsumption by the rich
and poor choices of
technologies are major
drivers; dramatic cultural
change provides the main
hope of averting calamity.
Sometime before the end of March, the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is
expected to propose new national vehicle
emissions and fuel standards by updating a
program called Tier 3.
Updated Tier 3 standards would cut smog
and soot, among other pollutants, by
establishing new standards for light-duty
vehicles and their fuels to reduce emissions
of the most toxic pollutants.
Cyprus ordered banks to
remain closed for two more
days over fears of a run by
customers trying to get
their money out, after
striking a pre-dawn bailout
deal Monday that averted the
country's imminent
bankruptcy.
The 6.75 percent
bank-deposit tax that the
European Union is requiring
from Cyprus in exchange for
a bailout, could lead to a
financial meltdown,
including a Cypriot
withdrawal from the
eurozone, says Pimco CEO
Mohamed El-Erian.
Five years ago, rural
America was giddy for ethanol.
Backed by
government subsidies and mandates, hundreds
of ethanol plants rose among the golden
fields of the Corn Belt, bringing jobs and
business to small towns, providing farmers
with a new market for their crops and
generating billions of dollars in revenue
for the producers of this corn-based fuel
blend.
Those days of
promise and prosperity are vanishing.
Demolishing Detroit’s blighted and
dangerous buildings would cost an estimated
$500 million in a city already $325 million
in debt — and much of the blame can be laid
squarely on red tape.
The situation in the Motor City is grim —
and so is the landscape. More than 38,000
homes are listed on Detroit’s Dangerous
Building inventory, and 80,000 addresses no
longer receive mail.
NOAA predicts tough spring
for already struggling
farmers as growing demand
for water leaves US more
exposed dry seasons
While the special interests
are at odds over ethanol
mandates, party leaders are
coming together to examine
whether the so-called
Renewable Fuels Standard
should continue or be
modified.
That’s the
provision in a 2007 law that
had laid out a plan to grow
the use of ethanol -- one
that critics say is skewing
energy markets and one that
supporters say is making
transportation a cleaner
venture and minimizing
imports
There’s an old joke with an
equally archaic punchline
that quips about the U.S.
government never getting a
thing done, how every
project takes forever. At
least in the case of a
cybersecurity model, the
U.S. government has
definitely proven that joke
completely and utterly
wrong.
The U.S. environmental regulator has
selected experts in fields ranging from
well-drilling to toxicology to review a
highly anticipated report on the natural gas
and oil extraction method commonly known as
fracking.
The Environmental Protection Agency's
science advisory board on Monday named 31
experts from universities, scientific labs
and companies to review the agency's
landmark hydraulic fracturing study that is
expected to be delivered in 2014.
Arguing that the
Environmental Protection
Agency has failed in its
obligation to protect the
nation's bee population—one
of the Earth's most vital
pollinators—from dangerous
pesticides, a group of
beekeepers and environmental
groups have filed a lawsuit
in federal court saying the
EPA's inaction is causing
great harm to biodiversity
and the future of food in
the U.S.
A family recently moved into
a prototype Active House,
which uses natural lighting
and ventilation to reduce
its energy consumption while
still blending in with the
architecture of the
surrounding neighborhood
The Food and Drug
Administration issued a
health advisory Thursday
warning consumers not to
purchase or use three “male
enhancement” products being
sold online that contain
hidden drug ingredients that
could be dangerous.
Argentina's actions don't
just threaten the nation's
democratic system. The
latest policies amount to a
harsh form of financial
repression that will bring
the nation's private sector
to its knees. As confidence
in Argentina's stability
deteriorates, foreign
reserves are becoming
dangerously low. The latest
move to close any loopholes
that allowed outflows of
dollars from the country is
now impacting domestic
market liquidity.
Clean-energy jobs make up a small part of
U.S. employment, but a new federal report
shows they are growing much faster than
other work, even healthcare.
The nation had about 3.4 million green
energy jobs in 2011, the Bureau of Labor
Statistics said Tuesday in its second annual
and final look at this emerging category of
employment. (More on why it's the last
report later.)
For the first time in U.S.
history, the median age of
American women when they
have their first child is
lower than the median age of
marriage, an eye-opening new
report discloses.
This year's theme is in part
a reflection of the
International Year of Water
Cooperation. The day is also
dedicated to the theme of
cooperation that is
emphasized concerning using
water as a resource. Not
only is the environment
heavily dependent on water,
but as a basic human need,
good management of water
sources is crucial to our
own livelihood.
Ten years after the US invasion of Iraq,
oil production is on the rise but the
country is far from stable.
Indeed, the rise in oil output is perhaps
the only bright spot in an otherwise bleak
picture of a nation riven by political
infighting, dogged by insecurity and
grappling with crumbling public services a
decade after the start of Operation Iraqi
Freedom on March 19, 2003.
Nobody's going to win an Emmy for a
parody of the TV show "Star Trek" filmed by
Internal Revenue Service employees at an
agency studio in Maryland.
Instead, the IRS got a rebuke from
Congress for wasting taxpayer dollars.
Republicans on the House
Energy and Commerce, Senate
Finance, and Senate Health,
Education, Labor and
Pensions committees today
released a joint report on
“The Price of Obamacare’s
Broken Promises.”
The report, which is based
on a compilation of over 30
studies and analyses,
outlines estimated premium
increases for all 50 states
that will result from the
rigid mandates and price
controls imposed by the
president’s health care law.
Obamacare Projections Show
Massive Premium Increases
-
One in four patients in a hospital is
harmed in some way from a medical
mistake
-
An estimated 30 percent of all medical
procedures, tests and medications may be
unnecessary – at a cost of at least $750
billion a year
-
For the past two years, the American
Board of Internal Medicine Foundation,
one of the largest physician
organizations in the US, has released
reports on the most overused tests and
treatments that provide limited or no
benefit to the patient, or worse, causes
more harm than good. The list currently
includes a total of 135 different tests,
procedures and treatments
-
Once you’re hospitalized, you’re
immediately at risk for medical errors,
so one of the best safeguards is to have
someone there with you.
Children biking around their
Long Beach, N.Y.,
neighborhood discovered
piles of used medical
syringes Sunday, local news
agency News12 reported.
...the satellite is now
ready to start sending its
first images back home. The
first batch of photos are
part of a three-month
testing period, and show the
meeting of the Great Plains
with the Front Ranges of the
Rocky Mountains in Wyoming
and Colorado. Viewed from
space, it's already a pretty
spectacular scene, but the
images from the LDCM managed
to enhance it even further.
Cyprus reached a last-ditch
deal with international
lenders on a 10 billion euro
($13 billion) rescue plan to
avoid economic meltdown,
agreeing to close down its
second-largest bank and
inflict heavy losses on big
depositors.
There seems to be a problem with
estimates of the total amount of energy
available for harvesting from the wind.
Most calculations assume that
extracting wind energy doesn't alter
large-scale winds enough to significantly
limit wind power production.
But that's wrong, say researchers from
the University of North Carolina at
Charlotte and Harvard University
... some residents voiced
concern over such meters at
Thursday's KPUB board
meeting. Edward A. Shuler
and three members of local
conservative groups
indicated smart meters may
not be the most efficient
way to help deliver power to
residents and may even be
unhealthy.
Low-income populations,
racial and ethnic minorities
in California are exposed to
greater levels of some air
pollutants than
higher-income, Caucasian
populations. New research
shows that as a result they
suffer more asthma-related
difficulties – from asthma
attacks and daily medication
use to work absences and
emergency room visits.
The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) has
just released the results of
a comprehensive survey that
looks at the health of
thousands of stream and
river miles across the
country, and frankly the
results are not very
encouraging.
An Lacomb-area resident
armed with a shotgun caught
a burglar in his shop early
Friday morning and held the
suspect at gunpoint until
deputies arrived.
The average annual output of
the Berkshire wind farm,
with 10 wind turbines atop
Massachusetts' Brodie
Mountain, is nearly 40% of
its generating capacity,
surpassing expectations,
according to Massachusetts
Municipal Wholesale
Electric.
-
According to the nonprofit ocean
protection group Oceana, nearly 60
percent of fish labeled "tuna" in the US
is not actually tuna. A shocking 84
percent of “white tuna” sold in sushi
venues was actually escolar, a fish
associated with acute and serious
digestive effects if you eat just a
couple of ounces
-
One-third of all fish samples tested
across the US were found to be
mislabeled; substituted for cheaper,
less desirable and/or more readily
available fish varieties
-
87 percent of fish sold as snapper was
actually some other type of fish
-
Grouper, halibut, and red snapper were
sometimes substituted with king mackerel
and tile fish, two types of fish the FDA
advises pregnant women and other
sensitive groups to avoid due to high
mercury content
-
As seafood fraud and widespread
contamination grows, along with mounting
evidence of the critical importance of
omega-3 fats found in fish, finding and
using a viable alternative becomes an
increasingly pressing issue
Only 11 percent of the estimated 79
million Americans who are at risk for
diabetes know they are at risk, federal
health officials reported Thursday.
The condition, known as prediabetes,
describes higher-than-normal blood sugar
levels that put people in danger of
developing diabetes, according to the
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.
A majority of physicians see
a somewhat bleak future for
medicine, pointing to
eroding independence and
shrinking income, reports
everydayhealth.com.
A growing number of American
workers are financially
unprepared for retirement —
and few feel confident that
Social Security will provide
them with the benefits
retirees enjoy today.
The biofuel industry has had
a bumpy few years: Ethanol
is still a Department of
Energy golden child, but
recent studies raise serious
questions about its
viability. Production could
eat up half of America’s
corn crop this year,
potentially causing food
shortages, and some say that
ethanol manufacturing uses
more energy than it
produces. What’s more, the
fuel’s corrosiveness makes
it unsuitable for
distribution via existing
petroleum pipelines. But two
new biotech companies
believe biofuels can
leapfrog past these
problems, and they’re each
engineering fuels that are
virtually identical to the
gasoline and diesel we use
today.
The nuclear plant in
Monticello is among those
affected by an order from
the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory
Commission requiring 31
reactors similar to the
ill-fated Fukushima plant in
Japan to upgrade their
ventilation systems.
Judging from the televised
images, President Obama's
first state visit to Israel
was a love fest. The
Israelis literally and
figuratively rolled out the
red carpet, even giving Mr.
Obama a medal to thank him
for his friendship to the
Jewish people. The
President, in turn,
literally and figuratively
hugged Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
and repeatedly called him by
his nickname, "Bibi," as
though they had been best
pals for years. The days of
frosty, even frigid,
relations between the two
leaders seemed over.
An obscure federal regulator
of electricity markets has
emerged as a tough cop on
the beat, taking on Wall
Street banks and big energy
firms alike for market
manipulation. That
aggressive approach stands
out when it's compared with
that of the regulator in
charge of looking for
manipulation in the oil and
gasoline markets.
Humans have used oil shale
as a fuel since prehistoric
times, since it generally
burns without any
processing. Oil shale, also
known as kerogen shale, is
an organic-rich fine-grained
sedimentary rock containing
kerogen (a solid mixture of
organic chemical compounds)
from which liquid
hydrocarbons called shale
oil (not to be confused with
tight oil—crude oil
occurring naturally in
shales) can be produced.
-
Tomatoes are one of the best dietary
sources of lycopene, which has been
shown to have anti-cancerous activity,
and may reduce your risk of stroke.
-
Cooked tomatoes (such as in tomato sauce
or tomato paste) not only increases the
lycopene content that can be absorbed by
your body, but also increases the total
antioxidant activity. Consume your
tomatoes, whether raw or cooked, with
some type of fat, such as olive oil,
since lycopene is a fat-soluble
nutrient.
-
Choose organic varieties, whether whole
tomatoes or tomato paste, ketchup, or
sauce. Organic ketchup has been found to
contain 57 percent more lycopene than
conventional national brands.
-
Avoid anything that comes in a can,
since the acidity of the tomatoes will
increase toxic BPA release from the
liner.
Put a special kind of
plastic called an electro
active polymer (EAP) between
two electrodes and you can
apply an electric field to
change the plastic's shape.
This idea has been used for
many years to make up
sensors that react to
stretching or straining. But
Danfoss PolyPower A/S in
Europe is investigating ways
of employing this kind of
material as a way of
harvesting energy in
situations characterized by
physical movement in one
direction.
Pope Francis urged the West
on Friday to intensify
dialogue with Islam and
appealed to the world to do
more to combat poverty and
protect the environment.
Speaking in Italian, the
new pontiff said richer
countries should fight what
he called "the spiritual
poverty of our times" by
re-forging links with God.
To appreciate the explosive growth of
solar power in North Carolina, consider the
state of the solar industry six years ago:
Solar energy was so unusual that most
residents had never seen a photovoltaic
panel here.
Today, North Carolina ranks fifth in the
nation for solar energy production,..
A pre-Viking woolen tunic
found beside a thawing
glacier in south Norway
shows how global warming is
proving something of a boon
for archaeology, scientists
said on Thursday.
A June 1 rate increase for Flathead
Electric Cooperative members will bump up
most area residential electricity bills by
about $4.75 per month.
The 3.75 percent across-the-board
increase is based on a proposed 9.6 percent
increase in wholesale power rates from
Bonneville Power Administration.
Cyprus is zeroing in
on a solution to avoid
getting ejected from the
EMU. It's simple. Since
taxing everyone's account by
a few percent didn't work,
it's time to raid all the
larger accounts.
REC Solar, a leader in solar
system design and
installation, announced the
completion of solar
installations totaling 3.5MW
on twelve Arizona public
schools. The systems, which
were developed and installed
by REC Solar, will provide
enough power to reduce the
schools’ electricity bills
by up to 20 percent while
also offering educational
opportunities for K-12
students.
Climate change is likely to
make reef-building stony
corals lose out to softer
cousins in a damaging shift
for many types of fish that
use reefs as hideaways and
nurseries for their young, a
study showed.
For British entrepreneur
Timothy Porter and millions
of other Europeans who get
generous financial
incentives for solar panels,
the sun has been very
lucrative.
There are currently 4
numbered sunspot regions on
the disk. Solar activity is
expected to be very low with
a chance for a C-class
flares on days one, two, and
three (26 Mar, 27 Mar, 28
Mar). The geomagnetic
field is expected to be at
quiet levels on day one (26
Mar), quiet to unsettled
levels on day two (27 Mar)
and quiet to minor storm
levels on day three (28
Mar).
Saudi Arabian customs
officials have foiled an
attempt to smuggle 3.255
million kg (equivalent to
27,300 barrels) of refined
oil products out of the
eastern port of Dammam,
capital of the kingdom's
oil-rich Eastern Province,
the official Saudi Press
Agency SPA reported Tuesday.
AWWA hails ‘pivotal moment’
for water infrastructure
Denver — A US Senate Committee today
passed legislation that would create a Water
Infrastructure Finance and Innovation
Authority, a development the American Water
Works Association hailed as pivotal in
confronting America’s trillion-dollar water
infrastructure challenge.
An amendment to a $984
billion Senate government
funding bill that would have
stripped funds from the
Defense Department's drop-in
biofuels program failed by a
40-59 vote on Wednesday.
Critics of banks deemed “too
big to fail” gained
political support in the
waning hours before the U.S.
Congress adjourned over the
weekend when senators voted
unanimously in favor of
ending perks enjoyed by the
largest banks.
It would remove licensing
barriers for small
hydropower development and
also would require a study
on the feasibility of a
streamlined two-year
permitting process at
existing dams.
Scientists from the
Nano-Science Center at the
Niels Bohr Institut, Denmark
and the Ecole Polytechnique
Fédérale de Lausanne,
Switzerland, have shown that
a single nanowire can
concentrate the sunlight up
to 15 times of the normal
sun light intensity. The
results are surprising and
the potential for developing
a new type of highly
efficient solar cells is
great.
Barstow Unified's biggest energy hogs
have a new source of food: The abundant High
Desert sunshine.
Eight of the district's most demanding
buildings -- seven schools and the district
offices -- will have solar panels providing
their power.
A little electrochemical
magic puts power where it’s
needed.
It was unremarkable, that
is, until last October. On a
blustery Friday, the
wastewater treatment
facility hooked up to a new
2.8-megawatt stationary fuel
cell power plant. That’s not
a great deal of
electricity—enough to supply
about 2,000 homes—but it’s
the largest fuel-cell plant
making electricity from
biogas in the United States,
and it now provides 60
percent of the power that
Plant No. 1 had been getting
from the grid.
Oil companies have suggested
that increased prices for
conventional ethanol RINs
(Renewable Identification
Numbers) are leading to
higher gasoline prices at
the pump. Some have even
deceptively claimed RINs are
adding as much as $0.10 per
gallon to the retail price
of gasoline. This assertion
is completely absurd and is
easily disproven with a
series of very simple
calculations. Truth be told,
ethanol continues to sell at
a discount to gasoline and
continues to offer savings
at the pump, even when the
impact of higher RIN prices
is considered.
Target Rock Advisors has
named its utility industry
sustainability leaders in
the large capitalization,
mid-cap and small cap
categories. The eight
utilities named are being
recognized for their
performance and management
of the classic pillars of
sustainability:
environmental stewardship,
economic performance and
societal contribution.
-
If you are opposed to the hepatitis B
vaccine for your baby at birth, you can
amend the "consent for medical
treatment" forms you sign upon entering
the hospital before giving birth by
writing on the form that you do not give
consent for your baby's hepatitis B
vaccination but, unfortunately, that is
no guarantee that your baby will not be
vaccinated in the newborn nursery
without your knowledge or consent
-
By the age of 15, about 15 percent of
teens who received the full series of
hepatitis B shots as infants tested
positive for hepatitis B surface antigen
(HBsAg), which is an early indicator of
infection or a sign that the person is a
chronic carrier of the virus
A bristling commentary from
The Economist stated that
the Federal Reserve ended
its two-day meeting this
week with a "nothing burger
of a statement," and that
Fed decision makers are
guilty of conducting a
"pretty lousy monetary
policy" for years on end.
The publication noted
little changed in the
Federal Open Market
Committee (FOMC)’s statement
on the economy. Both asset
purchases and rate guidance
are continuing just as
before.
Imagine a land with 47
million people who can’t
afford food on their table.
A new apocalypse movie
blockbuster? It’s worse than
that … it’s the United
States of America — today.
We have become The Land of
the Walking Dead.
CIA Takes Control of Elite
Iraqi Unit in Major Policy
Shift
Tanzania Gas Find Could Fuel
Rapid Growth
Warburton: US Economy
Prospects Good But
Government Spending a
Problem
Syria Crisis Jumpstarts
Turkish-Israeli Relationship
Syria’s Opposition Leader
Quits; Leaves Coalition in
Free Fall
Christians Under Fire in
Libya, Stoking Tensions with
Egypt
Fears Grow That China May
Take Top Bank Post from
Japan
Connecticut, Massachusetts
and Vermont are working
together to fast-track a
joint solicitation aimed at
creating a significant
buyer's market for renewable
energy and driving down its
costs in New England,
Connecticut officials said
Monday during a news
conference.
Connecticut also plans to
increase its state's
renewable portfolio standard
and take the controversial
step of letting large
hydroelectric projects
participate.
Owners of coal-fired power plants
invested more than $30 billion in flue gas
desulfurization systems, also known as
scrubbers, between 2007 and 2011, according
to a report from the U.S. Energy Information
Administration.
According to the report, scrubbers were
installed at around 110 coal-fired power
plants in 34 states during that time,
raising the amount of scrubbed generating
capacity in the U.S. from 115 GW to just
more than 191 GW. That number represents a
little less than 60 percent of coal-fired,
steam electric generation capacity in the
U.S.
The biggest weakness of renewable power
advocates is the fact that the sun doesn’t
always shine, nor the wind blow.
Geothermal power, which does not suffer
from down time, is slowly gaining ground in
the United States.
Afghanistan has taken full
control of a controversial
detention center from the
United States...
Monday's transfer of control
of Bagram prison comes a day
after Afghanistan's Foreign
Ministry announced President
Hamid Karzai will visit
Qatar to discuss the
possibility of opening a
Taliban office in the Gulf
state.
The White House has issued the following
news release:
The United States is on the path to a
cleaner and more secure energy future. Since
President Obama took office, responsible oil
and gas production has increased each year,
while oil imports have fallen to a 20 year
low; renewable electricity generation from
wind, solar, and geothermal sources has
doubled; And our emissions of the dangerous
carbon pollution that threatens our planet
have fallen to their lowest level in nearly
two decades. In short, the President’s
approach is working. It’s a winning strategy
for the economy, energy security, and the
environment.
Stresses on water supplies aggravated by
climate change are likely to cause more
conflicts and water should be considered as
vital to national security as defense, the
United Nations report said on Friday.
About 145 nations share river basins with
their neighbors and need to promote
cooperation over a resource likely to be
disrupted by more frequent floods and
heatwaves, it said.
When you consider your
off-grid survival supplies,
what do you think about?
Food? Water? A back-up power
source? Ammunition? Needed
medications? Those are the
biggies, for sure. But what
about other things?
For instance, one common
substance that doesn't get a
lot of fanfare is hydrogen
peroxide.
The Wisconsin Public Service
Commission has approved the
use of regenerative
activated coke technology,
or ReACT, at a coal-fired
power plant near Wausau,
Wisc., according to the
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The plant will be the first
in the U.S. to use the
emissions control system,
which will cost around $275
million.
A jury awarded Redondo Beach
resident Simona Wilson $4.05
million Monday in her case
against Southern California
Edison over stray
electricity emanating from
the Topaz Substation next
door to her house..
Wilson said she suffered
from low-voltage
electrocution because her
shower head was electrically
charged. Every time she
adjusted the shower head,
she said voltage seeped into
her body. The home's gas
line was also carrying a
charge.
On the first International
Day of Forests, celebrated
Thursday by the United
Nations, Jose Graziano da
Silva proposed that all
countries support a Zero
Illegal Deforestation
target.
March
22, 2013
Globally, nuclear saw modest
growth between 2000 and 2011
and experienced a sharp drop
between 2011 and 2012 when
many reactors were shut down
in the wake of the Fukushima
disaster. According to
GlobalData, 198 nuclear
reactors are scheduled to
begin commercial operations
from 2013 to 2020.
Communities in 19 states,
working in partnership with
non-profit organizations and
state and federal agencies,
removed 65 dams in 2012,
American Rivers announced
today. Outdated or unsafe
dams came out of rivers in
California, Connecticut,
Georgia, Illinois, Maine,
Maryland, Massachusetts,
Michigan, Minnesota, New
Hampshire, New Jersey, New
York, North Carolina, Ohio,
Oregon, Pennsylvania,
Vermont, Washington and
Wisconsin, restoring 400
miles of streams for the
benefit of fish, wildlife
and people across the
country.
Last week we sent an
emergency email to our
subscribers about a terrible
biotech rider attached to
the big must-pass
Appropriations bill that
would let GMO crops be
planted even when a court
has ordered a stop. The
Senate rejected this
provision in the past—but
now they may be accepting it
as part of some back-room
deal that was struck.
Anadarko Tuesday said its
Shenandoah-2 well in the
deepwater US Gulf of Mexico
hit more than 1,000 net feet
of oil pay, calling it one
of the company's largest
finds in the Gulf.
Apple (AAPL) on Thursday
gave itself an A-plus for
what it calls a dramatically
improved environmental
performance, boasting that
its corporate facilities
around the world now get 75
percent of their power from
renewable sources such as
solar and wind, up from 35
percent two years ago.
Full testimony before the
Supreme court on Arizona's
voting litagation.
Integration of intermittent renewable
energy resources is driving interest in
advanced battery technology in an effort to
contain global greenhouse gas emissions.
In Asia Pacific, most of the research,
development, and demonstrations of native
energy storage technologies are advanced
batteries, specifically advanced lithium
ion, sodium sulfur, and flow batteries,
according to Pike Research, where the total
capacity of advanced batteries for
utility-scale applications will reach 25.1
gigawatts by 2022.
If you are one who thought the news
regarding Asteroid 2012 DA14 and the bolide
which hit an area in Russia just didn't add
up - you can now tell your friends it's not
your imagination nor do you in the
'everything is a conspiracy crowd'.
Before colonization,
many tribes recognized more
than two genders (and many
still do), and in many
cultures Two Spirit people
were often healers or had
specific societal and
ceremonial roles. “It meant
my Indian identity and Two
Spirit identity weren’t
separate,” Thomas says.
“It’s important that we
acknowledge that history,
that Two Spirit people did
exist.”
Emerging markets have
tremendous biomass
resources. Such fuels also
enjoy commercial advantages
due to grid and baseload
power availability and a
strong willingness from
users to pay for
electricity. Yet to become a
corporate sector, biomass
power has avenues to explore
to take it away from being
made up of mostly isolated
one-off projects,
captive-generation schemes
or public policy/NGO
projects. Biomass power
needs to focus on the
vertical logistics of the
fuel business. Indeed,
conventional fuel price
rises and demand-side
pressures from north Asia
point to the adoption of
such a logistics chain.
The recurring plagues known
as the “Black Death,” which
decimated medieval peoples,
could return in modern times
as antibiotic-resistant
forms of of the virus have
emerged, a study warns.
These tougher strains are
raising “serious concerns,”
according to the study,
published in the March issue
of the journal Infection,
Genetics and Evolution.
With reports that rebel
forces launched a chemical
weapons attack in Syria on
Tuesday, the U.S must make
sure such deadly munitions
never cross the borders into
the hands of terrorists,
says John Bolton, former
Ambassador to the United
Nations.
“We’ve got
to up our intelligence and
we’ve got to be prepared to
work with Turkey and Israel
and Jordan, who would be
very concerned about this
thing,’’ Bolton told Newsmax
TV’s “The Steve Malzberg
Show.’’
In KNOxOUT, CristalActiv
uses light energy to break
down nitrogen oxide (NOx)
and volatile organic
compounds (the two
components of smog) into
harmless substances through
a process called
photocatalysis. The process
requires only light and
humidity for activation, and
because the air cleaning TiO2 is
merely a catalyst and does
not get used up in the
reaction, a surface painted
with KNOxOUT is able to
continuously clean the air
as long as the paint is on
the wall. In essence, it
transforms ordinary painted
surfaces into air purifiers.
Reviews of offshore oil and
gas exploration plans and
approval of drilling permits
may be delayed by mandatory
across-the-board budget cuts
known as a "sequester," US
Bureau of Ocean Energy
Management Director Tommy
Beaudreau said Wednesday.
When it comes to the green technology
sector, there's California and then there is
everyone else.
The state has managed to reduce per
capita greenhouse gas emissions even as its
economy and population have grown, according
to Next 10, the San Francisco nonprofit
group that has produced the California green
innovation index for the last five years.
An alliance of Canadian and
U.S. aboriginal groups vowed
on Wednesday to block three
multibillion-dollar oil
pipelines that are planned
to transport oil from the
Alberta tar sands, saying
they are prepared to take
physical action to stop
them.
The Willard Bay State Park
in Utah was closed after
around 4,200 to 6,300
gallons (100-150 barrels) of
diesel leaked from a Chevron
Corp pipeline that runs just
north of the park, the Salt
Lake Tribune reported on its
website on Tuesday.
In advance of legislative
hearings today on a bill
banning "mountaintop"
removal of coal in the
state, the Tennessee
Conservative Union on
Tuesday launched a
blistering ad attack on the
practice and charged the
Volunteer State will "become
the first state in America
to permit a communist
Chinese company to destroy
our mountains."
Over the past four years,
the state of America’s
infrastructure has improved
from a grade of D to D+ but
a spending shortfall of $1.6
trillion is anticipated by
2020, the American Society
of Civil Engineers warns in
its new report card.
"Colorado's governor signed
bills Wednesday that place
new restrictions on
firearms, signaling a change
for Democrats who have
traditionally shied away
from [victim disarmament] in
a state with a pioneer
tradition of gun ownership
and self-reliance. The
legislation thrust Colorado
into the national spotlight
as a potential test of how
far the country might be
willing to go with new
[victim disarmament schemes
gravy-training on] the
horror of mass killings at
an Aurora movie theater and
a Connecticut elementary
school.
An exhaustive study by three
congressional committees
delivers startling news
about the dire effects of
Obamacare: President Barack
Obama’s signature
legislation could increase
health insurance premiums by
over 200 percent and render
insurance coverage
unaffordable for millions of
Americans.
Broadly,
the new report declares that
Obamacare “breaks its core
promise” to make healthcare
coverage affordable.
Electric vehicles (EV) are quickly
becoming common among energy-efficiency
enthusiasts, but these vehicles have yet to
break through to the broader consumer
market.
But the hope is that new EV applications
and higher quality vehicles will spur a
consumer revolution in the not-too-distant
future...
eBay acknowledged a glitch
on Wednesday that caused it
to remove sellers' listings
in error. The exact number
of sellers impacted is
uncertain, but the problem
is widespread, and many of
the sellers who were
impacted said most of their
listing were pulled from the
site.
The European Union gave
Cyprus until Monday to raise
the billions of euros it
needs to clinch an
international bailout or
face the collapse of its
financial system and likely
exit from the euro currency
zone.
U.S. commercial crude oil
stocks unexpectedly fell
1.314 million barrels to
382.661 million barrels for
the reporting week ended
March 15, as refiners raised
utilization rates across
much of the country, U.S.
Energy Information
Administration (EIA) data
showed Wednesday.
Governments must impose radical limits on
everything from water use to greenhouse
gases if they want to have any chance of
ending global poverty, a group of scientists
said.
States needed to tighten clean air laws,
at least halve the amount of water drawn
from river basins and start cutting some
environmentally damaging pollution, all by
2030, they suggested.
"The stable functioning of Earth systems
- including the atmosphere, oceans, forests,
waterways, biodiversity and biogeochemical
cycles - is a pre-requisite for a thriving
global society," the Australian-led team
wrote in Thursday's edition of the journal
Nature.
The good news is that more
than 50 percent of all
homeowners in a recent
survey by the Association of
Energy Services
Professionals (AESP) are
actively pursuing energy
efficiency in their homes.
The bad news is that most of
them are not looking to
utilities to do that.
Employment in energy
efficiency is expected to
increase in 2013, according
to the Association of Energy
Services Professionals
(AESP), led by growth in the
commercial and industrial
sector, an area which is
ripe for energy efficiency
improvements. AESP surveyed
its members and conducted
interviews with industry
thought leaders who
projected a 63 percent
increase in the number of
employees involved in energy
efficiency and demand
response activities in 2013.
As the renewable energy
industry grows and becomes a
larger part of our energy
mix, the concept of energy
storage has made its way
into the spotlight and has
created some important
pressing questions: Do
renewables' inherent
intermittency require some
kind of energy storage, and
should it be at the endpoint
of use or closer to the
utility (or both)? Do we
even need an "energy
storage" application, or can
grid flexibility and
responsiveness assume this
role? If energy storage is
indeed embraced, how should
we weigh the options?
An environmental group went
to an Olde Towne East church
yesterday to defend Ohio's
energy-efficiency rules,
pointing toward the ceiling
not to invoke a higher power
but to call attention to a
lighting system that has
saved the congregation
thousands of dollars.
A three-decade long study
carried out by a husband and
wife ornithological team in
western Nebraska has, thanks
to long years of carefully
recording all available
data, shown that roadkill
has exerted a selective
advantage on swallows with
shorter wingspans.
Electric vehicles are still a decade from
becoming mainstream, experts said at
Tuesday's Megatrends auto conference in
Dearborn.
"Continuous improvement in gas engines
will continue to push plug-in hybrids and
electric vehicles farther into the future,"
said Michael Omotoso, senior manager, global
powertrain forecast, with LMC Automotive.
The Federal Reserve foresees
unemployment remaining high
into 2015, suggesting it
will keep short-term
interest rates near record
lows at least until then.
In its latest economic
forecasts released
Wednesday, the Fed predicts
that the unemployment rate
will stay above 6.5 percent
for about two more years.
Fed policymakers also expect
the economy to grow modestly
this year and next despite
economic gains so far in
2013.
In its latest monthly report
on economic conditions
across the country, the
Federal Reserve points to
Obamacare as one reason the
unemployment rate has
remained near or above 8
percent under the current
administration.
Film star and activist Gary Farmer wore
an impish grin from time to time as he
conducted an Idle No More (Idle) teach-in,
but his core message defied humor: “We’re
the cutting edge of the economic downturn,”
he said of Indian people.
Given that resources are limited, we
don’t have enough of them to sustain us at
our present rate of usage, he said. On this
matter, Indian people “have been trying to
talk to the larger population for some
time,” Farmer said. “Now it’s extremely
critical for all of us.”
At the end of last
year, Japanese Prime
Minister Shinzo Abe fired a
loud salvo. In a forceful
attempt to kick start
Japan's economy from its
decade-long stupor, Abe
leaned on the Bank of Japan
to set a 2% inflation
target. He threatened to
pass a law to limit the
central bank's independence
if it balked. "Countries
around the world are
printing more money to boost
their export
competitiveness," said Abe.
"Japan must do so, too." The
Bank of Japan caved, vowing
to step up purchases of
government bonds starting
next January.
Observations made by the
Herschel space observatory
have revealed 15 protostars
in the constellation Orion,
the biggest star formation
area near our own solar
system. The observatory was
the first telescope to
reveal the grouping, with
previous studies of the area
missing the stars which are
thought to be some of the
youngest and coldest in the
constellation. The discovery
is a significant step in
furthering our understanding
of how stars form.
With over two million
children now schooled --
usually quite well -- at
home, the education
establishment and the
teachers unions find
themselves leaking students
at an alarming rate. Driven
by bad public education, the
threat of school violence,
and a virtual prohibition
against values-based
learning in government
schools, more and more
Americans are taking
advantage of their right to
homeschool their children.
The very success of their
experiences -- as measured
by test scores, jobs after
graduation, and college
admissions -- are violating
the fundamental credo of the
education hierarchy: That
all children must go to
schools we run.
The House on Thursday
averted a looming government
shutdown by approving
legislation that will keep
the government funded
through the end of the
fiscal year. The $984
billion spending bill passed
by a vote of 318 to 109. The
bill cleared the Senate on
Wednesday on a vote of 73 to
26 and now heads to
President Obama’s desk.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike
Huckabee tells Newsmax that
President Obama won’t
succeed in restarting peace
talks in the Middle East
because the Palestinians
have “zero interest” in
negotiations.
The
2008 Republican presidential
candidate also says the
administration’s dealings
with Mohammed Morsi and
Egypt are “foreign policy
gone wild,” and warns that
the United States will be
viewed as a “toothless
tiger” if Obama doesn’t
respond as promised to the
use of chemical weapons in
Syria.
In a first for medical
science, two livers have
been successfully
transplanted into patients
following storage and
transportation of the organs
in a machine that keeps them
warm and functioning. It's
hoped that the machine,
developed at the University
of Oxford, could double the
number of livers available
for transplant at any given
time, potentially saving
thousands of lives every
year.
Thrustcycle Enterprises LLC
and the Lane Motor Museum
are working to fulfill the
promise of a vehicle built
in 1967 called the Gyro-X,
which featured a working
hydraulic flywheel kinetic
energy recovery system
(KERS) forty years before
the introduction of KERS to
Formula One. Designed and
engineered by famed
automotive designer Alex
Tremulis and gyroscopic
systems expert Thomas
Summers , the Gyro-X was
featured on the cover of the
September 1967 edition
of Science and Mechanics.
As part of President Obama’s
commitment to empowering
American Indian tribal
nations and strengthening
their economies, Secretary
of the Interior Ken Salazar
and Assistant Secretary for
Indian Affairs Kevin K.
Washburn joined New Mexico
Governor Susanna Martinez
and leaders from four Pueblo
tribes -- the Tesuque,
Nambe, Pojoaque and San
Ildefonso -- at the Santa Fe
Indian School to execute
settlement documents and
celebrate the historic New
Mexico vs. Aamodt water
rights settlement.
Iran is re-appraising an
offshore oil field that
India's Oil and Natural Gas
Corporation (ONGC) had
abandoned as commercially
non-viable, the
semi-official Mehr news
agency reported Wednesday.
Amazon.com founder and the
man behind Blue Origin, Jeff
Bezos, has recovered parts
of the F-1 rocket engines
used in the Apollo missions.
Recovered by remotely
operated vehicles (ROVs)
from the multi-purpose
offshore vessel Seabed
Worker, they were brought up
from a depth of over 14,000
feet (4,267 m) over a three
week period.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry Monday
urged creation of what would be the world’s
largest marine reserve in Antarctica and
better safeguards for all oceans.
Kerry and New Zealand’s Ambassador to the
United States, Michael Moore, announced a
joint U.S.-New Zealand proposal to establish
a Marine Protected Area in the Ross Sea, a
1.9 million-square-mile area off the
Antarctic coast.
The Los Angeles Department
of Water and Power Board of
Commissioners approved
Tuesday an amended power
sales contract with the
Intermountain Power Agency
that will lead to replacing
the 1,800-MW coal plant in
Delta, Utah, with a smaller
natural gas-fired plant that
complies with California's
emission standards.
The Weston A. Price
Foundation (WAPF) announces
that the National Farmers
Union (NFU) has adopted new
pro-raw milk policies at its
111th annual
convention, held on March
2nd-5th, in Springfield
Massachusetts.
The conference theme,
Making Waves in Agriculture,
reflected the new,
progressive stance on raw
milk.
The Navajo Nation is paying millions of
dollars to figure out whether it truly wants
to purchase the Navajo Mine.
While the deal is not set in stone, the
tribe announced in December that it signed a
memorandum with BHP Billiton, the current
owner, regarding the possible purchase of
the mine from the Australia-based mining
company.
It since has taken on a more cautious
tone.
China's maritime authority said on
Wednesday that to date there is no direct
threat to China's territorial waters posed
by the pollution from Japan's Fukushima
nuclear power plants.
Readings of radioactive matter in the sea
and marine organisms in waters under China's
jurisdiction, as well as the air above these
waters, are within the normal range, the
State Oceanic Administration (SOA) said in a
statement.
After just over one year in
power, North Korea’s novice
leader, 30-year old Kim Jong
Un, has dashed hopes that he
will change course from the
brinkmanship-style policies
pursued by his late father,
Kim Jong Il. For the first
time in decades, U.S.
intelligence and defense
analysts believe the threat
of an outbreak of
significant hostilities on
the Korean peninsula is a
distinct possibility. How
would a potential conflict
play out? While there is
little doubt that North
Korea would lose, the
consequences for the region
would be dire, with
casualties potentially in
the hundreds of thousands,
if not more.
Google Maps is the first
place most internet users
look to for views of the
world that might be
otherwise unreachable.
Google is expanding that
service, with detailed views
from the tops of mountains.
Most of us will never be
able to climb any of the
world's tallest peaks, but
with Google Maps Street
View, at least we can see
what it would be like if we
did.
President Barack Obama today
again called on Congress to
establish a $2 billion
Energy Security Trust for
investments in research that
will make the vehicle and
fuel technologies of the
future cheaper and better.
To say that the pundits have
low expectations for
President Obama's trip to
Israel and Jordan this week
would be putting it mildly.
Most expect a series of
photo ops, but no serious
progress on the three major
issues: the Iran nuclear
threat, the implosion of
Syria, and the moribund
Israeli-Palestinian peace
process.
The main brunt of the impact
will be on premiums for
health insurance coverage.
They will skyrocket in very
short order. The Heritage
Foundation estimates the
increases by state.
President Barack Obama’s
efforts to significantly
curtail U.S. nuclear weapons
without seeking the proper
Senate approval are at best
misguided and worst illegal,
sources tell Newsmax.
Obama is exploring
opportunities to achieve the
reductions in infrastructure
and capability he seeks –
including a drawdown to
1,000 weapons – without
seeking the advice and
consent of the Senate that
international treaties
require.
Produced at least as far
back as 5,000 BC, beer has
been with us for a long
time. But coming third only
to water and tea in terms of
worldwide popularity means
that the lifespan of
individual beers is more
likely to be measured in
days or weeks rather than
years or decades. The
exception is if they’re
preserved at the bottom of
the Baltic Sea in a
shipwreck. One such
shipwrecked beer that is
about 170 years old has been
salvaged and analyzed and
will be reproduced using
modern industrial
techniques.
One of the two reactors at the darkened
San Onofre nuclear plant could be restarted
at full power and operate safely for almost
a year, Southern California Edison officials
said Monday.
The utility said its analysis confirms
that it would be safe to fire up one of the
reactors, but that out of an abundance of
caution, Edison is proposing running the
unit at only 70%.
Japan is projected to
install more than 5 GW of
new solar capacity in 2013,
according to research from
IHS. As a result, Japan
would outpace Germany,
Italy, and the U.S.,
becoming the second largest
PV market worldwide.
Installations are expected
to exceed 1 GW in the first
quarter of 2013 alone.
Undaunted by its experience
with overheating smart
meters, Peco Energy Co. has
proposed accelerating the
installation of the devices
to all 1.6 million customers
by the end of 2014, five
years ahead of current
plans.
It’s purpose is to act as an
educational tool showing the
evolution of the internet
from 1994 to the present,
with projections going
forward to 2020.
Plankton are any organisms
that live in water and are
incapable of swimming
against a current. They
provide a crucial source of
food to many large aquatic
organisms, such as fish and
whales. The true base of the
food chain. Though many
plankton species are
microscopic in size,
plankton includes organisms
covering a wide range of
sizes, including large
organisms such as jellyfish.
Models of carbon dioxide in
the world's oceans need to
be revised,..
A power blackout occurred Monday at
Japan’s damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear
power plant, knocking out the system that
cools four pools of water holding spent fuel
rods.
Operator Tokyo Electric Power Company,
TEPCO, said the blackout took place just
before 7 pm Monday. On Tuesday, TEPCO
restored cooling systems for spent fuel
pools at two of the three reactors affected
by a power failure, but could not explain
why the power had gone out.
“The
cleanest and lowest cost way
to meet our energy needs is
to consume less,” declares
Myers, who goes on to write
about the need for
incentives and strong
financial paybacks to “raise
the game” and put “the right
tools and policies in place
to increase investment in
energy efficiency, which
will save money, produce
jobs, and reduce carbon
pollution.”
Federal regulators have pushed back their
estimate of when they are likely to decide
whether one of the reactors at the San
Onofre nuclear plant can be restarted.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's
website now indicates that the decision
could come in May or June, not late April as
previously estimated. Southern California
Edison has proposed restarting one of its
two shuttered reactors at reduced power.
The largest solar event of the period was
a C3 event. There are currently 4
numbered sunspot regions on the disk.
Solar activity is likely to be low with a
slight chance for an M-class flare on day
one (22 Mar) and expected to be very low
with a chance for a C-class flares on days
two and three (23 Mar, 24 Mar). The
geomagnetic field has been at quiet to
active levels for the past 24 hours.
The project will examine
drinking water plants in the
U.S. States and Canada to
clarify the impact of
various conventional and
advanced treatment processes
in minimizing the formation
of nitrosamines, which are
known carcinogenic
compounds. Certain
nitrosamines are by-products
of the disinfectant
chloramines -- a common
disinfectant in the U.S.
drinking water industry,
which is used as an
alternative to chlorine to
control the formation of
regulated halogenated
by-products. This research
will allow the team to
determine key factors that
lead to nitrosamine
formation in treated
drinking waters using
chloramines and identify
cost-effective controls.
Russia's Rosneft has
realized its ambition of
becoming the world's biggest
publicly traded oil and gas
producer, with the closure
March 21 of its $56 billion
deal to buy TNK-BP.
The enlarged company, in
which UK major BP now owns
nearly 20%, controls some
40% of Russia's total crude
output of more than 10
million b/d, and has also
become a major Russian
refiner, with control of 11
plants totaling some 1.6
million b/d, nearly a third
of Russia's total refining
capacity.
A new plan surfaced Tuesday to make solar
energy more affordable for homeowners,
churches and schools looking to save money
on costly power bills.
State Sen. Greg Gregory, R-Lancaster,
introduced a bill making it easier for solar
energy companies to locate in South Carolina
and offer lower-cost panels. South Carolina
law now discourages solar companies from
locating here.
"Iranian scientists are
working on nuclear warheads
- and trying to perfect them
- at an underground site
unknown to the West,
according to a high-ranking
intelligence officer of the
Islamic regime," reports
Reza Kahlili, a former
Iranian Revolutionary Guard
Corps officer who joined the
CIA and became a double
agent against the Iranian
regime.
“Shell screwed up in 2012
and we’re not going to let
them screw up when they try
to drill in the Arctic
again,” Secretary of the
Interior Ken Salazar told
reporters today, releasing
the findings of a
departmental review of Shell
Oil’s 2012 Arctic
operations.
Some Senate Democrats
are asking President Obama
to reconsider his
administration’s approach to
regulating greenhouse gas
emissions, saying that
advanced coal technologies
are a viable way to generate
electricity. Easing up to
allow more diversity in the
country’s fuel portfolio is
not only a prudent policy
but it's also an affordable
and healthy one, they add.
Currently in the U.S., state
governments are only
obligated to collect sales
taxes from online retailers
that are based in their own
states. If an online sales
tax bill makes it to law,
states could collect from
online retailers that don't
reside in their state.
The city of Minneapolis has seen a surge
in recycling after four collection routes
switched to one-sort or single-stream
recycling near the end of last year.
Following the lead of other single-stream
converts like Ann Arbor, Mich., and
Portland, Ore., Minnesota's largest city
rolled out the first phase of a
single-stream system to about 33,000
residential customers. In the first six
weeks of the program, recycling tonnage for
those areas increased more than 60% over the
same period last year.
More than 180,000 deaths
worldwide in 2010 were
linked to a high intake of
sugar-laden drinks, a new
study estimates, including
25,000 deaths in the United
States.
Most deaths
occurred in middle- to
low-income countries, the
Harvard researchers noted.
Despite competition with solar, the small
wind turbine (SWT) industry will double
globally in the next five years from 86 MW
in 2012 to 172 MW in 2018, according to
Navigant Research.
SWT market maturation is illustrated by
the expanded role of SWT certification,
hundreds of manufacturers and dealer
networks globally, and an increase in the
number of national and regional industry
associations. SWTs can also be seen in a
number of new applications including
telecommunications, defense, and other
sectors that involve producing power in
remote locations.
Quantum mechanics (QM),
together with its extensions
into quantum electrodynamics
and quantum field theory, is
our most successful
scientific theory, with many
results agreeing to better
than a part in a billion
with experiment. However, at
its roots QM is ghost-like –
when you try to pin down
just what it means, it tends
to slip between the fingers.
It is full of apparent
paradoxes, incompatible
dualities, and "spooky
actions." Simply put,
although QM works
amazingly well, why
and how it works
remains elusive.
A cyberattack caused
computer networks at major
South Korean banks and top
TV broadcasters to crash
simultaneously Wednesday,
paralyzing bank machines
across the country and
prompting speculation of
North Korean involvement.
Southwestern Public Service, which
provides electricity to eastern New Mexico
and West Texas, has already met New Mexico's
renewable energy mandate of 15 percent that
will go into effect in 2015. Now SPS is
seeking proposals for wind energy projects
so they can increase the amount of power in
the SPS grid.
"We generate power, and we purchase
power," said Wes Reeves, media relations
officer at SPS (Xcel Energy is the parent
company). "We're always looking ahead to
meet our customers needs 10 to 20 years down
the road. We're looking for more power at
the most economical, least expensive price."
A new study shows that sleep
problems can be an early
indicator of Alzheimer’s
disease. One of the nation’s
top neurologists tells
Newsmax Health that the
findings confirm what many
doctors have long believed:
A good night’s sleep is
vital to brain health.
Suntech Power
Holdings, the China-based maker of solar
panels, declared bankruptcy on Wednesday,
the state news agency Xinhua said.
On Monday of this week, according to
Reuters, Suntech said that it had
defaulted on US$541 million of its bonds
due on Friday, triggering defaults on
loans from the International Finance
Corporation and various Chinese lenders.
A battle-hardened
al-Qaeda veteran who fought
U.S. troops in Afghanistan
and planned to bomb U.S.
diplomatic facilities in
Nigeria has been held in
secret federal custody in
New York since October,
according to court documents
unsealed Wednesday.
The North American
electrical grid is the
world's largest machine, so
upgrading it is obviously a
complex task. This grid - or
more accurately, multiple
grids -- includes more than
200,000 miles of
high-voltage transmission
lines serving all of the
contiguous United States,
most of Canada and part of
Mexico. Portions of the grid
are more than 100 years old,
with many components such as
transformers, switches and
connectors that have been in
place since the 1960's.
Naturally, this yields
questions surrounding
reliability, efficiency and
environmental efficacy. In
today’s world, the evolution
of the grid is a major
necessity and focus of
today’s power industry
leaders.
-
Poor will power is NOT necessarily what
drives you to overeat on junk food. An
in-depth investigation into the
processed-food industry reveals there’s
a conscious effort on behalf of food
manufacturers to get you hooked on foods
that are convenient and inexpensive to
make
-
Sugar, salt and fat are the top three
substances making processed foods so
addictive. Sugar alone has been shown to
be more addictive than cocaine, and food
manufacturers use sophisticated taste
science to determine the “bliss point”
that makes you crave more
-
Recent research confirms that processed
meat consumption is strongly associated
with premature death. According to the
researchers, reducing daily processed
meat consumption to less than 20 grams a
day could reduce mortality rates across
Europe by three percent annually
Ask any policy wonk,
politician or pundit –
Republican, Independent or
Democrat – about the sine
qua non of economic policy,
and the chances are pretty
good their answer will boil
down to one word:
growth. Yet this flies
in the face of reality. It
is a disconnect, a non
sequitur, an
impossibility, a folly of
immense proportions.
Because the plain fact is,
the economy can’t
continuously grow in a
finite world, and we are
already bumping up against
limits.
While air travel today
accounts for just three
percent of worldwide
greenhouse gas emissions,
the carbon dioxide (CO2) and
other pollutants that come
out of jet exhaust
contribute
disproportionately to
increasing surface
temperatures below because
the warming effect is
amplified in the upper
atmosphere.
Richard Holm: US
Government's Behavior After
Benghazi 'Inexcusable'
Russia’s Troubles with
Muslims Could Hurt Its
Interests
Bahrain: Tough Job Ahead for
Crown Prince to Calm Tension
Cyprus-EU Bailout Battle
Could Provide Opening for
Russia
General Vallely: Rebels
Control Most of Syria
Pope Francis Unlikely to
Mend Rift With China
Policy Shifts Drive
US-Israeli Convergence on
Iran
Airbus and Boeing Win Big
Orders, But Is The Aircraft
Market Overheating?
About a week ago, I noticed
my 9-year-old son, Sten
walking around the house
with one of his plastic
airsoft guns tucked neatly
into his back pocket. As he
passed by me I stopped him
with a big smile on my face
and asked, “Sten, what are
you doing?” He looked at me
with a funny expression and
replied, “What do you mean
‘what am I doing’?
It’s my gun.”
TVA has failed to adequately
protect Sequoyah and Watts
Bar nuclear plants from the
potential for failure of
earthen dams upstream and
flooding that would ensue in
the event of what utility
and nuclear regulators call
a probable maximum flood --
an event that would surpass
any known local weather
occurrence.
-
For the last 16 years, the United States
is one of only two countries that allows
drugs to be advertised on TV. A new
study assessing the effect of
direct-to-consumer drug advertising
concluded that TV ads for statins may be
a driving factor of overdiagnosis of
high cholesterol and overtreatment with
the drugs
-
Those who reported seeing statin ads on
TV were 16-20 percent more likely to be
diagnosed with high cholesterol, and
16-22 percent more likely to be using a
statin drug
-
Both the diagnosis of high cholesterol
and increased statin use was driven
almost exclusively by those who were at
LOW risk for future cardiac events.
Conversely, those at high risk of heart
disease were not more likely to be
taking a statin after seeing the
commercials
Investment in renewable
energy in the UK could be at
risk if construction on
EDF’s Hinkley Point nuclear
power station – the first
nuclear power station to
receive planning approval in
the UK since Sizewell B over
two decades ago- is allowed
to proceed, according to
environmental group
Greenpeace.
US crude oil imports in
February fell 770,000 b/d
year on year, or 9%, to
average 7.8 million b/d --
their lowest level in 16
years, the American
Petroleum Institute said
Thursday.
Total crude
and refined product imports
fell in February to below 10
million b/d for only the
second time in 15 years, the
API said in its monthly
statistical report.
How safe is our drinking
water? The water system
especially in our older
cities has been around for a
long time being patched and
repaired. The American
Society of Civil Engineers
and its members are
committed to protecting the
health, safety, and welfare
of the public, and as such,
are equally committed to
improving the nation’s
public infrastructure. To
achieve that goal, they have
recently issued a Report
Card on the condition and
performance of the nation’s
infrastructure. They are
experts at how it is done
and they give the American
system a D+! At the dawn of
the 21st century, much of
our drinking water
infrastructure is nearing
the end of its useful life.
There are an estimated
240,000 water main breaks
per year in the United
States. The quality of
drinking water in the United
States remains universally
high, however. Even though
pipes and mains are
frequently more than 100
years old and in need of
replacement, outbreaks of
disease attributable to
drinking water are rare.
The US energy industry must
vigorously oppose efforts to
restrict exports of
liquefied natural gas,
ExxonMobil Chemical
President Stephen Pryor said
Wednesday at the IHS World
Petrochemical Conference.
As the US Department of
Energy considers
applications to export LNG
to non-free trade agreement
nations, lobbying from some
of Exxon's petrochemicals
rivals as well as utilities
for a block on such trade
has ramped up.
Existing home sales in the
US rose to 4.98 million
annualized units in February
2013 from the revised 4.94
million reported in the
previous month (previously
reported as 4.92 million).
Market expectations had been
only marginally higher at
4.99 million annualized
units.
The Federal Market Open
Market Committee (FOMC) made
no changes to monetary
policy at its March meeting.
The pace of balance sheet
expansion at $40 billion per
month for agency
mortgage-backed securities
(MBS) and $45 billion per
month for longer-term
treasuries was retained. The
fed funds rate target
remains in the 0% to 0.25%
range,
Superfund is the common name
for the Comprehensive
Environmental Response,
Compensation, and Liability
Act of 1980 (CERCLA), a
United States federal law
designed to clean up sites
contaminated with hazardous
substances. Where
responsible parties cannot
be found, the Agency is
authorized to clean up sites
itself, using a special
trust fund. There has been
undeniable success in the
cleanup of the nation’s
hazardous waste and
brownfields sites. However,
annual funding for Superfund
site cleanup is estimated to
be as much as $500 million
short of what is needed, and
1,280 sites remain on the
National Priorities List
with an unknown number of
potential sites yet to be
identified.
Regions all over the US are
forming task forces, holding
meetings and drafting
studies to improve
coordination between the gas
and electric industries and
figure out whether the gas
system is adequate to meet
electricity demands, staff
of the US Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission said
Thursday.
Outsourcing in the
U.S. technology industry has
increased for the first time
in three years, according to
data released by BDO USA,
LLP. Among the 100 U.S.
technology chief financial
officers polled, 63 percent
plan to outsource or
manufacture products outside
of the U.S. This marks the
highest level of outsourcing
by U.S. technology companies
since the inception of the
survey in 2008.
Interestingly, of the
companies who are not
currently outsourcing, 84
percent said they are not
likely to do so this year.
Has Voyager 1 left the Solar
System? Is it officially the
first spacecraft to reach
interstellar space? It
depends on whom you ask.
NASA says no, but W.R.
Webber of the New Mexico
State University Department
of Astronomy and F.B.
McDonald of the University
of Maryland Institute of
Physical Science and
Technology say yes. They
contend that the unmanned,
nuclear-powered probe left
the Solar System on August
25, 2012 at a distance of
121.7 AU (18.2 billion km)
from the Sun when its
instruments on board
detected a major shift in
cosmic ray intensity.
The number of Atlantic storms with
magnitude similar to killer Hurricane
Katrina, which devastated the U.S. Gulf
Coast in 2005, could rise sharply this
century, environmental researchers reported
on Monday.
Scientists have long studied the
relationship between warmer sea surface
temperatures and cyclonic, slowly spinning
storms in the Atlantic Ocean, but the new
study attempts to project how many of the
most damaging hurricanes could result from
warming air temperatures as well.
After a two-year improvement
process, the Mesa Water
Reliability Facility (MWRF)
has increased its water
treatment capacity, meaning
that the district can now
serve all of its customers'
water needs with local water
supplies.
Whole Foods Market Inc,
Trader Joe's and other food
retailers representing more
than 2,000 U.S. stores have
vowed not to sell
genetically engineered
seafood if it is approved in
the United States, a new
advocacy group said on
Wednesday.
-
Mother's obesity can predispose her
fetus to heart attacks by causing the
first clinical sign of cardiovascular
disease before birth. Diet during
pregnancy and early childhood have
lifelong health effects on children.
-
A third of a newborn baby's blood is
outside his body in the umbilical cord.
Routine cord clamping deprives neonates
of their birthright to their own
lifesaving blood.
-
Routine caesarian deliveries and
umbilical cord clamping are depriving
children of the edge that can mean life
or death.
Thanks to its low latitude
and low percentage of cloudy
days, the United Arab
Emirates (UAE) is an ideal
location for capturing solar
energy. So it’s no surprise
to see the world’s largest
operating concentrated solar
power (CSP) has launched in
the sun-soaked Middle
Eastern country. Officially
inaugurated this week by UAE
President and Ruler of Abu
Dhabi, Sheikh Khalifa bin
Zayed Al Nahyan, Shams 1 is
a 100 MW CSP that will power
20,000 UAE homes.
March 19, 2013
As Baby Boomers age, those
everyday questions of life
-- Where are the car keys?
What was her name again? --
are increasingly followed by
another: Can this be
Alzheimer’s disease?
"It was a symbolic act of standing up and
defying the dismissal," Rifkin said about
the latest arrest.
On May 20, 14 protesters were arrested
after marching onto power plant property in
an attempt to deliver a letter to company
owner Entergy Nuclear. The effort was in
response to the disaster at the Fukushima
Dai-ichi nuclear plant in Japan.
A least 26 people were
killed by a rocket blast in
the Syrian city of Aleppo,
according to a human rights
group, while both the Assad
regime and rebels are
pointing fingers at each
other for the attack.
Canadian-based Ballard Power
Systems has sold a ClearGen™
distributed generation fuel
cell system to an Indian
reservation in northern
California. The 175 kW
system will be integrated
with a biomass gasifier and
syngas purification unit to
form an integrated
biomass-to-fuel cell power
solution.
World-renown pediatric
neurosurgeon Dr. Benjamin
Carson has no problems with
losing Obamacare in the
quest to find a more
affordable, efficient, and
patient-friendly healthcare
system for the nation.
Boeing is confident that the
redesign of the lithium-ion
batteries and added safety
tests will fix the safety
issue
BP can bid in next week's
Central Gulf of Mexico
offshore lease sale, but
will be disqualified if,
after a 90-day review, the
company remains under the
suspension that was imposed
on federal contracts after
its guilty plea to Macondo
oil spill-related charges,
the US Department of
Interior said Thursday.
California (CROMCA)’s
reputation for environmental
protection may be
jeopardized by the lure of a
$25 billion tax windfall
that depends on how the
state permits oil companies
to take advantage of vast
deposits lying two miles
beneath its golden hills.
The costs to California residents to meet
the ambitious goal of using renewable power
for one-third of the state's electric needs
by 2020 are beginning to come down,
according to a state regulatory report.
Hackers are increasingly targeting
electric, natural gas and other vital
utilities, threatening a disaster of epic
proportions that experts say firms are doing
too little to guard against.
"We will see catastrophic outages," PG&E
Chief Information Security Officer James
Sample warned state regulators at a recent
forum, though not specifically referring to
his company. "We are dealing with a very
intelligent adversary."
The United States is one of
the world's biggest users of
water—many Americans use as
much water as approximately
900 Kenyans. As a result,
water resources in the U.S.
are shrinking. In the last
five years, there have been
water shortages in almost
every part of the country,
including the worst drought
in at least 25 years, which
hit 80 percent of the
country's farmland in 2012.
Even worse, the damaged land
won't fully recover this
year, and at least 36 states
are expecting local,
regional, or statewide water
shortages, even without
drought.
A record number of U.S.
counties — more than 1 in 3
— are now dying off, hit by
an aging population and
weakened local economies
that are spurring young
adults to seek jobs and
build families elsewhere.
New 2012 census
estimates released Thursday
highlight the population
shifts as the U.S.
encounters its most sluggish
growth levels since the
Great Depression.
China has bypassed Britain as the world's
fifth largest arms exporter, a Swedish think
tank said Monday.
The volume of Chinese weapons exports
rose by 162 percent in the five years
2008-2012, compared to the previous
five-year period, the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute said
in its report. That means China's share of
all international arms exports increased to
5 percent from 2 percent, and the country
climbed to fifth from eighth in the
rankings.
The largest buyer of Chinese weapons was
Pakistan...
A private Chinese company is
"quietly" making an
"aggressive push" into the
U.S. natural gas fueling
station business, according
to a report from Reuters.
Weld County Sheriff John Cooke said he won’t
enforce either gun-control measure waiting
to be signed into law by Gov. John
Hickenlooper, saying the laws are
“unenforceable” and would “give a false
sense of security.”
One bill
passed Friday would expand requirements to
have background checks for firearm
purchases. Hickenlooper is expected to sign
it into law within two weeks.
The currency war
precipitated by global
central bank easing is still
going strong, says Marshall
Gittler, head of currency
strategy for online trading
firm IronFX.
Last
week, five important central
banks met. None changed its
policy stance.
“Yet
. . . the meetings made it
clear that the ‘currency
wars’ are still with us, and
clarified each central
bank's stance in these wars,
"A plan to seize up to 10
percent of savings accounts
in Cyprus to help pay for a
(EURO)15.8 billion ($20.4
billion) financial bailout
was met with fury Monday,
and the government shut down
banks until later this week
while lawmakers wrangled
over how to keep the island
nation from bankruptcy.
Though the euro and stock
prices of European banks
fell, global financial
markets largely remained
calm, and there was little
sense that bank account
holders elsewhere across the
continent faced similar
risk."
The D.C. government's
agencies will be getting all
of their electricity through
wind power for at least a
year, according to a news
release from Washington Gas
Energy Services. Under the
terms of a new contract, the
District will purchase all
of its power needs from a
Washington Gas-owned wind
farm in Northern Virginia.
The hospital, as the saying
goes, is no place for a sick
person. That’s particularly
true when it comes to
drug-resistant superbugs
that cause deadly bacterial
infections. This month
federal officials reported
an alarming rise in hospital
infections from a rare,
almost-untreatable microbe
over the past decade.
The rotting bodies of about 6,000 pigs in
a river that supplies tap water to Shanghai
has drawn attention to an ugly truth -
China's pig farms are often riddled with
disease and one way or another, sick animals
often end up in the food chain.
Authorities have found traces of a common
pig virus in some of the animals floating in
the Huangpu River this week, and industry
insiders say farmers likely dumped them,
common in an industry which has no system of
compensation for losses from disease.
Disease may challenge the
ability of fish farming to
feed the growing human
population even as wild fish
stocks decline and climate
change hampers food
production from other
sources, a study shows.
The dollar has scored hefty
gains since the beginning of
February, even as the
Federal Reserve sustains its
massive easing program and
talk intensifies of a
currency war.
Investors’ sunny view of the
U.S. economy is what’s
pushing the greenback
upward, according to The
Wall Street Journal.
That sounds a bit fishy,
given that the consensus
forecast for U.S. economic
growth this year is only
about 2 percent. And the
automatic spending cuts
might trim even that modest
estimate.
Lost tax revenue associated with
ecommerce was estimated at $11.4
billion in 2012.* In 2013 states are
expected to face crushing budget
deficits. As a result, ecommerce
businesses will be under the
microscope by state auditors. Sales tax
is more complex than ever and
what you don't know about your liability
can, and will, hurt you.
Look for President Barack
Obama to attempt an increase
in the federal excise tax on
gasoline, according to John
Licata, CEO and chief energy
strategist at Blue Phoenix
Inc.
Gen. Jim Jones
believes the future of
energy in America is linked
closely to the nation’s
economic health and national
security. As former national
security adviser to
President Barack Obama and
head of the Marine Corps,
Jones knows security.
Recently, along with former
Sen. Byron Dorgan and
others, he helped steer a
two-year study on the future
of energy at the Bipartisan
Policy Center.
The Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) is projecting
model year 2012 cars and
truck will have the highest
ever real-world average fuel
economy, according to the
agency’s annual trends
report released today.
EU governments failed to agree a ban on
three widely used pesticides linked to the
decline of honeybees on Friday, but the
European Commission could force one through
by the summer unless member states agree a
compromise.
A sharp fall in bee populations around
the world, partly due to a phenomenon known
as colony collapse disorder, has fuelled
concerns over the impact of widespread use
of pesticides, notably the neonicotinoids
class.
The over-use of fossil fuels
is focusing greater
attention on upping the ante
for wind, solar and
geothermal power. And the
key player in this effort,
says a new report by a
congressional watchdog
agency, is the federal
government.
Uncle
Sam is well positioned to
usher in a new era of
renewable energy
development, mainly through
its land management
activities.
The Federal Reserve’s
low-interest-rate
environment is pushing
senior citizens into the
stock market, according to
Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a
senior fellow at the
Manhattan Institute.
-
An award-winning documentary called
“FLOW: For Love of Water” investigates
the worldwide water crisis, described as
one of the most important political and
environmental issues of the 21st Century
-
Multinational corporations are beginning
to capitalize on the growing worldwide
shortage of fresh water, and as with any
commodity, those who can’t pay the price
go without; but going without clean
water can have deadly consequences
-
Of the six billion people on Earth, 1.1
billion do not have access to safe,
clean drinking water; between 500,000
and seven million people get sick each
year from drinking contaminated tap
water, in which more than 116,000
human-made chemicals are now found
The US Department of Energy
has awarded $3.4 million to
the Houston Galveston Area
Council (HGAC) to fund the
demonstration of heavy duty
fuel cell trucks. This
project will be based at the
Port of Houston and
represents the largest
deployment of fuel cell
heavy duty trucks to date.
Alongside HGAC, other
project participants include
the Environmental Defense
Fund, Vision Industries
Corp., Total Transportation
Services Inc., and Air
Products.
Sen. Lindsey Graham charged
on Friday that survivors of
the Benghazi attack have
been “told to be quiet” and
feel that they cannot come
forward to tell what happen
in the Sept. 11 assault on
the U.S. consulate that
killed four Americans.
“The bottom line is they
feel that they can't come
forth,” the South Carolina
Republican told Fox News,
“They've been told to be
quiet.
In a review of existing
evidence on the health value
of fixes to housing,
researchers say that
improving buildings to
enhance "thermal comfort" -
with central heating or
insulation, for instance -
pays off in both physical
and mental well-being.
Honda has established the
world’s first process to
reuse rare earth metals
extracted from nickel-metal
hydride batteries to make
new batteries for hybrid
vehicles.
The Democrats of the U.S.
House of Representatives
introduced a budget plan on
Monday that includes $1.2
trillion in new taxes and
$200 billion in stimulus
spending — twice the
stimulus spending that
Democrats in the upper
chamber proposed last week.
Imagine if one day the power
goes out on a nationwide
scale, the water stops
running and becomes scarce.
How will you survive? Start
thinking about collecting
water from the atmosphere,
there is over three
quadrillions of it floating
around the atmosphere right
now. And if you made the
mistake of not storing
water, this might be your
only hope. Here are a few
Atmospheric Water Collecting
tips!
Road rage isn't exactly what you'd expect
from the drivers of electric or hybrid
vehicles, which number roughly 92,000 out of
the 7.5 million cars in Virginia.
But in their own polite, environmentally
friendly way, about 6,845 of them registered
their anger Monday over a proposed $100
annual tax on Virginia's alternative fuel
vehicles, embedded in the sweeping
transportation package passed last month by
the General Assembly and currently under
review by Gov. Bob McDonnell.
Like many Natives and
our allies across our
Grandmother Earth, Unci
Maka, I have joined the Idle
No More movement, attending
round dance gatherings,
praying for Chief Theresa
Spence and her supporters,
sharing the stories I hear
and read and perusing news
and opinion pieces. Like
many indigenous people, I am
acutely aware that our
voices in the mainstream of
American, Canadian and
Central and South American
societies are often unheard,
and that we appear silent
when in fact our voices are
singing out with stories of
our lives. Defining this
movement is our
responsibility. Each of us
should learn about this
movement and find our own
place in it. We can add our
voices to songs of our
relatives and allies across
the earth.
Defying conventional wisdom
about the limits of wind
power, in 2012 both Iowa and
South Dakota generated close
to one quarter of their
electricity from wind farms.
Wind power accounted for at
least 10 percent of
electricity generation in
seven other states. Across
the United States, wind
power continues to
strengthen its case as a
serious energy source.
Did you know that if Iowa
were a country, it would be
the fourth largest producer
of corn in the world behind
the U.S., China, and Brazil?
Iowa also produces more than
the entire European Union –
comprised of 27 countries.
And Iowa has a tiny
footprint in comparison to
America, U.S. and Brazil.
Talk about producing more on
less land!
President Barack Obama is
due to make his first
official visit to Israel and
the Palestinian territories
this week, looking to
improve ties after sometimes
rocky relations with both
sides during his first term
in office.
Despite
the fact that Obama oversaw
ever-closer military ties
between the two nations, he
has never won the affection
of ordinary Israelis, who
resented the fact that he
did not visit their country
in his first term, but did
go to Egypt and Turkey.
-
he US does not have a health care
system; we have a disease-management
system that is dependent on expensive
drugs and invasive surgeries. It’s a
system rooted in an ideal of maximized
profits, opposed to helping people
maintain or regain their health
-
The US spends more on health care than
the next 10 biggest spenders combined:
Japan, Germany, France, China, the U.K.,
Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain and
Australia, yet the US ranks last in
health and mortality analysis of 17
developed nations
They're called national
security letters and the FBI
issues thousands of them a
year to banks, phone
companies and other
businesses demanding
customer information.
They're sent without
judicial review and
recipients are barred from
disclosing them.
The Computer Fraud and Abuse
Act is under the microscope
again following a stiff
sentence for Andrew
Auernheimer, who will spend
just over three years in
prison for taking personal
data from a publicly
accessible website and
giving it to a popular blog.
A digital rights group,
while admitting that
Auernheimer's behavior
during trial didn't help,
says the CFAA -- used by law
enforcement in two other
recent cases -- is too
vague.
According to the text of the
legislation, the new law
allows the Public Utilities
Commission to let utilities
recover costs not recovered
in the existing rates of the
utility for the purchase of
electric power from a
biomass energy facility that
has received a certificate
from the Kentucky State
Board on Electric Generation
and Transmission Siting
In spite of ongoing
stream of positive economic
news out of China, a number
of economists have been
ringing alarm bells with
respect to the nation's
economic trajectory. China
clearly faces some major
challenges, but the question
remains if the country is
still at risk of a "hard
landing". Here are some of
the issues that keep
China-focused economists and
portfolio managers awake at
night.
With spring imminent—the equinox occurs
on Wednesday March 20—many are watching for
the profusion of blossoms that erupt over
much of Turtle Island this time of year.
But along the shores of Lake Erie, many
are looking with trepidation to a bloom of
another kind: Experts say that this year’s
spring rains will most likely cause an
outbreak of toxic algae.
A lawsuit that U.S.
servicemembers have filed
against Tokyo Electric Power
Co. is now seeking more than
$2 billion, with a growing
number of plaintiffs
claiming Japan's
nationalized utility lied
about the dangers to those
helping out after a nuclear
disaster two years ago.
Even with recent declines in
natural gas prices resulting
from the expansion of shale
gas production, wind power
proves to be beneficial for
its ability to give buyers
long-term price certainty, a
new report from Lawrence
Berkeley National Laboratory
(LBNL) finds.
Here’s something interesting
most Americans don’t know…
About 40 years ago,
a significant event took
place in Britain, which
caused everyone in the
country to get poorer…
overnight.
- Market participants' renewed
sense of optimism has accompanied
further policy accommodation, but
macroeconomic performance is lagging
behind.
- In the third quarter of 2012, BIS
reporting banks posted their smallest
increase in cross-border claims in 13
years. They increased their crossborder
claims on non-banks located in the
United States but cut their exposure to
banks in the euro area.
- Inflation expectations returned to
pre-crisis levels as central banks
started to implement asset purchase
programmes in late 2008 and early 2009.
But further analysis suggests that these
programmes were probably not the main
driver of these shifts.
...whenever freedom of any kind is
lost--whether it affects us directly or
not--the loss is sorely felt. Maybe certain
laws that are in the making won't directly
affect you. But they do affect someone. They
do take away someone's liberty. And when
their freedom is affected, so is yours.
Microbes are thriving in
surprising numbers at the
deepest spot in the oceans,
the 11,000-metre (36,000 ft)
Mariana Trench in the
Pacific, despite crushing
pressures in sunless waters,
scientists said.
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?
Bipartisan legislation
introduced today by Senate
Energy and Natural Resources
Committee Ranking Member
Lisa Murkowski continues the
recent trend of proposals
designed to increase
domestic hydro development.
Saudi Arabian oil minister
Ali Naimi said Monday that
the price of oil at
$100/barrel seemed
"reasonable" and would not
deter economic growth in
Asia while reiterating the
kingdom's commitment to
maintaining spare oil
production capacity for the
sake of market stability.
State Climatologist Al Dutcher delivered
some gloomy news to officials from Nebraska
Public Power District during a drought
update last week.
Although conditions have improved in
parts of Nebraska following recent winter
storms, Dutcher told the utility's board of
directors it will be months before the state
completely recovers from last year's
drought.
Most of Nebraska remains in an either an
"extreme" or "exceptional" drought,
according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, which
are the two worst classifications.
Only 29 of 156 Japanese prefectures and
municipalities mandated to draw up
anti-disaster plans for a nuclear emergency
have completed them, a survey has found.
Local governments within 30 miles of
nuclear power plants were required to
develop the plans after an
earthquake-tsunami catastrophe in March
2011, the Yomiuri Shimbun, which conducted
the survey, reported Monday.
Buried in the news made late
Friday made by Defense
Secretary Chuck Hagel that
the U.S. planned to deploy
missile interceptors in
Alaska and California was
the equally important news
that the Obama
administration was going to
stop long-held plans to
fully deploy a missile
shield in Eastern Europe.
[Editor: Is this the
promise Obama was giving
Russia last year, before the
elections?]
The Obama administration
will release its 2014 budget
more than two months late on
April 8, according to
congressional sources.
With Obamacare set to be
implemented next year,
several taxes associated
with the measure already
have gone into effect, with
new levies on Americans of
all income levels.
Individuals making more than
$200,000 and families making
$250,000 this year will have
to pay an additional 0.9
percentage points in
Medicare taxes, Those same
levels will also be subject
to additional new Medicare
taxes of 3.8 percent on
their investment income.
Here we have a President who
has been emphatic on green
energy and has put money
where his mouth is: $90
billion in the Stimulus Bill
(ARRA), highest car mileage
standards ever (CAFÉ, 50+
mpg), and the first Clean
Air Act regulations for
mercury from coal electric
power generation plants.
Warning that the United
States risks falling behind
in the international race to
develop alternative energy,
President Obama on Friday
proposed diverting $2
billion in revenue from
federal oil and gas
royalties over the next
decade to pay for research
on advanced vehicles.
President Obama’s plan to
expedite the development of
alternative fuels is causing
both sides of the aisle to
wince. He would take $200
million a year for the next
10 years from federal oil
and gas royalties and use
that money to fund research
for next-generation
vehicles.
President Barack Obama is
preparing to tell all
federal agencies for the
first time that they should
consider the impact on
global warming before
approving major projects,
from pipelines to highways.
McClatchy-Tribune Regional News
- Paul Monies The Oklahoman,
Oklahoma City
Helped by a year-end surge of completed wind
projects, Oklahoma is well ahead of schedule
for a state goal for renewable energy
capacity.
The state's renewable energy goal, passed in
2010, called for 15 percent renewable energy
by 2015. Oklahoma came close to meeting that
mark in 2011, with 14.5 percent.
Much as neighbors might grow carrots and
tomatoes in a single, community plot,
Orlando's municipal utility wants to plant a
garden where its customers can harvest
individual shares of solar power.
Already popular in other states, such
"solar gardens" involve adding hundreds of
photovoltaic panels to an area such as a
parking lot, rather than erecting thousands
of panels on a solar "farm" covering
hundreds of acres.
The footprint of the growing US oil and
gas industry is very much on display in the
Census Bureau’s report on the
fastest-growing metropolitan areas and
smaller cities.
The Census Bureau is known for its
decennial counting of the number of people
in the country. But it also does annual
updates that use a variety of data rather
than the head counting that takes
place every 10 years.
Supporters of the Keystone
XL pipeline, including its
developer, TransCanada, are
finding they’ve got a fight
on their hands from
environmentalists that
hasn’t lost a step in terms
of creating energy among the
green movement. Gary Park in
Calgary has had a front row
seat, and he writes about it
in this week’s Oilgram News
column, Petrodollars.
Most Americans would prefer
to send illegal immigrants
back to their home countries
rather than give them legal
status in this country, a
new poll reveals.
Buddhist nuns, anti-nuclear
activists and concerned
citizens walked from Toms
River to Lacey Sunday to
promote their view that
nuclear power plants such as
the Oyster Creek Generating
Station in Lacey are not
safe and need to be closed.
An overview of the most
significant U.S.
Environmental Protection
Agency regulations affecting
the water/wastewater
industry in 2013.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s
new proposals to gauge the
impact of federal
regulations on the economy
could be long overdue.
Regulatory-agency spending
has surged 1,700 percent in
the past half-century.
Energy efficiency is growing in the
Pacific Northwest, according to a report by
the Northwest Power and Conservation
Council. The more energy efficient the
region is, the less power that has to be
generated.
Right now, energy efficiency makes up
about 17 percent of the Northwest’s demand.
That’s second to hydropower, which generates
55 percent of the power in the region.
The largest solar event of
the period was a C2 event
observed at 18/0321Z from
Region 1698 (S19W86). There
are currently 6 numbered
sunspot regions on the disk.
slight chance for an M-class
flare. he geomagnetic
field is expected to be at
quiet to unsettled levels on
days one and two (19 Mar, 20
Mar) and quiet to active
levels on day three (21
Mar).
A report form an economy
analyst with the Vermont Law
School Institute for Energy
and the Environment states
ratepayers in South
Carolina, Florida and
Georgia must either pay for
$6 billion in money already
invested in current nuclear
power projects or face
paying even more as the
projects face excess costs
of $20 billion or more.
This week I want to delve a
bit more into the national
debate around deficits. Long
gone are the days of Dick
Cheney who infamously
uttered: “Deficits don’t
matter!”
It is now
established that deficits do
matter and we as a nation
have to do something about
it. The logical place to
start the reform is at the
feet of those who caused the
problem — Washington, D.C.,
and our Congressmen, who
through the various
outlandish and wasteful
programs have gotten us into
this mess.
The president and his
administration seem so
surprised that during the
term of his presidency, the
top 1 percent have gotten
disproportionally richer
than have those at the
bottom.
Of course, he
has never had a job in the
real world or started a
business from scratch like
many of those in the 1
percent who he seems to
enjoy chastising for not
paying their fair share.
Allowing farmland that's
been reclaimed from the sea
to flood and turn back into
salt marsh could make it
absorb lots of carbon from
the atmosphere, a new study
suggests, though the
transformation will take
many years to complete
Australian scientists have
successfully revived and
reactivated the genome of an
extinct frog. The "Lazarus
Project" team implanted cell
nuclei from tissues
collected in the 1970s and
kept in a conventional deep
freezer for 40 years into
donor eggs from a
distantly-related frog. Some
of the eggs spontaneously
began to divide and grow to
early embryo stage with
tests confirming the
dividing cells contained
genetic material from the
extinct frog.
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said a
recent report by the Energy Department’s
(DOE) internal watchdog “raises serious
concerns” about the agency’s grant
management practices.
McCaskill is looking into DOE’s
monitoring of a $150 million federal
stimulus grant to a battery maker that has
failed to meet the award’s goals, despite
collecting $142 million.
Legislators heard an outpouring of
complaints Thursday about smart meters from
Maryland utility customers who want to be
allowed to opt out without charge.
They said it couldn’t be
done. They tried to tell us
that renewable energy could
only survive if it were
propped up with government
subsidies. Never mind that
our whole system of economic
development, beginning with
the patent office, is
predicated on the idea that
fledgling, underfunded
industries need special
protection for a limited
time until they are strong
enough to go it alone. Never
mind that the fossil fuel
industry, which can hardly
be considered fledgling or
underfunded, is still
receiving billions in
taxpayer subsidies.
Using the technique that
created Dolly the sheep,
researchers from the RIKEN
Center for Developmental
Biology in Kobe, Japan, have
identified a way to produce
healthy mouse clones that
live a normal lifespan and
can be sequentially cloned
indefinitely.
Case focused on whether
voter-approved law which requires voters to
prove they are US citizens, violates federal
law
The Supreme Court was hearing oral
arguments on Monday in a case which will
decide whether US states can require voters
to submit proof of citizenship to cast a
ballot.
There is something quite
alien when imagining a swarm
type intelligence. A bunch
of little creatures who act
as if directed by one being.
Swarming is the spontaneous
organized motion of a large
number of individuals. It is
observed at all scales, from
bacterial colonies, slime
molds and groups of insects
to shoals of fish, flocks of
birds and animal herds.
Now physicists Maksym
Romenskyy and Vladimir
Lobaskin from university
College Dublin, Ireland,
have uncovered new
collective properties of
swarm dynamics in a study
just published in EPJ B.
Ultimately, this could be
used to control swarms of
animals, robots, or
human crowds...
A research team led by
biogeochemists at the
University of California,
Riverside has filled in a
billion-year gap in our
understanding of conditions
in the early ocean during a
critical time in the history
of life on Earth. Over time,
the planet cooled and formed
a solid crust, allowing
liquid water to exist on the
surface. The first life
forms appeared between 3.8
and 3.5 billion years ago.
Success in any change
is largely dependent on
identification of the real
problem or issue. Many
times, the obvious problem
is masking an obscured
larger issue. This is true
in both our personal lives
and professional
organizations.
Japan: Aggressive Monetary
Policy Likely from New
Central Bank Governor
Mexico: Government Signals
Willingness to Open Energy
Sector
Europe Frets Over Hungary’s
Autocratic Trajectory
US Credit Expansion Likely
to Continue in 2013
US politicians have
been attempting to "adjust"
the sequester law, as the
level of pain from the
spending cuts is expected to
get progressively worse.
A number of
strategists continue to call
for significant price
increases in gold.
Apparently investors have
been ignoring those calls.
In particular hedge funds
have been exiting positions
in precious metals recently,
driving prices lower. The
chart below shows changes in
holdings of GLD (gold ETF)
by the two major investment
groups.
U.N. agencies want to strengthen national
drought policies after warnings that climate
change would increase their frequency and
severity.
Droughts cause more deaths and
displacement than floods or earthquakes,
making them the world's most destructive
natural hazard, according to the Food and
Agriculture Organisation, one of the groups
taking part.
The US Department of Energy
is still considering 13 loan
guarantee applications for
energy projects totaling
$15.1 billion, according to
a congressional audit
released Friday.
During the RD&D program we
have built plant control
systems, assembled AC100
centrifuge machines and
conditioned the machines
with uranium gas in our
existing lead cascade.
Importantly, the RD&D
program continues to operate
on schedule and on budget.
The
Rooftop solar panels are
ideal for many homes,
commercial buildings and
schools. But facilities with
greater energy needs often
turn to larger "groundmount"
systems that feature a field
of solar arrays. Some
groundmount systems have
"single axis" tracking that
allows the solar arrays to
follow the sun as it moves
across the sky, much like a
sunflower. Other systems
have even more sophisticated
"dual axis" tracking that
also follows the sun's
elevation, which slowly
changes with the seasons.
US President Barack Obama's
pick to head the Department
of the Interior made vague
pledges to expand US energy
production, but resisted
attempts in written
questioning by Republican
senators for further
commitments.
Her
responses indicated she
would back away from
proposals to open new
federal lands or waters to
drilling, alter the current
royalty revenue sharing
system, speed up the federal
permitting process or give
states jurisdiction over
fracking regulation.
Freddie Mac (OTCQB:
FMCC) yesterday
released the results of its
Primary Mortgage
Market Survey®
(PMMS®), showing average
fixed mortgage rates rising
this week on stronger signs
of jobs growth and consumer
spending. The 30-year fixed
averaged 3.63 percent, its
highest reading since the
week of August 23, 2012. The
30-year fixed hit its
average all-time record low
of 3.31 percent the week of
November 21, 2012.
The Tennessee Valley
Authority failed to
adequately protect two
nuclear plant sites from the
potential for the failure of
earthen dams upstream, a
failing that may have had
substantial safety
significance, the US Nuclear
Regulatory Commission said
in letters made public
Friday.
A hunger strike at the
Guantanamo Bay prison has
grown and now involves at
least 21 men, a U.S.
military official said
Monday while denying reports
trickling out from prisoners
through lawyers that there
is a more widespread protest
and lives are in danger.
With another record-breaking
year, solar is the fastest
growing energy source in the
U.S., powering homes,
businesses and utility grids
across the nation. The
Solar Market Insight
annual edition shows the
U.S. installed 3,313
megawatts (MW) of solar
photovoltaics (PV) in 2012,
a record for the industry.
For those in the northern
hemisphere, we are still
shivering from our winter.
Well it is getting warmer.
According to NOAA (National
Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration), the
combined average temperature
over global land and ocean
surfaces for February 2013
tied with 2003 as the ninth
warmest on record, at 0.57°C
(1.03°F) above the 20th
century average of 12.1°C
(53.9°F). The global land
surface temperature was
1.00°C (1.80°F) above the
20th century average of
3.2°C (37.8°F), tying with
2010 as the 11th warmest
February on record.
If the six-month trial is
successful, White Castle
will consider rolling out
the program to additional
restaurants, the article
indicates.
-
Whole Foods has announced it will make
labeling of genetically engineered (GE)
ingredients mandatory in its American
and Canadian stores by 2018. Many expect
other retailers to follow suit
-
About 20 major food companies, including
Wal-Mart, recently gathered for a
meeting in Washington to discuss
potential lobbying for a national GMO
labeling program
-
The Organic Consumers Association (OCA)
recently announced the creation of a new
nationwide campaign called the Organic
Retail and Consumer Alliance (ORCA). The
mission of the new alliance includes
exposing and eliminating the misleading
practice of “natural” labeling and
marketing
-
Organic food and products, by law and by
third-party certification, are produced
without the use of synthetic pesticides
and chemical fertilizers, animal drugs,
genetically modified organisms (GMOs),
irradiation, nanoparticles, or sewage
sludge, whereas so-called “natural”
products are completely unregulated
When the residents of DeKalb County,
Ill., approved 115 wind turbines in 2009,
they insisted on a property value guarantee
from the developers, FPL Energy Illinois
Wind, LLC.
In the event property owners there can't
sell their homes for the appraised value,
the wind energy company will provide the
difference between the sale price and the
appraised value at closing.
After 33 years of developing
this "impossible"
technology, Yildiz looks to
the public demonstration of
his technology at the Geneva
Inventors' Expo for all the
world to witness, to finally
provide the simple
vindication he has sought
for so many years, but which
universities have
continuously balked at
providing.
March 15, 2013
Smoking, obesity, and unhealthy diets
are the biggest risk factors for cancer.
But a range of other little-known
factors you may not know about can also
lead to deadly cancer.
“The best cancer weapon is prevention
...
In the past 40 years,
meditation has entered the
mainstream of modern Western
culture, and been prescribed
by physicians and practiced
by everyone from business
executives, artists, and
scientists to students,
teachers, military
personnel, and - on a
promising note -
politicians.
If you could choose just one
crop to grow to feed your
family in tough times, the
potato would be ideal.
Potatoes may have a humble
reputation, but when it
comes to surviving in tough
times, they're superstars.
Here are eight reasons why.
Sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide down
nearly 80 percent since 1996
Alabama Power in 2012 continued its
long-term trend of reducing key air
emissions at its power plants.
The Obama administration is
following through on its
pledge to push for
commercialization of a new
breed of small nuclear
reactors. And Ameren
Missouri is expected to be
among the companies to
compete for funding.
Crude oil prices will plunge
to $75 a barrel by the end
of the second quarter amid
mushrooming production of
shale oil, says Andrew Su,
CEO of Australian
commodities brokerage firm
Compass Global Markets.
That would represent a
19 percent drop from
Wednesday morning’s price of
$92.95 for April crude
contracts on the Nymex. And
Su thinks oil could keep
sliding in the second half
of the year.
More than 100 drugs have
been found to combat aging
by virtually the same
biological mechanisms and
may be available within five
years, according to landmark
new research led by a
Harvard University
researcher.
Agreement Bans Unauthorized
Data Collection, Requires
Training of Google Employees
on Privacy, and Nationwide
Campaign to Education
Consumers on Protecting
Information
-
Two prominent dairy associations have
filed a petition with the FDA requesting
the agency “amend the standard of
identity” for milk and 17 other dairy
products to provide for the use of any
safe and suitable sweetener as an
optional ingredient—including
non-nutritive sweeteners such as
aspartame to deceive you by not having
to indicate its use on the label
-
The FDA already allows the dairy
industry to use the unmodified “milk”
label for products that contain added
sugar or high fructose corn syrup.
Because of this, the petitioners
maintain that “consumers can more easily
identify the overall nutritional value
of milk products that are flavored with
non-nutritive sweeteners if the labels
do not include such claims”
-
Aspartame is the most dangerous food
additive on the market today, accounting
for over 75 percent of adverse reactions
reported to the FDA, including seizures
and death
Driven by aggressive biofuel
mandates, rapid industry
growth will cause great
strain on biomass by 2030,
according to analysis firm
Lux Research. A report from
the firm says that, using
today's technologies, an
area the size of Russia
would need to be cultivated
to replace all petroleum
used for chemicals and
fuels, and feedstock
innovation will be needed to
keep growing biomass's
market share.
-
Many infections are becoming
increasingly difficult to treat.
Antibiotic overuse has led to the
emergence of antibiotic-resistant
bacteria, such as methicillin-resistant
Staphylococcus aureus, also known as
MRSA
-
Exposure to natural sunlight on a large
percentage of your skin can actually
have a very potent antimicrobial action.
-
According to a new proof-of-principle
study, blue light can selectively
eliminate infections caused by
Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Blue light
therapy has also been shown effective
against MRSA and other resistant bugs
"New energy technologies
face a series of structural
market barriers to entry. As
such, the federal government
needs to continue to play a
vital role in supporting new
energy technologies,
products and services,"
Woolf told the subcommittee.
"Just as the Internet
economy transformed society
in ways we did not expect,
the advanced energy economy
is creating dramatic new
opportunities for economic
growth in the United States
and around the world."
Whole Foods has announced
that, by 2018, all GMO
products sold in their
stores will carry GMO
labels, so customers know
what they're buying.
Whole Foods has also
asserted they are working
with their suppliers to find
non-GMO raw ingredients, so
that current GMO products
sold in the stores can
become non-GMO.
Chevron is "in discussions"
with Venezuela about adding
opportunities to invest in
that country following the
recent death of its
controversial populist
President Hugo Chavez,
Chevron CEO John Watson said
Tuesday.
More than half of South
Carolina's counties,
including Richland and
Lexington, are in danger of
falling out of compliance
with tougher federal smog
standards that could make it
harder for industries to
expand in the Palmetto
State, regulators say.
2012 proved to be an
unsettling and difficult
year for clean energy.
High-profile bankruptcies
and layoffs plagued many
clean-tech companies,
overall venture investments
retreated in the face of
increasingly elusive
returns, and the industry
was begrudgingly transformed
into a partisan wedge issue
during the U.S. presidential
campaign.
While the State of New York
hashes out deep disagreement
over how to deal with sugary
megadrinks that contribute
to obesity, maybe they can
turn their attention to
something a little less
complicated — like mapping a
full conversion to 100
percent renewable energy in
less than 20 years.
President Barack Obama's Tuesday
declaration of a disaster on the Navajo
Nation will provide relief directly to the
tribe, something that we have been
impossible as recently as two months ago.
Tribal officials said the aid, to help
repair damage from freezing weather that
disrupted water service to thousands, marks
an important change in federal-tribal
relations because it will not have to go
through a state government first.
To better understand this
issue, we must start at the
beginning – the DMCA. The
Digital Millenium Copyright
Act was signed into law in
1998, and introduced
anti-circumvention
provisions that made it
illegal to break DRM
protections on copyright
works. It also barred
consumers from circumventing
locks on hardware. It’s this
provision within the DMCA
that makes it illegal for
you to unlock your cell
phone without your carrier’s
permission.
When the Wright brothers
took to the skies from Kitty
Hawk in December 1903, they
did it in a biplane, a craft
with two pairs of parallel
wings. Most early aircraft
were biplanes, but by the
1930s, the faster monoplane
design, with just two wings,
dominated aviation. On page
1309, a Chinese team
presents dramatic new
fossils suggesting that
early birds went through a
similar evolution, starting
off with wings on both arms
and legs and only later
adopting the arms-only,
monoplane configuration.
The U.S. EPA issued an
administrative order
requiring Enbridge Inc. to
perform additional dredging
in Michigan's Kalamazoo
River to clean up oil from
the company's 2010 pipeline
spill...
Georgia Power has completed
the placement of basemat
structural concrete for the
nuclear island at its Vogtle
Unit 3 nuclear expansion
site, a significant
achievement in the building
of the first new nuclear
units in the United States
in 30 years.
France and Britain are
pushing the European Union
to lift its arms embargo on
Syria as soon as possible so
that they can send weapons
to rebel fighters, French
President Francois Hollande
said Thursday.
The twin developments of the
death of Venezuelan dictator
Hugo Chavez and the election
of Jorge Mario Bergoglio as
Pope may offer a turning
point for Latin America.
The United States is poised
to achieve long-term energy
security because of the rise
of fuel-efficient vehicles
and the revolution in
domestic oil and gas
production, says General
Motors Chairman and CEO Dan
Akerson.
At its February 2013 meeting
in Paris, the Financial
Action Task Force (FATF), a
multilateral group focused
on blocking money laundering
throughout the world,
announced that Turkey would
not be “blacklisted”—a
decision that reveals the
increasing power of the
little known organization.
While the FATF is not a
panacea for the
difficult-to-solve problems
of terrorism and corruption,
its growing stature enhances
the West’s ability to defend
itself against asymmetric
threats.
79% of executives listed
stability and financial
performance as top criteria
for selecting and keeping
core banks, but only 43% are
completely confident their
banks are operating within
their companies’ risk
parameters
“Earth scientists generally
look askance at catastrophic
claims about global
warming,” says Kalmanovitch.
“We are currently in a warm
period, geologically
speaking. There have been
four of these in the past,
but each cooler than the
previous one. The present
warm period is cooler than
the Medieval Warm Period.
That’s what we should be
concerned about.”
Technically Spain has made
the right moves toward
stabilizing the banking
system. More importantly the
ECB has been instrumental in
bringing some degree of
confidence and stemming
depositor flight out of the
country. But the Spanish
banking system, especially
among domestically focused
institutions, still has a
long way to go before it
becomes fully functional.
House Republicans redoubled
their efforts to roll back
signature accomplishments of
President Barack Obama on
Tuesday, offering a slashing
budget plan that would
repeal new healthcare
subsidies and cut spending
across a wide swath of
programs dear to Obama and
his Democratic allies.
The 2,100 solar panels
recently installed at
Greeley's wastewater
treatment facility are up
and running, soaking up
energy that will cut costs
for the city and improve its
environmental footprint,
officials say.
There is good news and
better news about
ground-level ozone in
American cities. While
dangerous ozone levels have
fallen in places that clamp
down on emissions from
vehicles and industry, a new
study from Rice University
suggests that a model widely
used to predict the impact
of remediation efforts has
been too conservative.
More and more, renewable
energies are competing against each other,
instead of against conventional energy
sources.
If you read the reports from major
energy agencies and industry associations,
you might be tempted to conclude that there
is a bright future where all types of
renewable energies will flourish and coexist
peacefully. Well, they will not. Much like
in any other sector, some technologies will
trump others. In this article, we analyze
how solar photovoltaic (PV) is winning over
concentrated solar power (CSP).
The Illinois Senate today
voted to put the state's
electric grid modernization
efforts back on track and
ensure that the benefits of
improved reliability, job
creation, and infrastructure
upgrades can be realized by
the state and Illinois
consumers. Senate Bill 9,
sponsored by Senate
President John Cullerton,
clarifies the Smart Grid law
enacted in 2011 while
maintaining strong consumer
protections.
International oil and
gas executives are feeling
optimistic about the year
ahead, yet rather than take
the opportunity to grow
their businesses and expand
operations, companies are
using the boom to hedge
against the short-term
uncertainties of the global
oil and gas industry.
Iran's vice president says
the Bushehr nuclear power
plant has been disconnected
from the country's
electricity grid because of
a mechanical problem.
Two years after an
earthquaked rocked Japan,
scientists there are hitting
back. They successfully
mined “methane hydrates”
from the Sea of Japan -- an
effort that could supply the
country with unconventional
natural gas for decades to
come. But it’s an expensive
proposition that must now
survive beyond the testing
phase.
People across Japan today
marked the second
anniversary of the
earthquake and tsunami that
devastated northeastern
Honshu island on March 11,
2011 with memorial
ceremonies, speeches and
promises. More than 300,000
people are still in
temporary housing and nearly
all the country’s nuclear
power plants are closed.
A new poll taken by Mexico's
leading public opinion
researcher shows that U.S.
citizens of Latino descent
are potentially strong
allies of the Republican
Party. The survey found
strong indications that
Latinos in the U.S. are
deeply worried that the
Democratic Party could lead
their new country down the
same path to debt and
dependence that bedeviled
the nations they left to
come here.
Li’s elevation comes days
after data showing China
remains reliant on overseas
sales and investment at home
to propel its expansion,
underscoring the challenges
faced by an administration
that puts urbanization at
the forefront of its
domestic initiatives. In two
days he will have a chance
to detail his agenda amid
calls for deepening China’s
shift toward free markets
and away from state-directed
lending.
State lawmakers Tuesday rekindled a
debate over how and whether state policy
should play favorites when it comes to
renewable energy.
For the third time in as many legislative
sessions, lawmakers are contemplating a
state law that requires a certain amount of
the power consumed in Maine comes from
renewable resources.
The next scary risk for
global investors is China’s
huge credit bubble,
according to contrarian
investor Marc Faber.
Faber, editor and publisher
of The Gloom, Boom & Doom
Report, told CNBC that
shadow banking practices in
China pose a broad financial
threat.
Scientists have identified
sulfur, nitrogen, hydrogen,
oxygen, phosphorus and
carbon - some of the key
chemical ingredients for
life - in the powder
Curiosity drilled out of a
sedimentary rock near an
ancient stream bed in Gale
Crater on the Red Planet
last month. Sedimentary rock
means running water once
upon a time. Water often
means life...
"First, do no harm," is a
prime directive for doctors.
But there are times when
medical tests do the patient
more harm than good by
leading to unnecessary and
dangerous biopsies, by
damaging internal organs,
and even by raising the risk
of cancer. They are also a
big part of the reason for
America’s soaring medical
costs.
The number of monarch
butterflies making it to
their winter refuge in
Mexico dropped 59 percent
this year, falling to the
lowest level since
comparable record-keeping
began 20 years ago,
scientists
reported Wednesday.
At this very moment, a
Continuing Resolution (CR)
for the big Appropriations
funding bill is being
debated on the Senate floor.
It’s supposed to be about
funding the government, but
the Senate Appropriations
Committee, chaired by Sen.
Barbara Mikulski (who has
always stood by our side in
the past), has included a
dangerous GMO rider that has
no place in a funding bill.
In November 2009, Norwegian
state owned electricity
company Statkraft opened the
world’s first osmotic power
plant prototype, which
generates electricity from
the difference in the salt
concentration between river
water and sea water. While
osmotic power is a clean,
renewable energy source, its
commercial use has been
limited due to the low
generating capacities
offered by current
technology – the Statkraft
plant, for example, has a
capacity of about 4 kW. Now
researchers have discovered
a new way to harness osmotic
power that they claim would
enable a 1 m2
(10.7 sq. ft.) membrane to
have the same 4 kW capacity
as the entire Statkraft
plant.
A small Finnish study is
raising hopes for a new drug
designed to help stave off
memory loss among patients
struggling with moderate
Alzheimer's disease.
Still in the preliminary
stages of investigation, the
drug -- called ORM-12741 --
showed promise during a
three-month trial involving
100 such patients, half of
whom were given the
medication on top of their
current drug treatment.
The report found that 51% of
Suffolk County hospitals,
long-term care facilities
and nursing homes are still
flushing expired and unused
controlled substances.
Controlled substances
include codeine, valium,
morphine, Ativan, ambien,
vicadone, and Percocet.
Once again the race is on to
get new renewable energy
projects under construction
by year end. While the
American Taxpayer Relief Act
of 2012 ("ATRA") provided
the long sought extension of
the Production Tax Credit
("PTC") and Investment Tax
Credit ("ITC") for certain
renewable resources through
2013 (wind, biomass,
geothermal, landfill gas,
trash, hydropower and marine
and hydrokinetic
facilities), the extension
comes with terms that
present new challenges for
developers.
Oil companies seeking new
Arctic areas for exploration
face a battle with
environmentalists, fishermen
and hotel owners over
Norwegian islands where
jagged snow-capped peaks
rise sheer from the sea.
National Rifle Association
President David Keene
believes President Barack
Obama and other Democrats
who want to expand gun
control have been shocked by
the outpouring of support
for the Second Amendment.
A glut of
government-subsidized wind
power may help accomplish a
goal some environmentalists
have sought for decades:
kill off U.S. nuclear power
plants while reducing
reliance on electricity from
burning coal.
Applying for benefits under President Barack
Obama's health care overhaul could be as
daunting as doing your taxes.
The government's draft application runs
15 pages for a three-person family. An
outline of the online version has 21 steps,
some with additional questions.
President Barack Obama has
tried to soothe Senate
Democrats disturbed by his
administration’s drone
policy — by telling them
that former Vice President
Dick Cheney was worse.
Depending on which expert
you talk to, the U.S. either
got a bargain when it
snapped up 2 million doses
of a smallpox medicine for
use in a possible bio-attack
or it got fleeced to the
tune of $463 million.
That amounts to some
$200 each to treat up to 2
million Americans in the
event of a large-scale
attack on U.S. soil, The New
York Times reports. But
smallpox has been eradicated
since 1980 with the last of
the virus samples believed
to be in goverment hands in
the U.S. and Russia.
President Barack Obama asked
House Democrats on Thursday
for the flexibility to make
entitlement concessions to
Republicans in upcoming
discussions to reach a deal
to reduce the deficit.
“What he basically said
was that there's got to be a
balanced deal,” Rep. Peter
Welch of Vermont told The
Hill after the meeting of
the House Democratic Caucus.
“And that if there's going
to be revenues, then
obviously there's going to
be, in a
Republican-controlled House,
the need for us to consider
some of the things we don't
like. That was more or less
it.”
Decorated military veteran
and best-selling author
Oliver North tells Newsmax
that the decision to try
Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law
in civilian court shows that
the administration has
“abandoned” the war on
terror.
A defense contractor better
known for building jet
fighters and lethal missiles
says it has found a way to
slash the amount of energy
needed to remove salt from
seawater, potentially making
it vastly cheaper to produce
clean water at a time when
scarcity has become a global
security issue.
Two protesters were arrested
at Pilgrim Nuclear Power
Station on Wednesday about
an hour after a judge
dismissed charges against
them and nine others accused
of trespassing during a
demonstration there in May.
Aging sewer systems are
spilling a considerable
amount of nitrogen into
urban watersheds,
diminishing both the quality
of water and ecosystems’
habitats. However, many
studies documenting the
impacts of nitrogen on urban
environs have not properly
estimated the contribution
of leaky sewer systems—until
now.
Wastewater reuse is now
becoming more accepted in
areas where agricultural
demand for water is
increasing yet it is in the
production of fuel where it
could have greatest
potential, according to new
research.
As part of President Obama's
all-of-the-above energy
strategy to continue to
expand domestic energy
production, Secretary of the
Interior Ken Salazar today
announced the approval of
three major renewable energy
projects that, when built,
are expected to deliver
1,100 megawatts to the grid
- enough to power more than
340,000 homes - and help
support more than 1,000 jobs
through construction and
operations.
Sen. John McCain, one of two
senators who placed holds on
the Senate's continuing
resolution, has released his
hold on the bill.
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski,
R-Alaska, today applauded
the Senate Energy and
Natural Resources Committee
for passing by unanimous
consent the Denali Park
Improvement bill, which
includes three separate
measures to decrease the use
of diesel fuel and improve
energy access in Denali, as
well as honor Athabascan
climber Walter Harper. The
bill was passed as part of a
package of public lands
bills approved by the
committee Thursday morning.
If you drive by a farm
nowadays you're liable to
see a field of solar panels
rather than a field of
cattle.
Another year of single-digit
growth forecast for the PV
industry, with China, Japan,
and India accounting for 36%
of global demand
The government is forcing you to buy
health care insurance or be fined.
Drones in the sky are watching
you ... and the U.S. Attorney General will
not rule out the possibility of drone
strikes on U.S. citizens within U.S.
borders.
Children are being told to shut down
their lemonade stands or be fined by the
government....
A House-passed bill viewed
as critical by West Virginia
coal operators, forbidding
the federal Environmental
Protection Agency from
imposing heavy fines for
excessive selenium in water,
cleared its first hurdle
Tuesday in the Senate.
Congress has been grappling
with cyber security for
months, and the executive
branch is circulating an
order calling for greater
coordination among agencies.
At the National
Association of Regulatory
Utility Commissioners, we’re
making our views known in a
coalition that is monitoring
the legislation.
The promise of jobs and
economic prosperity
highlight a new report that
suggests South Carolina
would be a good spot to
deposit the nation's nuclear
waste for recycling,
research or other uses.
Study Shows Mother
Earth Heading Toward Highest
Temperatures in Human
History by End Century
A team headed by Shaun
Marcott, a postdoctoral
researcher in OSU’s College
of Earth, Ocean and
Atmospheric Studies, reached
further back than most other
studies, which he said
usually don’t go beyond
2,000 years ago, to give the
current climate change
issues some context. They
studied data from 73 sites
around the world, to tell
Earth’s temperature history
back to the end of the last
Ice Age. The current age,
called the Holocene, began
when the great ice sheets of
northern Turtle Island and
Europe receded. What they
found may well heat up the
climate change debate.
Suntech has managed to delay
a major bond payment for
another two months until May
15, but there's still
considerable buzz
surrounding the company and
this $541 million debt
deadline, widely anticipated
as a major test of China's
drive to consolidate its
solar industry.
The main Syrian opposition
group is pushing to form a
breakaway interim government
to rein in chaotic
rebel-held areas in the
north. But it faces
objections from within its
own ranks amid fears that
such a move is premature and
could lead to the
fragmentation of the
country.
With China hacking the US,
the US hacking China, and
LinkedIn and Facebook and
credit card companies and
Google and who knows who
else all vomiting our data
all over the web, I was
intrigued when a new report
on data loss ran across my
desk from auditing firm
KPMG.
Israel: Netanyahu Forced to
Exclude Religious Parties
From New Government
Taiwan: Enhanced Bilateral
Ties Spur Chinese Espionage
Bulgaria: Uncertainty to Hamper Governing
U.S. Intelligence Emphasizes Cyber
Threats But Plays Down Iranian Danger
Czech President Unlikely to Reverse
Opposition to Euro
Syria: Allies
Frustrated with US Inaction
Saudi
Arabia’s Foreign Policy Tilts East and West
Ireland: Still Fragile But Ahead of
the Pack
While it’s clear to
just about everyone at this
point that Mother Earth is
out of balance, perhaps it
is difficult to galvanize
mainstream Americans (and
the U.S. Congress) with
bureaucratic-sounding terms
such as climate change.
There are better ways of
describing what it will be
like to have eight feet of
water flooding your first
floor—such as describing
what it has been like to
actually have eight feet of
water flooding homes. If the
past is any guide, we have a
lot to look forward to on
Turtle Island in 2013—none
of it good. Here are the
Seven Most Alarming Effects
of Climate Change on North
America, 2013 Edition.
Leaders of more than two
dozen Kayapó indigenous
communities have rejected a
$9 million offer from
Brazilian state energy
company Eletrobras to fund
development projects in
their region due to the the
firm's involvement in the
construction of the Belo
Monte dam, reports Amazon
Watch, an activist group
fighting the hydroelectric
project.
Two years ago this week, the world
watched in horror as a massive earthquake
registering 9.0 on the Richter Scale hit
Japan, followed by a tsunami on the
country's east coast, killing thousands of
people.
While the loss of life and property was
tremendous, it could have been far worse.
A geothermal well project to save energy
at the University of Maine at Farmington
received unanimous approval Monday from the
Planning Board.
The board considered soil erosion control
and storm water management applications for
drilling 80 wells approximately 600 feet
deep and trench excavation underground pipe
installation. The wells include a sealed
loop of pipes that circulate heat-bearing
water from the ground and back.
The number of Americans on
food stamps climbed to an
all-time peak last year,
according to data released
by the Department of
Agriculture.
An
average of 46.6 million
people received the benefits
each month last year, with
the average number of
households that received
them totaling 22.3 million.
In 2007, just 26.3 million
people received food stamps.
The home mortgage sector in
the world’s largest economy
has been “effectively
nationalized,” says George
Melloan, former deputy
editor of the editorial page
for The Wall Street Journal.
Government agencies —
primarily Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac, but also the
Federal Housing
Administration — insured or
purchased more than 90
percent of home mortgages
originated in 2012, a $1.3
trillion business, compared
with 30 percent in 2006,
according to ProPublica
data.
A measure of the burden of U.S. household
debt sank to a record low in the fourth
quarter, offering more evidence of improving
household finances that should lend support
to consumer spending and the economy.
The household debt-service ratio — an
estimate of the share of debt payments to
disposable personal income — fell to 10.38
percent, the Federal Reserve said on
Wednesday.
The Obama administration is
drawing up plans to give all
U.S. spy agencies full
access to a massive database
that contains financial data
on American citizens and
others who bank in the
country, according to a
Treasury Department document
seen by Reuters.
Many agree that the world is
better prepared today than
when SARS emerged in 2003 to
counter infectious diseases.
The outbreak drove home that
the world is an awfully
small place, and that
collaboration is essential.
Disease surveillance has
improved, and scientific
advances make it easier to
fish an unknown pathogen
from a sample and
characterize it.
Walking out of Keflavik
airport as the arctic breeze
hit my face at 50 km per
hour, I thought to myself,
“I love my job.” A job that
makes a tropical citizen
like me enjoy the
hospitality of the very warm
Icelanders and allows me to
learn from their experience
is hard to top. With 320,000
citizens and just the size
of the U.S. state of
Kentucky, subpolar Iceland
has a lot to teach us
development practitioners.
Flu vaccines protect people
by activating white blood
cells that, in turn, boost
the development of
antibodies to the flu, a new
study suggests.
-
Your access to raw milk is determined by
state law , and there are many
differences among the states. Raw milk
sales or distribution are legal in a
majority of the states, and there has
been a trend towards improving access in
recent years. Two major holdouts to this
trend are Minnesota and Wisconsin;
criminal trials centering on raw milk
are scheduled to take place later this
year in each state
-
In response to a 2010 lawsuit
challenging the FDA’s ban on interstate
sales, the agency made its draconian
views on food freedom part of the public
record, stating that “there is no
absolute right to consume or feed
children any particular food” and that
there is no fundamental right to one’s
“own bodily and physical health”
-
Several insurance companies have stopped
writing raw milk product liability
policies. The rest have dramatically
raised their rates for raw dairy
producers, forcing many out of business
-
In spite of the government agencies and
private organizations that continue to
oppose freedom of choice for raw milk
consumers, the demand continues to grow
and the number of farmers producing raw
milk is increasing, especially at the
micro-dairy level. Efforts to increase
freedom for producers and consumers
continues to progress on a
state-by-state basis
Westinghouse Electric Co. is
seeing brisk business these
days -- underscored by a
spate of overseas deals it
announced in the past two
months -- that belies the
pressure the company faces
from a downturn in the
industry.
March 12, 2013
FEMA, the Federal Emergency
Management Agency, urges all
Americans to have at least a
3-day supply of
non-perishable food and
water in case of emergency.
We agree ... especially when
you consider their track
record at providing disaster
relief.
When California held its first-ever
auction of greenhouse gas emission
allowances last fall, allowances sold for
$10.09, just pennies above the $10 floor
price set by state regulators. Some
observers warned that the low price meant
the state's new cap-and-trade program
wouldn't work and was a sign that companies
were not participating.
But in the second auction last week, the
allowances sold for $13.62 each, higher than
many analysts had expected.
The stock market’s roar to
record highs Tuesday
reflected the Federal
Reserve’s massive easing
campaign, not the strength
of the U.S. economy, says
financial commentator Robert
Wiedemer, best-selling
author of "Aftershock."
The Dow Jones Industrial
Average rallied 125.95
points, or 0.9 percent, to
14253.77, surpassing
its previous record closing
high of 14,164 set in
October 2007.
A cash rebate for Hawaiian
Electric Co. customers who
install solar water heaters
will be increased to $1,000
for a limited time in an
effort to boost sales of the
energy-efficient units.
A new survey of the algae industry
conducted by the Algae Biomass
Organization (ABO) shows the industry
expects increasing production in 2013 and
price-competitiveness with fossil fuels by
2020.
The survey also noted the critical role
of supportive Federal policy required in
order to accelerate hiring and production.
Antibiotic resistance poses
a catastrophic threat to
medicine and could mean
patients having minor
surgery risk dying from
infections that can no
longer be treated, Britain's
top health official said on
Monday.
One day in 2017 or maybe sooner, the
power that flows through Boulder's
distribution system and into homes and
businesses may not come from Xcel Energy.
If and when that day comes, business and
residential customers should not notice any
difference, city officials say.
The only difference is that it will be
cleaner and cost less.
Canadian glaciers that are the world's
third biggest store of ice after Antarctica
and Greenland seem headed for an
irreversible melt that will push up sea
levels, scientists said on Thursday.
About 20 percent of the ice in glaciers,
on islands such as Ellesmere or Devon off
northern Canada, could vanish by the end of
the 21st century in a melt that would add
3.5 cm (1.4 inch) to global sea levels, they
said.
In the face of the many
challenges inherent in
getting 15 countries—each
with their own resources,
priorities, and political
complexities—to agree to
anything, let alone a
comprehensive regional
energy policy, the Caribbean
is now on the brink of
taking a significant (and
impressive) step forward.
The planet today is warmer
than it has been during 70
to 80 percent of the last
11,300 years, finds a new
study of ice and sediment
cores from sites around the
world.
-
The World Health Organization (WHO)
recently released a joint report with
the United Nations Environment Program
(UNEP), titled: State of the Science of
Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs),
which suggests a ban of endocrine
disrupting chemicals may be needed to
protect the health of future generations
-
The joint study is the most
comprehensive report on EDCs to date,
highlighting a wide variety of health
problems associated with exposure,
including: non-descended testes, breast,
prostate and thyroid cancer, nervous
system defects, and ADD/ADHD
-
Some of the most commonly used endocrine
disrupters are Bisphenol-A (BPA),
Bisphenol-S (BPS), PCB’s, phthalates and
agricultural pesticides
The percentage of Americans who are
“alarmed” about climate change and motivated
to do something about it increased to 16
percent between 2010 and 2012, according to
a new poll.
That is a jump of 6 percentage point over
two years, which occurred as the percentage
of Americans who are skeptical of climate
change or doubt that it has significant
impacts fell 8 percentage points, to 8
percent.
That troubled nuclear
plant in Southern California
may have some more problems.
A key member of the U.S.
Congress is asking security
regulators to look further
into whether Edison
International knew of
defects before they became
public but chose instead to
sit on the information.
The inner core of the Earth,
its innermost part, is a
primarily solid ball with a
radius of about 760 miles,
according to seismological
studies. It is believed to
consist primarily of an
iron—nickel alloy, and to be
about the same temperature
as the surface of the Sun. A
new study, by an
international team of
researchers from Leeds,
London and California,
states that rocks could be
circulating in the inner
core which may explain the
unusual behavior of seismic
waves passing through it.
Though regulations are
likely to shut older
coal-fired plants in coming
years, coal-fired capacity
is likely to dip a scant 8%
by 2020, said Stephen
Braverman, vice president,
coal services, at DTE Coal
Services.
"No matter
what, the US is still going
to have a viable domestic
coal industry," Braverman
said Friday at the Platts
Coal Properties & Investment
conference in Fort
Lauderdale, Florida.
A comet visible to the naked
eye is not that common.
Scientists estimate that the
opportunity to see one of
these icy dirtballs
advertising their cosmic
presence so brilliantly they
can be seen without the aid
of a telescope or binoculars
happens only once every five
to 10 years. That said,
there may be two naked-eye
comets available for your
viewing pleasure this year.
“This is a classic bull
market, climbing the wall of
worry,” said Robert Tipp,
chief investment strategist
at Prudential Fixed Income
in Newark, N.J. “We are
seeing the ‘great
migration.’ But it’s not the
great migration people
expected. There’s a fear out
there that a wave of money
will move out of bonds into
stocks. But the money will
not come from bonds. It will
come from cash, the most
expensive asset.”
New research from
Environmental Entrepreneurs
(E2) reports that 300 clean
energy and clean
transportation projects
announced in 2012 are
expected to create 110,000
jobs.
The easiest way to
understand this recession is
by looking at income data,
Achuthan says.
Personal
income plunged 3.6 percent
in January as the payroll
tax increased, the biggest
drop in 20 years.
Is there a
supplement that can capture
in the body a significant
portion of the mercury
contained in certain
seafoods?
Dr. Brownstein's Answer:
Mercury poisons hundreds
of enzymes in the body and
is also a neurotoxin. It has
been linked to many serious
illnesses such as coronary
artery disease, congestive
heart disease, Parkinson’s
disease, Alzheimer’s, and
cancer.
Elon Musk says he's still
waiting for a call from
Boeing to fix the jumbo jet
maker's overheating
Dreamliner battery problem.
For the past few months,
Boeing's 787 fleet has been
grounded in the United
States following a
lithium-ion battery that
caught fire in flight. The
National Transportation
Safety Board was unable to
determine the cause of the
fire, but the Tesla and
SpaceX CEO says the problem
is clear to him, and he's
willing to "do the fix" for
Boeing.
It's the best of times and the worst of
times for grain sorghum in Nebraska.
On the dark side, last year's harvest of
about 60,000 acres was the smallest since
Barb Kliment joined the ranks of sorghum
promoters in 1981. On a much brighter note,
the managers of ethanol plants in Trenton
and Ravenna are pushing hard to make a crop
also known as milo the main ingredient in
their renewable fuels recipes.
If the Fed doesn’t go on a
money-printing spree,
thereby monetizing the debt,
interest rates would rise
since private lenders demand
higher rates, they maintain.
Such higher rates
would cause an economic
contraction, the experts
write. “Indeed, without
monetization, the government
could end up defaulting on
its debt.”
That means
the Fed would have to buy
more and more Treasurys “by
printing money, eventually
leading to a surge in
inflation,” the foursome
says.
Residents of the Falkland Islands started
voting on Sunday in a sovereignty referendum
that seeks to counter Argentina's
increasingly assertive claim over the
British-ruled territory.
Diplomatic tension between Britain and
Argentina has flared up after more than
three decades since they went to war over
the South Atlantic archipelago, and that has
unsettled some of the roughly 2,500
islanders.
“This time we’ll take
the water from the
headwaters, where it is
still clean and pure, and
all along the way where it
enters the Gulf,” she said.
There they will mingle the
cleaner water with the
much-stressed waters at the
mouth, bringing it a
message, perhaps, of hope
for its future and memories
of its origins.
“The whole idea is to
raise awareness, aside from
the spiritual purpose,” she
said.
The first American nuclear
power plant project in more
than two decades is $381
million over budget and a
year behind schedule,
officials with
Georgia
Power Co.
announced Thursday.
Clean Edge’s Annual Trends
Report Finds Increased
Deployment, But Market Value
Increases Only Slightly, Up
1 Percent, to $249 Billion
Republican lawmakers said Sunday they
welcome President Barack Obama's courtship
and suggested the fresh engagement between
the White House and Congress might help
yield solutions to the stubborn budget
battle that puts Americans' jobs at risk.
Yet the lawmakers cautioned that years of
hurt feelings were unlikely to heal simply
because Obama dined last week with
Republican lawmakers. They also said they
would not to rush too quickly into Obama's
embrace during three scheduled, and unusual,
visits to Capitol Hill next week to win them
over.
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is
expected Tuesday to endorse
a Medicaid expansion bill
backed by Democrats, but
could have a difficult time
convincing members of her
own Republican Party to
support it.
The
governor needs to attract
eight of the 17 Republicans
in the state Senate to her
side to see the measure
pass, according to The New
York Times. But Republicans
long used to seeing the
governor fighting against
President Barack Obama on
everything from Obamacare to
immigration don't believe
expansion is the best way,
as Brewer argues, to
stabilize the state’s
healthcare system, which is
already struggling to care
for uninsured patients.
A case involving a homeless veteran being
cited in Houston for rummaging through trash
for something to eat is receiving national
attention.
James Kelly was ticketed by a Houston
police officer after being caught looking in
a garbage can near City Hall, ...
If you have diabetes, or are diagnosed
with it in the future, beware! Obamacare may
force you
to go off-grid with your health care.
In fact, it's already happening, in fact.
Tropical forests may be less sensitive to
global warming than previously thought,
argues a new study published in Nature
Geoscience.
The research is based on computer
simulations using 22 climate models for
tropical forests in Africa, Asia, and the
Americas. It projects loss of forest biomass
as a result of climate change only in the
Americas.
However the study is far from conclusive,
with the authors listing several
uncertainties about how tropical forests
will respond to climate change.
When China's environment
ministry told attorney Dong
Zhengwei he couldn't have
access to two-year old data
about soil pollution because
it was a "state secret", it
added to mounting public
outrage over the worsening
environment.
Kansas legislators aren't ready to back off
a state policy requiring utilities to
generate 20 percent of their electricity
from wind and other renewable resources
by 2020.
The Senate voted 23-17 on Thursday to reject
a bill postponing the renewable energy
requirement for four years, until 2024. The
action, which killed the measure, came hours
after the House voted 63-59 sending its own
legislation lowering the standards back
to committee.
-
Many cancer patients have reportedly
overcome the disease by adopting a
ketogenic diet, which calls for
eliminating carbohydrates, replacing
them with healthy fats and protein
-
Animal studies have shown that mice fed
a carb-free diet survived highly
aggressive metastatic cancer even better
than those treated with chemotherapy
-
Your normal cells have the metabolic
flexibility to adapt from using glucose
to using ketone bodies. Cancer cells
lack this metabolic flexibility, so when
you eliminate carbs, which turn into
sugar, you effectively starve the cancer
-
Eating fat is NOT bad for your heart.
Particularly beneficial fats include
coconut oil, butter, organic pastured
eggs, avocado and raw nuts. Most people
need as much as 50-70 percent healthful
fat in their diet to optimize health
Los Angeles currently gets
39% of its electricity from
coal, but that will end
soon.
In the coming
weeks, Mayor Antonio
Villaraigosa announced he
will sign agreements that
will make the city
coal-free. The coal comes
from two outdated dirty
plants, one in Utah, the
other in Arizona. He will
end the contract in Arizona
by 2015 and the one in Utah
by 2025.
Maryland is on the cusp of approving as
much as 200 MW in offshore wind development
by 2017.
The Maryland Offshore Wind Energy Act of
2013 cleared one of its final hurdles last
week, gaining senate approval in a 30-15
vote. The state House passed similar
legislation in February. The push to
incorporate offshore wind into the state's
energy portfolio now heads to the desk of
Governor Martin O'Malley, where it is
expected to be signed into law.
Only a small suffix
separates the two major
health care programs run by
the federal and state
governments, but their
relative political,
budgetary, and equity
considerations are miles
apart. When Obama lumps
"entitlements" together, he
inevitably means Medicare
and Social Security. But
the entitlements that need
reining in are neither of
these; they are Medicaid,
food stamps, disability,
subsidized housing, and
welfare.
-
A new 30-year study from the University
of Bristol in England has revealed that
bees and flowers share a symbiotic
relationship based on the electric
currents each emits. This affects not
only the pollination and proliferation
of the plants, but also the nourishment
of the bees and the hives.
-
Bees not only can sense the negative
charge coming from flowers using color,
shape, pattern and humidity, but are
able to change the electrical charge to
tell which ones contain nectar and if
another bee has beat them to it.
-
Bees worldwide are threatened by a
number of ecological and environmental
factors, such as pesticides, fungi, GMOs
and cell phone networks.
-
The world’s food supply is threatened
because bees and the way they pollinate
and carry food to their hives is
threatened.
Special cells that were discovered in
healthy breast tissue from women undergoing
breast reductions may hold the key for an
important discovery.
UC San Francisco researchers found that
certain rare cells extracted from adult
breast tissue have the capability to turn
into other cell types.
Similar to human embryonic stem cells,
the newly found cells are pluripotent.
Pluripotent cells have the potential to
differentiate into almost any cell in the
body.
New Mexico public health and environmental
advocates would like nothing better than to
see the state powered by renewable energy
and bid farewell to coal.
Currently, close to 70 percent of the
state's generated electricity still comes
from air-polluting, coal-fired plants.
Hard to believe, but every
time you bite into an
organic apple or pear you
get a mouthful – and gutful
– of antibiotics. That’s
because organic apple and
pear growers are allowed to
spray streptomycin and
tetracycline on their trees
to prevent a bacterial
disease called fireblight.
North Korea declared the
1953 Korean War armistice nullified on
Monday, following through on a longstanding
threat that it renewed last week amid rising
tensions with South Korea.
The move
comes as the United States and South
Korea are in the midst of two months
of joint military drills, which
started on March 1, and on Monday
they began another planned joint
exercise that involved bringing
2,500 troops from the United States.
Stirring up a sense of crisis among
its impoverished people, North Korea
was also staging an unusually
vigorous military drill.
Members of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission today upheld the licensing
board’s decision to deny a construction and
operating license for the proposed 1,500 MW
Calvert Cliffs 3 nuclear reactor in
Maryland, according a release from the
public relations firm The Hastings Group.
The decision not to allow the reactor,
according to the release, marks the first
time in history that the NRC has upheld a
license denial for a commercial nuclear
reactor, and only the second time a
commercial nuclear facility has been denied
a license at all (the other being a
Louisiana uranium enrichment facility shut
down in 1997).
More than one-third of U.S.
nuclear power plants
suffered safety-related
incidents over the past
three years, and nuclear
regulators and plant
operators need to improve
inspections to prevent such
events, the Union of
Concerned Scientists (UCS)
said in a report on
Thursday.
With the Pentagon facing $46
billion in mandatory
spending cuts, the White
House may try to use the
sequester to argue for
deeper cuts in military
programs it has long wanted
to scale back. According to
The New York Times,
President Barack
Obama will visit Capitol
Hill Tuesday to push for a
deficit reduction deal that
would replace
across-the-board cuts with
more targeted ones.
An Ohio man who was exonerated after
spending 13 years in prison for murder cried
as a federal jury found that two Cleveland
police detectives violated his civil rights
by coercing and falsifying testimony and
withholding evidence that pointed to his
innocence.
The jury's verdict on Friday, which
included awarding $13.2 million to David
Ayers of Cleveland for his pain and
suffering, brings an end to the legal battle
he's been fighting since his arrest in the
1999 killing of 76-year-old Dorothy Brown.
Saudi Arabia produced 9.15
million b/d in February and
supplied 9.16 million b/d to
markets as output fell by
100,000 b/d over January,
but the OPEC kingpin is
likely to raise production
in the coming months as
demand picks up, a Gulf
source said Monday.
Britain's hopes of a nuclear renaissance
are hanging by a thread after a black week
for the sector. Negotiations between the
Government and the industry to set the
all-important price structure are "on the
brink."
If they collapse, the UK will face the
real prospect of a future without new
nuclear power, which would leave it heavily
reliant on imported gas or controversial
wind technology.
House Budget Committee
Chairman Paul Ryan said that
the U.S. can seemingly have
it all — a balanced budget,
3.4 percent increases in
government spending each
year, and no new taxes over
the next 10 years.
In
an op-ed published in The
Wall Street Journal on
Monday, Ryan pointed to
America’s $16 trillion
national debt, President
Obama’s missed budget
deadlines in four of the
past five years, and the
refusal of Washington to
“tackle the drivers of the
nation’s debt — or simply to
write a budget” as evidence
of a broken budget process.
Phoenix is launching a solid waste
sustainability program that will focus on
diverting 40% of waste from landfills by
2020, according to a city press release.
Phoenix's diversion rate of 13% for
fiscal year 2011-2012 is below the national
average, the report said.
Bill Gross, whose Pacific
Investment Management Co.
coined the phrase “new
normal” in 2009 to describe
an era of subpar growth and
a diminishing role for
developed economies, sees
the U.S. outlook
brightening, at least for
2013.
A plurality of Americans
think federal spending cuts
will have no effect at all
on them or their families,
according to a new
McClatchy-Marist Poll. At
the same time, as many
Americans think the cuts
will have no effect or a
positive effect on the
overall economy as think the
cuts will hurt the economy,
the survey found.
Quantum entanglement, one of
the odder aspects of quantum
theory, links the properties
of particles even when they
are separated by large
distances. When a property
of one of a pair of
entangled particles is
measured, the other
"immediately" settles down
into a state compatible with
that measurement. So how
fast is "immediately"?
According to research by
Prof. Juan Yin and
colleagues at the University
of Science and Technology of
China in Shanghai, the
lower limit to the
speed associated with
entanglement dynamics – or
"spooky action at a
distance" – is at least
10,000 times faster than
light.
Most insurance companies do
not have comprehensive
strategies to cope with
climate change despite
mounting weather-related
claims, says a report to be
released Thursday.
C1 event observed
There are currently 8
numbered sunspot regions on
the disk. Solar
activity is likely to be low
with a slight chance for an
M-class flare on days one,
two, and three (12 Mar, 13
Mar, 14 Mar). The
geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet
levels
The federal government’s
decision to try Osama bin
Laden’s son-in-law, Sulaiman
Abu Ghaith, in the United
States — specifically New
York City — has sparked
outrage.
Republican
lawmakers say legal
precedent has been
established for “enemy
combatants” to be put on
trial at Guantanamo Bay, and
that vital intelligence
could be lost in a civilian
trial,...
Are these just unhealthy
obsessions with death and
decay? To Clemson University
professor Sarah Lauro, the
phenomenon isn't harmful or
a random fad, but part of a
historical trend that
mirrors a level of cultural
dissatisfaction and economic
upheaval.
“This video proves once and
for all that today’s ethanol
is not your father’s
ethanol. The ethanol
industry has made impressive
strides in the last 30 years
in production volumes,
foreign oil displacement,
production efficiencies,
co-products, job creation,
and cellulose and advanced
ethanol market entry.
Russian scientists believe they have
discovered new life forms sealed off for
millions of years in a subglacial lake deep
under the Antarctic ice, the RIA news agency
reported on Thursday.
North Korean state media
said Monday that Pyongyang
had carried through with a
threat to cancel the
60-year-old armistice that
ended the Korean War, as it
and South Korea staged
dueling war games amid
threatening rhetoric.
Deployment of smart meters
have now become commonplace
in many parts of the United
States. Approximately 33
percent of all U.S.
households now have a smart
meter installed. California
and Texas have led these
efforts with many other
states expected to follow
suit.
A mainland company that
supplied a key component for
many commercial and
utility-scale solar
photovoltaic projects in
Hawaii has gone out of
business, leaving its
customers scrambling to come
up with contingency plans
for servicing the devices,
which are critical to the
operation of PV systems.
The battle over gun control
is playing out across the
nation as well as in
Washington D.C., with towns
and states considering gun
laws they say will protect
their residents' rights to
bear firearms at a time when
many fear the federal
government will enforce
weapons bans.
The Law
Center to Prevent Gun
Violence reports more than
1,100 gun-related bills have
been introduced in recent
months on the state level.
The Conclave’s Top 10: Three
Are Frontrunners for Pope
North Korea: New Belligerent
Rhetoric Could Lead to
Conflict
Iran: Mounting Evidence That
Sanctions Have Failed
Egyptian Police in
Crosshairs After Soccer
Rulings Upheld
Russia’s Naval Base in
Syria: Weak Link in Putin’s
Naval Expansion Plan
British Pound Battered by
Waves of Uncertainty
Italian Political Turmoil
Poses Difficult Choices for
EU
Yemen: Far From Stable a
Year After Saleh
Dr. Ben Carson, Presidential
Medal of Freedom winner and
legendary neurosurgeon, is
now in the spotlight for his
keynote address to the
National Prayer Breakfast on
Feb. 7. It’s not brain
surgery to figure out why.
Most notable was his
criticism of Obamacare, one
of the worst federal laws in
decades, and one which,
before its complete
implementation, is already
destroying our economy on a
massive scale.
Thousands of protesters marched in the
Japanese capital on Sunday calling on the
government to shun nuclear power, a day
before the second anniversary of an
earthquake and tsunami that triggered the
world's worst atomic disaster in 25 years.
Japan is still coming to terms with the
disaster that ravaged its northeastern
region two years ago - the earthquake and
tsunami killed more than 15,000 people.
Several thousand people are still
unaccounted for.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned on
Thursday that time was of the essence if
Germany was to shift to renewable energy and
power intensive industries should expect
cuts to their benefits and exemptions.
Merkel's ambitious switch to green energy
from nuclear, known as the 'Energiewende,'
is seen as a key domestic policy of her
second term. Renewables are expected to
account for 35 percent of German power in
2020 and 80 percent by 2050.
Many of the significant
safety lapses at U.S.
nuclear power plants in 2012
happened because plant
owners—and often the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission
(NRC)—either tolerated known
problems or failed to
address them adequately,
according to a report
released today by the Union
of Concerned Scientists.
UCS, a nonprofit,
nonpartisan science-based
organization, has been
evaluating nuclear plant
safety for more than 40
years.
As many utilities look
to increase their wind and
solar generation, they need
to know how to best mix the
power in with other sources
of electricity. The U.S.
National Renewable Energy
Laboratory in Golden, Colo.,
is completing a new test
facility, powered by
sophisticated computers, to
model how utilities can make
increased use of renewables
without hurting reliability.
Dan Arvizu, NREL director,
talked with me about the
project and its importance.
In the United
States, a federal Investment Tax Credit
(ITC) has been an attractive lure for
investors in solar projects. However, the
ITC was given a limit: it is designed to
phase out in 2016.
The 30 per cent tax credit that currently
provides the policy incentive driving
record-breaking investment in solar projects
in the United States takes six years to
receive fully, beginning once a solar
project has been completed.
After three years of trying
to get a law passed by the
Vermont legislature to
require mandatory labeling
of genetically modified
organisms (GMOs), Vermonters
are once again up against a
governor who continues to
run scared from threats of a
lawsuit by Monsanto and its
gene giant allies.
Vermonters are beginning to
wonder: What’s the governor
really afraid of?
The rate increase effort by
the power supplier to 12
rural electric cooperatives
in New Mexico, including
Otero County Electric
Cooperative, is heating up.
Wildlife poachers now are
well organized criminal
syndicates, and in response,
wildlife law enforcement
officers from around the
world convened in Bangkok
Thursday for the first
global meeting of wildlife
enforcement networks.
The seeds were able to resist and kill
the common American Bollworm cotton pest,
making them an instant hit, with 85 percent
of cotton grown in India being
Monsanto-controlled Bt cotton by 2009.
However, the seeds were expensive, and
spiralling prices (coupled with planting
restrictions from the multinationals selling
the seeds) led to farmers approaching money
lenders for hefty loans that eventually
turned into unmanageable debt. Almost
300,000 cotton workers have committed
suicide to date, some of them by drinking
the same insecticides they were sold by
multinationals
Italian architectural firm
Traverso-Vighy and the
Department of Physics at the
University of Padua have
teamed up to create an
innovative zero-energy home
dubbed “Tvzeb.” Located in
the woodlands a few
kilometers from the historic
center of Vicenza, the home
combines the use of recycled
materials, geothermal and
solar energy generation, LED
lighting and wall and roof
insulation made from 40,000
recycled plastic bottles.
What is zero waste? In
manufacturing zero waste's
goal is to reuse left over
materials from the
manufacturing of products,
putting them back into the
process to manufacture new
products. Zero waste can
also be carried out when a
manufacturer of a product
that is recyclable takes it
back to its facility to
reuse recycled product in
the production of a new
similar product. This
closely resembles circular
economy, but not completely,
because all older products
cannot be brought back for
feed for reproduction, due
to possible hazardous and
toxic contaminants, asbestos
being one.
March 8, 2013
The Obama White House is cutting $65 billion in the sequester, but
it could easily leave or torch 750,000 pieces of major military
hardware — worth $36 billion — in Afghanistan after U.S. troops pull
out by the end of next year.
—25 Times More Than 1995
Estimate—
Technically recoverable oil
resources are those
producible using currently
available technology and
industry practices. USGS is
the only provider of
publicly available estimates
of undiscovered technically
recoverable oil and gas
resources.
Sixty-thousand federal
employees responsible for
securing the nation’s
borders and facilitating
trade will be furloughed for
as many as 14 days starting
next month because of $85
billion in cross-government
spending cuts.
The
federal government notified
the workers on Thursday..
Once considered a low value
by-product of oil refining
and natural gas processing,
used primarily in home
heating and in industry,
propane is now being used as
a fuel in some new school
buses and trucks around the
country.
ast year, the team drilled through almost
4km (2.34 miles) of ice to reach the lake
and retrieve samples.
Vostok is thought to have been cut off
from the surface for millions of years.
This has raised the possibility that such
isolated bodies of water might host
microbial life forms new to science.
Environmentalists and
tribal activists are crying
foul on a mining proposal on
sacred land in Arizona
that’s been resurrected for
the eighth year in Congress.
Think the jets to Europe and
Latin America are packed?
Try the ships carrying jet
fuel.
The bills would amend
Minnesota's 30-year-old law
limiting solar units to 40
kilowatts and expand the
limit to 1,000 kW, or 1
megawatt. The bill also
would expand opportunities
for small businesses to
install solar projects and
would set minimum solar
electricity generation
standards for utilities.
Business executives
are significantly less
pessimistic about the U.S.
economy and their own
businesses’ prospects than
they were at the end of
2012, according to the first
quarter AICPA Economic
Outlook Survey, which polls
chief executive officers,
chief financial officers,
controllers and other
certified public accountants
in U.S. companies who hold
executive and senior
management accounting roles.
California regulators have
expanded the state's
California Solar Initiative
(CSI) Thermal Program in an
effort to provide enhanced
incentives for solar heating
and cooling technologies.
Asked by IHS Vice Chairman
Daniel Yergin, what lessons
he could offer the energy
industry from the cyber
attack on Saudi Aramco last
August, that company’s
president and CEO, Khalid
al-Falih warned participants
against underestimating
their dependence on their
information technology and
systems.
The Wall Street Journal
published an alarmist piece
yesterday depicting
California's electrical grid
as the victim of a 'looming
crisis' brought on by the
state's 'growing reliance'
on wind and solar.
Renewable energy journalist
Osha Gray Davidson recently
released a book called Clean
Break, detailing the German
Energiewende
(translation: energy
change). It’s a story of
how the Germans
systematically shifted to
clean energy, finding as
they proceeded that the
possibilities were greater,
the costs lower, and the
benefits for ordinary
citizens more prodigious
than anyone could have
forecast.
Reflecting his intent to
tackle climate change in his
second term, President Obama
picked two Washington
veterans who've been
wrestling with such issues
for years.
An Egyptian court on
Wednesday ordered the
suspension of parliamentary
elections scheduled to begin
in April, opening a legal
battle likely to delay the
vote and deepening the
political crisis between the
Islamist president and his
opponents that has polarized
the nation for months.
Naomi Klein speaks with
writer, spoken-word artist,
and indigenous academic
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
about “extractivism,” why
it’s important to talk about
memories of the land, and
what’s next for Idle No
More.
A dark realm far beneath the
Earth's surface is a
surprisingly rich home for
tiny worms and "zombie
microbes" that may hold
clues to the origins of
life, scientists said on
Monday...
"It's very possible that
there's a deep microbial
biosphere that goes down
more than 10 km (6 miles),
maybe 20,"..
“It’s impossible to give
somebody cancer,” said David
Samadi, M.D., vice chairman
of the Department of Urology
and Chief of Robotics and
Minimally Invasive Surgery
at the Mount Sinai School of
Medicine in New York City.
I suspect the reason is more
about the marketing of drugs
and the popularity of
“anti-aging” medicine than
any scientific evidence that
men experience menopause.
I do not agree with
the concept of anti-aging –
aging is an important part
of the human experience. To
deny that fact and try to
fight aging is to go against
nature.
Crop-friendly snowfall will
be moving from the Northern
Plains into the central and
eastern Midwest overnight
Monday and Tuesday, leaving
up to an additional six to
eight inches of snow, an
agricultural meteorologist
said on Monday.
The Department of Energy on Wednesday put
forward a long-term plan to extract and ship
low-level radioactive waste from leaking
tanks at Washington state's Hanford Nuclear
Reservation to a dump in New Mexico.
During February 2013,
ENSO-neutral continued
although SSTs remained below
average across the eastern
half of the equatorial
Pacific Ocean. The Niño 3.4
index remained near -0.5oC,
while the Niño 3 index
became less negative as the
month progressed
s you view these, rather than just blame
it on “global warming“, which has been the
propaganda cry to bring in carbon taxes and
other globalist totalitarian measures, bear
in mind the following:
- Man-made weather manipulations, such
as by HAARP, Chemtrails, etc…, are
surely partially to blame
- The earth is a living entity, and is
responding to the havoc man is reaping
on its surface
- While the mean temperature of the
earth might be in decline over the past
16 years, the extremes (which create
that average) seem to be increasing:
e.g. record-breaking lows in U.S. and
UK, with record-breaking highs in
Australia; snow in Israel.
- The sun cycles also have a large
influence on earth temperatures and
weather and seismic activity (See Mitch
Batros’ Earthchanges.net)
The Federal Reserve's aggressive monetary
stimulus will make it harder for the U.S.
central bank to engineer a smooth retreat
from its unconventional policies, a top Fed
official said on Tuesday.
"I fear that small mistakes (could have)
large consequences," said Jeffrey Lacker,
President of the Federal Reserve Bank of
Richmond and an inflation hawk who has been
skeptical of central bank bond buying.
The nation's largest bank holding
companies have continued to improve their
ability to withstand an extremely adverse
hypothetical economic scenario and are
collectively in a much stronger capital
position than before the financial crisis,
according to the summary results of bank
stress tests announced by the Federal
Reserve on Thursday.
The price of electricity paid by
Americans has increased in the last ten
years, as utilities have passed the cost of
system upgrades on to consumers, but those
investments haven’t made the grid more
reliable, according to a new study from the
Associated Press and the consulting
firms Ventyx and PA .
Though the cost of power itself has
fallen in recent years, the AP found that
customers in the US are spending 43 percent
more on electricity than they did in 2002.
Icelanders pride themselves on that
sustainability — that ability to survive,
all on its own, far removed from Europe and
the U.S. A recent film, Future of Hope,
highlights the country’s sustainability
goals, which include growing its own food
and preserving its striking natural beauty,
among other endeavors.
But the country is weighing a difficult
choice right now as it considers what to do
with that abundant geothermal energy it is
so lucky to have.
Great white sharks off the coast of
California gained protection on Friday as
regulations took effect designating them
candidates for future listing under the
state's Endangered Species Act.
The world's largest predatory fish has
been off-limits to commercial and sport
fishing under California law since 1994. But
great whites, particularly as juveniles, are
still caught as unintentional "bycatch" in
gill-net fishing for halibut, swordfish and
white sea bass off California and Mexico's
Baja Peninsula.
Listen carefully to the comments of
current leaders such as Vice President
Biden, Secretary Kerry, and the Commander of
CENTCOM - as well as to icon of U.S.
national security policy such as Henry
Kissinger - and to former senior White House
advisors such as Dennis Ross and Elliot
Abrams, and this is what you will hear:
-
According to a scientific review, the
practice of using a type of starch
intravenously to replace lost blood
volume in critically ill patients is
based on studies “loaded with fraudulent
data,” and may increase their risk of
death or kidney failure
-
According to a British poll from last
year, more than one in 10 scientists and
doctors claimed to have witnessed
colleagues deliberately fabricating data
in order to get their research published
A report on US spending in
Iraq released today found
that of the $60 billion
spent there, at least $8
billion, or 13.3 percent of
it, was wasted.
The highly radioactive fuel
rods in nuclear power plants
are moved from the reactor
core to cooling pools when
they are “spent” and are
replaced by fresh fuel to
drive the nuclear chain
reaction that generates
electricity. You are right
that spent fuel pools have
raised safety concerns
because an event like a
severe accident or terrorist
attack that caused a loss of
water from the pool could
result in a self-sustaining
fire that would damage the
fuel and could cause a
massive radiological
release.
Converting gas from human waste into
energy will be one of the goals of a $3.1
million upgrade at the Medford sewage
treatment plant in Central Point.
The new generator will produce about
10,500 kilowatt hours a month, or enough
energy to run 11 homes. In 10 years, the
power output is expected to rise because of
increased methane production. A typical
American home uses 958 kilowatt hours a
month.
John Rohner's explanation of the raid
portrays a police state coming in to
confiscate their engines, IP, working
documents, and to freeze their bank account,
thus making it impossible to continue as a
business. He makes it sound like
Inteligentry was ready to demonstrate a
working engine [super improbable] to the
stockholder's meeting coming up later this
month. And now, that won't happen, not
because of John, but because of the police
state out to stop any technology that might
pose a challenge to the powers that be.
As organizations around the
world search for ways to
ensure that impoverished
communities have dependable
access to drinking water, a
new concern has surfaced:
Just who will own the rights
to managing that water
access in the years to come?
The stock market’s roar to
record highs Tuesday
reflected the Federal
Reserve’s massive easing
campaign, not the strength
of the U.S. economy, says
financial commentator Robert
Wiedemer, best-selling
author of "Aftershock."
Words like these should fire
up indignation in the hearts
of every American patriot.
And yet, should we really be
surprised?
It's been a rough few years for the coal
industry, with President Obama and
environmental groups seemingly bent on
driving it out of business. But for coal,
all the world's a stage -- and a market.
While Mr. Obama has vowed to keep
ratcheting up the regulation of coal-fired
power plants in the U.S., forcing hundreds
to close, nations from Europe to the Far
East are hungry for coal, and their demand
is only going to get stronger in the years
ahead as more nations turn to coal as a
primary source of power.
Highlights this week include: nine
mainstream outlets cover the NASA "nuclear
reactor in your basement" story; Budapest
University: Ni-H systems; George Miley up
for another vote; QuantumHeat introduces
Delta Pyro; Swedish Defence Materiel
Administration finances rudimentary
experiments with Ni-H.
When nations declare
independence from the
domination of other nations
it is often within the
context of the carnage of
bloody confrontations, which
tends to get the attention
of international media (the
old adage in the news
business "if it bleeds it
leads" really does apply).
However, when nations
declare independence
peacefully it often goes
unnoticed. Such was the case
recently in Spain with the
declaration of sovereignty
by Catalonia.
Grilled hot dogs and
sausages may be tasty treats
at ball games and picnics,
but a new study of nearly
450,000 people finds that
eating too much processed
meat might shave years off
your life.
It’s probably too late to fix the damage
done to healthcare and stop the destruction
of private health insurance over the next
year in the United States, according to
economist and author John Lott.
“I don’t think [President Barack] Obama’s
willing to do the things that are necessary
to fix it,”...
On Wednesday, Mr Hollande
said that the "final phase"
of the French intervention
"will last through March and
from April there will be a
decrease in the number of
French soldiers in Mali as
African forces will take
over, supported by the
Europeans".
Contradictory trends are
currently pushing the
polysilicon industry to
simultaneously restrict
production volumes while
continuing to add new
capacity.
Most Americans support the
idea of cutting federal
spending across the board,
but insist defense programs
be kept off limits when
trimming the government's
budget, according to a new
Washington Post/ABC News
poll.
More than 110,000 clean energy and
transportation jobs were created in 2012
thanks to more than 300 projects in the
U.S., according to a report by Environmental
Entrepreneurs (E2).
California, North Carolina and Florida
led the nation with clean energy jobs
created in 2012, followed by Illinois,
Connecticut, Arizona, New York, Michigan,
Texas and Oregon.
Chief among the niches that can help
position the state as a leader is
distributed energy generation systems --
systems that can combine renewable energy
and energy storage in one spot, on site, and
can either tap into the power grid or be
independent of it.
Hidden 1,000 feet beneath
the surface of the Rocky
Mountains lies the largest
untapped oil reserve in the
world.
It is more
than 2 TRILLION barrels. On
August 8, 2005 President
Bush mandated its
extraction.
In three
and a half years of high oil
prices none has been
extracted.
With this
motherload of oil, why are
we still fighting over
off-shore drilling?
...public comment is vital
to keep the NOSB accountable
in the face of an
increasingly cozy
relationship between NOSB
and Big Farma, and a serious
dilution of organic
standards. For example, the
list of synthetic
ingredients that are allowed
in Certified Organic
products is growing. As we
reported previously, in
2002, the NOSB allowed only
72 chemicals. Since then,
over 250 more chemicals have
been added.
The White House issued a
two-sentence response on
Thursday to a 13-hour
filibuster led by Sen. Rand
Paul over whether the
president is authorized to
use a weaponized drone to
kill U.S. citizens not
engaged on combat on
American soil.
Washington, D.C.'s, renowned
cherry trees, a gift from
Japan 101 years ago, are
expected to hit their peak
bloom at the end of this
month, coinciding with the
early days of the National
Cherry Blossom Festival, a
festival spokeswoman said on
Monday.
The Pentagon is
investigating allegations
linking the US military to
human rights abuses in Iraq
by police commando units who
operated a network of
detention and torture
centres.
The independent analysis
released by the Institute
for Energy Economics and
Financial Analysis found
that the once profitable
50-year-old power plant's
earnings before interest,
taxes, depreciation and
amortization are plummeting
due to a "perfect storm of
market conditions" that are
projected to continue at
least through 2020.
The use of new and
existing approaches to draw
more private capital into
the U.S. mortgage market is
at the heart of regulators'
and politicians' agendas in
2013. Fitch sees the
potential for some of these
tools to be effective in
gradually reducing the
dominant role of
government-sponsored
enterprises (GSEs) in
housing finance.
There are currently 5
numbered sunspot regions on
the disk. slight chance for
an M-class flare on days one
and three (07 Mar, 09
Mar) and expected to be very
low with a chance for a
C-class flares and a slight
chance for an M-class flare
on day two (08 Mar).
The geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet to
unsettled levels on day one
(07 Mar) and quiet levels on
days two and three (08 Mar,
09 Mar).
“Every American has the right to know
when their government believes that it is
allowed to kill them,” he remarked.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) began the
filibuster Wednesday morning amid the
nomination of John Brennan as the next
director of the CIA. He began the filibuster
because U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder
said Tuesday the United States could
“hypothetically” use lethal military force
against American citizens in “an
extraordinary circumstance.”
Proponents of a House bill to set a new
standard for a chemical in mine runoff
touted it as a boon to the coal industry.
Opponents panned it as opening the door
to poison fish and, ultimately, people.
The West Virginia Legislature held a
public forum on Monday regarding the
proposed House Bill 2579 whose topic is the
amount of Selenium allowed in state waters.
The House Committee on the Judiciary passed
the bill out of committee and will it was
read for the first time before the House
members on Wednesday.
The Obama administration's push for
reducing emissions that fuel climate change
have many in the environmental and energy
sectors bracing for what may come next.
The Environmental Protection Agency is
set to release new rules for greenhouse gas
emissions from new power plants by month's
end. Those rules are less likely to have an
impact locally but are bringing increased
attention to the potential for new rules
affecting existing coal-fired power plants.
Supermassive black holes are
the largest known objects of
their type, with masses
millions or billions times
the mass of our sun. It is
believed that all most, if
not all, galaxies contain an
SBH at their center. SBHs
are surrounded by an
accretion disk of dust and
gas, which represents matter
falling into the black hole.
Amid improving
expectations for revenue
growth, technology CFOs
point to a steadying economy
and increased consumer
demand as key drivers of
growth in 2013.
Want to know your chances of
dying in the next 10 years?
Here are some bad signs:
getting winded walking
several blocks, smoking, and
having trouble pushing a
chair across the room.
How Israel’s Missile Defense
is Changing the Rules
Warburton: Euro Appreciation
Could Foil European Recovery
Bombings Signal Rebel
Divisions Over Thai Peace
Talks
Venezuela: Political
Turmoil, Opportunities After
Chavez
Turkey: Peace Accord Could
End 30-Year Uprising
Slovenia Rejects Austerity,
Increasing Risk of New
Fiscal Crisis
Over ten years ago, the EPA finally began
phasing out some of the dangerous chemicals
used in common home and garden
pesticides--chemicals that were linked to
cancer, nervous system abnormalities,
autoimmune disorders, and more.
The only problem is they replaced it with
something just as dangerous.
The House, as expected, passed the
Continuing Resolution to fund government for
the rest of the year. H.R. 933 now moves to
the Senate for consideration.
There is a quiet, but important, debate
ahead. The $984 billion spending bill locks
into place the sequester amounts for the
remainder of the year (although it opens up
a little flexibility for the Defense
Department and veterans programs).
There are now more deer in Britain than
at any time since the Ice Age, the
scientists said.
Without natural predators, populations
are continuing to rise, causing a serious
threat to biodiversity. High numbers of deer
can threaten woodland birds, carry
infections such as Lyme disease, damage
crops and cause road traffic accidents.
Treasury departments
have coped with tight
budgets in the five years
since the financial crisis.
But as U.S. economic
indicators pick up, there
are signs that treasury
budget constraints are
easing. According to the
Greenwich Market Pulse, U.S.
Corporate Treasurers Seen
Opening Their Wallets, of
177 finance executives, more
than a third of companies
increased the budget
allocated to their treasury
department this year. This
is allowing treasury
departments to increase the
level of automation and be
more strategic in their
activities.
Despite the efforts of the
Federal Reserve to use easy
monetary policy to boost
jobs, the country's economy
is stuck in "neutral" more
than three years after the
end of the recession, a top
Fed official said.
Consumer spending reportedly
improved across the country
and was led by strength in
auto sales and
tourism-related spending.
Manufacturing improved in
most Districts
Housing market activity
continued to strengthen
Labour market conditions
generally improved
Inflationary pressures
remained modest
Despite concerns that the US
may be losing out in its
clean energy trade
relationship with China, a
new report from the Pew
Charitable Trusts found that
the US holds a trade surplus
of more than $1.6 billion
over the Asian economic
powerhouse in solar, wind
and energy smart
technologies.
Freddie Mac (OTCQB:
FMCC) yesterday
released the results of its
Primary Mortgage
Market Survey®
(PMMS®), showing average
fixed mortgage rates largely
holding steady from the
previous week, remaining
near their 65-year record
lows, and continuing to
provide support for the
housing recovery.
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul
Volcker said U.S. central bank officials may
find it difficult to rein in their historic
stimulus at the appropriate time because
“there is a lot of liquor out there now.”
“At some point when the worm turns and
the party is getting under way, to use that
old analogy, at what point do you begin
retreating?”
According to Brook and his
team, a truly global tipping
point must include an impact
large enough to spread
across the entire world,
hitting various continents,
in addition to causing some
uniform response.
"These criteria, however,
are very unlikely to be met
in the real world," says
Brook.
March 5, 2013
-
Pancreatic cancer is a devastatingly
fatal form of cancer, and is typically
regarded as the most deadly and
universally rapid-killing form of cancer
-
A 15-year-old freshman high school
student, Jack Andraka, invented a
dipstick-type sensor to detect
pancreatic, ovarian, and lung cancer
that is 168 times faster, 26,000 times
less expensive, and 400 times more
sensitive than the current standard of
detection. The test costs three cents,
takes five minutes, and has a 90 percent
accuracy rate
Members of the U.S. Nuclear
Regulatory Commission
received tongue lashings
from legislators Thursday
over a set of proposed rule
changes made in response to
the Fukushima meltdown. The
testifying commissioners
received criticism from both
sides of the issue,
including warnings about the
cost of new regulations and
rebukes about the delays in
implementing them, The
Hill reports.
Eighteen-year-old Taylor
Wilson has designed a
compact nuclear reactor that
could one day burn waste
from old atomic weapons to
power anything from homes
and factories to space
colonies.
Modern anthropology
has finally taken on the
study of humans in all their
complexity, urban as well as
rural, white as well as
brown, but those of us who
have always been classified
as data still have some raw
sores from the old days.
Within my lifetime,
anthropology still flirted
with the socially
constructed fiction of
“race” as if it reflected
biological reality and
therefore destiny.
Nuclear materials travel
along the highways on a
regular basis, but more
transports are anticipated
along the Interstate 81
corridor in the next
year-and-a-half, prompting
area emergency managers to
offer additional training
for their teams and other
first responders.
Facing criticism from
Republican lawmakers,
Chairman Ben Bernanke stood
behind the Federal Reserve's
low-interest-rate policies
Wednesday and sought to
reassure members of Congress
that the central bank has a
handle on the risks. He also
said unemployment probably
won't reach the 6 percent
level until 2016.
The U.S. economy might be
“dead in the water” without
the stimulus provided by the
Federal Reserve under
Chairman Ben Bernanke,
according to Warren Buffett,
CEO of Berkshire Hathaway.
“I think very cheap
money makes things happen,
it makes asset values
higher. When asset values
are higher, people do have a
greater propensity to
spend,” Buffett told CNBC.
“I think Bernanke has
sort of carried the load
himself during this period.”
The notion of Federal
Reserve independence is a
myth, and that’s clearly
illustrated by the
relationship of Ben
Bernanke’s Fed with the
White House, says Gerald
O'Driscoll, a senior fellow
at the Cato Institute.
“It is difficult to
portray the Fed under
Chairman Ben Bernanke as
operating independently in
any meaningful sense,” he
writes in The Wall Street
Journal.
Stricter gun laws won’t make
most Americans feel safer, a
new CBS “60 Minutes”/Vanity
Fair poll reveals.
The survey also found
Americans uncomfortable with
the idea of arming
schoolteachers. And when it
comes to protecting their
homes, more Americans picked
a firearm for security over
installing an alarm system
or a having a dog.
Almost a decade after Kansas wrestled
with the merits of evolution, the
Legislature now grapples with the politics
of environmental science.
As they move to ease often expensive
renewable-energy mandates, lawmakers also
debate the climate-change worries that help
motivate such regulations.
Coal is likely to remain the
dominant fuel in the power
generation mix in the US
Rockies and Southwest going
forward as the home of the
cheapest coal in the country
-- Powder River Basin --
continues to hold an immense
price advantage over other
fuels, even as aggressive
regulations and state
mandates ensure that natural
gas and renewables will make
considerable inroads.
The first comet discovered
this year, Comet C/2013 A1,
is currently projected to
pass within about 23,000
miles (37,000 km) of the
surface of Mars late in
2014. While this event in
itself promises spectacular
views for astronomers, the
uncertainty of the comet's
orbit includes a significant
chance of an impact on Mars.
If this happens, the impact
would be hundreds of times
more powerful than the
asteroid impact that wiped
out the dinosaurs on Earth.
Rapid cropland
expansion is the main cause
of biodiversity loss in
tropical countries, a study
by UNEP's (the UN
Environment Programme) World
Conservation Monitoring
Centre and the Cambridge
Conservation Initiative has
found.
Renewable energy is quickly
becoming the way forward for
U.S. energy supply. The
benefits of renewable
energy, such as improved
national and economic
security, have wide-ranging
appeal. But this technology
is expensive, and
politicians, utilities,
analysts and manufacturers
all have their own opinions
about how to pay for it.
The Democratic National
Committee has no intention
of repaying the country’s
largest electrical power
company for the
unprecedented $10 million
line of credit it guaranteed
to help a local host
committee fund last
September’s Democratic
National Convention in
Charlotte, N.C.
Technical and fundamental
factors are bullish for the
dollar, says Bilal Hafeez,
currency strategist at
Deutsche Bank.
While
some commentators say the
Federal Reserve’s massive
easing program has set off a
currency war, the Dollar
Index, which measures the
currency’s value against six
major currencies, has gained
4 percent over the past
year.
Whether tied to the larger
utility grid or islanded
from it, microgrids are
becoming an increasingly
common way for campuses,
communities, and other large
power users to harness the
benefits of distributed
power generation. Many of
these systems are deployed
by end-use customers who are
not getting the quality of
energy services they desire
from their host distribution
utilities.
Flathead Electric Cooperative's Kalispell
campus will be the first test site for the
Zinc Air Inc. battery storage technology, it
was announced Friday.
Zinc Air has been working on the
production of a battery for storing and
generating power at its Columbia Falls plant
since 2009. This will be the company's first
test run of its technology in the field.
As the grim reality of
Obamacare starts to set in,
more and more people are
realizing they are going to
have to take charge of their
own health care. You simply
cannot rely on the
government or your insurance
company to do right by you.
They hover over Hollywood film sets and
professional sports events. They track
wildfires in Colorado, survey Kansas farm
crops and vineyards in California. They
inspect miles of industrial pipeline and
monitor wildlife, river temperatures and
volcanic activity.
They also locate marijuana fields,
reconstruct crime scenes and spot illegal
immigrants breaching U.S. borders.
The energy game is rigged in
favor of fossil fuels
because we omit the
environmental and health
costs of burning coal, oil
and natural gas from their
prices. Subsidies manipulate
the game even further.
According to conservative
estimates from the Global
Subsidies Initiative and the
International Energy Agency
(IEA), governments around
the world spent more than
$620 billion to subsidize
fossil fuel energy in 2011:
some $100 billion for
production and $523 billion
for consumption. This was 20
percent higher than in 2010,
largely because of higher
world oil prices.
When Gov. Jerry Brown called
on his fellow governors at a
conference in Washington
last week to embrace a
California-style pursuit of
cleaner air, he was doing
more than reinforcing the
state's image as an
environmental trailblazer.
He was trying to protect its
economy.
People in the area worst
affected by Japan's
Fukushima nuclear accident
two years ago have a
slightly higher risk of
developing certain cancers,
the World Health
Organization said on
Thursday.
-
According to a recent paper by South
Dakota State University researchers,
grasslands in the “Western corn belt” is
being converted to grow corn and soy at
a rate "comparable to deforestation
rates in Brazil, Malaysia, and
Indonesia”
-
This trend may have a significant impact
on global climate change, and
subsequently, our ability to secure our
food supply long-term. According to
another research paper, converting
sections of Midwestern corn fields into
pasture for cows could reduce greenhouse
gas emissions from agriculture by as
much as 36 percent
Kamakura Corporation
reported today that the
Kamakura index of troubled
public companies ended the
month of February at 7.87%,
an increase of 1.03% since
the end of January. The
index reflects the
percentage of the Kamakura
31,000 public firm universe
that has a default
probability over 1%. An
increase in the index
reflects deteriorating
credit quality. The index
showed a steady
deterioration throughout the
month.
"Secretary of State John
Kerry promised on Sunday to
give Egypt $190 million to
help the government pay its
bills but said more money
would require that Egyptian
President Mohamed Morsy move
quickly to resolve the
country's differences with
the International Monetary
Fund, reform its security
services and take steps to
provide equal rights for
women and religious
minorities."
A new
study offers more compelling
evidence that life
expectancy for some U.S.
women is actually falling, a
disturbing trend that
experts can't explain.
You’ve stashed away wheat,
sugar, and oil, and you’ve
canned more quarts of beans,
peaches, tomatoes, and pears
than you care to remember.
If you’re like me, though,
one item you might have
overlooked is eggs. We often
take this inexpensive,
widely available staple food
for granted, but what would
happen if you didn’t have
access to a store or a
chicken coop?
Ohio has been on a positive
renewable energy track since
alternative energy standards
were put into place in 2008
and recent voter polling
shows that many Ohio
residents support clean
energy policy and investment
in the state.
In one generation (from the
40s to the 80s) the giant
leaps in inventions and
industry either propelled
most to the cities or
brought such modern
conveniences to our daily
lives that the "old ways"
were quickly forgotten. Why
go through the toil and
labor of growing a garden
when you could go to the
grocery store and purchase
your vegetables from a bin,
already picked and cleaned?
With the advent of TV
dinners, pre-cooked meals,
and fast food restaurants,
why bother to cook much at
all?
Minnesota Power officially
filed its "road map to a
cleaner energy future"
Friday with the Minnesota
Public Utilities Commission.
...has a new twist: the use
of more wind. That's because
of an extension on
production tax credits,
making its use an affordable
option.
When CU-Boulder scientists
turned on the instruments,
just a few days after
launch, they were shocked by
what they found: a third
storage ring radiation belt.
It is generally understood
that the inner and outer Van
Allen belts result from
different processes. The
inner belt, consisting
mainly of energetic protons,
is the product of the decay
of so-called albedo neutrons
which are themselves the
result of cosmic ray
collisions in the upper
atmosphere. The outer belt
consists mainly of
electrons. They are injected
from the geomagnetic tail
following geomagnetic
storms, and are subsequently
energized through
wave-particle interactions.
The new third belt has no
theory yet./p>
The national debt has
increased by more than $6
trillion since President
Barack Obama took office,
marking the largest increase
under any president in
history.
The Navajo Nation is
finally emerging from
Operation Winter Freeze, an
unprecedented
weather-related state of
emergency in which more than
3,000 homes lost water due
to frozen and broken pipes.
"We're always talking about
sustainability and being
independent," Tsutsui said.
"This goes hand in hand with
a lot of our initiatives.
It's definitely a step in
the right direction and we
look much forward to other
projects."
On January 23, 2013 Duke
Energy announced that it had
completed the Notrees
Battery Storage project in
Texas which now represents
the largest capacity battery
facility in North America.
Providing backup power for
the Notrees Windpower
project, this facility is
able to produce 36 MW of
power on demand whether or
not the wind is blowing.
This announcement
generated literally hundreds
of articles and blogs
claiming in essence that
battery backup for wind
generation facilities is now
a reality.
President Barack Obama has
begun contacting Republican
and Democratic senators in
search of a budget
compromise even as each
party blamed the other for
across-the-board cuts in
government spending.
Overstock.com will sever its
relationship with
Massachusetts-based
affiliates if legislation is
passed requiring it to
collect the state's sales
tax.
Public concern about
environmental issues hit a
20-year low last year, a
poll showed, as worries
about the aftermath of the
global financial crisis
overshadowed growing
evidence of man-made climate
change.
A fish caught near the
Fukushima nuclear plant
contained levels of
radioactivity 5,100 times
above the state-set safety
limit, Tokyo Electric Power
Co. said.
Dr. John Till has more than 30 years of
experience assessing risks from radiation
and chemicals, including time studying the
Savannah River Site.
So after reading a recent news report
about the concerns of some environmental
groups that SRS could become a disposal
ground for the nation's high-level nuclear
waste from commercial reactors, he took
notice.
Wind energy led the pack
with six new units providing
958 MW, followed by 16 new
solar units generating 267
MW of electricity and six
new biomass units for 6 MW
of new generation. Nuclear,
hydro and all fossil fuel
sources, including coal,
oil, and natural gas offered
no new electrical generating
capacity last month.
There are currently 7
numbered sunspot regions on
the disk. Solar activity is
likely to be low. The
geomagnetic field has been
at quiet levels for the past
24 hours. Solar wind speed,
as measured by the ACE
spacecraft, reached a peak
speed of 516 km/s
When investing in a wind
project, developers want to
reduce as many risks and
uncertainties as possible in
order to get the best
business case. Measuring
wind farm characteristics to
achieve this goal has been a
limited practice. For the
first time, research results
are quantifying how targeted
measurement campaigns can
reduce uncertainty and
improve the value of wind
farms.
Response crews have stopped
oil spewing into the Gulf of
Mexico from an inactive oil
and gas well that was struck
by a crew boat Tuesday
night.
Andre Taylor is working on
ways to lower energy's costs
and impacts on the planet
while increasing
opportunities to convert
fuel sources into
electricity.
Protection measures have
failed to stop around 100
million sharks being fished
every year and a third of
all shark species are now
threatened with extinction,
conservationists say.
Large movements in the
major currencies in recent
weeks reflect a multitude of
developments, from
recognition of the weak
growth outlook in the UK to
investor expectations of
anti-deflationary policies
in Japan. In an already
turbulent financial
environment, the interaction
of these forces presents an
additional complication for
currency-market prospects in
2013.
Tanque Verde Unified School
District has switched on a
multicampus solar energy
system built by Tucson-based
Solon Corp. that is expected
to offset much of the
district's daytime
electricity needs.
The Public Service
Commission will meet Tuesday
in Jackson to hear
residents' comments on the
proposed 18 percent
rate increase
Mississippi Power requested
this year.
A new State Department
report is the latest
evidence that the
long-delayed Keystone XL oil
pipeline from Canada should
be approved, supporters say.
The US may be importing Christmas toys,
iPads and “Gangnam Style” from Asia. But the
US is sending a rare gift to Asia over the
holidays: gasoline.
At least four cargoes carrying more than
1 million barrels–enough to fill up your SUV
tank 2 million times–have moved
recently from the US to Asia in a “reverse
arbitrage.”
Mali: Guerrilla Attack Could
Mean an Extended Stay for
France
Defense Expert: Military
Cuts Could Lead to
‘Catastrophe’ for West
Australia: Seeks
Transformation for Asian
Security Role
Rabil On Syria: Positive
Signs, But Peace Still A
Distant Hope
Paraguay Turns Conservative,
Reconsiders Mercosur
Pakistan: Turmoil to
Accompany Spring Elections
Former US Ambassador to
Vatican Lists Top 3 Pope
Contenders
Israel: Netanyahu Faces
Turmoil Forming New
Government
Greece: Eurozone Membership
Day of Reckoning Draws
Nearer
US fuel oil exports to the
Netherlands, Europe's
primary demand hub, were the
second-highest on record for
2012 but slowed in the
latter part of the year,
according to US data,
signaling a shifting dynamic
as domestic demand for the
low-sulfur form of the fuel
is on the way up. US exports
to the Netherlands last year
totaled 16.735 million
barrels, according to
federal Energy Information
Administration data released
Wednesday. That is the
second-highest level since
the EIA began tracking these
exports, surpassed only by
the 18.17 million barrels
sent to the Netherlands in
2011.
"A bipartisan group of
senators signed onto
legislation that would
strengthen gun trafficking
and straw purchasing laws by
making both federal crimes,
Senate Judiciary Chairman
Patrick Leahy announced
Monday. 'The practice of
straw purchasing is used for
one thing -- to put firearms
into the hands of those that
are prohibited by law from
having them. Many are then
used to further violent
crimes,' Leahy, D-Vt., said
in a statement."
A team led by the University
of Colorado Boulder looking
for clues about why Earth
did not warm as much as
scientists expected between
2000 and 2010 now thinks the
culprits are hiding in plain
sight -- dozens of volcanoes
spewing sulfur dioxide.
This week, Washington DC
unveiled the Sustainable DC
Plan, a very
substantial strategy to move
the district to a renewable
energy and cut greenhouse
gas emissions in half.
"It is clear that the water
industry needs to reframe
its thinking and embrace
innovation at all levels,"
said Cindy Wallis-Lage,
president of Black &
Veatch's global water
business. "To solve our
cities' future water
challenges, we need to be
smarter about how we create
policies and then plan and
deliver infrastructure."
The drop in personal
income last week got some
media attention,
particularly given that it
was the largest one-month
drop in 20 years.
On January 21st, our nation
listened as President Obama
made his second inaugural
speech. Thousands were in
attendance as he made
references to a variety of
topics including immigration
reform, gun violence, equal
pay for women, and of
course, climate change.
U.S. House Speaker John
Boehner this week appointed
former Rep. Heather Wilson,
R-N.M., to a new commission
that will recommend ways to
improve the performance of
the National Nuclear
Security Administration, the
federal agency that oversees
Sandia and Los Alamos
national laboratories in New
Mexico.
The rising cost of
construction of nuclear
power plants, combined with
the allure of cheap gas, has
lawmakers in Georgia and
Florida asking why
ratepayers should be on the
hook for expensive,
over-budget, past-due
projects, the Associated
Press reports.
This has nothing to do with
"should" or "should
not". This is just
my personal opinion.
But I want you to carry
a gun with you everywhere
you go.
I'm not
ordering you to do so, so
don't get bent out of shape
over my wish.
March 1, 2013
The People's Liberation Army
(PLA) of China calls the
electromagnetic spectrum
"the fifth domain of battle
space," putting cyberspace
on an equal footing with
ground, air, sea, and space.
Augmenting PLA efforts is a
legion of civilian
researchers and hackers
whose efforts are ostensibly
directed at repelling
electronic intruders. Now
that Pandora's box is open,
the United States fears that
it, too, may someday be on
the receiving end of an
effective attack. Hackers in
China have gathered
gigabytes of data on
industrial secrets, military
hardware, and government
strategy for political
negotiations.
Afghan President Hamid
Karzai, long a persistent
critic of the U.S. military
presence in his country, has
become increasingly involved
in constraining U.S. combat
operations. His late
February directive ordering
an end to U.S. Special
Forces operations in Wardak
province left the
strategically important area
largely undefended, creating
a significant opportunity
for the Taliban to reassert
control there, not far from
the capital of Kabul.
A British hobby pilot will
be flying high on recycled
plastic waste this summer.
Al-Qaida is on a
round-the-clock mission to
launch a new terrorist
attack on New York City,
former federal prosecutor
Andrew McCarthy said on the
20th anniversary of the
first World Trade Center
attack.
And only the
diligent work of eagle-eyed
law enforcement officials
has prevented another
tragedy, McCarthy told Steve
Malzberg on Newsmax TV’s
“The Steve Malzberg Show.’’
The bill would allow a subsidiary of
American Transmission Co. to have ownership
stake in the capacity of electricity along
power lines. Current law allows ATC to own
transmission lines but not the rights to
certain amounts of power.
Utilities around the country are
jockeying to build power lines to take
advantage of federal incentives and help
power companies deliver renewable energy and
low-cost power to population centers.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben
Bernanke strongly defended
the U.S. central bank's
monetary stimulus before
Congress on Tuesday, easing
financial market worries
over a possible early
retreat from bond buys.
The Fed chairman also
urged lawmakers to avoid
sharp spending cuts set to
go into effect on Friday,
which he warned could
combine with earlier tax
increases to create a
"significant headwind" for
the modest economic
recovery.
In 2011, more than 1 billion pounds of
post-consumer plastic bags and films were
collected for recycling in the United
States, according to a new report.
That's a 4 percent increase from 2010 and
a 55 percent increase from the 652.4 million
pounds collected in 2005, according to the
National Postconsumer Plastic Bag & Film
Recycling Report, released Feb. 25 by the
American Chemistry Council.
A bill that would make it
more attainable for biomass
companies to contract with
power companies in the state
will likely be signed into
law.
House Speaker John Boehner said the U.S.
House won’t act to replace automatic federal
spending cuts until the Senate “gets off
their ass” and passes a plan.
Boehner also accused President Barack
Obama of using the military as a “prop” to
campaign for a tax increase in the debate
over spending cuts that will take effect for
this fiscal year starting March 1.
“If the Senate acts, I’m sure the House
will act quickly,” Boehner told reporters in
Washington Tuesday. Boehner said Obama isn’t
“focused” on finding a solution to averting
the reductions.
A federal judge has agreed
with British oil company BP
that the 810,000 barrels of
oil the company recovered
from its 2010 spill site in
the Gulf of Mexico should
not be part of the court’s
determination of Clean Water
Act penalties.
The advantages of the site
seemed plain: Relentless,
hard-driving winds, shallow
shoals several miles
offshore on which to anchor
large turbines, and, perhaps
most importantly, a
left-leaning population
inclined to support what was
already viewed at the time
as an overdue migration away
from dirtier sources of
electricity.
The Centers for Disease
Control is warning doctors
that an untreatable
multidrug-resistant
“superbug” is emerging in
the United States...
The increased resistance and
rise in cases means health
care providers must “act
aggressively to prevent the
emergence and spread of
these unusual CRE
organisms,” the CDC said.
China's annual electricity
consumption in 2013 is
expected to grow about 7.5%
year on year to about 5,330
billion kWh, according to a
report Thursday from the
China Electricity Council.
In 2012, China consumed
4,960 billion kWh of
electricity, an increase of
5.5% from 2011.
Key Republicans in the US
House of Representatives and
the Senate decried claims
Wednesday that the federal
sequester could stall oil
and natural gas drilling,
calling them empty threats
from an Obama administration
that has been working for
years to slow down energy
production within the US.
Shale gas is getting a
lot of ink. So does
liquefied natural gas, or
LNG. But a third member of
the unconventional natural
gas family is coal bed
methane, which has not
gotten as much attention.
Its promise, though, could
be as great as that of its
cousins, although it too
faces stiff environmental
opposition.
Once again it’s government
and industry on one side,
and organic farmers on the
other.
Last Friday, the DC Court of
Appeals held that California
almond producers don’t
currently have the right to
even argue that the
USDA overstepped the bounds
of its authority with the
Almond Rule.
The UN climate change
negotiations in Doha, Qatar
last week did not result in
any strong international
treaties to curb carbon
dioxide (CO2) emissions or
reform the way the world
generates and uses energy,
but some minor progress was
made that can impact climate
change. Most notably, the 25
members of the Climate and
Clean Air Coalition agreed
to reduce the emissions of
three other greenhouse
gasses: black carbon, ozone
(O3) and methane (CH4).
For more than a decade, Progress Energy
Florida had a serious flaw in the safety
procedures at its Crystal River nuclear
plant.
If a major radiation leak had occurred,
nearby communities might not have found out
"in a timely manner," according to a U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission report issued
to the nation's nuclear plants this week.
People attending a
Washington event this week
may witness something almost
unheard of in political
circles: Republicans
praising a clean-energy
program supported by
President Barack Obama.
Questions continue to
surround the Fed’s eventual
exit from years of
quantitative easing. The
ultimate fate of what is to
become of the 3.5 - 4
trillion dollar portfolio of
securities (the expected
peak holdings of Fed’s
balance sheet) will
determine, among other
things, long-term interest
rates, mortgage rates,
corporate and US government
borrowing costs,
profitability of the banking
system, returns on pension
and insurance portfolios,
and even the value of the
dollar. In short, the exit
strategy will drive the
fixed income markets for
years to come.
An ax is scheduled to hit
the federal budget Friday:
Unless the White House and
Congress reach a budget deal
by then, automatic cuts will
carve $85 billion out of the
budget through Sept. 30 and
$1.2 trillion over the next
decade
On the same day that the
Energy Information Agency
reported the lowest US net
petroleum import dependence
since the early 90′s, the
same agency reported yet
another build in crude oil
stocks. The two aren’t
really linked: the import
dependence figure is from
December, and the stocks are
from last week. But it’s all
part of a decent level of
supply for the US.
eRC allows in-carrier and
retail stores to offer
instant-credit that a
customer can apply to the
purchase of a new phone. It
also allows carriers to make
money from their e-waste.
It’s a clichéd win-win
situation for both customers
and carriers. What does eRC
do with the devices
collected by in-store
operators and retail
programs? They are repaired
to "like new" quality and
resold. That keeps them out
of landfills.
On paper, there's one thing
to like about the ugly
spending cuts due to kick in
on Friday: $85 billion in
budget savings at a time
when Washington continues to
bleed red ink. In reality,
the so-called sequester is
likely to yield less than
half that much in the short
term.
BP Plc fostered a culture that put
cost-cutting over safety before the deadly
2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a noted
forensic engineer said in the first day of
testimony in the federal civil trial
centered on the disaster.
"There is ample evidence of intense
pressure within the system to save time and
money," said Bob Bea, co-founder of the
Center for Catastrophic Risk Management at
the University of California, Berkeley.
"With stress and pressure come sacrifices to
safety."
The company released its new
five-year global waste
reduction strategy. By 2016,
Ford aims to landfill only
13.4 pounds of waste per
vehicle, down from 22.7
pounds per vehicle in 2011.
In 2007, the company
landfilled a worldwide
average of 37.9 pounds of
waste per vehicle.
On the right side of the
racing fence you have your
combustion engine.
Politically incorrect to
some but a highly efficient
piece of engineering design
that transported millions
for the past hundred years
and kept Beijing smoggy
since 2008. On the left side
of the power debate, you
have your battery-electric
options. Heavy, costly and
slightly dangerous, this
mode is still in its
evolutionary infancy but is
making headway against its
dinosaur brethren.
The hulking hunk of steel
that towers over U.S. 1,
across the Indian River from
the Kennedy Space Center,
stands as a monument to one
utility's success -- and
another's failure. Come June
1, Florida Power and Light,
the state's largest power
company, plans to flip the
switch on the state's newest
natural gas plant. The
1,250-megawatt power
generator took just over two
years to build and will cost
FPL customers $970 million.
That's about $130 million
under budget. Duke Energy
customers could only wish to
be so lucky.
Recent retail numbers from
France are showing an
ongoing consumer recession
in spite of signs of
improvement in confidence
elsewhere in the EU. In fact
the EU economic sentiment
numbers today beat
expectations to the upside -
nothing to write home
about, but there are signs
of stabilization (for now).
Geothermal energy
development grew 5 percent
in the U.S. since March
2012, a number analysts say
points to a continued desire
for geothermal and renewable
energy sources.
The future growth of
electrical energy storage
(EES) systems and thermal
energy storage (TES)
systems, part of the energy
storage market in commercial
buildings, is waiting for
the regulatory tide to
change.
The “Ready for Hillary"
political action committee,
launched Jan. 25 to support
a possible run for the
presidency by Hillary
Clinton in 2016, has hired
its first senior official
and is set to bring on more
staff, a knowledgeable
source tells BuzzFeed, a
social and political news
website.
On
a vote of 286-138, the House
sent the bill, earlier
approved by the
Democratic-led Senate,
78-22, to President Barack
Obama to sign into law.
A federal strategy to consolidate spent
nuclear fuel from the nation's 104
commercial power reactors could send huge
volumes of radioactive waste to Savannah
River Site, according to a study released
Thursday.
"Because of its proximity to most of the
nation's reactors, access to ports, and its
nuclear material processing history,
Savannah River Site in South Carolina is
considered by some to be a prime candidate
for the interim storage and reprocessing of
spent power reactor fuel," wrote Bob
Alvarez, a senior scholar at the Institute
for Policy Studies.
If only this were fiction,
friends. Unfortunately, it's
not.
"The Telegraph
can disclose details of
activity at a
heavily-guarded Iranian
facility from which
international inspectors
have been barred for 18
months," reports the London
Telegraph. "The images,
taken earlier this month,
show that Iran has activated
the Arak heavy-water
production plant. Heavy
water is needed to operate a
nuclear reactor that can
produce plutonium, which
could then be used to make a
bomb. The images show signs
of activity at the Arak
plant, including a cloud of
steam that indicates
heavy-water production."
The sequester. Continued
Congressional gridlock.
Declining levels of venture
capital funding.
High-profile bankruptcies.
The boom in low-cost natural
gas. As the Obama
administration seeks to find
its footing for a second
term, there appear to be
plenty of reasons to hold a
very bleak outlook for clean
tech in the U.S. and beyond.
It would cost Japan's 10 nuclear power
plants about $10.87 billion to comply with
new safety standards, operators told an
Asahi Shimbun survey.
The safety standards relate to disaster
preparedness by nuclear power plant
operators. A draft of the standards prepared
last month by Japan's Nuclear Regulation
Authority requires operators to take broad
measures against natural disasters and
accidents.
Lake Tahoe is a large
freshwater lake in the
Sierra Nevada of the United
States. Visibility in Lake
Tahoe was about 100 feet in
the 1970s, but has since
declined. The main culprits
seem to be dirt, dust and
other fine particles. Lake
Tahoe’s clarity improved in
2012 for the second year in
a row, and its waters were
the clearest in 10 years,
according to University of
California, Davis,
scientists who study the
lake. Last year’s average
annual clarity level was
75.3 feet, or a 6.4-foot
improvement from 2011,
according to data released
today by the UC Davis Tahoe
Environmental Research
Center and the Tahoe
Regional Planning Agency.
It's hard to get excited about trash. All
counties are mandated by the state to manage
the disposal of their trash. It's a dirty
job, but it's got to be done.
What does get some government officials
and landfill operators excited is methane.
The EPA reports, "Landfill methane is
produced when organic materials (such as
yard waste, household waste, food waste, and
paper) are decomposed by bacteria under
anaerobic conditions (i.e., in the absence
of oxygen)."
The signs of rising water are everywhere
in this seaport city: yellow "Streets May
Flood" notices are common at highway
underpasses, in low-lying neighborhoods and
along the sprawling waterfront.
Built at sea level on reclaimed wetland,
Norfolk has faced floods throughout its
400-year history. But as the Atlantic Ocean
warms and expands, and parts of the city
subside, higher tides and fiercer storms
seem to hit harder than they used to.
Scientists interested in
doing experiments involving
the H5N1 avian influenza
virus and 14 other
potentially dangerous
biological agents face new
requirements to get funding
from the U.S. government.
The new rules are a direct
response to a global
controversy that erupted in
late 2011 after scientists
created H5N1 viruses that
some feared could spark a
deadly human pandemic. Such
changes please many, but
some advocates for tougher
biosecurity oversight aren't
happy. Meanwhile, other
researchers are resuming
their H5N1 work now that a
voluntary moratorium is
over.
As part of an
agreement with the U.S. EPA,
the owners of a tire
incinerator located in a
suburb of Chicago will close
the facility permanently.
Polish security researchers
have discovered yet more
zero-day vulnerabilities in
Java, the beleaguered Web
plug-in, that led to the
successful intrusion of
Facebook, Apple and
Microsoft in recent weeks.
Palo Verde Nuclear
Generating Station achieved
its 21st consecutive year in
2012 as the nation's largest
power producer. The 31.9
million megawatt-hours of
net production is the most
ever generated by Palo Verde
or by any other U.S. power
station of any kind. Palo
Verde is the only U.S.
generating facility to ever
produce more than 30 million
megawatt-hours in a year -
an operation accomplishment
the plant has achieved eight
times.
Environmental exposure to
bisphenol A, a chemical
found in plastics and
resins, may suppress a gene
vital to nerve cell function
and to the development of
the central nervous system,
finds new research led by
scientists at Duke Medicine.
There are currently 4
numbered sunspot regions on
the disk.
IB. Solar
Activity Forecast: Solar
activity is likely to be low
with a
slight chance for
an M-class flare on days
one, two, and three (01 Mar,
02 Mar, 03 Mar).
Reptiles have inhabited our
planet for more than 250
million years, and are
adapted to almost every part
of it. Yet when it comes to
conservation action,
reptiles all over the world
have been overlooked in
favour of more charismatic
animals. With only 35% of
described reptile species
evaluated for the IUCN
(International Union for the
Conservation of Nature) Red
List of Threatened Species,
no one knew to what extent
reptiles were being affected
by our current extinction
crisis.
In America and Europe, there
is a silent transfer of
wealth taking place, day by
day. Cash-strapped and
heavily indebted governments
are desperate to hold down
the interest rate at which
they borrow. Unfortunately,
this also means perennially
low interest rates for
savers: rates so low that
they do not match the rate
of inflation. Negative real
interest rates imply that
retirees must consume their
wealth in order to pay the
bills.
Thanks to advances in modern health care and medicines,
humans are healthier now in
their 70s than our ancestors
were in their 30s, according
to German researchers.
President Obama's massive
and voluble campaign against
the sequester has a deep
political motivation that is
not apparent on the surface.
He is engaging in a battle
he knows he'll lose.
Republicans are not going to
budge on agreeing to tax
hikes to avoid the
sequester's spending cuts,
and Democrats won't opt for
entitlement cuts to avoid
it, either. So why is he
fighting so hard when he has
no leverage and battling a
measure that will take
effect on March 1 if
Congress does nothing --
something it does rather
well?
City nets $350k per year
from farm
But unlike most farmland,
these fields are fertilized
with biosolids produced by
the city's wastewater
treatment process.
Royal Dutch Shell announced
yesterday that it was
setting "pause" on its
exploratory drilling
activities in the Arctic for
2013. Shell's operations are
currently under review by
the federal government after
the oil company suffered
numerous setbacks during
last year's opening attempt
to drill exploratory wells
in the Beaufort and Chukchi
Seas, including running its
drilling rig aground on
Sitkalidak Island in
southern Alaska in late
December.
The Obama administration is
linking improvements in the
electrical grid with the
increasing occurrence of
aberrant weather patterns,
all associated with climate
change. To that end, it has
just released its “progress
report” detailing the steps
that it has made and will
continue to make to achieve
its goals.
[Editor's Comment: At this
point in time, the Grid is
extremely vulnerable to
Solar Flares and manmade
Nuclear. EMPs remain
attracted to and will
dramaticly fuse to the
extremely high voltage of
the Gird. Creating
far-ranging explosions of
transformers and
desctruction of electrical
appliances. Nothing has
mitigated this exposure and
apparences are there is
nothing down the road
anticipated that will
correct this exposure. We
still recommend "pulling the
plug" to our friends and
loved ones.]
The European Union’s
(EU) ambitious plan to
rollout smart meters to 80
percent of its 500 million
population by 2020 is not
going well as hoped.
Fort Bliss on Tuesday took a
step forward with its plans
to one day be
self-sufficient in energy,
waste and water.
The job of the South African
police is to fight one of
the highest crime rates in
the world. Instead, the
force stands accused of
contributing to it.
Spain's banking system
continues to struggle, with
Bankia reporting more losses
and tapping the government's
bailout vehicle.
Missed or wrong diagnoses in primary care
may put thousands of patients at risk of
complications each year, a new study
suggests.
Although mistakes during surgery and in
medication prescribing have been at the
center of patient safety efforts,
researchers said less attention has been
paid to missed diagnoses in the doctor's
office.
Chinese military ships have
dropped mysterious buoys
near the disputed
Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in
the East China Sea, a tactic
usually associated with
tracking submarines and a
glimpse into possible
underwater warfare going on
between Beijing and rival
Japan. An undersea battle is
not likely, but the intense
activities of dueling
submarines raise the odds
that a mistake, accident or
miscalculation could lead to
a larger clash on the sea
surface or in the air.
So far, so good - but
compared with the power
sector, where the total
potential investment value
of new projects decreased by
16 percent and the number of
new projects decreased by 14
percent, renewables have, by
any measure, performed
exceptionally well. Neil
Golding, Head of Business
Information at EIC, put it
in perfect context when he
said the renewables sector
"remained buoyant".
Ambassador Miller: Trouble
for Global Economic Freedom
in 2013
Argentina: Damage from
Kirchner Wrecking Ball
Piling Up
Mali: New Fighting Makes a
Quick French Withdrawal Less
Likely
Vatican Sources: Power
Struggle Continues,
Cardinals Intent on
‘Governing Reformer’ as Pope
Italian Election Results
Threaten Italian Economy and
Euro
Syria: Opposition Relents on
Peace Talks With Kerry
Peace Deal for Congo
Unlikely to Bring Big Change
A bill to facilitate
development of small
hydro-electric projects
co-authored by a North
Central Washington
congresswoman won unanimous
approval in the U.S. House
of Representatives last
week.
A bill that would tighten
unilateral US sanctions on
trade with Iran was
introduced Wednesday by the
chairman and ranking member
of the House of
Representatives' Committee
on Foreign Relations.
The bill comes a day
after talks concluded
between Iran and six allied
countries, including the US,
about Iran's nuclear
ambitions.
U.S. prime money market fund (MMF)
exposure to eurozone banks increased in
January 2013, with increased allocations
across the rest of Europe as well, according
to Fitch Ratings.
At end-January 2013, exposures to
eurozone banks represented 14.5% of MMF
assets under management within Fitch's
sample, the highest level since end-October
2011. Eurozone exposures have increased more
than 90% since the end-June 2012 low point.
Freddie Mac (OTCQB:
FMCC) yesterday
released the results of its
Primary Mortgage
Market Survey® (PMMS),
showing average fixed
mortgage rates moving lower
after being largely
unchanged over the past
month, while continuing to
help drive the housing
recovery leading up to the
spring home buying season.
New home sales in the US
jumped by 15.6% in January
2013 to an annualized pace
of 437,000 units, which was
well above market
expectations for a 380,000
reading and the highest
level since July 2008.
A federal program intended
to kickstart the
much-anticipated development
of bite-sized nuclear
reactors at Westinghouse
Electric Co. and other
energy firms faced heat from
a budget watchdog group
Wednesday, which called the
technology untested and
unworthy of taxpayer
dollars.
A new study from J.D. Power
and Associates reports that
electric utilities were more
effective and responsive
before, during, and after
Superstorm Sandy than local
and federal governments.
The heated power struggle
that marked the period
leading up to Pope Benedict
XVI's announcement that he
would resign continues in
full fury. Cardinals will
soon meet in conclave
(possibly next week) to
choose his successor and
decide on a clear path
forward for the Church.
Today is the 20th anniversary of the
ATF’s attack on the Branch Davidians outside
Waco, Texas.
I thought Waco might be the most
important public education lesson of the
1990s, but I don’t see the learning curve
yet.
Most Americans forgot or never
undertstood Waco, paving the way for
politicians to commit other grave abuses in
the following years.
The Washington Post on
Thursday slammed both
Congress and President
Barack Obama for choosing
“not to govern” and reaching
a deal to avert the $85
billion in broad government
cuts scheduled to take place
on Friday.
“To govern
is to choose,” The Post said
in an editorial. “Congress
and President Obama have
chosen not to govern.
Instead, each side has
concluded that its interest
lies in letting the
‘sequester’ proceed as
scheduled — and then trying
to win the political blame
game.
According to the latest
issue of the U.S. Energy
Information Administration's
(EIA) "Electric Power
Monthly," with preliminary
data through to December 31,
2012, non-hydro renewable
sources (i.e., biomass,
geothermal, solar, wind)
increased by 12.8% last year
compared to 2011 and
provided 5.4% of net U.S.
electrical generation. Solar
increased by 138.9% while
wind grew 16.6%, geothermal
by 9.6%, and biomass (i.e.,
wood, wood-derived fuels,
and other biomass) by 1.6%.
Moreover, since 2007,
non-hydro renewables have
more than doubled their
contribution to the nation's
electrical supply.
Fraudulent billing. Identity theft.
Greater expense and inefficiency. Loss of
privacy. And campaign donations from the
companies benefiting most.
Electronic medical records (EMR) came
into mainstream consciousness after a
hardcore lobbying effort by the EMR
industry. The result? A $19 billion (yes,
that’s billion with a B) government
incentive package was built into the 2009
economic stimulus bill just for electronic
medical recordkeeping.