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This week we commemorated
the 175 anniversary of the
Trail of Tears with a
National Day of Remembrance.
We did this to honor not
only the sacrifices of our
ancestors, but their spirit
as well.
Six massive glaciers in
West Antarctica are moving
faster than they did 40
years ago, causing more ice
to discharge into the ocean
and global sea level to
rise, according to new
research.
The amount of ice
draining collectively from
those half-dozen glaciers
increased by 77 percent from
1973 to 2013, scientists
report this month in
Geophysical Research
Letters, a journal of the
American Geophysical Union.
Pine Island Glacier, the
most active of the studied
glaciers, has accelerated by
75 percent in 40 years,
according to the paper.
Thwaites Glacier, the widest
glacier, started to
accelerate in 2006,
following a decade of
stability.
A study by the University of
Southampton suggests that on
average the end of Autumn is
taking place later in the
year and Spring is starting
slightly earlier. A team of
researchers examined
satellite imagery covering
the northern hemisphere over
a 25-year period (1982 -
2006), and looked for any
seasonal changes in
vegetation by making a
measure of its 'greenness'.
They examined in detail, at
daily intervals, the growth
cycle of the vegetation —
identifying physical changes
such as leaf cover, color
and growth.
China plans to move some
administrative, research and
healthcare facilities out of
its capital to a nearby city
to ease the burden on
Beijing, which is often
wreathed in heavy smog and
choked with traffic jams,
state media reported on
Thursday.
Are you a fan of guilty
pleasures like red meat,
chicken, cheese, and dairy
products? Many of us crave
these high-fat foods, but
still try to limit our
consumption due to the
assumption that foods high
in saturated fat are bad for
our health. The U.S. Dietary
Guidelines even tell
Americans to eat small
amounts of foods that are
high in saturated fats
because these foods raise
the risk of heart disease.
However, a group of
researchers are questioning
this assumption about the
link between foods high in
saturated fat, and heart
disease.
But when hospital superbug
infections result in the
deaths of 205 Americans per
day, it is simply another
statistic and not treated as
a national emergency.
Somehow, the annual death of
75,000 Americans is
considered "business as
usual" in a sick-care system
that virtually everyone
considers a disastrous
failure.
There is no doubt in my
mind that good hydration can
have very positive effects
for those with asthma. One
of the hallmarks of asthma
is mucous production that
clogs the airways. What is
the best known mucolytic
agent, something that breaks
down mucous? The answer is
easy — water. At the first
sign of wheezing, I tell my
patients to drink an
eight-ounce glass of water
mixed with ¼ teaspoon of
unrefined salt.
The number of ships waiting
to move through the Houston
Ship Channel on Thursday
morning had fallen by 20
from the day before as the
cleanup of a Saturday oil
spill in Galveston Bay
continued to gain momentum,
the U.S. Coast Guard said.
Fast-rising sea levels,
declining fisheries, more
air pollution and an
ice-free Arctic summer are
projected by scientists and
government representatives
from around the world
meeting now in Yokohama to
finalize the latest
assessment of climate change
impacts on human and natural
systems.
Though increasingly obsolete
due to the advent of safer
alternatives, dental
amalgams made from mercury
are still being used in many
clinics around the world,
despite the fact that they
could cause brain damage and
other permanent harm. And
one former dentist who
suffered extensive health
damage because of this
pernicious element wants to
see dental amalgams outlawed
entirely, revealing all in a
new book on the intense
toxicity of mercury.
Since 2010, Nevada has
invested $5.5 billion in
clean energy, creating a
renewable energy boom that
includes the state's first
utility-scale wind farm,
according to a new report by
the Clean Energy Project NV.
When we complain about the
rain, other people will
often say "Yeah, but it's
good for the plants." Well,
thanks to a
microturbine-based system
created by three students
from the Technological
University of Mexico, it's
now also being used to
generate electricity for use
in low-income homes.
The clean energy industry’s
performance over the past
year can be seen as a
classic good news-bad news
situation, according to the
experts at Clean Energy, a
research and advisory firm
devoted to the clean-tech
sector. The industry saw
dazzling growth, success,
and rising stock prices in
some sectors – most notably
solar photovoltaic (PV)
deployment – but downward
trends and policy and
finance hurdles in others.
C4 event observed. olar
Activity Forecast: Solar
activity is expected to be
low with a slight chance for
an M-class flare on days
one, two, and three (28 Mar,
29 Mar, 30 Mar). Geophysical
Activity Forecast: The
geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet
levels on days one, two, and
three (28 Mar, 29 Mar, 30
Mar).
Keystone XL, a pipeline
proposal to pump Canadian
oil sands through the heart
of America, has alarmed
environmentalists and become
one of the most contentious
issues of the Obama
presidency. But there is a
"Plan B" to cut the United
States out of the picture,
and it is championed by one
of Canada's wealthiest
business dynasties.
Phosphorus is a mineral
that's widely used in
fertilizer, which itself has
an unfortunate tendency to
leach out of farmers' fields
and into our waterways. Now,
researchers from Germany's
Fraunhofer Institute for
Silicate Research have
devised a method of
retrieving some of that
phosphorus from the water –
thus both reducing
pollution, and providing a
source of reclaimed
phosphorus.
A new survey of American
consumers provides some
potentially surprising
findings that indicate
American food shoppers are
very mindful about what they
place into their shopping
carts, and it's not just
about price and taste.
Texas' Loving County, the
least populated county in
the US, could be a potential
host for the state’s spent
fuel waste.
While it is still early
days, the state already as
the nation's first
commercial nuclear waste
facility already in
operation in Andrews County,
illustrating commercial
viability and benefits to
the state.
Today marks 35 years since
the meltdown at Unit 2 of
the Three Mile Island (TMI)
nuclear power plant near
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Despite the long passage of
time, myths and
misinformation about the
disaster still abound. Many
questions may remain
permanently unanswered.
"The drafts became too
alarmist," the Dutch
professor of economics at
Sussex University in England
said by telephone from
Yokohama, Japan, where
governments and scientists
are meeting to edit and
approve the report.
But he acknowledged some
other authors "strongly
disagree with me".
The final draft says
warming will disrupt food
supplies, slow economic
growth, and may already be
causing irreversible damage
to coral reefs and the
Arctic.
30-year fixed-rate mortgage
(FRM) averaged 4.40 percent
with an average 0.6 point
for the week ending March
27, 2014, up from last week
when it averaged 4.32
percent. A year ago at this
time, the 30-year FRM
averaged 3.57 percent.
Members of both the U.S.
House of Representatives and
the Senate have signed
letters asking for the
extension of the wind
production tax credit (PTC)
and the investment tax
credit (ITC).
Rumors are swirling in the
media here about a possible
Israeli preemptive strike on
Iran this year. Israeli
officials at the highest
level — including the
Defense Minister — are
reportedly coming to the
reluctant belief that they
cannot count on President
Obama to take decisive
action to neutralize the
Iranian threat before it is
too late.
Over 37 GW worth of solar
capacity was installed
worldwide during 2013,
according to recent figures
from the European
Photovoltaic Industry
Association (EPIA).
Those figures exceed the
prediction made by NPD
Solarbuzz of 36 GW to be
installed in 2013 by only 1
GW. The relative accuracy of
NPD Solarbuzz’s predictions
bodes well for the solar
industry in 2014, as the
organization is predicting a
bring jump — up to 49 GW.
Twelve Cape protesters who
were arrested for
trespassing on the Pilgrim
Nuclear Power Station
property last spring were
found guilty in Plymouth
District Court on Friday and
sentenced to a day in jail
with time served.
Today, on the 25th
anniversary of the Exxon
Valdez oil spill in Alaska,
Greenpeace climbers mounted
a protest in Norway against
an ExxonMobil rig scheduled
to drill in the Russian
Arctic this summer.
Fourteen activists from
seven countries took part in
the protest in Norway, where
five of them scaled the West
Alpha oilrig and unfurled a
banner saying, “No Exxon
Valdez in Russian Arctic.”
From indigenous
leaders in Canada to U.S.
politicians, the call is on
for attention to water and
our use of it. On World
Water Day March 22, both
Assembly of First Nations
and Arizona’s junior senator
broached the subject.
At least 46 Iraqis were
killed and 32 more were
wounded in today’s
violence. The most shocking
report, however, may be the
discovery of polio in Iraq
after a 14-year-absence.
Butter consumption in
the US has hit a 40-year
high, largely resulting
from a shift in consumer
preferences away from
processed foods
Between 1920 and 1960,
Americans’ butter
consumption declined by
over 75 percent, yet
heart disease went from
a relatively unknown
condition to the number
one killer
Butter, especially raw
butter from grass-fed
cows, is rich in
beneficial nutrients
including vitamins,
trace minerals, CLA, and
beneficial fats
Butter produced from
CAFO milk is inferior
nutritionally as it
comes from cows fed
almost entirely GE
grain, some fattened up
with additional sugar
from GE sugar beets and
cottonseed
Buying dairy products
from reputable local
farmers will allow you
to enjoy butter without
supporting the inhumane
conditions too common at
factory farms
It's not just people,
animals and trees that
suffer from radiation at
Chernobyl, writes Rachel
Nuwer, but also decomposer
fungi and microbes. And with
the buildup of dead wood
comes the risk of
catastrophic fire - which
could spread radiation far
and wide. Nearly 30 years
have passed since the
Chernobyl plant exploded and
caused an unprecedented
nuclear disaster. The
effects of that catastrophe,
however, are still felt
today.
Although no people live
in the extensive exclusion
zones around the epicenter,
animals, trees and other
plants still show signs of
radiation poisoning.
China said Monday it was
demanding an explanation
from Washington over
allegations U.S.
intelligence agencies hacked
into the email servers of
Chinese tech giant Huawei
and targeted top Chinese
officials and government
institutions.
Beijing is “gravely
concerned” about the claims
and demands that any such
spying be stopped, Foreign
Ministry spokesman Hong Lei
said at a daily press
briefing.
At least 98 people were
killed and 34 more were
wounded across Iraq. In
Diyala province, security
forces are trying to prevent
militants from taking over
Buhriz.
Clean energy investment in
Nevada has accelerated
rapidly in the past five
years, reaching at least
$5.5 billion since 2010,
according to a new report
from the Las Vegas-based
Clean Energy Project. As of
2014, Nevada has 480-MW of
clean energy developed or
being developed to meet its
energy demand and 985-MW of
clean energy exported to
other states.
Posture and proper body
mechanics is equally
important when you're moving
about. Simply walking has
been found to have
significant health benefits,
including the reduction of
severe attacks associated
with lung disease, and a
reduced risk of stroke—both
of which I'll discuss in a
moment.
A new report published by
the Nicholas Institute for
Environmental Policy
Solutions at Duke University
seeks to uncover under what
conditions a substantial,
decentralized domestic
biogas market could develop
in the United States by
2040. The report, titled
“Biogas in the United
States: An Assessment of
Market Potential in a
Carbon-Constrained Future,”
determined that biogas could
supply as much as 5 percent
of the total natural gas
market in 2040, when U.S.
consumption of natural gas
is expected to reach nearly
30 trillion cubic feet.
The U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) and
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
(Army Corps) today jointly
released a proposed rule to
clarify protection under the
Clean Water Act for streams
and wetlands that form the
foundation of the nation’s
water resources. The
proposed rule will benefit
businesses by increasing
efficiency in determining
coverage of the Clean Water
Act. The agencies are
launching a robust outreach
effort over the next 90
days, holding discussions
around the country and
gathering input needed to
shape a final rule.
Following the January
decision by the Ninth U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals to
deny rehearing en banc in
the litigation regarding
California’s Low Carbon Fuel
Standard, the Renewable
Fuels Association and Growth
Energy have petitioned the
U.S. Supreme Court for
certiorari to make a final
determination relating to
the LCFS. By its own
admission, California’s LCFS
seeks to regulate greenhouse
gas emissions occurring in
other states by rewarding
and punishing industrial and
agricultural activity taking
place outside California.And it bases the size
of these rewards and
penalties on whether
production took place in
California or in the
Midwest—systematically
favoring California.
Plaintiffs argue that the
Constitution denies states
such authority.
The FDA is condemning
children to death by
refusing to allow them
access to experimental
cancer treatments, even
though it has the
authority to grant such
access to terminal
patients who have not
responded to
conventional treatment
Six years ago,
10-year-old Braiden was
enrolled in a clinical
trial for his incurable
brain tumor. The
“experimental” drug
Antineoplaston (ANP) was
the sole treating agent.
He went into full
remission, and suffered
no toxic side effects
An MRI recently revealed
Braiden’s tumor has
reoccurred. The FDA is
now refusing to allow
Braiden to go back on
ANP even though the
treatment has already
proven its efficacy
through his previous
remission
Many other terminal
patients are also being
prevented from accessing
ANP. The only available
remedy that could
possibly act in time to
save these children is a
political response to
the indifference of the
FDA
The ANP Coalition (ANPC)
has been formed for the
purpose of organizing
the parents of these
children to launch a
political campaign to
allow them access to ANP
The Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission (FERC)
has taken further steps to
improve the coordination and
scheduling of natural gas
pipeline capacity with
electricity markets in light
of increased reliance on
natural gas by electric
generators.
The proposed revisions
include starting the natural
gas operating day earlier,
moving the Timely Nomination
Cycle later, and increasing
the number of intra-day
nomination opportunities to
help shippers adjust their
scheduling to reflect
changes in demand.
Failure to establish the
highest ethical business
standards and practices
throughout an organization
can result in negative
consequences to operations,
investors, employees and
more. The Ethisphere
Institute, an independent
researcher, has recognized
several energy organizations
for their ethical business
standards and practices,
including five U.S. energy
and utility companies.
Demand outlook for the
solar industry remains
strong, and global solar
installations will be around
46 GW in 2014, according to
a forecast from Mercom
Capital Group. Other
research also forecasts
global installations in 2013
to come in at about 37 GW.
The forecast has recently
been revised to reflect
shifting market conditions
and China's new installation
goal.
There has been no reverse
in the trend of global
warming and there is still
consistent evidence for
man-made climate change, the
head of the U.N. World
Meteorological Organisation
(WMO) said on Monday.
A slow-down in the
average pace of warming at
the planet's surface this
century has been cited by
"climate skeptics" as
evidence that climate change
is not happening at the
potentially catastrophic
rate predicted by a U.N.
panel of scientists.
The head of a nationwide
sheriffs coalition is
calling on Vermont's law
enforcement officers to
defy three controversial gun
control measures passed by
Burlington voters three
weeks ago.
"Sheriffs have a
constitutional duty to
refuse to comply with such
ordinances," said Richard
Mack, president of the
Constitutional Sheriffs and
Peace Officers Association.
A consortium of energy
companies, auto
manufacturers, government
laboratories, and other
stakeholders is driving the
acceleration of the rollout
of an infrastructure for
hydrogen-powered vehicles
and related technologies.
H2USA was launched last year
by the Department of Energy
(DOE) and other stakeholders
to focus on furthering the
infrastructure for
hydrogen-powered vehicles,
such as those powered by
fuel cells.
Hydrogen sulfide is probably
the most obnoxious and
troublesome compound to be
dealt with in a potable
water supply. It is an
almost impossible task to
produ ce a palatable water
that is free of taste and
odor at all times if
hydrogen sulfide is present
in the raw wa ter in
significant concentra tions.
Not only does the treatment
process require continuous
surveillance, bu t the
distribution system and
consumers hot water systems
require monitoring. Hydrogen
sulfide occu rs mainly in
well waters. Occurrence in
surface supplies is
primarily by groundwater
Mercury vapor
concentrations in
certain Philippine
dental institutions and
dental stores exceeded
the standard reference
levels set by the US
Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA)
Some areas in dental
institutions had mercury
concentrations of
>10,000 ng/m3, which is
considered as the
evacuation alert level
by the US EPA
In the Philippines,
mercury is supposed to
be phased out of health
care facilities by the
end of 2016, but
environmental groups are
calling for an immediate
ban to protect human
health and the
environment
Anyone who has mercury
fillings in their mouth
is at risk from the
mercury vapors they
release. However, dental
practitioners are
particularly vulnerable
to mercury intoxication
while working with this
toxic substance
According to the latest
"Energy Infrastructure
Update" report from FERC's
Office of Energy Projects,
wind and solar provided
80.9% of new installed U.S.
electrical generating
capacity for the month of
February. Five new "units"
of wind provided 99 MW while
12 units of solar provided
92 MW.
Energy and energy
security expert Robert Bensh
explains how Russia’s
takeover of Ukraine’s
Crimean Peninsula will shape
the oil and gas industry in
an exclusive interview with
James Stafford of
Oilprice.com.
Bensh has led oil and gas
companies in Ukraine for
over 13 years. He served as
an adviser to former energy
minister and former
vice-prime minister Yuri
Boyko on issues of Western
capital markets and
political systems.
Many continue to argue
that the rate normalization
taking place now will slow
business activity in the US.
Good luck betting on that
however. There is no
question that corporate
America had benefited
tremendously from
extraordinarily low rates.
Many US firms have locked in
these rates over the past
couple of years by
refinancing - interest
expense savings that go
directly to the bottom line.
But what will happen now as
rates "normalize"?
Seventeen workers at the
Carlsbad-area "waste
isolation pilot project"
(WIPP) were exposed to
radiation after an
accidental leak last month
from the site which stores
waste from U.S. nuclear labs
and weapons production
facilities.
State regulators were
withdrawing the draft
expansion permit to identify
safety issues that may need
to be addressed in the
aftermath of that accident,
New Mexico Environment
Secretary Ryan Flynn told a
news conference on Friday
afternoon.
On February 14, New
Mexico got a Valentines’ Day
present, and we are still
dealing with the fallout
(pun unavoidable) from that
event. The WIPP (Waste
Isolation Pilot Plant)
facility in Carlsbad, NM
finally acknowledged that
their first radiation leak
in 15 years was larger than
first reported. Also a month
earlier a truck moving salt
caught on fire due to
negligence. This is all a
half mile "down there" in
ancient salt beds. One
report said a ceiling panel
collapsed at some point and
that may have led to an
accident, possibly a
breached container. Experts
said fires or radiation
leaks "are not supposed to
happen" -- "down there".
Genetically engineered (or
GMO) corn that was developed
to kill insect pests has
been causing resistance in
some of those very insects
for several years. But the
issue has not received as
much attention as it should.
A new research paper in the
prestigious journal,
Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences (PNAS),
may change this by providing
additional cause for
concern.
Hydrogen fuel cell
electric vehicles (FCEV)
were the belles of the ball
at recent auto shows in Los
Angeles and Tokyo, and
researchers at the Energy
Department's National
Renewable Energy Laboratory
(NREL) continue to play a
key part in improving
performance and durability
while driving down costs.
The driving public has
long been tantalized by the
allure of a vehicle that
emits nothing but water from
its tailpipe, but now that
Toyota, Hyundai, and Honda
have all committed to
putting them on the market
by 2015, the stakes have
changed.
A major oil spill
Saturday has closed the
Houston Ship Channel,
preventing over 60 vessels,
including three cruise
ships, from transiting
between the Gulf of Mexico
and Galveston Bay.
Efforts to contain and
recover about 168,000
gallons of marine fuel oil
spilled when a bulk carrier
collided with a barge
continue today with what the
U.S. Coast Guard calls
“aggressive deployment of
all available response
resources.”
The
mirrors, called heliostats,
focus the sun on
459-foot-high (140 meter)
towers that contain
water-filled boilers. The
concentrated sunlight boils
the water to create steam,
driving turbines that
generate 377 megawatts of
carbon-free electricity. The
heat is so blistering that
it has melted the feathers
of birds in mid-flight.
Pinal Energy LLC in
Maricopa, Ariz., is back
online after being down for
the past year and half. “We
started grinding last week,
distillation started up on
the weekend and we’re up and
running, going full steam,”
reported General Manager
Keith Kor.
PESHAWAR: A female polio
vaccinator kidnapped from
her house in Gulozai village
in the suburbs of Peshawar
on Sunday night had been
killed. Her bullet-riddled
and severely tortured body
was found in a field on
Monday morning.
The vast majority of the
American public claim to be
energy efficient, but when
it comes to putting words
into action, the assertions
fall short. Despite the fact
that many are not actively
trying to conserve energy,
they can be critical of the
type of energy and where it
comes from -- but
perceptions are changing,
according to a Harris Poll.
The energy revolution,
including inexpensive
natural gas, will boost
manufacturing growth in the
U.S. and its metropolitan
areas, according to a report
by IHS Global Insight.
"We believe the energy
revolution is helping the
U.S. regain its footing in
the manufacturing sector,"
said Lansing, Michigan Mayor
Virg Bernero, chair of the
U.S. Conference of Mayors
Advanced Manufacturing Task
Force, the organization that
commissioned the report.
Energy-intensive
manufacturing industries,
including fabricated metals,
machinery, and plastics, are
helping the national economy
rebound from the recession,
especially in metropolitan
areas, according to the
report.
According to the report
published late Saturday
night, “The captain of
missing Malaysia Airlines
flight MH370 received a
two-minute call shortly
before take-off from a
mystery woman using a mobile
phone number obtained under
a false identity.”
C4 event observed.
There are currently 8
numbered sunspot regions on
the disk. The
geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet to
unsettled levels on day one
(25 Mar), quiet to active
levels on day two (26 Mar)
and quiet levels on day
three (27 Mar).
The Pacific Northwest
remains in a period of
steady growth in demand for
natural gas, according to a
detailed 10-year overview of
expected natural gas demand,
supply availability,
infrastructure development
and prices in the Northwest
conducted by the Northwest
Gas Association (NWGA). The
report projects a continuing
trend of regional growth in
natural gas demand at an
annual growth rate of 1.5
percent -- up from 1.2
percent last year.
Roads are considered
connectors of human
development providing
opportunities for economic
success and communication
but the flip side of this
network is that it has also
brought enormous destruction
to our fields and forests.
With forest destruction
comes increased human
development and ecological
degradation. Recent mapping
and modeling has been done
to document and measure
forest destruction in an
initiative by the Ames
Research Center of NASA and
ENN affiliate, Mongabay.
After the official
retirement of California's
largest nuclear plant last
June, many in the
environmental community
there were celebrating. Now
that the state's public
utility commissioners have
said that the state's
utilities can use natural
gas to replace a portion of
that lost power, they are
far less sanguine.
The American Association for
the Advancement of Science
published a
report Tuesday that warned
of extreme harm to the
world’s climate if people
don’t act immediately to
slow climate change. The
report, titled “What We
Know,” is designed to launch
a new AAAS initiative to
research and understand
climate change, the role
humans play and what world
leaders can do about it, the
group said. “We’re the
largest general scientific
society in the world, and
therefore we believe we have
an obligation to inform the
public and policymakers
about what science is
showing about any issue in
modern life, and climate is
a particularly pressing
one,” ..
A group of prominent
scientists chose to mark the
second International Day of
Forests by urging the world
to support an initiative
that aims keep wild areas
free of roads.
Roadfree, an initiative
led by Member of the
European Parliament Kriton
Arsenis, has been growing in
prominence over the past
year, gaining supporters
ranging from indigenous
rights leaders to deep
ecologists. Now the Alliance
of Leading Environmental
Researchers and Thinkers
(ALERT), a group of
prominent conservation
scientists, has thrown its
weight behind the concept.
Treasuries once again
experienced what amounts to
a sharp curve flattening in
recent days. The market
action resembled what took
place after the initial
announcement of taper back
in December. The yields in
the "belly" of the curve
have risen sharply as the
market prepares for rate
"normalization".
Sea level rise has been
one of the clearest signs of
climate change - water
expands as it warms and
parts of Greenland and
Antarctica are thawing,
along with glaciers from the
Himalayas to the Alps.
But in a puzzle to
climate scientists, the rate
slowed to 2.4 millimeters
(0.09 inch) a year from 2003
to 2011 from 3.4 mm from
1994-2002, heartening
skeptics who doubt that deep
cuts are needed in mankind's
rising greenhouse gas
emissions.
Carbon dioxide emissions are
causing the climate to
change and those changes
come with a real cost. The
big questions are what’s the
price tag for that “social”
cost and when does it gets
paid? According the a new
report, current best
estimates could actually be
on the low end thanks to
“unknown unknowns.”
KB Home (NYSE: KBH), one of
the nation’s largest and
most recognized
homebuilders, today
announced that homebuyers at
all of its communities in
Arizona now have the
opportunity to own a
solar-powered KB home.
Combined with the
energy-efficient features
already included in all
ENERGY STAR® certified new
KB homes, solar power will
help KB homeowners reduce
their monthly energy bills
by as much as 80% when
compared to a typical resale
home, and lower their
overall cost of
homeownership for years to
come.
From sun-soaked California
and Texas to snow-weary
Minnesota, the United States
this week saw a palpable
surge in solar activity,
whether measured in
megawatt-hours produced or
in hours of testimony before
public officials trying to
find the best way to
integrate more solar power
into state energy
portfolios.
"In solar-cell creation
and manufacturing, a key
challenge is that the cost
is too high," Cao said. "To
decrease cost, we need to
optimize the manufacturing
process, which makes up the
majority of solar cell
cost."
The "super-absorbing"
design could decrease the
thickness of the
semiconductor materials used
in thin film solar cells by
more than one order of
magnitude without
compromising the capability
of solar light absorption.
California is setting
records for solar energy
usage so fast that the
state’s grid operator has
had to change its protocol
for announcing them.
The instantaneous use of
solar by the California
Independent System Operator
(the ISO) reached a record
peak of 4,143 megawatts at
2:28 p.m. on March 16. It
was enough electricity to
power over 3 million homes,
according to the ISO.
Susan Sluyter has been a
teacher for more than two
decades. One can imagine
that she’s seen and adjusted
to her fair share of change
within the educational
system during her 25 years
in the field, but the more
recent shift in requirements
was so dramatic that she
resigned last month.
Rather than Mr.
Ritholtz's tumor analogy,
let's think about QE as
delivering excessive doses
of experimental pain
killers. Yes the patient may
feel better at first, but as
we all know, prolonged use
could create some nasty side
effects. The key side effect
of course is addiction -
which over a long period of
time requires one to
administer ever larger doses
in order to obtain the same
effect. And now you are not
just fighting the disorder
but also the withdrawal
symptoms. That is precisely
what is taking place these
days. Furthermore, the
uncertainty surrounding the
QE "withdrawal symptoms" is
what had put some of the
economic activity on hold,
activity that is only now
beginning to return.
One
day we could have conductive
materials that grow, evolve,
and self-repair. Researchers
at MIT have taken the first
steps to creating them. A
new study (paywall)
describes “living materials”
that combine bacterial cells
with nonliving materials
that can conduct electricity
and emit different colors of
light. The study is just a
proof-of-concept, but
researchers say that future
applications could include
cheaper, more efficient
solar panels and biosensors.
In the next few months,
Chris Hoffmann's start-up
Ryno Motors begins shipping
its self-balancing,
one-wheeled US$5250 personal
mobility device that has
caused tidal waves of
interest across the internet
with global distribution and
manufacturing on several
continents in planning.
That's Chris' very proud
daughter Lauren, now 20
years of age. Her
inquisitive mind as a
13-year-old catalysed this
magical story.
Ukraine's fledgling
government ordered troops to
withdraw from Crimea on
Monday, ending days of
wavering as Russian troops
consolidate control over the
peninsula.
Russian forces have been
systematically seizing
Ukrainian ships and military
installations in Crimea,
including a naval base near
the eastern Crimean port of
Feodosia, where two wounded
servicemen were taken
captive on Monday and as
many as 80 were detained
on-site, Ukrainian officials
said.
Japan will turn over
hundreds of kilograms
(pounds) of sensitive
nuclear material of
potential use in bombs to
the United States to be
downgraded and disposed of,
the two countries' leaders
said as a nuclear security
summit began on Monday.
The Hague — President
Barack Obama and top
economic powers cancelled an
upcoming G8 summit in
Russia, seeking to deepen
Moscow's isolation over its
intervention in the Ukraine
crisis.
After emergency talks
called by Obama, it was
announced that the G8 summit
in Sochi in June would be
replaced by a G7 meeting in
Brussels, without Russian
involvement.
In addition to water volume
removal resulting from over
development, rivers are also
increasingly faced with
nutrient and chemical
pollution, flooding and
droughts, and human
engineered adjustments
further exacerbating the
crisis mounting in our
watersheds.
Images of placard-waving
protesters and angry
blockades often spring to
mind when Canadians think of
energy projects and
Aboriginal peoples. However,
in Canada's clean energy
sector, Aboriginal peoples
are beating their drums in
celebration, not in protest.
And the sector is booming.
Some 13.8 billion years ago,
just before the Big Bang,
the enormous, galaxy-filled
universe we know today was
contained inside a tiny,
dense, extremely hot point.
Suddenly, it began rapidly
expanding faster than the
speed of light in a
cataclysmic explosion. The
universe grew from a
subatomic size to that of a
golf ball in an
incomprehensibly short
fraction of a second.
Work will now begin on the
development of a 'Solar
Tulip' hybrid concentrated
solar system.
The innovative solar
power project entails
the installation of a
hybrid concentrated
solar power plant that
employs a Solar Tulip to
concentrate the sun’s
energy, turning it into
electricity. The system
produces power 24/7,
moving seamlessly from
solar to natural gas or
biogas. The hybrid
system also uses little
to no water while
producing a high-
quality thermal output
in addition to power.
Arizona Attorney General
Tom Horne is today
announcing that Arizona has
won a significant victory in
the legal battle to require
voters to provide evidence
of U.S. citizenship as
mandated by Arizona law.
Arizona joined Kansas
in a federal lawsuit against
the Federal Election
Assistance Commission, which
had denied requests by both
states to vary the federal
election registration form
to include proof of
citizenship. The court ruled
today that the Election
Assistance Commission
exceeded its authority in
denying those requests, and
ordered the Commission to
help Arizona and Kansas
enforce their voter
identification laws.
For years, the Corn
Refiner’s Association (CRA),
which represents companies
that process and sell
high-fructose corn syrup, or
HFCS, and the Sugar
Association have been in a
cutthroat competition.
In 2010, CRA asked the
FDA permission to rebrand
HFCS as “corn sugar” in an
attempt to rehabilitate
HFCS’s negative image—that
is, to trick consumers into
thinking HFCS is
nutritionally equivalent to
processed sugar or even
natural sugars. In 2011, the
Sugar Association sued CRA
for its “misleading
campaign.” In 2012, CRA sued
right back for “smearing”
HFCS.
It’s difficult to decide
whose “spin” is more absurd.
At least 115 people were
killed and 128 more were
wounded in attacks and
clashes today. A large
number of people were killed
or wounded during shelling
in Falluja, and Baghdad saw
a number of bombings again.
Hazmat crews are cleaning
up about 10,000 gallons of
crude oil that spilled from
a broken underground
pipeline into an Ohio nature
reserve Monday night.
The oily mess has
affected close to one mile
of a creek running through
the Oak Glen Nature
Preserve. Crews are
vacuuming up the oil that
covers the surface of a
pond,..
Drought-plagued California
will ease some protection
for fish in the fragile San
Joaquin-Sacramento River
Delta, officials said
Tuesday, a move expected to
make more water available
for farming and ease
political tensions in an
election year.
Katherine Reid, a Bay
Area biochemist with a
daughter who was autistic,
believes she may have found
an antidote to the
neurodevelopment disorder -
and it's as simple as
changing a person's diet.
Well, actually, more like
blowing it up.
Because there is no Food
and Drug
Administration-approved
medical treatment for the
core symptoms of autism,
people have turned to
homeopathic remedies,
probiotics, invasive
therapies and
alternative diets.
China's environmental
authorities have passed a
plan to tackle soil
pollution as the government
becomes increasingly
concerned about the risk to
food posed by widespread
contamination of farmland.
About 3.33 million
hectares (8 million acres)
of China's farmland - about
the size of Belgium - is too
polluted for crops, a
government official said in
December, after decades of
industrial development and
poorly enforced laws allowed
poisonous metals and
discharge to seep into soil
and water.
Renewable energy will keep
getting the boost from China
in 2014. Last week, at its
annual session in Beijing,
the National People
Congress, the national
legislator gathering almost
3,000 delegates from all
Chinese provinces, approved
the work programme of the
government presented by
Premier Li Keqiang. Among
its major tasks for 2014,
China aims to increase the
proportion of electricity
generated by non-fossil
fuel, encourage the
development of wind and
solar power, continue the
development of smart grids
and start the construction
of new hydro power projects.
PennEnvironment issued
the following news release:
As public concern about
extreme weather ramps up,
clean energy policies in
Pennsylvania and around the
nation are proving that we
have the tools we need to
win the fight against global
warming. While
Pennsylvania's clean energy
policies - like the
Alternative Energy Portfolio
Standard and our state's
energy efficiency
requirements - are already
reducing carbon pollution,
there is significant
progress to be made compared
to other state's efforts
according to a new
PennEnvironment report,
"Moving America Forward."
As temperatures warm up and
the next season of wildfires
draws near, Colorado is
proving that we can win the
fight against global
warming. Clean energy
policies, such as Colorado's
Renewable Energy Standard,
are significantly cutting
emissions of carbon
pollution - the leading
cause of global warming -
according to a new report by
Environment Colorado
Research & Policy Center .
The report, Moving America
Forward, showed that
Colorado's Renewable Energy
Standard saved 3.7 million
metric tons of carbon
dioxide from entering the
atmosphere in 2012. That is
comparable to the annual
emissions from over 750,000
cars.
The U.S. Department of
Energy's Sandia National
Laboratories issued the
following news release:
Sandia National
Laboratories engineers have
been studying the most
effective ways to use solar
photovoltaic (PV) arrays --
a clean, affordable and
renewable way to keep the
power on. Systems are
relatively easy to install
and have relatively small
maintenance costs. They
begin working immediately
and can run unassisted for
decades.
Consumers Energy has its
fingers in multiple pots
when it comes to energy
efficiency -- both with the
Battle of the Buildings and
with investments in
renewable energy.
Could it one day be possible
to generate electricity from
the loss of heat from Earth
to outer space? A group of
Harvard engineers believe so
and have theorized something
of a reverse photovoltaic
cell to do just this. The
key is using the flow of
energy away from our planet
to generate voltage, rather
than using incoming energy
as in existing solar
technologies.
After years of slow
progress, the market for
global concentrated
photovoltaic (CPV) – which
uses lenses or mirrors to
focus sunlight onto solar
cells -- will undergo a
major growth, with its
cumulative installed
capacity jumping from 357.9
MW in 2014 to 1,043.96 MW by
2020, GlobalData forecasts.
A new report, conducted
by ICF, is predicting that
the decline in U.S. coal
production will come to an
end.
Low natural gas prices
driving coal-fired power
plants to convert to natural
gas and the regulations on
CO2 emissions were biggest
factors affecting coal. The
report goes on to say that
these factors are likely to
lessen its impact on the
coal sector in years to
come.
ICF also expects
emissions standards to be
flexible for states,
ultimately limiting the
number of coal plant
retirements.
New research could help
shift workers at travelers
reset their body clock
faster.
The human body clock is the
curse of any shift worker or
traveler arriving in a new
time zone. Although one's
body clock can be adjusted
by external cues, such as
light – a factor that
devices such as the Re-Timer
and Litebook are designed
take advantage of – the
adjustment period can vary
significantly for different
people. Now researchers have
discovered the mechanism
that controls how easily
such adjustments can be
made.
Duke Energy is considering
closing units at two
coal-fired plants in
response to the coal ash
spill at Dan River in North
Carolina, according to a
report from the Charlotte
Business Journal.
Fierce solar blasts that
could have badly damaged
electrical grids and
disabled satellites in space
narrowly missed Earth in
2012, U.S. researchers said
on Wednesday.
The bursts would have
wreaked havoc on the Earth’s
magnetic field, matching the
severity of the 1859
Carrington event, the
largest solar magnetic storm
ever reported on the planet.
That blast knocked out the
telegraph system across the
United States, according to
University of California,
Berkeley research physicist
Janet Luhmann.
“Had it hit Earth, it
probably would have been
like the big one in 1859,
but the effect today, with
our modern technologies,
would have been tremendous,”
Luhmann said in a statement.
After five years of
drought in central Chile,
there is a good chance that
the El Niño weather pattern
could bring much-needed
rains during the Southern
Hemisphere's winter, the
national meteorological
service said on Thursday.
In recent years, power
producers in the world's top
copper producer have been
forced to rely on
more-expensive fossil fuels
as the lack of rain has
dented hydroelectric
generation.
EU leaders have given the
European Commission and
national governments "an
explicit mandate" to prepare
possible targeted economic
measures against Russia for
its actions in Crimea, EU
President Herman van Rompuy
said early Friday.
But they stopped short of
calling for specific
economic sanctions, such as
an arms embargo.
Fresh off her resignation
from CBS News, journalist
Sharyl Attkisson’s website
dedicated to seeking the
truth about the Fast and
Furious gun-walking scandal,
Benghazi, Obamacare and
other important issues is
gaining national attention.
Mortgage rates are rising
sharply after the Federal
Reserve's March 2014 FOMC
meeting.
The central banker
described the U.S. economic
growth as having "slowed"
during the winter months,
and acknowledged inflation
rates as less-than-optimal.
The Fed also announced the
next phase of its QE3 taper,
to being in April.
QE3 is a economic
stimulus program which aims
to suppress U.S. mortgage
rates. As the size of QE3
shrinks, mortgage rates are
expected to rise. The April
taper marks the third round
of reductions to the QE3
program.
The maker of flushable
wipes is facing a federal
class-action suit filed by
customers who say the
product clogged their
plumbing.
It turns out pre-moistened
wipes, such as those
marketed for babies and
toddlers and billed as safe
to throw down the toilet,
might not actually be
"flushable."
A new 'carbon grab' is under
way as governments and
corporations seize valuable
rights to the carbon stored
in standing forests, with UN
and World Bank support. But
there's no benefit for
forest communities - who
even risk expulsion to make
way for 'carbon
plantations'.
It has long been known that
eating chocolate,
particularly dark chocolate,
has numerous health
benefits. Although various
studies have backed this up,
the exact reason as to why
this is so has remained a
mystery. Now researchers
from Louisiana State
University have provided the
answer – gut microbes.
For more than two years, the
Sargasso Sea Alliance (SSA),
in collaboration with the
Bermuda government, has
pushed to establish
safeguarding measures for
the Sargasso Sea, a unique
two-million-square nautical
mile ecosystem in the North
Atlantic that is without
effective legal protection,
placing it at risk of
long-lasting harm due to
overfishing, pollution and
more. Today, SSA’s effort
took an unprecedented step
forward as government
representatives from 11
countries and territories
from North America, the
Caribbean and Europe
committed support for the
conservation of the Sargasso
Sea ecosystem for the
benefit of present and
future generations.
Oil and gas lease sales for
federal waters in the Gulf
of Mexico have garnered
$872,143,771 in high bids on
329 tracts covering
1,707,358 acres, as the
Department of the Interior's
Bureau of Ocean Energy
Management (BOEM) offered
nearly 40 million acres
covering tracts in the
Central and Eastern planning
areas of the Gulf of Mexico,
and opened bids from
previously offered acreage
in the Western planning
area.
Overall demand for hydrogen
as a fuel are projected to
grow, largely due to
increased energy demand,
requirements to use
curtailed renewable energy,
growth in the cleantech
backup power market, and
deployment of a growing
number of fuel cell-powered
vehicles in the transport
sector.
Most talk of "energy
efficiency" and
“sustainability” is
insidious or naïve, or even
misdirected. We all should
switch off the lights when
we leave a room, use
efficient, gas-fired
tankless water heaters (even
when they are uneconomical),
and work in LEED certified
buildings. Intelligent
thermostats — Nest, for
instance — may regulate our
air-conditioning to assure
comfort while generating
savings, and shaving “peak”
load on the electricity
grid. Using LED lamps and
star rated appliances is
admirable too. These
solutions and behaviors,
while praiseworthy, are
beside the point; we should
rather favor “supply action”
before demand response.
It’s five years this month
since NASA’s $600 million
Kepler Space Telescope was
launched to look for planets
beyond our Solar System –
so-called exoplanets – and
while the quest to find a
twin for Earth has so far
been fruitless, Kepler’s
observations have revealed
our galaxy to be full of
worlds potentially able to
support life
Researchers from King's
College London, working with
the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT), have
produced a skinsuit which,
if worn by astronauts in
outer space, could
counteract the degradation
of bone and muscle mass
during long term exposure to
microgravity.
Trees left standing after
deforestation have a
discernible impact on the
composition of local
biodiversity in secondary
growth forests, according to
a new study published in
PLOS ONE. Researchers
working on the Osa Peninsula
in Costa Rica discovered
that remnant trees could
affect species composition
of regenerated forests up to
20 years after being logged.
When large-scale renewable
energy sources such as wind
and photovoltaic are
integrated into power grids
on remote islands, power
frequencies tends to
fluctuate due to
intermittent power outputs
from the renewables.
Toshiba’s battery energy
storage systems provide such
islands with an excellent
solution for efficient and
effective frequency
regulation.
The Los Alamos National
Laboratory has found a
temporary home in Texas for
roughly 1,000 barrels of
radioactive junk left in
limbo after a radiation leak
led to a prolonged shutdown
of New Mexico's only nuclear
waste disposal facility.
Los Alamos, one of the
leading U.S. nuclear weapons
labs, said earlier this
month it had been forced to
halt shipments of its
radioactive refuse some 300
miles across the state to
the nation's only
underground nuclear
repository, the Waste
Isolation Pilot Plant, near
Carlsbad.
Freddie Mac reports the
30-year fixed rate averaging
4.32% nationwide, a
5-basis-point decrease from
the week
prior. Unfortunately,
though, Freddie Mac gets it
wrong.
Mortgage rates are not lower
as compared to last week.
Freddie Mac's survey failed
to capture the aftermath of
the this week's Federal
Reserve meeting, in which
mortgage rates spiked -- in
some cases, by as much as
0.250 percentage points.
Today's mortgage rates
are as high as they've been
in two months.
Coal retirements as a result
of U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA)
regulations will leave a
gaping hole in the U.S.
energy supply over the next
five years and beyond, but
this gap is expected to be
filled by natural gas-fired
plants, according to
predictions from ICF
International.
As we all
know, oil is a very
important energy resource
the world needs for its
everyday life. It is known
that not only do most of the
countries on the planet use
it, but also it is a scarce
resource, which means that
in the near future, there
will no longer be enough
available oil that could be
drilled and processed for
future endeavors. The demand
for oil has increased
significantly throughout the
past few years and other
ways of obtaining this
resource must be used more
often. A form of oil
drilling has emerged which
is dangerous and is known as
offshore drilling. Sounds
like a good plan at first,
going to the ocean where
more oil can be found and at
a faster rate, but is it
really worth it? There
should be an alternate to
offshore drilling because of
the many horrific and unfair
problems that it brings to
Americans, animals, and the
overall environment.
Anaergia Inc, and its
project partner Grannus LLC,
have been selected to enter
negotiations with the Pima
County Regional Wastewater
Reclamation Department
(PCRWRD) in Arizona to
design-build-finance-own-operate
(DBFOO) a large-scale biogas
upgrading facility. The
biogas upgrading facility
will produce a renewable
biomethane, which is a clean
fuel to off-set the use of
conventional fossil fuel.
The top predators of the
Southern Ocean, far-ranging
seabirds, are tied both to
the health of the ocean
ecosystem and to global
climate regulation through a
mutual relationship with
phytoplankton, according to
newly published work from
the University of
California, Davis.
When phytoplankton are
eaten by grazing crustaceans
called krill, they release a
chemical signal that calls
in krill-eating birds. At
the same time, this chemical
signal — dimethyl sulfide,
or DMS — forms sulfur
compounds in the atmosphere
that promote cloud formation
and help cool the planet.
Republican Sen. Rand Paul’s
criticisms of President
Barack Obama and other
government leaders over
recent surveillance
disclosures were warmly
received on Wednesday at the
University of California,
Berkeley.
M1 event observed.
Solar Activity Forecast:
Solar activity is expected
to be low with a chance for
M-class flares on days one,
two, and three (21 Mar, 22
Mar, 23 Mar). The
geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet
levels on days one and two
(21 Mar, 22 Mar) and quiet
to unsettled levels on day
three (23 Mar).
Intense emotion is a major
risk factor for heart attack
and stroke, particularly in
the first hours after the
emotion occurs. While
prevention efforts typically
focus on more concrete steps
like physical exercise, not
smoking, and a healthier
diet, it’s just as
important, if not more so,
to tend to your emotional
health as well.
Russia may revise its
stance in the Iranian
nuclear talks amid tensions
with the West over Ukraine,
a senior diplomat warned
Wednesday.
Russia's Deputy Foreign
Minister Sergei Ryabkov
said, according to the
Interfax news agency, that
Russia didn't want to use
the Iranian nuclear talks to
"raise the stakes," but may
have to do so in response to
the actions by the United
States and the European
Union.
U.S.-Russian tensions over
Ukraine spilled over into
nuclear talks with Iran
Wednesday, with Moscow’s
chief envoy at the
negotiations warning that
his country may take
“retaliatory measures” that
could hurt attempts to
persuade Tehran to cut back
on programs that could make
atomic arms. That comes as
President Obama said the
United States would not be
“getting into a military
excursion in Ukraine.”
Americans don't have a
clue about how much water
they use.
A recent study found that
Americans "underestimated
their water use by a factor
of 2, and were only slightly
aware of how much water goes
into growing the food they
eat," the Los Angeles
Times reported.
The Department of Justice
and the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA)
announced today that Flint
Hills Resources of Port
Arthur has agreed to
implement innovative
technologies to control
harmful air pollution from
industrial flares and
leaking equipment at the
company’s chemical plant in
Port Arthur, Texas.
Car manufacturer Toyota has
agreed to pay a staggering
$1.2 billion to avoid
prosecution for covering up
severe safety problems with
“unintended acceleration,”
according to court
documents, and continuing to
make cars with parts the FBI
said Toyota “knew were
deadly.”
Farmers worry that a
proposed new transmission
line could interfere with
their livelihoods. The windy
plains of Kansas could be a
treasure trove in the
nation's effort to harness
clean energy, but a major
proposal to move
wind-generated electricity
eastward is running into a
roadblock: Farmers who don't
want high-power transmission
lines on their land.
The month of March has not
been a comforting one for
those of us who are
concerned about America’s
security. The news in
Eastern Europe, Southeast
Asia, and right here in the
United States is of a world
full of threats for which
the Obama Administration is
unprepared.
Years later, the
aftershocks of the Great
Recession still resonate.
Unemployment remains high,
and economic growth is
sluggish. The United States,
despite some bright spots —
like a recovering housing
market and soaring stock
prices — just hasn’t been
able to snap back to normal.
The concept of space based
solar power, in which a
solar power station in space
collects the sun's energy
and then beams it to Earth,
has been around as a serious
technological concept since
the late 1960s. In a March
17, 2014 story Wired reports
that the United States Navy
is experimenting with
hardware to make the concept
into reality.
There is a real danger that
the United Nations could
take over the Internet.
Last week, the U.S.
Department of Commerce
announced that it was not
going to renew its contract
with the Internet
Corporation for Assigned
Names and Numbers (ICANN)
which now controls the
assignment of domain
names.
Nobody
knows how the ICANN
functions will be performed
in the future.
The Fed struck a
somewhat more hawkish tone -
certainly enough to spook
the markets. Expectations
for the first rate hike have
shifted forward by nearly a
quarter, pointing to late
spring of 2015 as the
starting point.
This
monetary stance, combined
with another $10bn taper was
the right move.
...in the early 1200s,
Genghis Khan united the
Mongol tribes and began
invading neighbors in all
directions. The Mongol
Empire continued to grow
after his death, led by the
mighty leader’s sons and
grandsons, who pushed their
armies into regions as far
as eastern Europe, the
Middle East, Southeast Asia
and Korea.
This great empire was
made possible not by
brilliant leadership alone,
but by a 15-year period of
abnormal moisture and warmth
in central Mongolia...
Higher natural gas prices
in New England last year
resulted in a steep 55
percent increase in
wholesale electricity
prices, according to
preliminary results from ISO
New England, the operator of
the region's electric grid
and electricity markets.
The average price of a
megawatt hour in New England
rose to $56.06, up from
$36.09 in 2012.
On April 8, Microsoft will
cease all support to
consumers who are still
running Windows XP. On the
same day, the company will
also end support for Office
2003. If you're a
procrastinator still
plugging away on an XP
machine or working away in
Microsoft's aging
productivity suite, it's
high time you considered
your options. Gizmag
provides a few suggestions.
New groundwater rules
went into effect in Wyoming
recently amid criticism from
oil and gas companies.
The rules are among the
strongest in the country for
testing groundwater near
fracking sites, according to
the New York Times.
Under the new rules,
energy companies "must take
three groundwater samples
within a half mile of new
oil and gas wells, one
before and two after the
well is drilled,"..
Arbor Networks,
Inc. today announced the
results of a survey it
sponsored with the Economist
Intelligence Unit on the
issue of incident response
preparedness. The Economist
Intelligence Unit surveyed
360 senior business leaders,
the majority of whom (73%)
are C-level management or
board members from across
the world, with 31% based in
North America, 36% in Europe
and 29% in Asia-Pacific.
Another sign of our global
connectedness has manifested
itself in a new satellite
analysis linking dust in
North Africa and West Asia
with stronger monsoons in
India. The study shows that
as airborne dust from North
Africa and West Asia absorbs
sunlight it warms the air
and strengthens the eastern
winds carrying moisture. The
heavy laden air generates a
monsoon rainfall about a
week later in India thereby
explaining one way that dust
can affect the climate,
filling in previously
unknown details about the
Earth system.
After six years of
deliberation, the U.S.
Environmental Protection
Agency in May will decide on
changes to the Clean Water
Act that would direct power
companies to remove
dangerous impurities,
including carcinogens, from
coal ash wastewater before
releasing it into rivers
that supply drinking water.
According to researchers the
Ross Sea will "be
extensively modified by
future climate change" in
the coming decades creating
longer periods of ice-free
open water and affecting
life cycles of all
components of the ecosystem
in a paper published and
funded by the National
Science Foundation (NSF).
The researchers have drawn
their information from the
Regional Ocean Modeling
System, a computer model
that evaluates sea-ice,
ocean, atmosphere and
sea-shelf.
Moss that was frozen for
1,500 years beneath an ice
sheet in Antarctica has been
brought back to life,
marking the longest life
span for any known plant,
researchers said Monday.
The study in Current
Biology describes the
first time moss has been
shown to survive for such an
extended period of time.
Judge Walton upheld the
Department of the Interior –
along with 16 other Federal
and State agencies’ – review
and approval of Cape Wind, a
permitting process that took
10 years and includes more
than 400,000 pages.
If your family is sick of
the rat race, fed up with
bureaucracy, and tired of
being tethered to
technology, this is your
chance to finally pull the
plug – literally – on life
as you know it. This
groundbreaking series
chronicles the adventures of
one family as they reject
modern conveniences and get
‘back to basics’: imagine
building a homestead,
foraging for berries,
collecting water, harnessing
solar energy, and living
life on your terms.
Together, you will shatter
the illusion of conveniences
and re-engineer life as you
know it in a way that will
forever change our
perception of what is really
most important in life.
Duke Energy says it plans
to move three leaky coal ash
pits away from North
Carolina waterways,
including one that coated 70
miles of the Dan River with
toxic sludge.
Duke says it will take at
least two years to clean up
the Dan River site, and
sites near Asheville and
Charlotte. State regulators
say Duke's plans fall short
of cleaning up nearly three
dozen leaky coal ash dumps
spread across the state.
The disputed Ukrainian
peninsula of Crimea formally
applied to join Russia
Monday, after its people
voted 97 percent in favor of
a referendum to secede. The
referendum has been
condemned as illegal by
Ukrainian leaders and the
U.S. and its European allies
are expected to announce
sanctions against Russia
Monday.
DTE Energy Services, Inc.
(DTEES), a subsidiary of DTE
Energy, has finished its
conversion of its shuttered
coal-fired power plant at
the Port of Stockton to
biomass fuel. The plant site
was once one of the most
polluted in San Joaquin
Valley, but can now claim
home to one of the cleanest
solid-fuel power plants in
the country.
Easy-to-fix household leaks
account for more than one
trillion gallons of water
wasted each year across the
United States, equal to the
annual household water use
of more than 11 million
homes. In the race against
water waste, the U.S.
Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) is urging
people to fix household
water leaks during the sixth
annual Fix a Leak Week,
March 17 through 23, 2014.
Democrat, Republican, it
doesn’t matter. As long as
you can help Monsanto slide
its icy tentacles into the
food chain, then there’s
some financial tip available
to you. Thankfully, many
such ties can be exposed
through some data digging,
and thanks to diligent
readers who send
comprehensive news tips
and other researchers out
there, we now have an
extensive list of
politicians getting paid
cold hard cash from GMO
juggernaut Monsanto
In an era when everything is
done to the extreme – from
sports, to home makeovers,
to weather predictions – it
should come as no surprise
that the world of water
filtering has joined the
crowd . “Extreme” filtering,
so to speak, is achieved
through the use of high -
flow cartridge systems –
smaller designs that are
able to handle much higher
water volumes and pressures
at lower costs and with less
maintenance.
Foreign buyers of U.S.
Treasury securities trimmed
their holdings slightly in
January, marking the first
monthly decline in six
months.
The Treasury Department
says total foreign holdings
slipped to $5.79 trillion,
down 0.3 percent from
December when holdings had
risen 1.5 percent to an
all-time high of $5.80
trillion.
Lawmakers are looking to see
how the EPA was able to
mandate that new coal plants
install carbon capture and
storage (CCS) technology.
Lawmakers argue that the
mandate violates federal law
and the technology is not
commercially viable,
according to the Daily
Caller.
We're overstating the
case there—the Choctaws
didn't save the
Irish, but they sure tried
to help. The year was 1847,
and the the Great Irish
Famine (sometimes called the
Irish Potato Famine by
non-Irish) was in its second
year. Individuals in the
Choctaw Nation—with the
hardships of The trail of
Tears, 16 years earlier,
perhaps still in
mind—learned of the
catastrophe in Ireland and
sent copy70 of their own
money to help.
Arizona State University
(ASU) is developing a
hybrid-concentrated solar
system on the Tempe campus,
which employs a solar tulip
to concentrate the sun's
energy, turning it into
electricity. This will be
the first ever solar hybrid
generating facility at a
university in the United
States.
Last week we saw Lois
Lerner, the former head of
the IRS division accused of
targeting conservative and
tea party groups, once again
plead the fifth when called
to testify before the U.S.
Congress.
Every
American, regardless of
political affiliation,
should be concerned that
this same agency (and in
some cases, the same people)
will be – by law – in charge
of enforcing much of
Obamacare.
If we
can’t trust the IRS to
protect our right to free
speech, how can we possibly
trust them with our health?
The answer is we
can’t.
The Threat of Distributed
Generation - Basics
Unchanged...
One of the obvious
challenges that the whole
industry has to wrestle
with, and it's both an
opportunity and a threat, is
distributed generation. It
does fundamentally challenge
the old model. If you have a
rate structure that's not
fundamentally aligned with
your cost structure, that
creates a mismatch. What we
are going to see over the
next few years is the
working out of that
mismatch. The sooner that we
have the conversation with
our respective regulators
and policymakers about the
consequences of that
mismatch, the better.
Japan’s Emperor and Empress,
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe,
and representatives of those
who lost family members
gathered in Tokyo today to
observe the third
anniversary of the
earthquake and tsunami of
March 11, 2011 that caused
one of the world’s worst
nuclear disasters at the
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear
power plant.
In another sign of
improving momentum in the US
economy, the active oil and
gas rig count started rising
in recent weeks. This is
after a major decline in
2012 and a stagnant 2013.
Plant-e is a company that
develops products that can
generate electricity from
living plants. Based on
natural processes electrons
are harvested from the soil
and electricity is produced
while plants keep growing!
Too good to be true?
'Two anticipated risks to
budget forecasts -
healthcare reform and
federal inaction - have had
little negative impact on
U.S. State credit this year.
While the actual
implementation of healthcare
reform has been difficult,
this has not had a material
negative budgetary effect.
Also, the congressional
spending agreement has
alleviated the threat that
federal developments could
derail the economic recovery
or lower funding to states,'
said Laura Porter, Managing
Director, Public Finance at
Fitch.
The resolution urges the
Missouri Department of
Natural Resources (DNR) to
require groundwater
monitoring immediately at
all new and existing coal
ash ponds in Missouri , and
require cleanup at all coal
ash ponds found to be
leaking toxic chemicals.
"Coal ash is full of
heavy metals, like mercury,
lead and arsenic, which can
cause cancer and brain
damage in humans and are
harmful to fish and
wildlife...
In warmer climates, tree
roots grow faster and deeper
(aided by the decomposition
of leaf litter), breaking up
rock that combines with
carbon dioxide. This
weathering process removes
carbon dioxide from the
atmosphere, lowering the
global temperature and
decreasing the growth rate
of vegetation.
If you’ve run out of
drinking water during a
lakeside camping trip,
there’s a simple solution:
Break off a branch from the
nearest pine tree, peel away
the bark, and slowly pour
lake water through the
stick. The improvised filter
should trap any bacteria,
producing fresh,
uncontaminated water.
In fact, an MIT team has
discovered that this
low-tech filtration system
can produce up to four
liters of drinking water a
day — enough to quench the
thirst of a typical person.
A comprehensive online
repository that allows the
tracking and analysis of
financial deals in the
global clean technology
markets using analytical
tools has launched. The
Climate Connect Limited
website, cleantechdeals.com,
will help stakeholders
remain informed of the
latest commercial
developments in the
low-carbon sector globally
by leveraging big data
techniques, including
web-scraping to ensure data
consistency.
A
pizza delivery woman
thwarted an armed robbery
attempt at a house off
Rosehill Road on Thursday by
producing a weapon of her
own, Fayetteville police
said.
Background pollution -- the
outdoor air quality
experienced by the average
citizen -- topped the 100
maximum measurable index
level in Paris on Thursday,
data from pollution watchdog
airqualitynow.eu showed,
making the French capital
the only European capital in
the "very high" level zone.
The index stood at 81 in
London, 76 in Berlin and 61
in Madrid.
With a historic sweep of
his pen, President Vladimir
Putin signed a treaty today
to annex Crimea, describing
the move as correcting past
injustice and a necessary
response to what he called
Western encroachment upon
Russia’s vital interests.
In an emotional 40-minute
speech that was televised
live from the Kremlin, Putin
said “in people’s hearts and
minds, Crimea has always
been an integral part of
Russia.”
After Orlando invested
$8.5 million and years of
its workers' labor, an
experimental energy reactor
at a city sewage treatment
plant suffered a massive,
violent blowout.
The incident, which
mangled a steel
pressure-relief apparatus
and blew the vents out of
the city building, has
sidelined a plant that had
drawn international
attention because of its
promise to convert sewage
sludge into electricity.
When federal investigators
review years of reports they
have subpoenaed from the
N.C. Utilities Commission ,
they'll likely be struck by
the many times Duke Energy
and state officials missed
opportunities to prevent the
recent Dan River coal ash
spill.
With the Fed still
pumping billions into the
U.S. economy, further
ravaging the dollar’s value,
Warren Buffet issued a harsh
warning to investors:
“Run from paper money.”
The world’s most famous
investor delivered his blunt
advice in a riveting
interview on CNBC, saying
investors should fear the
dollar because it will be
“worth less and less over
time.”
“Paper money has a lousy
future,” Buffett said,
adding that Americans should
run from it as fast as they
can.
In a discovery that has
profound implications for
our understanding about the
beginnings of the universe,
the Harvard-Smithsonian
Center for Astrophysics this
morning announced evidence
of so-called primordial
B-modes in the cosmic
microwave background (CMB).
Salt River Project (SRP) has
completed Tempe, Arizona's
largest solar project to
date. Located at Tempe's
South Water Treatment Plant,
the project features more
than 3,000 solar panels that
will generate more than 1.6
million kilowatt hours of
electricity each year --
supplying 15 percent of the
plant's energy needs
Three glaciers holding
back a vast ice stream in
northeast Greenland, a
region thought to be the
last bastion of stability in
that rapidly warming region,
are now thinning and moving
more rapidly into the sea, a
new study found.
The study overturns
longstanding assumptions
that the northeastern corner
of Greenland, which is one
of the coldest and driest
parts of the world’s largest
island, is stable, and
instead suggests that sea
level rise projections based
on this assumption will need
to be reevaluated.
According to a new
study, medical experts
have implemented 146
“reversals” in the past
decade, meaning course
changes on specific
medical practices;
reversals are common
across all medical
specialties
Between 40 and 78
percent of the testing,
treatments and
procedures you receive
today are of no benefit,
and many have already
been deemed harmful by
clinical studies
The US earned a failing
grade on nearly every
benchmark in a survey
comparing the opinions
and experiences of
people from seven
different countries
about their respective
health care systems
America spends more on
health care than the
next 10 biggest spenders
combined, yet ranks last
in health and mortality
among 17 developed
nations; we hold the top
rating in one category,
however: medical waste
America’s health care
system compares
unfavorably in
coordination of care,
prevention of chronic
disease, medical errors,
accessibility and
affordability, and
patients’ satisfaction
with their doctors and
care
Ukraine's law enforcement
forces took full control of
the country's natural gas
pipelines that carry most of
Russian gas to markets in
Europe, the Interior
Ministry said Sunday.
Prime Minister Arseniy
Yatseniuk ordered the
protective measures a day
after Russian soldiers
sought to take control over
a gas pumping station at a
regional pipeline on the
border between Ukraine's
Kherson region and the
breakaway region of Crimea.
Residents of Khost province
in southeast Afghanistan say
a nationwide development
initiative is making a real
difference to their daily
lives, calming tribal
tensions and boosting
security as well as
providing essential
infrastructure.
Credit growth in the
US seems to have stabilized
and may be on the rise. It's
worth mentioning that the
bottom in loan growth just
happened to correspond to
the start of Fed's taper.
Coincidence?
Their desire to start
peecycling was two-fold:
They saw unnecessary
chemical fertilizer being
created, and they saw energy
and water being wasted at
water treatment to scrub
those same chemicals out of
the water. Using urine as a
fertilizer eliminated both
of those problems and closed
the loop between consumption
and waste: You pee out the
same nutrients you take in
when you eat. It also helps
that urine works really well
as a fertilizer. “It’s an
easy point of entry for
recycling human waste
without violating too many
taboos, and it has most of
the nutrients; 85 percent of
good stuff is in the
urine,”..
Nikola Tesla said it best,
“the day science begins to
study non-physical
phenomena, it will make more
progress in one decade than
in all the previous
centuries of its existence.
To understand the true
nature of the universe,
one must think it terms of
energy, frequency and
vibration.” Swami
Vivekananda was Tesla’s
mentor, an Indian Hindu monk
and chief disciple of the
19th century saint
Ramakrishna.Science works
best when in harmony with
nature. If we put these two
together, we can discover
great technologies that can
only come about when the
consciousness of the planet
is ready to embrace them,
like free energy.
By our count at the Galen
Institute, more than 37
significant changes already
have been made to ObamaCare:
at least 20 that President
Obama has made unilaterally,
15 that Congress has passed
and the president has
signed, and 2 by the Supreme
Court. But even this large
number of changes hasn’t
stopped the cascade of
failures we are seeing today
in the implementation of the
law.
Tribal traditions are
under attack in Indian
country because of
assimilationist pressures.
But traditionalists are
finding novel ways to cope
and in the process are
becoming healthier and
better off than before. Many
young Indians all over the
United States, Canada and
South America are
increasingly embracing
tradition.
Does anyone remember
an incident in Spokane,
Washington, when the
Salvation Army turned away a
Turtle Mountain Chippewa
family for emergency shelter
because they did not accept
Tribal Identifications? It
was in January 2007 and the
family slept in their car in
below-zero temperatures.
After media attention and
many, many complaints the
Salvation Army apologized
and looked at their policy.
Their business
administrator, Richard
Silva, told the local paper,
“That was not just wrong,
it’s illegal,” and they
began the process of
educating themselves,
including meeting with
tribal agencies and
individuals.
According to researchers the
Ross Sea will "be
extensively modified by
future climate change" in
the coming decades creating
longer periods of ice-free
open water and affecting
life cycles of all
components of the ecosystem
in a paper published and
funded by the National
Science Foundation (NSF).
The researchers have drawn
their information from the
Regional Ocean Modeling
System, a computer model
that evaluates sea-ice,
ocean, atmosphere and
sea-shelf.
A court injunction obtained
by Texas-based Cabot Oil &
Gas is preventing
Pennsylvania resident Vera
Scroggins from going to her
local grocery store, her
friends' homes, schools, or
even the hospital.
“Flaring in North Dakota hit
36% in December, a new
record,” Logan told the
subcommittee. ”This means
that more than 1/3 of all
natural gas produced in the
state is going up in smoke,
at the same time as
consumers around the country
are seeing price spikes from
natural gas in this cold
winter, along with actual
shortages of propane in many
places.”
Marathon meets beach
cleanup for a group of
concerned surfers who will
walk from Palm Beach to Boca
Raton to raise public
awareness about coastal
pollution.
With
California facing dire water
shortfalls after the driest
year in recorded state
history, Gov. Jerry Brown
has called on residents of
the Golden State to conserve
water "in every way
possible."
Central Maine Power Co.
wants customers that
generate some of their own
electricity from renewable
sources to pay higher
monthly service charges, but
the idea is being challenged
as an attack on Maine's
renewable-energy industry.
CMP says its plan would
help cover the overall cost
of service while keeping
such customers on the grid
even if they don't need
power all the time.
Advocates of solar and wind
power say the so-called
standby charge would kill
the economics of investing
in renewable generation and
run counter to the state's
policy of encouraging
renewable energy
development.
As with every major city,
New York creates a huge
amount of waste. Disposing
of it requires a variety of
environmentally damaging
processes, such as landfill
and transportation. To try
and minimize the impact of
waste disposal, Present
Architecture has proposed a
series of composting islands
along the city's waterfront.
While reports coming out of
the IAEA signal Japan has
made good progress in
remediating the area around
the damaged Fukushima plant,
some in the industry believe
the decommissioning task is
not a job for a single
nation.
Radioactively
contaminated water from
Fukushima is expected to
reach waters off Oregon’s
coast as early as this
April and the California
coast sometime later this
year, according to computer
simulations of water
currents, but it will not
pose a significant health
threat. As the radioactive
plumes travel across the
great expanse of the
Pacific, they will become so
diluted that any radiation
exposure from swimming in
the ocean off the West Coast
or eating locally caught
fish is likely to be well
below national and
international regulatory
limits.
Conversely, one should
exercise caution in eating
fish caught in the western
Pacific near Fukushima,
where contamination levels
remain high.
The Environmental
Protection Agency and BP
today executed an agreement
resolving all suspension and
debarment actions against BP
that barred the company from
doing business with the
federal government following
the company’s guilty plea in
the Deepwater Horizon
disaster of April 2010. The
administrative agreement
will be in place for five
years.
Members of the European
Parliament’s Environment
Committee Monday approved a
report for reducing the use
of single-use lightweight
plastic carrier bags. The
report recommends a
two-stage reduction target
for plastic bags across the
EU’s 28 Member States.
According to the Times,
in 2011 Hillary Clinton,
while secretary of state,
set up an 85-person bureau
to channel "the domestic
energy boom into a
geopolitical tool to advance
American interests around
the world." In a sentence
that goes right to the heart
of the matter in the sixth
year of Barack Obama’s
presidency, the Times article
pointed out that "the
administration’s strategy
has attracted unlikely
allies, including major oil
and gas producers like
ExxonMobil and Republican
leaders on Capitol Hill..."
Amusingly, in the online
version, that ill-chosen
phrase "unlikely allies" has
been expunged and the
sentence rewritten (without
any indication of a change
or correction) -- since, in
the Green Revolution
president's new version of
energy geopolitics,
ExxonMobil and its big
energy compatriots are now
clearly “likely” allies.
The chairwoman of the
Senate intelligence
committee, Dianne
Feinstein, on Tuesday
accused the Central
Intelligence Agency of a
catalogue of cover-ups,
intimidation and smears
aimed at investigators
probing its role in an
“un-American and brutal”
programme of post-9/11
detention and
interrogation
Consistent improvements in
technology and gradually
lower costs will drive
high-concentration
photovoltaic (HCPV) systems
will give conventional solar
generating solutions a run
for their money due to
superior efficiencies,
consistent improvements in
technology, and gradually
lower costs, according to
research from IHS
Technology.
There will be no delay in
the penalty most Americans
face under President Barack
Obama’s healthcare reform
law if they fail to obtain
health coverage this year,
U.S. Health and Human
Services Secretary Kathleen
Sebelius said on Wednesday.
No matter how you may feel,
what mood you are in, or in
whatever life situation you
may find yourself, the one
thing never to doubt is you
are always, 100 percent,
unequivocally, a human
resource. With a mind and a
body, we humans have the
capacity to do. Whenever we
take action to do something,
we become a resource if not
to ourselves then to someone
else.
The International Energy
Agency Friday revised upward
its estimate of world oil
demand in 2014 on an
improving economic picture,
but said burgeoning supply
from both OPEC and non-OPEC
countries meant pressure on
oil markets was likely to
ease.
A California appeals court
sided with environmentalists
over growers on Thursday and
upheld federal guidelines
that limit water diversions
to protect Delta smelt, in a
battle over how the state
will cope with its worst
drought in a century.
At least 39 people were
killed today in Iraq, while
another 41 were wounded.
Outside of the Anbar war
zone, the deadliest place
was Mosul where a number of
suicide bombers were killed
or blew themselves up.
A gas-to-energy project that
was supposed to earn the
V.I. Waste Management
Authority up to $1 million
annually is not looking as
promising as it did when it
was announced two-and-a-half
years ago.
The last trainload of
coal was delivered Monday to
the Perry K Steam Plant,
marking the end of a
121-year era Downtown.
The steam plant at 350 S.
West St. has burned coal
since 1893. But increasingly
stringent environmental
regulations spurred operator
Citizens Energy Group to
switch to cleaner-burning
natural gas.
As a confirmation of a
significant downward
adjustment to China's
growth, a battery of
economic reports this
morning all came in
materially below
expectations.
A community meeting on coal
ash stored at Mountain
Island Lake turned into a
grilling Monday of state
legislators over their
response to Duke Energy's
spill on the Dan River last
month.
Electric vehicles (EV) are
seeing another push as
pressure on car
manufacturing companies to
devise sustainable and
environmental friendly
automobiles grows. Although
electric cars will not be
the answer to all
environmental issues,
automakers are touting the
benefits of ownership.
The Freedom
Industries chemical leak has
led many to find creative
ways to avoid using tap
water.
Most are relying on
bottled water, but a growing
number of people are looking
to the sky for a clean --
and free -- water source.
Rainwater harvesting
is the process of collecting
rainwater in containers,
then storing it for later
use. The practice is popular
among gardeners and in
desert areas where water is
scarce.
According to the latest
research, obesity rates
among American
preschoolers declined by
43 percent in the past
decade
No reduction in obesity
rates was found among
any other age group,
however; obesity rates
for women over the age
of 60 actually rose by
about 21 percent
One in eight
preschoolers is still in
the obese category,
along with 18 percent of
kids aged six to 11—up
from seven percent in
1980
Federal policies have
not budged when it comes
to issues that matter
the most, or could have
the greatest impact,
such as reducing
subsidies to growers of
genetically engineered
sugar beets, corn, and
soy
Agricultural subsidies
and other federal
policies actively
promote the production
of cheap unhealthy
processed junk foods
that promote obesity and
ill health
High-profile data
breaches affecting retailers
including Target, Nieman
Marcus and Michael’s have
put information security
into the mainstream,
affecting sales and
prompting Congressional
hearings. As these breaches
show, it is becoming
increasingly difficult for
businesses and technology
companies to stay ahead of
cyber-criminals.
The shale gas boom resulted
in a surplus of natural gas
in the United States, which
triggered a collapse of
natural gas prices when
combined with a shortage of
export facilities. However,
despite this, infrastructure
investments will give export
capacity a boost, and
consumption will gradually
increase as the economy
recovers in the five years
to 2019, according to
IBISWorld.
More than 78,600 clean
energy and clean
transportation jobs were
announced in 2013, at 260
projects with solar power
generation driving more than
21,600 jobs in the sector,
according to Environmental
Entrepreneurs (E2).
The Los Alamos National
Laboratory is evaluating how
to meet a June deadline to
permanently discard
plutonium-tainted junk in
light of a prolonged
shutdown of a New Mexico
nuclear waste dump after an
accident there last month, a
lab official said.
High quality non-renewable
natural resources (NNR) like
minerals, metals, and fossil
fuels are vital to
maintaining and expanding
high-consumption industrial
societies, but such
resources are being rapidly
depleted, according to
ecologist and resource
economist Chris Clugston of
Negative Population Growth
(NPG), who has researched
global and U.S. sources,
cost, and availability of
NNRs since 2006.
Take a close look at the
pictures of the Iranian men
who used stolen passports to
board the Malaysian Airlines
plane that has been missing
since Saturday. Notice
anything off about it?
In a policy retreat that is
little known and virtually
uncovered in media circles
(except for the Wall Street
Journal), the Obama
Administration has
effectively postponed, for
three years, any requirement
that those whose health care
policies were cancelled or
will be cancelled from
having to buy health
insurance.
According to
Industrial Valves: World
Markets published by the
McIlvaine Company, the
upstream oil and gas
industry will spend for the
first time more than $10
billion for valves in a
single year.
In 2015, the expenditure
is predicted to be $10.3
billion, which includes
valves purchased for oil and
gas extraction. Further, it
includes those used in
unconventional extraction
such as from subsea shale
and oil sands. The forecast
also includes valves used in
LNG and gas-to-liquids
plants. The shale gas boom
is resulting in LNG and
gas-to-liquid plant
construction, and large
numbers of valves are
required to operate these
plants.
After missing their charter
bus home to stake out Gov.
Deval Patrick, members of
the Cape Downwinders nuclear
watchdog group left Boston
on Monday with the
governor's promise to
officially reiterate his
concerns about the Pilgrim
Nuclear Power Station in
Plymouth.
Northern California
preservationists are
fighting to keep a rare
albino redwood, one of just
10 trees of its kind known
to exist, from being chopped
down to make way for a new
commuter rail system,
arborists and city officials
said on Wednesday.
Bitcoin replaces
trust with
cryptography to
provide a monetary
system without
surprises
Bitcoin, the digital
cryptocurrency designed
to enable anonymous
peer-to-peer financial
exchanges without the
involvement of third
parties, is having
serious teething
problems. However, most
such problems are
associated with bitcoin
storage or conversion,
and should settle down
as the currency is more
widely accepted.
Assuming this happens,
let's look at the
strengths and weaknesses
of a mature Bitcoin
currency in a modern
economy.
Another Obamacare delay has
taken effect, although you
may not have heard.
The administration has
quietly announced that it
was delaying through October
2016 the Affordable Care
Act's individual mandate for
millions of Americans who
have lost their healthcare
coverage.
The latest
change was buried in an
announcement that Americans
would be able to keep health
plans that do not meet
Obamacare standards for
another two years, Fox News
reports.
The President of the
European Wind Energy
Association (EWEA) has told
delegates at its annual
conference that the threat
to Europe’s energy security
can be neutered by
investment in the EU’s wind
energy sector. He told his
audience, “Mr Putin cannot
turn off the tap that
supplies our wind, our free
indigenous fuel.”
Big, sweeping changes
to any established market
run the risk of unintended
consequences, particularly
when those changes result
from multiple pieces of
legislation and regulation,
often written independently
of each other and introduced
more or less at the same
time. The UK’s Financial
Conduct Authority (FCA) now
thinks it might have spotted
some in the commodity
markets, warning in a report published at the
end of last month about the
impact a retreat by
investment banks may have on
market liquidity and
transparency.
Reaching Darbang in Myagdi
district is an ordeal. The
rough roads leading from the
district capital of Beni are
impassable during the rains,
requiring you to wade
through rivers and perform
balancing acts across
landslides to get there. So
it’s surprising that once
you reach there, what greets
you is not a sleepy rural
village, but a bustling
center of economic activity.
M9 event observed. There are
currently 7 numbered sunspot
regions on the disk.
Solar activity is expected
to be moderate with a slight
chance for an X-class flare
on days one, two, and three
(14 Mar, 15 Mar, 16 Mar)
because there are large,
magnetically complex regions
on the disk. The
geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet to
unsettled levels on day one
(14 Mar) and quiet levels on
days two and three (15 Mar,
16 Mar).
New Weapon in Climate Fight?
The degradation of soils
from unsustainable
agriculture and other
development has released
billions of tons of carbon
into the atmosphere. But new
research shows how effective
land restoration could play
a major role in sequestering
CO2 and slowing climate
change.
Rising concerns over
depletion of fossil fuel
reserves, rising greenhouse
gas emissions, and
increasing investments for
governments represent the
major factors driving demand
for solar power. In
particular, the market for
thin film photovoltaic cells
is projected to thrive --
reaching $22.8 billion by
2020, according to Global
Industry Analysts (GIA).
As energy costs rise,
bioenergy -- renewable
energy made from organic
sources, such as biomass --
is turning into a viable
alternative where the
technology has advanced
enough that biomass power
plants are small enough to
fit on a farm and can be
built at relatively low
costs. Creating a bioenergy
grid with these small plants
could benefit people in
rural areas and provide
relief to an aging U.S.
power grid, according to
University of Missouri (MU)
research.
Some of the smallest
children in Koriyama, a
short drive from the
crippled Fukushima nuclear
plant, barely know what it's
like to play outside - fear
of radiation has kept them
indoors for much of their
short lives.
Establishment Republicans
always remind us of how the
Tea Party cost the GOP
crucial seats in 2010 and
2012, which might have
delivered control of the
Senate to the Republican
Party. And, they have a
point.
If Tea Party candidates had
not won primaries in
Delaware, Nevada, Colorado,
Indiana and Missouri, these
states might now be sending
more Republicans to the
Senate.
This is a story that
needs to be told: an ancient
culture imperiled and under
siege as Bering Sea fish
resources are sold off to
the highest bidder. Poor
people eliminated from the
bidding war, their
subsistence resources
eliminated, the spiral
downward to hopelessness and
despair, and then, too
often, suicide.
The story is difficult to
communicate due to the
remote location of Alaska’s
Native village of Kaltag and
its stark cultural
differences with modern
America.
World sentiment seemed to
steer away from nuclear
energy and toward more
renewables following the
disaster at Japan's
Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear
plant on March 11, 2011.
Three years later, have we
forgotten?
A “myth of safety”
permeated before the
accident — and indeed
may have led to it. ..
A group of experienced
experts in waste composting,
irrigation, agronomy and bio
gas energy have formed a
team which aims to create
practical programs to
convert waste into food and
energy. These experts are
not scientists and engineers
but rather practitioners,
each armed with 20 plus
years of expertise
worldwide.
Peshawar, Pakistan:
Two policemen guarding a
polio vaccination team
in northwest Pakistan
were shot dead by armed
men on Tuesday, police
said, the latest setback
to efforts to eradicate
the crippling disease.
Militant strikes and
threats of violence have
badly hampered a
campaign to stamp out
polio in Pakistan, which
along with Nigeria and
Afghanistan are the only
countries where the
disease remains endemic.
30-year fixed-rate mortgage
(FRM) averaged 4.37 percent
with an average 0.6 point
for the week ending March
13, 2014, up from last week
when it averaged 4.28
percent. A year ago at this
time, the 30-year FRM
averaged 3.63 percent.
The US Department of
Veterans Affairs today
announced it will resume its
policy of allowing homes
with water catchment systems
for use as collateral for VA
loans.
People in densely populated
highlands of Africa and
South America — who have so
far been protected from
malaria by cooler
temperatures — may be seeing
more of the disease as the
climate changes, according
to a study in Science (6
March).
Tapering is a term given to
an expected series of
upcoming actions on the part
of the Federal Reserve to
pull back new infusions of
cash into the U.S. economy.
Ever since the credit crisis
and subsequent Great
Recession, the Fed has been
injecting liquidity into the
banking system to stimulate
the economy and keep
interest rates low. At some
point, when the economy
shows enough signs of
improvement, the Fed will
need to begin slowing the
rate at which it buys assets
and pumps up markets.
Investors and other
financial observers fear
that as the Fed begins this
tapering process (tapering
off the buying of assets to
inject liquidity into the
economy) markets and the
economy may suffer.
Environmental regulations
(and not tax reform) will
have the greatest impact on
the capital investment
decisions of accounting, tax
and finance professionals in
the energy industry,
according to Ernst & Young
(EY), who surveyed the oil
and gas, power and
utilities, and mining and
metals industries on a range
of issues related to
government policies at the
federal, state and local
levels.
Food production has long
been linked to politics, but
there is a new movement
underfoot. Americans are
growing tired of waiting for
the food industry to change.
Thanks to the Internet,
revealing documentaries, and
outspoken food activists,
there is more information
available than ever before
about the dark side of
corporate-driven food
production. So, while
Monsanto continues to sell
its genetically modified
seeds and CAFOs continue to
churn out questionable meat,
Americans are protesting by
picking up their shovels and
hoes – and gardening.
AWEA, the national trade
association of the United
States wind energy industry,
has shared that wind power
topped 4% of the U.S. power
grid for the first time last
year.
China's propaganda
machine went into full gear
as it sets its sights on
foreign economic forecasters
who are continuing to
profess slower economic
growth for the nation. Is
the West is picking on China
again? Creating all this
negative publicity?
Middle Fork River
advocates are urging Gov.
Pat Quinn and the Illinois
Environmental Protection
Agency to "do the right
thing" and direct Dynegy to
relocate three coal-ash
ponds at the old Vermilion
Power Station north of
Oakwood.
If that's not done, they
said, it will just be a
matter of time before the
pond walls break and tons of
the toxic sludge spill into
the state's only national
scenic river.
A Massachusetts-based
startup backed by
Microsoft’s Bill Gates plans
to install its energy
storage battery at First
Wind’s wind power projects
in Oahu, Hawaii.
First Wind said they are
still determining which
project will receive the
technology. Upon the
decision, Ambri and First
Wind will formalize an
agreement.
A scathing judgment issued
by a U.S. judge this week
against their lawyer will
cast a long shadow over
cases filed in Canada,
Brazil and Argentina, where
the plaintiffs are seeking
Chevron assets as payment
because the oil giant no
longer has a presence in
Ecuador.
President Obama today
released a $3.9 trillion
budget plan for Fiscal Year
2015 with many green
features, including funds
for his Climate Action Plan
and a new Climate Resiliency
Fund.
Marijuana sales in
Colorado brought in $3.5
million in tax revenues and
fees in the first month
retail pot outlets were
allowed, the western US
state said Monday.
The figure included $2.9
million in taxes for
recreational and medical
marijuana in the month of
January, and nearly $600,000
in fees, said Colorado's
Department of Revenue.
The court, on an 8 to 1
vote, threw out the
government’s claim that it
retains control of a
200-foot-wide trail that
crosses part of Marvin
Brandt’s 83 acres of land in
Fox Park, Wyo. Brandt was
the only one of dozens of
landowners who objected to
the government’s claim to
the land and its conversion
into a trail.
The railway line was
abandoned in 2004. Brandt
argued that the rail line
was an easement, which
becomes part of his property
under an 1875 law. The
government said the right of
way reverts to the public.
The global deepwater rig
market, which was booming
for the past few years,
appears to be pulling back,
with contract dayrate
expectations for even
high-specification rigs down
about $50,000/d from late
2013 and at least one rig
temporarily idle, observers
said.
Duke Energy expects its
3.2 million North Carolina
customers to pay the costs
of closing its ash ponds,
CEO Lynn Good said Friday.
Duke is preparing a
response to Gov. Pat
McCrory's request last week
that his former employer
supply options, costs and
other details for dealing
with its ash ponds by March
15.
McCrory's demand added to
the pressure on Duke, after
a disastrous spill last
month on the Dan River, to
move millions of tons of ash
away from water supplies
such as Charlotte's Mountain
Island Lake.
Many low-income communities
around the country are
located in what policy
makers, activists and media
refer to as "food deserts"
-- places where there is an
abundance of cheap,
processed food and an
absence of healthy, fresh,
affordable food. In a food
desert food options range
from a variety of fast food
chains to "food" sold at
local corner stores, liquor
stores, pharmacies, etc. I
live in South Central Los
Angeles and it is
undoubtedly a food desert.
But I do not call it that. I
call it a food prison. And
if our communities do not
take the necessary steps to
break out of this prison we
will remain trapped by the
immobilizing confines of our
zip code.
Four new gases have been
detected in the atmosphere –
all resulting from human
activities and all
contributing to destruction
of the ozone layer.
Research by scientists at
the University of East
Anglia shows that more than
74,000 metric tonnes of
three new
chlorofluorocarbons, CFCs,
and one new
hydrochlorofluorocarbon,
HCFC, have been released
into the atmosphere.
The Great Lakes saw some
of their worst ice cover in
nearly four decades because
of a frigid winter with
months of below-freezing
temperatures in large
sections of the northern
United States, the National
Ocean and Atmospheric
Administration said.
As of Thursday, 92.2
percent of the five lakes
were under ice, breaking a
record set in 1973 but still
short of the 94.7 percent
set in 1979, the federal
agency said.
Japanese Prime Minister
Shinzo Abe said Monday that
the country intends to
restart nuclear reactors
once they are confirmed safe
by the country's independent
Nuclear Regulatory
Authority.
Speaking
at a televised press
conference, Abe said the
country intends to "proceed
restarting" nuclear reactors
that are confirmed safe by
the world's "most
rigorous-level" safety
standards and scrutiny.
Abe said any nuclear
restarts would come after
confirmed safety assurances
based on lessons from the
2011 Fukushima nuclear
disaster.
The two largest grocery
stores in the United States,
Kroger and Safeway, have
promised to not sell GMO
salmon. Over 9,000 stores
nationwide have now
committed to being free of
the controversial fish.
Kroger, the US's leading
grocery chain with 2,424
stores, informed Friends of
the Earth of its decision in
an email from Keith Dailey,
director of media relations
at Kroger. "Should
genetically engineered
salmon be approved, Kroger
has no intention of sourcing
it", Dailey wrote.
Libyan officials said that
government forces on Monday
took over a North
Korean-flagged oil tanker
docked at a terminal held by
a regional militia, where it
had been attempting to load
oil. The militia, however,
denied the government had
taken the ship.
Recently newspapers
have trumpeted new
scientific discoveries that
lead some scientists to
conclude that early American
Indians lived in the area of
the Bering Strait, known as
Beringia, for more than
10,000 years before
colonizing the Americas
around about 15,000 years
ago.
The troubled Bitcoin
exchange, which claims to
have lost nearly $500
million in the
crypto-currency to theft,
wins a brief reprieve from a
pair of US lawsuits.
NATO says it is dispatching
surveillance aircraft to fly
over Poland and Romania to
monitor the crisis unfolding
in neighboring Ukraine.
The military alliance says
the decision to send AWACS
reconnaissance planes was
taken by the ambassadors of
NATO's 28 member states
Monday to intensify the
assessment of the possible
threat the crisis poses to
the alliance.
A series of small
aftershocks continued to
rattle the extreme northern
coast of California on
Monday, hours after a
magnitude 6.8 earthquake
shook the town of Eureka and
an area extending into
Oregon and Nevada with no
reports of damage.
The main tremor, which
struck at about 10:30 p.m.
on Sunday, was centered in
the Pacific about 50 miles
west of Eureka and 10 miles
beneath the ocean floor,
according to the U.S.
Geological Survey.
For the 22nd consecutive
year, Palo Verde Nuclear
Generating Station was the
nation's largest power
producer, generating 31.4
million megawatt-hours in
2013. With this milestone,
Palo Verde remains the only
U.S. generating facility to
ever produce more than 30
million megawatt-hours in a
year - an operational
accomplishment the plant has
achieved on nine separate
occasions.
Leaking or overfilled tanks
can cause environmental
problems, contaminate
drinking water, and cost a
company millions of dollars.
Proper instrumentation,
monitoring and control can
prevent these problems
One of the most prominent
and widely discussed topics
in renewable energy finance
is how to lower funding
costs to make more projects
viable. In general,
renewable energy
technologies are not yet at
economic parity with
conventional power
generation technologies.
M1 event observed.
Solar activity is likely to
be moderate with a slight
chance for an X-class flare
on days one, two, and three
(11 Mar, 12 Mar, 13 Mar).
The geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet to
unsettled levels on day one
(11 Mar) and quiet levels on
days two and three (12 Mar,
13 Mar).
The Tennessee Valley
Authority (TVA) has
completed an underground
retaining wall at the
Kingston Fossil Plant where
more than one billion
gallons of coal ash spilled
from a storage pond in
December 2008.
The wall is built around
the 240-acre containment
cell, where recovered ash
will be permanently stored.
Construction of the wall
began in the summer 2011 and
stretches nearly 64,000
linear feet – the equivalent
of 12 miles.
The share of foreigners on
the 3.75 trillion ruble
($103 billion) government
bond market declined to 22.7
percent on Feb. 1 from 23.9
percent at the start of the
year. That’s the lowest
level in 12 months, data on
Bank Rossii’s website showed
today.
Very low levels of
radiation from the Fukushima
nuclear disaster likely will
reach ocean waters along the
U.S. West Coast next month,
scientists are reporting.
Current models predict
that the radiation will be
at extremely low levels that
won’t harm humans or the
environment, said Ken
Buesseler, a chemical
oceanographer at the Woods
Hole Oceanographic
Institution who presented
research on the issue last
week.
But Buesseler and other
scientists are calling for
more monitoring. No federal
agency currently samples
Pacific Coast seawater for
radiation, he said.
A federal judge in San
Francisco blocked the Obama
administration Monday from
destroying millions of
records of National Security
Agency telephone
surveillance, issuing a
nationwide order to preserve
evidence for a half-dozen
invasion-of-privacy lawsuits.
The NSA, which has
acknowledged obtaining phone
numbers and other
information on all calls in
the United States in its
hunt for terrorists, was
prepared Tuesday to destroy
all records collected more
than five years ago. The
secretive court that
approved the surveillance
has required purging the
documents after five years
as a privacy measure, and
denied the government's
request Friday to extend
that timetable for the
pending lawsuits.
Former security
contractor Edward Snowden,
addressing a sympathetic
crowd at a tech-heavy event
in Austin, Texas, on Monday
from a secret location in
Russia, said proposed
reforms at the National
Security Agency show that he
was vindicated in leaking
classified material.
Snowden, who faces arrest
if he steps foot on U.S.
soil, spoke via a video link
to a packed house at the
annual South by Southwest
(SXSW) gathering of tech
industry experts, filmmakers
and musicians. He said the
U.S. government still has no
idea what material he has
provided to journalists.
Uncontrolled deer
populations in rural and
suburban areas have become a
nuisance for many
communities. Not only do
deer cause damage to
ornamental plants and
private residential
landscapes, but a new study
confirms that deer
populations are also
altering forest progression.
In support of its announced
the goal of producing a mass
market electric car in
approximately three years,
Tesla Motors, Inc.
has revealed its plans for a
massive industrial complex
to produce high volumes of
Li-ion batteries. Called the
Gigafactory, this industrial
complex is expected to
leverage Tesla's projected
demand for lithium ion
batteries to reduce their
cost faster than previously
thought possible. According
to the company, the total
volume of Li-ion batteries
produced globally by all
makers in 2013 was nearly 35
GWh. By 2020, the single
Gigafactory will be
producing 35 GWh of cells
annually and will have a
capacity to produce at least
50 GWh.
Since ancient times we
have seen pictures and
paintings of different
spiritual leaders across
various traditions but one
thing that is common among
all of them is the halo that
surrounds their head which
is known as the Aura- energy
field. Many have dismissed
Auras, especially those
professed to be experts in
natural sciences. However,
with the assistance of
highly sensitive cameras
scientists have been able
to photograph this field
some experts believe could
become a tool for use in the
diagnosis and treatment of
many diseases.
This aura represents your
physical, mental, emotional
as well as spiritual
energies. The aura is often
seen a mix of fine coloured
frequencies where each
colour defines its own
individual nature and
characteristics.
Endangered jaguars will
have 1,194 square miles of
critical habitat in southern
Arizona and New Mexico for
their recovery, under a rule
finalized by the U.S. Fish
and Wildlife Service on
Tuesday.
The gold and
black-spotted jaguar,
Panthera onca, is the
world’s third-largest cat,
after tigers and lions.
Jaguars once roamed from
southern California through
the Southwest and lived in
Louisiana, Kentucky and
North Carolina, but only
six, possibly seven,
jaguars, all males, have
been detected in the United
States since 1982, says the
Service.
In the face of congressional
pressure, US regulators are
taking steps to require the
electricity industry to
bolster physical security at
key facilities on the grid,
while at the same time
emphasizing that stronger
defenses will not be
required at most facilities.
The US Federal Energy
Regulatory Commission on
Friday directed the North
American Electric
Reliability Corp. to within
90 days propose reliability
standards to "address
physical security risks and
vulnerabilities related to
the reliable operation of
the bulk-power system."
In the days after an
earthquake and tsunami
decimated the Fukushima
Daiichi power plant in Japan
in 2011, U.S. officials hid
their concerns, emails
indicated.
The staff at the U.S.
Nuclear Regulatory
Commission made an effort to
downplay the risk of
earthquakes and tsunamis to
America's aging nuclear
plants, NBC News reported
Monday after reviewing
thousands of internal emails
it obtained through a
Freedom of Information Act
request.
More than two dozen U.S.
Senate Democrats joined
forces to speak through the
night on Monday, hoping to
"wake up" Congress to what
they call the threat of
climate change.
It's long been
established that Arctic
Ocean sea ice is on the
retreat, writes Tim Radford.
But it's the pace of change
that's surprising
scientists: latest studies
show that the ice-free
period is increasing by 5
days / decade.Ice in the Arctic
continues to retreat. The
season without ice is
getting longer by an average
of five days every 10 years.
And in some regions of
the Arctic, the autumn
freeze is now up to 11 days
later every decade.
Wolves are changing not
only the wildlife of
Yellowstone National Park
since being reintroduced
after a 70-year absence, but
also the geography—namely,
the rivers.
This stunning video
narrated by investigative
journalist George Monbiot
illustrates the "trophic
cascade" effect that wolves
have had on the very
geography of Yellowstone.
Two studies by researchers
at Oregon State University
in the past couple of years
have documented the
transformation of wildlife
as a result of the
resurgence of the wolf at
Yellowstone.
Although not native to North
America, this now ubiquitous
weed was quickly and widely
accepted into the materia
medica of this continent’s
indigenous peoples, which
itself is a clear indication
of its broad applicability
and benevolent nature. I
view Mullein as an important
guardian plant, emphasized
in how it followed European
immigrants to the Americas,
and served to create an
herbal bridge between old
world and new world healing
traditions, to the point
that very few herbalists or
folk healers could imagine a
practice without this
beloved and widespread
remedy.
The eastern and central
United States were plunged
into a deep freeze on
Tuesday, with record low
temperatures in the wake of
a deadly storm expected to
moderate in coming days.
A new NASA study finds that
warmer than normal waters
from rivers draining into
the Arctic Ocean each summer
are eating away at the sea
ice in the Arctic Ocean. Led
by Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, Calif., the
research team used satellite
data to measure the surface
temperature of the waters
discharging from Canada's
McKenzie River into the
Beaufort Sea during the
summer of 2012 and noticed
surface waters being warmed
suddenly due to the sudden
influx of warm river water
This warmed the surface
layers of the ocean, which
in turn increased the
melting of sea ice.
Average U.S. rates on
fixed mortgages fell after
three weeks of rises, edging
closer to historically low
levels.
Mortgage buyer
Freddie Mac said Thursday
that the average rate for
the 30-year loan declined to
4.28 percent from 4.37
percent last week. The
average for the 15-year
mortgage fell to 3.32
percent from 3.39 percent.
Researchers find that
Cahokia, a pre-Columbian
native American city of
20,000 near what would
become St. Louis, may have
been the first
cross-cultural melting pot
in North America...
The first experiment in
"melting pot" politics in
North America appears to
have emerged nearly 1,000
years ago in the bottom
lands of the Mississippi
River near today's St.
Louis, according to
archaeologists piecing
together the story of the
rise and fall of the native
American urban complex known
as Cahokia.
Free tap water may be a
weapon in the fight against
drunk driving. ..
In the U.K., many bars are
already required to serve
free tap water. According to
the Consumer Council for
Water, a group that
represents water and sewer
ratepayers, pubs and
restaurants have to serve
free tap water if they also
serve alcohol. The aim is to
"ensure that customers have
access to free tap water so
that they can space out
their drinks and not get too
intoxicated too quickly,"
the group said.
China, the top greenhouse
gas emitter, urged rich
nations on Thursday to do
more to lead the fight
against climate change and
help avert heatwaves, floods
and rising sea levels.
In a submission to the
United Nations before a
March 10-14 meeting of
governments in Germany,
Beijing called on developed
countries to make deeper
cuts in greenhouse gas
emissions and increase aid
to help the poor tackle
global warming.
EPA estimates that the
upgrades and advanced
treatment required by the
settlement will reduce
discharges of total
dissolved solids by over 36
million pounds each year,
and will cut metals and
other pollutants by
approximately nine million
pounds per year.
The US Congress should step
in to clarify impending
Environmental Protection
Agency rules designed to
reduce greenhouse gas
emissions from new
coal-fired power plants, the
heads of Duke Energy and
American Electric Power, two
of the country's largest
electric utilities, said at
an industry conference
Thursday.
The number of different
pests plaguing crops in the
developing world may be
vastly underestimated,
contributing to severely
reduced harvests in some of
the world's most important
food-producing nations, say
researchers.
About 200 pests and
pathogens per country fly
under the radar of
researchers and policymakers
in the developing world due
to a lack of technical
capacity to detect them,
according to a study.
Duke Energy has found
eight more corrugated metal
pipes at power plants that
store coal ash, after
telling state regulators
that the pipe that collapsed
at its Dan River facility in
early February was the only
one made of the weaker
material.
Wednesday's public
disclosure came as the
utility's growing coal-ash
problem in North Carolina
was also becoming Gov. Pat
McCrory's problem.
A North Carolina judge
ruled on Thursday that Duke
Energy Corp must immediately
stop the sources of
groundwater pollution at its
14 coal-fired power plants
in the state.
The issue of pollution
from coal ash gained
momentum in North Carolina
last month, when a spill
from a retired Duke power
plant dumped at least 30,000
tons of ash in the Dan
River.
The much-feared El Nino
phenomenon, the warming of
sea surface temperatures in
the Pacific which can
trigger drought in Southeast
Asia and Australia and
floods in South America,
could strike as early as the
Northern Hemisphere summer,
the U.S. weather forecaster
warned on Thursday.
In its strongest
prediction in almost 18
months that El Nino could
return, the Climate
Prediction Center (CPC) said
in its monthly report that
neutral El Nino conditions
will likely continue through
the spring, but there was
about a 50 percent chance of
the weather pattern
developing during the summer
or autumn.
Smart grid energy storage
technologies, and related
software applications,
experienced significant
advancements in 2013.
Utilities around the world
deployed new energy storage
systems and participated in
pilot projects aimed at
producing a more dependable
and sustainable grid. Recent
announcements of several key
energy storage projects
demonstrate expanding
strategies in the industry.
The Panama Canal Authority
expects the expanded canal
"should be in operation by
January 2016" after a trial
period, Silvia de Marucci,
ACP's manager of marketing
and forecasting, said
Friday.
After Nepal making a
commitment to protect the
future of its magnificent
and highly endangered
species, it has once again
succeeded and between
February 2013 and February
2014, no rhino, tigers or
elephants were poached in
the country. Nepal has a
history of success in the
prevention of poaching, and
another poaching-free year
occurred in 2011.
Last year the Klamath
were forced to use their
newly decreed water rights,
which the state had ruled
date back to “time
immemorial,” to cut off
irrigation to upper Klamath
Basin cattle ranches in
order to save tribal
hatcheries. Since then the
worsening drought in
California, which has
prompted both an emergency
declaration and state
legislation, has been
lending urgency to the
situation
The U.S. House of
Representatives has
overwhelmingly approved the
Energy Efficiency
Improvement Act, HR 2126, by
a staggering vote of 375 to
36. In addition to HR 2126,
the legislation packages
several important pieces to
increase energy efficiency
in commercial buildings, the
federal government, and
certain appliances. This
includes a modified version
of HR 540, the Energy
Efficiency Government
Technology Act; HR 4066, to
modify efficiency standards
for grid-enabled water
heaters; and HR 3820, to
encourage benchmarking in
commercial buildings.
Many Americans are confused
about the best ways to
conserve water and have a
slippery grasp on how much
water different activities
use, according to a national
online survey conducted by
Indiana University Assistant
Professor, Shahzeen
Attari. Experts say the best
strategy for conserving
water is to focus on
efficiency improvements such
as replacing toilets and
retrofitting washing
machines. However, the
largest group of the
participants, nearly 43
percent, cited taking
shorter showers, which does
save water but may not be
the most effective action.
Very few participants cited
replacing toilets or
flushing less, even though
toilets use the most volume
of water daily.
Many people worry about
"tipping points" in the
climate system. For example,
could a small increase in
Arctic temperatures cause a
major methane release with
accelerated global warming?
Will a little warming cause
rapidly accelerating
collapse of the Greenland
and Antarctic ice sheets,
quickly flooding low-lying
regions? Or could a small
disturbance along the
India-Pakistan border erupt
into a nuclear war that
could produce global
famine...
When the sun sets on a
remote desert outpost
and solar panels shut
down, what energy source
will provide power
through the night? A
battery, perhaps, or an
old diesel generator?
Perhaps something
strange and new.
Physicists at the
Harvard School of
Engineering and Applied
Sciences (SEAS) envision
a device that would
harvest energy from
Earth’s infrared
emissions into outer
space.
China reduced its
holdings of treasuries in
December by the largest
amount since 2011, raising
some eyebrows among
economists and debt
investors. The sentiment
among analysts is that this
reduction is related to
Fed's taper, which of course
doesn't bode well for
treasuries in the near-term.
Hatsuko Ishikawa never
got a final look at her
36-year-old son, a
firefighter, before he was
swept away by the tsunami
that devastated Japan's
northeast coast three years
ago.
Ishikawa only heard his
voice, bellowing from his
fire engine as he sped
towards the sea to try to
evacuate people before the
wave struck. As the truck
raced past, Ishikawa heard
her son call out to her
grandson, telling the boy to
evacuate to higher ground.
Then he was gone.
She is haunted by what
happened and tormented by
what might have been.
Longer-lasting batteries
continue to get the
attention from researchers
who point out that they
could allow electric
vehicles to travel longer
distances before needing a
charge. Lithium-sulfur
batteries appear to have the
potential if they can just
overcome a few technical
hurdles.
At least 82 people were
killed and 176 were wounded
across Iraq today. Most of
the casualties were
civilians. A series of
bombings once again took
place in Baghdad province,
but there were significant
blasts in nearby cities as
well.
The newest advancement in
oil exploration is an
early-phase aerial
technology that can see what
no other technology,
including the latest 3D
seismic imagery, can see,
allowing explorers to
pinpoint untapped reservoirs
and unlock new profits,
cheaper and faster, writes
James Burgess of
Oilprice.com.
In
the past four years, the
psychiatry establishment has
pivoted from first ignoring
Whitaker to then debating
him and attempting to
discredit him to currently
agreeing with many of his
conclusions. But will
Whitaker's success in
changing minds result in a
change for the better in
treatment practices?
The second solar crowdfunded
solar project is being
celebrated in California.
Developed by RE-volv, the
project was made possible by
a revolving fund for
community-based solar -- the
first of its kind in the
country.
The U.S. solar market is
going mainstream, according
to a new report from GTM
Research and the Solar
Energy Industries
Association (SEIA), which
cites continuing explosive
growth and a
record-shattering year in
2013.
North Carolina's
environment agency wants
Duke Energy to provide
information about its
coal-ash ponds that state
legislation has allowed the
utility to keep private.
The N.C. Department of
Environment and Natural
Resources said Wednesday
that it will inspect all of
Duke's ash ponds next week.
50% of utilities expect
natural gas to be their
primary fuel source in 20
years
Distributed generation is
the most disruptive
technology to the utility
business model, but rather
than look at it as a threat,
most utility executives
perceive it as an
opportunity, according to a
survey commissioned by
engineering firm Siemens.
In the late 1980s, the band
R.E.M. achieved pop music
fame by claiming, it's the
end of the world as we know
it. Utilities should heed
their warning. Distributed
generation (DG) could be the
end of utilities as we know
them today. Or, as we at
Morningstar like to say, DG
could destroy utilities'
economic moats.
Electrical transformers
are the Achilles heel of the
U.S. power grid, experts
say, because of the threat
of physical as well as
cyberattacks.
The transformers, the
largest of which can cost $1
million to $8 million, are
key to moving electricity
from power-generating plants
to consumers across the
country, but could be
rendered useless by through
relatively low-tech attacks,
the Wall Street Journal
reported Monday.
It's the largest wall of
its type -- almost 64,000
linear feet -- and it was
finished nearly a month
ahead of schedule, according
to TVA officials.
The utility giant on
Monday observed what
officials called a
"significant milestone" in
its ongoing cleanup of the
disastrous ash spill at its
Kingston Fossil Plant -- the
completion of the retaining
wall to store the remaining
ash that burst from a
holding cell in December
2008. The work wrapped up
late last month.
Cracking yields have been
driven lower across the US
over the past two weeks on a
drop in refined product
prices, although Midwest
yields have held up relative
to other regions because of
strength in Chicago jet fuel
and gasoline prices, Platts
data showed Thursday.
The relatively stronger
yields, combined with access
to discounted crude supply,
have bolstered Midwest
refining margins, while
margins in other regions
have drifted lower.
The U.S. weather
forecaster issued its first
El Nino watch in almost 18
months on Thursday, warning
the phenomenon that can
wreak havoc on weather and
roil global crops could
strike as early as the
Northern Hemisphere summer.
The latest outlook brings
the forecaster in line with
other global meteorologists
that have raised their
outlook for El Nino's
potential return.
The disenrollment
issue came under the
spotlight in 2006 with the
Cherokee Nation’s
disenrollment of the
descendants of the Cherokee
Freedmen, freed African
slaves who became citizens
of the Cherokee Nation in
accordance with a treaty
with the U.S. government
after the Civil War ended.
The case is still being
played out in the courts.
But since then more and more
tribes have become embroiled
in membership disputes,
which often go hand in hand
with leadership disputes.
Of the 51 tons of
antibiotics consumed every
day in the United States,
about 80 percent goes into
animal production (above).
The widespread use of
antibiotics in livestock may
be contributing to growing
resistance to the drugs by
bacteria such as
Salmonella (below). In
December, the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration enacted
a voluntary program phasing
out antibiotics used to make
livestock grow bigger.
There were more than 3.5
million job postings in the
U.S. clean energy sector
last year -- up 19 percent
from 2012 -- according to
Ecotech Institute, which
categorizes clean energy
jobs as part of a business
that benefits the
environment or conserves
natural resources, based on
the Bureau of Labor
Statistics description. The
report looks at various
sustainability factors such
as alternative fueling
stations and total energy
consumption, and was created
using data from independent
research entities including
the American Council for an
Energy-Efficient Economy,
Database of State Incentives
for Renewables & Efficiency,
U.S. Energy Information
Administration, and the U.S.
Department of Energy.
The findings raise hopes of
park managers, Native
American tribes and wildlife
advocates that efforts to
restore bison populations
derived from the nation's
last pure-bred band of wild
bison will face less
resistance from the cattle
industry.
The world food supply has
grown increasingly dependent
on a shrinking list of
crops, such as wheat and
maize, in the past 50 years
with major consequences for
human nutrition and global
food security, according to
a new study.
In the Western
Amazon—arguably the world's
most biodiverse
region—scientists have found
that not only is the forest
super-rich in species, but
also in chemicals. Climbing
into the canopy of thousands
of trees across 19 different
forests in the region—from
the lowland Amazon to high
Andean cloud forests—the
researchers sampled chemical
signatures from canopy
leaves and were surprised by
the levels of diversity
uncovered.
The monarch butterfly is
becoming endangered, as
genetically engineered
crops like corn and soy
have largely eliminated
the monarch’s sole food
and breeding source—the
milkweed
A group of scientists
and writers are urging
Mexican, American, and
Canadian leaders to
commit to restoring the
monarch’s migration
habitat
The proposal calls for
planting milkweed all
along the migratory path
through the US; between
fields, in ditches,
along roadsides, and in
public areas
Glyphosate-based
herbicides also destroy
soil, plant, animal, and
human health
To help, plant milkweed
in your garden, and sign
the petition asking EPA,
USDA and President Obama
to protect the monarchs’
breeding habitat by
stopping approval of
glyphosate-resistant
genetically engineered
crops
ICF International is
forecasting an end to the
decline in U.S. coal
production, and contends
that 2014 will be the lowest
point for producers, and
that both domestic and
foreign demand will pick up
steam to stabilize the
business.
ICF is also forecasting that
demand over the next decade
should average ~1,000
million short tons per year.
Two of the biggest drivers
of coal production
contraction -- low natural
gas prices driving
coal-to-gas switching and
EPA CO2 emissions
regulations -- are less of a
threat to the coal sector
moving forward. Domestic
production over the next
decade should average about
1 billion short tons per
year, ICF predicts.
Obamacare so far has been a
disaster of incompetence,
with the federal government
bungling critical parts of
the implementation. This
experience hasn’t shaken the
left’s confidence in big
government bureaucracy,
however. Many liberals
believe Obamacare is failing
because the government
takeover didn’t go far
enough. What we really need,
they explain, is a
single-payer system–one run
entirely by the bureaucrats.
When Ander Ordóñez
learned the extent of
pollution among the Kukama
indigenous communities along
the Marañón River in Peru’s
northeastern Amazon region,
he was not surprised.
He had accompanied the
experts who took water, soil
and sediment samples last
September, and the pools of
crude petroleum and other
damage he saw in near oil
wells and along a pipeline
was “terrible,” he said. “We
can’t just stand by and do
nothing.”
South Carolina
policymakers are moving
ahead with a plan that could
shield Duke Energy from
having to clean out polluted
coal ash ponds in two areas
of the state.
This past week, the state
House voted 80-30 for a bill
that will block lawsuits by
citizens groups under the
S.C. Pollution Control Act.
The bill now moves to the
Senate , which signed off on
a similar bill two years
ago.
"It is amnesty for
polluters," Rep. James Smith
, D- Richland said.
Energy Northwest will
begin moving more used
nuclear fuel to dry storage
Monday.
It's the fourth campaign
to remove used fuel from the
storage pool next to the
reactor core of the Columbia
Generating Station and put
it in dry storage near the
nuclear power reactor, said
Energy Northwest spokesman
John Dobken.
The study said instances of
very extreme floods, which
now occur about once every
50 years, could shorten to
about every 30 years, while
cases of extreme damage now
occurring once every 16
years could shorten to once
every 10 years.
Social network in
negotiations to buy a drone
manufacturer with the aim of
using its high-altitude
autonomous aircraft to beam
internet connections to
isolated communities
Genscape is reporting that
renewable generation was up
30 percent for the week
ending February 20, 2014,
while gas consumption
plummeted 35 percent as a
result of the increase in
renewables and weaker power
demand. According to
Genscape estimates, the
total weekly generation of
11,982 GWh was the second
highest weekly number in the
past five years.
A slowdown in the pace of
global warming so far this
century is likely to be only
a pause in a longer-term
trend of rising
temperatures, the science
academies of the United
States and Britain said on
Thursday.
Since an exceptionally
warm 1998, there has been "a
short-term slowdown in the
warming of Earth's surface,"
Britain's Royal Society and
the U.S. National Academy of
Sciences said in a report.
But, they said, that
"does not invalidate our
understanding of long-term
changes in global
temperature arising from
human-induced changes in
greenhouse gases."
Most HHO technologies have
to modify the car's
computer, which can void the
warranty. At a minimum, in
the other systems, they
usually have to shut the
system off when the vehicle
is undergoing annual
inspection to the vehicle so
it will "pass" according to
the computer algorithms,
which are not written to
accommodate or acknowledge
the benefits of hydroxy
addition to the fuel.
Police arrested more than
370 young people who tied
themselves to the White
House fence on Sunday to
protest the proposed
Keystone XL tar sands oil
pipeline.
“Some of the world’s most
charismatic animals are in
immediate danger of
extinction as a result of
habitat loss and illicit
trafficking,” warned UN
Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon, as the world marks
the first World Wildlife
Day.
The Dan River was running
fast and high when Mark
Bishopric dipped his paddle
into the muddy water and we
began a 2-mile float
downstream to the site of
the coal ash spill.
The ghostly-white bark of
sycamore trees lined the
banks, and we quietly
drifted along, the peace of
the morning broken only by
the cry of a kingfisher. I
understood why landowner
William Byrd named this
stretch of rolling hills
near the Virginia border
"The Land of Eden." You can
paddle for miles and see no
houses, no factories, only
an occasional otter slide
down the high banks.
At least 97 people were
killed, and 45 others were
wounded across Iraq
today. The number of
militants killed was, at 82
dead, remarkably high again;
however, that figure cannot
be independently confirmed.
Scientists are trying to
understand if the unusual
weather in the Northern
Hemisphere this winter —
from record heat in Alaska
to unprecedented flooding in
Britain — is linked to
climate change. One thing
seems clear: Shifts in the
jet stream play a key role
and could become even more
disruptive as the world
warms.
This winter's weather has
been weird across much of
the Northern Hemisphere.
Record storms in Europe;
record drought in
California; record heat in
parts of the Arctic,
including Alaska and parts
of Scandinavia; but record
freezes too, as polar air
blew south over Canada and
the U.S., causing
near-record ice cover on the
Great Lakes, sending the
mercury as low as minus 50
degrees Celsius in
Minnesota, and bringing
sharp chills to Texas.
Luminant won a court
battle against over alleged
Clean Air Act violations at
the Big Brown coal-fired
power plant in Texas.
A judge with the U.S.
District Court, Western
District of Texas (Waco)
ruled that no violations
occurred at the plant and
denied all of the Sierra
Club’s requested relief
after a three-day non-jury
trial.
What is needed if we are
to have a chance of enacting
a renewable energy
revolution in enough time to
prevent widespread and
catastrophic climate
disruption?
Revolutions happen when:
~~A majority of people
are either actively or
passively in support of the
changes that, cumulatively,
would constitute a
revolution;
~~The ruling
powers-that-be are divided,
unsure of how to handle
rising resistance and with
some going over to the side
of the revolution; and,
Antarctica's Ross Sea is one
of the few Polar Regions
where summer sea-ice
coverage has increased
during the last few decades,
bucking a global trend of
drastic declines in summer
sea ice across the Arctic
Ocean and in two adjacent
embayments of the Southern
Ocean around Antarctica. But
now, a modeling study led by
Professor Walker Smith of
the Virginia Institute of
Marine Science suggests that
the Ross Sea's recent
observed increase in summer
sea-ice cover is likely
short-lived, with the area
projected to lose more than
half its summer sea ice by
2050 and more than three
quarters by 2100.
Father-son fishing trips
on Lake Erie were the
closest TJ Corder thought
he'd ever get to a nuclear
power plant. From a
distance, he saw the cooling
towers of Ohio's Davis-Besse
Nuclear Power Station on the
shore but knew next to
nothing about how it
produced power.
Now, talk about nuclear
energy and lights go on for
Corder. A 26-year-old
nuclear engineer for
Atlanta-based Southern Co.,
Corder is training to
operate the systems and
equipment for two new
nuclear reactors under
construction at Waynesboro's
Plant Vogtle, the first
nuclear reactors licensed in
the U.S. in more than three
decades.
Brazilian farmers are
battling a voracious
caterpillar that likely
arrived from Asia,
challenging the agricultural
superpower's widely touted
mastery of tropical farming
just as it is on the verge
of becoming the world's top
soybean producer.
The caterpillar, a
variety known as helicoverpa
armigera that thrives in dry
heat, was spotted for the
first time in the Americas
on cotton farms in
drought-prone western Bahia
in early 2012, fuelling
panic among farmers who had
no idea what it was.
The Obama administration
on Monday announced new fuel
and automobile rules to cut
soot, smog and toxic
emissions, which it says
will reduce asthma and heart
attacks in the United
States.
The so-called Tier 3
rules unveiled by the
Environmental Protection
Agency have been under
development since President
Barack Obama issued a
memorandum instructing the
agency to develop them in
2010.
Fish exposed to increased
noise levels consume less
food and show more
stress-related behavior,
according to new research
from the University of
Bristol and the University
of Exeter. However, the way
fish decreased their food
intake differed between the
two British species tested.
Obama’s gutting of our
armed forces could make us
vulnerable to the greatest
disaster for the U.S.
military in half a century.
The Obama administration
announced this week that it
would shrink the Army to its
smallest size since before
World War II. This is a
dangerous decision that
projects weakness to our
enemies and our friends
alike.
Modern food production
involves animal cruelty
on a scale never seen
before
Most all conventional
meat and poultry is
raised in so-called
confined animal feeding
operations (CAFOs),
where the animals are
fed unnatural diets and
live under crowded,
filthy, and cruel
conditions
The routine use of
antibiotics for
growth-promotion
purposes has led to the
rapid rise of
antibiotic-resistant
superbugs that now
threaten human life
Chick-fil-A recently
announced it will switch
to antibiotic-free
chicken within the next
five years
Conventionally-raised
meats, beef in
particular, also contain
a range of other drugs.
A USDA report reveals
beef sold to the
American public have
been found to be
contaminated with 211
different drug residues
• Putin
formally asked Russian
parliament for authorization
to use force in Ukraine.
• Received unanimous consent
from Russian Senate. •
Russian legislators warned
of “apocalyptic
consequences” if Kremlin
didn't move. • Putin
ordered 6,000 troops into
southern Ukraine. *
Russian forces have occupied
Crimea. • More than
150,000 Russian troops have
been mobilized and are
awaiting Putin’s command.
The world loses or wastes
a staggering 25 percent to
33 percent of the food it
produces for consumption,
losses that can mean the
difference between an
adequate diet and
malnutrition in many
countries, the World Bank
said in a report released on
Thursday.
"The amount of food
wasted and lost globally is
shameful," said Jim Yong
Kim, president of the World
Bank.
M1 event observed.
Solar activity is likely to
be moderate with a slight
chance for an X-class flare
on days one, two, and three
(04 Mar, 05 Mar, 06 Mar).
The geomagnetic field is
expected to be at quiet
levels on days one, two, and
three (04 Mar, 05 Mar, 06
Mar). Protons have a slight
chance of crossing threshold
on days one, two, and three
(04 Mar, 05 Mar, 06 Mar).
Scientists have discovered a
30,000-year-old virus that,
while not a danger to
humans, suggests viruses
frozen in permafrost could
emerge from a thaw intact,
and potentially threaten our
health.
Soursop, also known as
graviola, custard apple,
cherimoya, guanabana, and
Brazilian pawpaw is a fruit
that grows in Central
America, the Caribbean, and
parts of northern South
America. It has also been
introduced to certain areas
of Africa, Southeast Asia,
and the Pacific. Annona
muricata is the scientific
name for this flowering
Evergreen tree. The fruit of
this tree is composed of
white flesh, fiber, and
indigestible black seeds.
Hydraulic Fracturing is a
process that sends
pressurized liquid down to a
target depth to fracture
rock and draws out liquids,
such as natural gas. This
process is used to retrieve
the gas from rock formations
beneath the earth that were
previously thought to be
unsuitable for gas
production (Helman) (Rao).
Fracking is now being
implemented all over the
world.
Littlefeather brought
up two points. One was
Hollywood's long tradition
of portraying Indians in a
negative light, as evildoers
or savages, ever the bad
guys to be bested by
virtuous cowboys and cavalry
-- and to those who'd argue,
in 1973, that we were living
in more enlightened times,
Littlefeather mentioned
re-runs shown on TV, racist
propaganda that was still
being broadcast despite some
progress in the contemporary
film industry.
...it strives for a
revolution of its own, a
return to a more limited,
more constitutional form of
government. If I had to
judge its performance so
far, I would say that it has
been courageous and right in
its diagnosis of the
problems facing American
politics, but somewhat off
in its prescriptions.
Many on the left, however,
argue that making it illegal
to hire employees for less
than $10.10 an hour would
not cause increased
unemployment. Two charts in
particular make a pretty
strong case that they’re
wrong—the President’s
proposals would put more
Americans out of work.
Myth # 1: Those who
believe that Putin's actions
with respect to Ukraine
could hurt Russia
economically should think
again. Global tensions have
generally been good for
Russia and the current
situation is no exception.
Russia is not afraid of US
administration's sanctions
threats. More dollars are
about to start flowing to
Putin and his friends
The Ukrainian legislature
wants international monitors
to help secure its atomic
reactors, according to
Reuters.
Ukraine's parliament
called for global assistance
to ensure that Russia does
not move in on the country's
energy supply, the article
said. Russian troops moved
into Ukraine's Crimean
Peninsula over the weekend.
While the public sleeps
through an unusually rough
winter, the fight against
climate change -- or the
fight against excessive
regulation, depending on the
point of view -- is being
waged at the U.S. Supreme
Court in a landmark case
involving greenhouse gases.
The Supreme Court ruled
in 2007 the Clean Air Act
gives the Environmental
Protection Agency had the
power to regulate
"greenhouse gases" emitted
from vehicles. Justice
Anthony Kennedy, a key swing
vote, joined the four
liberals to form the 5-4
majority.
This winter has already
been the wettest for almost
250 years in England and
Wales, Britain's national
weather service the Met
Office said on Thursday.
Around 435 millimeters
(17 inches) of rain was
recorded up to February 24
in England and Wales, making
it their wettest winter
since 1766.
For most of my childhood,
despite being perfectly
healthy and more than happy
to eat the delicious food my
mother cooked, I was
routinely rewarded
for finishing everything she
served with the
at-the-time-exciting-but-in-hindsight-seemingly-meaningless
invitation to join the
Clean Plate Club (CPC). The
words “Great job. You made
the Clean Plate Club today”
have been permanently etched
into my subconscious. And
from all the conversations
I’ve had about this topic,
I’m not the only one.
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