Wind power generation increased by 31 percent around the world last year, now totaling 157.9 gigawatts, according to a new report from the Global Wind Energy Council. The country with the biggest individual increase: China, which saw more than 100 percent growth in wind power capacity over the last year, accounting for more than a third of the new turbines installed. The news is not only good for the environment, but also the global economy. Not only does wind power now employ an international workforce of 500,000, the market has swelled to $63 billion. The increase defied analyst predictions that the economic downturn would slow wind development. China, which now derives 25.1 gigawatts from wind, wasn’t the only country in Asia placing emphasis on wind. India, South Korea, Japan and Taiwan added a combined 14 gigawatts of generation. To put this in context, the U.S. – which still leads in wind generation – added 10 gigawatts, upping its wind capacity by 39 percent. This is the year that the Asian wind market took off, after incremental increases over the last seven years. Europe also saw impressive growth in its wind capacity, adding 10.5 gigawatts, but year-over-year increases […]
BARCELONA — After reaching around 4.6 billion mobile cellular subscriptions by the end of 2009, ITU expects the number of mobile cellular subscriptions globally to reach five billion in 2010, driven by advanced services and handsets in developed countries and increased take-up of mobile health services and mobile banking in the developing world. ‘Even during an economic crisis, we have seen no drop in the demand for communications services,’ says ITU Secretary-General Dr Hamadoun Touré, taking part in the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, ‘and I am confident that we will continue to see a rapid uptake in mobile cellular services in particular in 2010, with many more people using their phones to access the internet.’ ITU expects to see the number of mobile broadband subscriptions exceed one billion globally during 2010, having topped 600 million by the end of 2009. With current growth rates, web access by people on the move – via laptops and smart mobile devices – is likely to exceed web access from desktop computers within the next five years. ‘Even the simplest, low-end mobile phone can do so much to improve healthcare in the developing world,’ adds Dr Touré. ‘Good […]
ROCKVILLE, Md. — The Nuclear Regulatory Commission is bursting out of its headquarters in the box-store, strip-mall northwestern suburbs of Washington. Buses shuttle among four structures where the commission has leased overflow space, but that’s not enough to relieve the feel of a college that badly underestimated the size of its incoming freshman class. Portions of the main cafeteria are partitioned off before and after lunch to form makeshift conference rooms. The actual conference rooms are off limits because they’ve been pressed into service as offices. The commission’s beleaguered staffers call the cause of all this uproar ‘the tsunami.’ It’s been 25 years since a new nuclear power plant was licensed in the United States, but applications started arriving again in 2007, spurred by incentives launched during President George W. Bush’s administration. By the end of this year, the Energy Department expects to have applications in hand for 31 new reactors. Fifty-two years after the first American commercial nuclear-power generator opened at Shippingport, Pa., 104 units in 31 states produce about 20 percent of the nation’s electricity. The licenses being sought would increase generating capacity by about 20 percent. To accommodate the demand, the NRC stuffed […]
The only place to see an aurochs in nature these days? A cave painting. The enormous wild cattle that once roamed the European plains have been extinct since 1627, when the last survivor died in a Polish nature reserve. But this could soon change thanks to the work of European preservationists who are hoping they can make the great beast walk again. If they succeed - through a combination of modern genetic expertise and old-fashioned breeding - it would be the first time an animal has been brought back from extinction and released into the wild. The aurochs was a massive creature, standing more than six feet tall at the shoulder and weighing more than a ton. It had forward-facing horns and a white stripe running down its spine. The prehistoric animal was domesticated about 8,000 years ago, but some aurochs also remained in the wild until the end of the Middle Ages, when scientists believe they became extinct due to overhunting and loss of habitat. The hope for its resurrection now lies in its tame descendants, domesticated cattle. Here’s how the process is expected to work: Scientists will first scour old aurochs bone and teeth fragments […]
Lately, financial news has been dominated by reports from Greece and other nations on the European periphery. And rightly so. But I’ve been troubled by reporting that focuses almost exclusively on European debts and deficits, conveying the impression that it’s all about government profligacy – and feeding into the narrative of our own deficit hawks, who want to slash spending even in the face of mass unemployment, and hold Greece up as an object lesson of what will happen if we don’t. For the truth is that lack of fiscal discipline isn’t the whole, or even the main, source of Europe’s troubles – not even in Greece, whose government was indeed irresponsible (and hid its irresponsibility with creative accounting). No, the real story behind the euromess lies not in the profligacy of politicians but in the arrogance of elites – specifically, the policy elites who pushed Europe into adopting a single currency well before the continent was ready for such an experiment. Consider the case of Spain, which on the eve of the crisis appeared to be a model fiscal citizen. Its debts were low – 43 percent of G.D.P. in 2007, compared with 66 percent […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
