KAREN B. ROBERTS, - Physorg.com
Stephan: When I find these stories I always think two things: I am glad to see this forward movement, all part of the trend away from petroleum. But also this: Where would we be now if in 1973 when the fuel shortage occurred, we had committed to exiting the age of petroleum for alternatives, and stuck with it steadily, as we do with missiles.
Producing hydrogen from non-fossil fuel sources is a problem that continues to elude many scientists but University of Delaware’s Erik Koepf thinks he may have discovered a solution.
Hydrogen is traditionally made from natural gas. Unfortunately, natural gas is a fossil fuel that releases carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, when converted to hydrogen.
Koepf, a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering, has designed a novel reactor that employs highly concentrated sunlight and zinc oxide powder to produce solar hydrogen, a truly clean, sustainable fuel with zero emissions.
His advisers are Ajay Prasad, professor of mechanical engineering and director of UD’s Center for Fuel Cell Research, and Suresh Advani, George W. Laird Professor of Mechanical Engineering.
‘People have been trying for years to generate hydrogen renewably from sunlight, and Erik’s reactor takes us closer to that goal,
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Daisy Luther and NinaO, - SHTFplan.com
Stephan: The Fukushima nuclear catastrophe is far from over, and it is spreading around the world.
Radiation from the Fukushima Nuclear Plant disaster in Japan is now actively in the ecosystem all along the North American west coast
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TRAVIS WALDRON, - Think Progress
Stephan: Another part of the assault on women. On the basis of evidence it can be proven that Rightist social policies are destructive to national wellness.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its monthly jobs report this morning, revealing that the American economy added 120,000 jobs. Though the number was lower than in previous months, it marked the 25th consecutive month that the private sector added jobs. The unemployment rate, meanwhile, dropped to 8.2 percent, in part because the labor force participation rate (which measures how many people are seeking employment) fell.
As former Department of Labor chief economist Betsey Stevenson noted on Twitter, female workers accounted for the entire drop in labor force participation:
Betsey Stevenson @BetseyStevenson
Declines in labor force participation all came from women: Male particpation +14K, Female particpation -177K
6 Apr 12
The overall drop in the rate is attributable to a number of factors, including a decline in the number of new immigrants to the United States and an increase in retirements from the Baby Boomer generation. Still, it’s another example of how the Great Recession has shifted from the ‘mancession
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Stephan: We must abandon industrial agriculture, for its dependence on massive amounts of petroleum and water if nothing else. And it can be done.
The Studebakers plying up and down Havana’s boardwalk aren’t the best advertisement for dynamism and innovation. But if you want to see what tomorrow’s fossil-fuel-free, climate-change-resilient, high-tech farming looks like, there are few places on earth like the Republic of Cuba.
Under the Warsaw Pact, Cuba sent rum and sugar to the red side of the Iron Curtain. In exchange, it received food, oil, machinery, and as many petrochemicals as it could shake a stick at. From the Missile Crisis to the twilight of the Soviet Union, Cuba was one of the largest importers of agricultural chemicals in Latin America. But when the Iron Curtain fell, the supply lines were cut, and tractors rusted in the fields.
Unable to afford the fertilizers and pesticides that 20th-century agriculture had taken for granted, the country faced extreme weather events and a limit to the land and water it could use to grow food. The rest of the world will soon face many of the same problems: In the coming decade, according to the OECD, we’ll see higher fuel and fertilizer costs, more variable climate patterns, and limits to arable land that will drive cereal prices 20 percent higher and hike meat prices by 30 […]
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Saturday, April 7th, 2012
SARA ROBINSON, - Truthout.org
Stephan: This is polemic, and I don't usually do this. But this essay so closely parallels my own thinking I had to use it. There is a kind of slow motion coup being attempted by the Theocratic Right, a minority attempting to defeat a majority through intimidation and fear. We must resist this with our votes. Masses of Republicans need to be defeated in both houses and the Democrats need to retain the White House. I know this sounds partisan but it is, in fact, based on data concerning social outcomes. The Theocratic Right's approach to the world produces significantly worse both personal and societal outcomes. That world view is dangerous to your health.
A marriage counselor friend once told me that he almost always knows by the end of the very first session whether he’s being hired to guide a damaged couple back to health, or to help them work toward a divorce — even when the couple doesn’t know the answer to this question themselves.
It’s easy to see, he explained. The relationship’s future success or failure all hinges on one simple thing: How much goodwill and trust they have left. Even if they’ve hurt each other badly, the couples who make it are the ones that still retain a few shreds of faith in each other’s basic good intentions. She didn’t mean to hurt me. He’s not always a bastard. Deep down, she still loves me. Deep down, he really wants things to be better.
These couples are still seeing same future together, and still cling to the tattered memories of why they first fell in love. Just a few frayed threads of trust are all that’s needed — if they’ve got that, the odds are high that with time and work, they can re-weave the fabric of the marriage into something that’s once again strong and good.
On the other hand, the tell-tale […]
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