Saturday, January 26th, 2013
Stephan: I lived on a bus for four years, a 36-foot Bluebird Wonderlodge, an absolutely wonderful vehicle. I mention the length because my purpose was to be able to go down every road on the maps, and one couldn't do that if the vehicle was over 36 feet.
We made eight coast-to-coast crossings. Each had a theme: The Presidents' Houses, Pre-Columbia America, Utopian Communities, as examples. These trips took months, as we meandered down small roads through American and Canada. I go into all this to say that having done it I know the truth of this report. If we spent the kind of money we spend for war creating a new non-carbon system it could be accomplished within a decade, just as we created the interstate highway system, or the national grid.
There are tens of thousands of places where wind or solar could go. What I learned from my trips is that most of America is empty. There are places you can drive on the largest local road, and not see anything on wheels all day. On little roads it could be two days. According to NOAA, 'The narrow fringe of coastal land comprising 17 percent of the contiguous U.S. land area is home to more than half of the nation's population.'
A new non-carbon energy system could be created in such a small space in this open empty country one would hardly notice. We would have decentralized regional community sized systems scaled to need. There is nothing technically stopping this except a collective surrender to the interests of the few.
Abu Dhabi, UAE- A new report released on the sidelines of the World Future Energy Summit here today, shows that even if all electricity is to be generated through renewable energy (RE) sources, and with solar photovoltaics (PV) alone, it would take up only an insignificant amount of total land area, contrary to common perception.
The report, Solar PV Atlas: solar power in harmony with nature, shows through seven cases- six countries and one region- less than 1% of the total land mass would be required to meet 100% of projected electricity demand in 2050, if generating electricity only with solar PV .
WWF teamed up with First Solar, 3TIER and Fresh Generation to develop the report. It looks at Indonesia, Madagascar, Mexico, Morocco, South Africa, Turkey, and the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh.
The regions represent diverse geographies, demographics, natural environments, economies and political structures. They receive different but good average levels of sunshine, and all show vast potential for widespread development of solar PV, a well-established, commercially available and reliable technology today.
The report illustrates that PV technology, when well-planned, does not conflict with conservation goals and clarifies that no country or region must choose between solar PV and space for humans […]
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Friday, January 25th, 2013
DAVID LEIGH, JEAN FRANÇOIS TANDA and JESSICA BENHAMOU , - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: Several readers sent me this. It's all of a piece with the rest, and I will let it speak for itself.
Few passing London tourists would ever guess that the premises of Bulgari, the upmarket jewellers in New Bond Street, had anything to do with the pope. Nor indeed the nearby headquarters of the wealthy investment bank Altium Capital, on the corner of St James’s Square and Pall Mall.
But these office blocks in one of London’s most expensive districts are part of a surprising secret commercial property empire owned by the Vatican.
Behind a disguised offshore company structure, the church’s international portfolio has been built up over the years, using cash originally handed over by Mussolini in return for papal recognition of the Italian fascist regime in 1929.
Since then the international value of Mussolini’s nest-egg has mounted until it now exceeds £500m. In 2006, at the height of the recent property bubble, the Vatican spent £15m of those funds to buy 30 St James’s Square. Other UK properties are at 168 New Bond Street and in the city of Coventry. It also owns blocks of flats in Paris and Switzerland.
The surprising aspect for some will be the lengths to which the Vatican has gone to preserve secrecy about the Mussolini millions. The St James’s Square office block was bought by a company […]
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Friday, January 25th, 2013
JANEEN CAPIZOLA, - The Raw Story
Stephan: Read this in the context of the proceeding story. This is one of the reasons hospitals have become so dangerous.
Britain’s most senior medical adviser has warned MPs that the rise in drug-resistant diseases could trigger a national emergency comparable to a catastrophic terrorist attack, pandemic flu or major coastal flooding.
Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, said the threat from infections that are resistant to frontline antibiotics was so serious that the issue should be added to the government’s national risk register of civil emergencies.
She described what she called an ‘apocalyptic scenario
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Friday, January 25th, 2013
CLARA MOSKOWITZ, - Live Science
Stephan: If you think you don't understand modern physics, you are not alone. Many physicists may be more sophisticated than you, but they aren't clear what it means either, as this report shows.
‘Anyone who claims to understand quantum theory is either lying or crazy,’ physicist Richard Feynman once said, according to legend.
That situation hasn’t changed much in the roughly 90 years since quantum mechanics was first introduced, as evidenced by a new poll, detailed online this month, showing that physicists are still divided over the theory’s meaning.
The 16-question poll was given to 33 physicists, philosophers and mathematicians at a conference on ‘Quantum Physics and the Nature of Reality’ in Austria in July 2011. The poll probed the experts’ thoughts on fundamental tenets of the theory, such as the randomness of nature and the impact of outside measurements on quantum systems.
Though the pollsters admit the sample size is small and the test not completely scientific, they found a striking divide among the experts on some of the most basic principles of quantum mechanics.
‘Nearly 90 years after the theory’s development, there is still no consensus in the scientific community regarding the interpretation of the theory’s foundational building blocks,’ the authors of the poll, led by physicist Maximilian Schlosshauer of the University of Portland, wrote in a paper describing the results posted on Jan. 6 on the preprint site arXiv.org. ‘Our poll is an […]
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Friday, January 25th, 2013
NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON and ERRIN HAINES, - The Washington Post
Stephan: This is a completely naked attempt on the part of the Republicans to rig America's elections. They don't even try to hide it, indeed they brag about it. What amazes me is how uninterested people seem to be about this. I would have expected people to be out in the streets in the states where this is going on.
Republicans in Virginia and a handful of other battleground states are pushing for far-reaching changes to the electoral college in an attempt to counter recent success by Democrats.
In the vast majority of states, the presidential candidate who wins receives all of that state’s electoral votes. The proposed changes would instead apportion electoral votes by congressional district, a setup far more favorable to Republicans. Under such a system in Virginia, for instance, President Obama would have claimed four of the state’s 13 electoral votes in the 2012 election, rather than all of them.
Other states considering similar changes include Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, which share a common dynamic with Virginia: They went for Obama in the past two elections but are controlled by Republicans at the state level.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus recently voiced support for the effort, saying it is something that ‘a lot of states that have been consistently blue that are fully controlled red ought to be looking at.
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