Tuesday, February 12th, 2013
Stephan: While the U.S. kowtows to Big Oil providing the most profitable industry in human history with tens of billions of tax breaks and subsidies, even second tier nations are moving in the opposite direction.
Wind power in Central and Eastern Europe will become a significant source of electricity production by 2020 and Turkey’s wind power generation capacity will grow even faster – provided there is a stable legal framework in each country.
The European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) has published a new report, ‘Eastern Winds’, analysing the emerging wind power markets in Central and Eastern European countries, plus Turkey, Ukraine and Russia. Twelve newer EU Member States in Central and Eastern Europe plan to increase wind power capacity from the 6.4GW installed at end of 2012 to 16GW by 2020. Turkey wants to increase wind power capacity from its current 2.3GW to 20GW by 2023. Poland and Romania almost doubled their annual installed wind power capacity in 2012. At the end of 2012, Poland had 2.5GW, Romania 1.9GW and Bulgaria 0.7GW of wind power capacity installed.
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Tuesday, February 12th, 2013
Stephan: Here is another European report.
Click through to listen to the npr package.
For the first time, electricity production from Spanish wind mills topped that of nuclear, coal and solar. Spain’s location in the south of Europe means it’s endowed with lots of sunshine and clear windy skies – which it’s put to use becoming a leader in renewable energy.
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DAVID GREENE, HOST:
We’ll begin NPR’s business news starts with strong winds in Spain.
GREENE: Spain has a pretty good location in the south of Europe. They are accustomed to good weather, plenty of sunshine, clear skies and wind – which the country is putting to good use. Spain has become a leader in renewable energy.
In fact, the countries wind farms have broken a new record, as Lauren Frayer reports from Madrid.
LAUREN FRAYER, BYLINE: High-tech wind turbines now dot these plains where Don Quixote’s windmills once stood. Spanish winters are windy, and since November these wind farms have made history. Their electricity output has topped that of coal, nuclear and solar energy for the first time.
HEIKKI WILLSTEDT: This is a real – an incredible feat.
FRAYER: Heikki Willstedt, with the Spanish Wind Power Association, says 26 percent of Spain’s […]
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Tuesday, February 12th, 2013
BRAD PLUMER, - The Washington Post
Stephan: Yet another report of the European energy conversion trend.
The main point here: Germany doesn’t get an enormous amount of sunlight, relatively speaking. Its annual solar resources are roughly comparable to Alaska’s. Just about every single region in the continental United States has greater solar potential, on average, than Germany.
Yet despite those limitations, Germany has still managed to be the world leader in solar power. At the end of 2012, the country had installed about 30 gigawatts of solar capacity, providing between 3 percent and 10 percent of its electricity. The United States, by contrast, has somewhere around 6.4 gigawatts of solar capacity.
Why the difference? Policy is the big factor. The German government has heavily subsidized renewable energy for years through a variety of measures. Perhaps most crucially, the country’s ‘feed-in tariffs
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Monday, February 11th, 2013
FRANK NEWPORT, - The Gallup Organization
Stephan: This yet another aspect of the Great Schism. Our politics are becoming completely racialized. Click through to see the charts, which will elaborate what is happening.
PRINCETON, NJ — Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 89% of Republican self-identifiers nationwide in 2012, while accounting for 70% of independents and 60% of Democrats. Over one-fifth of Democrats (22%) were black, while 16% of independents were Hispanic.
These results are based on more than 338,000 interviews conducted as part of Gallup Daily tracking in 2012, and clearly underscore the distinct racial profiles of partisan groups in today’s political landscape.
Republicans are overwhelmingly non-Hispanic white, at a level that is significantly higher than the self-identified white percentage of the national adult population. Just 2% of Republicans are black, and 6% are Hispanic.
Seventy percent of Americans who identify as independents are white, but independents have the highest representation of Hispanics (16%) of the three groups. Eight percent of independents are blacks.
Democrats remain a majority white party, but four in 10 Democrats are something other than non-Hispanic white. More than one in five Democrats are black, roughly twice the black representation in the adult population.
Racial and Ethnic Groups Gravitate Toward Different Parties
Looked at differently, these party composition patterns reflect major differences in the way Americans in various racial and ethnic groups identify […]
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Monday, February 11th, 2013
DANA LIEBELSON, - Mother Jones
Stephan: This is what I mean about the Great Schism playing out at every level of society. Notice that, of course, this idiot is a Republican. In those states where the Theocratic Right is powerful there are literally dozens of these lunatic bills being introduced, and many will become laws. The unintended consequences that flow from these laws will haunt the states where they take hold for a generation.
Late last month, Rick Brattin, a Republican state representative in Missouri, introduced a bill that would require that intelligent design and ‘destiny’ get the same educational treatment and textbook space in Missouri schools as the theory of evolution. Brattin insists that his bill has nothing to do with religion-it’s all in the name of science.
‘I’m a science enthusiast…I’m a huge science buff,’ Brattin tells The Riverfront Times. ‘This [bill] is about testable data in today’s world.’ But Eric Meikle, education project director at the National Center for Science Education, disagrees. ‘This bill is very idiosyncratic and strange,’ he tells Mother Jones. ‘And there is simply not scientific evidence for intelligence design.’
HB 291, the ‘Missouri Standard Science Act,’ redefines a few things you thought you already knew about science. For example, a ‘hypothesis’ is redefined as something that reflects a ‘minority of scientific opinion and is ‘philosophically unpopular.’ A scientific theory is ‘an inferred explanation…whose components are data, logic and faith-based philosophy.’ And ‘destiny’ is not something that $5 fortune tellers believe in; Instead, it’s ‘the events and processes that define the future of the universe, galaxies, stars, our solar system, earth, plant life, animal life, and the human race.’
The bill […]
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