Saturday, February 21st, 2015
Stephan: Elon Musk is this generation's mix of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. And he usually looks like he is having such a good time. I think he is correct to focus on the leverage point of storing electricity. It's going to be critical to the noncarbon future and the electrical storage industry that is emerging is going to make billions and billions of dollars. This is another example of looking into the future and seeing the opportunity of a wellness oriented technology.
Elon Musk, Chief Executive of Tesla Motors and SpaceX, attends the Reuters Global Technology Summit in San Francisco June 18, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Stephen Lam
Earlier this week, during a disappointing Tesla earnings call, Elon Musk mentioned in passing that he’d be producing a stationary battery for powering the home in the next few months. It sounded like a throwaway side project from someone who’s never seen a side project he doesn’t like. But it’s a very smart move, and one that’s more central to Musk’s ambitions than it might seem.
To understand why, it helps to look not at Tesla, but at SolarCity, a company chaired by Musk and run by his cousin Lyndon Rive. SolarCity installs panels on people’s roofs, leases them for less than they’d be paying in energy bills, and sells surplus energy back to the local utility. It’s proven a tremendously successful […]
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Saturday, February 21st, 2015
Valerie Tarico, - Alternet (U.S.)
Stephan: This is yet another example of the Theocratic Right's uninterest in facts, and their investment in the persistence of myths, even in the face of greater expense and deteriorated wellness. The policies they espouse make it very difficult for a Elon Musk, or Steve Jobs to emerge.
IUD
Credit: www.sogamds.com
When a pilot program in Colorado offered teens state-of-the-art long acting contraceptives—IUD’s and implants—teen births plummeted by 40%, along with a drop in abortions. The program saved the state 42.5 million dollars in a single year, over five times what it cost. But rather than extending or expanding the program, some Colorado Republicans are trying to kill it—even if this stacks the odds against Colorado families. Why? Because they insist, wrongly, that IUD’s work by killing embryos, which they believe are sacred. This claim, which is based in bad faith and scientific ignorance, undermines fiscal prudence and flourishing families.
Excellent Family Planning Transforms Family Life
Research from around the world shows that children and families are more likely to thrive when women are able to delay, space, and limit childbearing. The benefits are enormous: healthier moms and babies, less infant mortality and special needs, more family prosperity, higher education, less domestic conflict and abuse—even lower crime rates. Whole communities gain as women (and men!) […]
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Friday, February 20th, 2015
Stephan: As if soft drinks were not already bad enough there now comes this, about the chemical used to make Coke, Dr. Pepper, and other drinks brown in color.
I confess I was amazed at how many people drink these beverages every day, sometimes several times a day. I am going to look and see what the health effect of these drinks is, compared to smoking tobacco. If you drink sodas, please stop.
Credit: Jeff Chiu/AP
Although former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s war against large sodas failed in court, it succeeded in spreading awareness about the danger of consuming too many sugary beverages. But we might have to be wary of sodas for reasons other than excess sugar and weight gain. A chemical called 4-methylimidazole (4-Mel), the additive that makes sodas like Coke and Dr. Pepper brown, is actually a potential carcinogen, and consuming enough of it puts you at an increased risk of developing cancers. (emphasis added)
Scientists at Consumer Reports and the Center for a Livable Future at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health recently
collaborated on a study which aimed to determine exactly how many Americans were at an increased risk of cancer due to 4-Mel consumption.
Consumer Reports wrote up the findings:
Among the more than half of Americans age 6 to 64 who drink soda on a typical day, it turns out that the average intake ranges […]
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Friday, February 20th, 2015
Christopher Wanjek , - Livescience
Stephan: It is beginning to dawn on government policy makers, health care providers, and insurance companies that improving wellness has to be the priority, and policies have to be designed and implemented to do that. I see this as very good news because it shows a growing recognition that only the compassionate life-affirming option will effectively deal with the planetary trend towards obesity. A trend that is literally killing us.
SOURCE: The article abstracts, commentary and infographics are available on
The Lancet website.
Credit: TAGSTOCK1/Shutterstock.com
With obesity rates continuing to rise around the globe and the majority of Americans now obese or overweight, (emphasis added) it’s easy to see that we are losing the battle of the bulge.
Aside from isolated areas of improvement where people are, in fact, losing weight — in a city here, a neighborhood there — no country has succeeded in reversing its obesity epidemic. That failure has begun to have dire consequences: shortened lives, compromised life quality and skyrocketing health care costs, scientists reported Wednesday (Feb. 18) in a special issue of the journal The Lancet.
In a series of six critical articles covering the health, policy, economics and politics of obesity, scientists lay out what society has been doing wrong and call for a new global action plan to meet what they call the “modest” goal of the World Health Organization: no increase in the prevalence of obesity from now through 2025.
“There are clear agreements on what strategies should be implemented and tested to address obesity,” said Christina Roberto, an […]
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Friday, February 20th, 2015
Taylor Hill, Associate Environment and Wildlife Editor - takepart
Stephan: Not many people talk about it but unless airlines can change their carbon footprint commercial flight becomes very problematic on the existing scale. Some new kind of non-carbon propulsion is obviously the goal. But biofuel is a mid-point and should be encouraged. This is a good trend. Print out the list below and try to book on the airlines with the highest scores. This is a place to take the compassionate life-affirming option.
Credit: en.wikipedia.org
What’s in a jet fuel? If you’re flying on one of these environmentally friendly airliners, vegetable oil, desert plants, or some other biofuel concoction could be powering the engines.
According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, more than 40 commercial airlines have flown around 600,000 miles powered at least partly by biofuels. That may not make much of a dent yet in the 640 million metric tons of carbon pollution emitted by the airline industry annually, but it’s a start.
Now, for the first time, NRDC has ranked the commercial airline companies working the hardest to reduce their carbon footprint with the use of sustainable biofuels. (emphasis added)
The early leaders include Air France/KLM, British Airways, United Airlines, Virgin Atlantic, Cathay Pacific, and Alaska Airlines.
“It’s great to see certain airlines becoming leaders in the use of sustainable biofuels,” said Debbie Hammel, senior resource specialist with NRDC and author of the scorecard. “As the world rises to the challenge of curbing climate change […]
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